The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales

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The Bookwalker has a really interesting premise that I enjoyed - 'diving' into books and entering its world, with the goal of stealing an item from it to pay off your sentence for a previous crime you comitted that you later discover. I thought each of the unique worlds were interesting and distinct, with small rewards for exploring and crafting tools within the worlds (that don't carry over from books). Even better, you can 'leave' the book anytime to get items from the real world. If anything I wish the devs played with this a bit more, since usually you just leave to collect one tool. There's some mystery and intrigue with another 'writer' that is evicted in an appartment below yours, what if you had to dive into one of their books and learn something that you could then use in their appartment, like a code or a solution to a puzzle, or a hint about a secret compartment? Just a thought. Another thing I would've liked to see a bit more is more work on the dialogue and options. You start as a desperate person wanting to get their shackles off so you can get back to writing, but after meeting your partner you suddenly become convinced that all fictional characters are meant to be respected and have happy ends. A lot of the end results are also forced, you could go through different dialogue options and still hit the same result to get to the same story beats. It's definitely not an RPG or choose your own adventure type story. I'm not really sure what the moral is - fictional characters deserve respect and to finish your creative works? Or that people who you pass by and see as background characters have their own worlds, so treat them well? The combat was pretty straightforward, each enemy attack had a pretty easy counter. There's an upgrade system but its pretty thing - it just adds a secondary effect to the skills you already have (like stealing more 'ink', the games mana, or healing when you put up a shield). Contrary to some I don't hate combat in games like these, but it was a bit too shallow to feel tense. Again, it would be cool to use stuff you find in the books during combat instead of the same set of skills. That's pushing the scope though, just something that might've made the combat system feel more significant. I can't speak on the dialogue itself too much - much like 'The Last Station' English is not the studios native language (if I remember right they're Finish?), but it was definitely a bit flat. Part of the narrative is about how the main character looks down on characters in books since they're not written well, so maybe thats intentional? Overall I think it's definitely worth checking out if its already in your library (I think I got my key from humble) or for the story jumping gimmick. Just don't expect an RPG or deep combat system.