The Book of Unwritten Tales – A Mini Preview

The Book of Unwritten Tales is a point-and-click adventure hearkening back to the days of Guybrush Threepwood. As a similar adventure game, Unwritten Tales is more of an homage than a competitor, even including several gaming references to popular titles of the past. 

King Art Games has already released a retail version in their homeland of Germany, but the English translation will debut on October 28. For now, we can fiddle with the rather lengthy and puzzling demo.

The visuals so far are amazing. The depth of color and detail is a rare gem in today’s massive game worlds – it’s nice to stop and smell the roses. King Art Games combined a mixture of hand-drawn backgrounds with 3D models to create this particular union of cartoon fantasy. 

Regarding the gameplay and puzzles, the demo includes an option to reveal all the clickable areas by holding down the spacebar, and it’s only a matter of time before you’ve exhausted all the spots and worked your way through the obstacles. In this sense, the game is somewhat easy, but the spacebar is a temptation I’m learning to do without. The demo has stumped me at a few points, particularly in places where the task isn’t as simple as clicking and skimming dialogue.  The hilarious dialogue makes the frustration worthwhile. Speaking of dialogue, King Art has ensured that the jokes are not lost in translation as they’ve hired a very professional voice acting cast from the UK to deliver the charisma and charm behind each character. 

The sampling of soundtrack is sweet and compelling, composed of whimsy and beauty. I would play the game for soundtrack alone. 

Overall, The Book of Unwritten Tales is shaping up to be a great adventure and if it delivers on plot and length, it may supplant a few other games in my favorites list. If you are looking forward to the English PC release like me, you’d better check that your hardware meets the minimum requirements below. Look for our full review of The Book of Unwritten tales in the coming days!

Minimum system requirements:
Windows XP SP 3 / Vista / Windows 7
Pentium IV 2 GHz / Athlon 2.4 GHz
1 GB RAM (Windows XP) / 2GB RAM (Vista / Win 7)
6 GB Free Harddrive Space
Direct-X 9c compliant video card with 128 MB RAM, PixelShader 2.0

Recommended system requirements:
Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7
3 GHz CPU
4 GB RAM
6 GB Hard disk space
Direct-X 9c compliant video card with 256 MB RAM, PixelShader 2.0