Hard To Read: Book of Unwritten Tales 2
Unwritten but not unplayable
Way back in the mists of 2011, when the world was newly formed and virgin to such ideas as "crowd funding" "early access" and "XBOX One", our very own John Walker gave his honest thoughts on The Book of Unwritten Tales. Despite translation flaws, his younger self enjoyed it, summing up with "An adventure this long is such a rare treat. One this enjoyable at the same time is almost unheard of." Now developers King Art have returned to the series, after various departures, with a Kickstarter. The twist is that their game is already funded and slated for an early 2015 release. What this money is for is to improve it, a task usually left to stretch goals and bonus rewards. Their hilarious kickstarter video and some details on how it's going are below.
The comedic style and charming characters impacted well with the general internet, hitting their funding goal quickly. To be expected when the spin-off of the original game, while a step back in puzzle design, caused John to state "despite it all, I haven’t laughed out loud along with a game this many times since Portal 2." Humour of this calibre is sadly so very rare, but King Art had enough to produce a couple more videos with further information:
It's interesting to me that adventure games are still proving to be some of the most successful Kickstarters around, particularly when backed by pre-existing fanbases for games or developers. I had assumed that the ever-blooming money tree would prove false for the genre, along with space-simulators and "fuck you" survival games, but as yet it has not run out. Of course, more games is always good and while I've never touched the originals, what's displayed here and the delight with which John reviewed them makes it mighty tempting. You can grab both on Steam if you're feeling the same and want a taste of what's to come.