The Book of Unwritten Tales 2

This is a graphic adventure from a group of folks who know every game I do, and still want to put years of effort into an IF game. I come by it second-hand, on the PS-now marketplace, but it’s been on Steam.

This game is full of characters and puzzles and jokey references to every geeky joke I could recognize from the past 20 years, games, movies, Doctor Who, Monkey Island, Marvel movies, Harry Potter, on and on. It’s a sequel that mostly doesn’t assume I kniw the first one, but now I’m curious.

It’s long, like Grim Fandango, with more chapters than you expected. It changes PC characters, it comments on Adventure game puzzles while you are saddled with them. I liked it immediately, hated it later, then loved it again, and not just because I was only in part 2.

There was a section that seemed like it was making fun of a thing I would write, where you go back in time, and it turns into a 256-color type graphic lucasarts game, and then if you go back too far, it’s a text adventure. And you have to pop back up, hopefully with some new inventory, and having changed the present from the past.

I have to recognize and recommend a game that did my dealie with full budget and all the trimmings, in the same spirit. It’s - I always wanted to see that, and I didn’t have to do it, so I got to play it.

The adventure goes way far past this part. And you keep swapping PCs, freely, and the dialogue and the Examine descriptions are all tailored, with proper voice performance. I never could have produced this, but it’s kind of what I was thinking back in 2002.

It’s clever. And done with love of all adventure game history.

Rob

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