KING ART Games is back! This time with a sequel to one of the most charismatic point-and-click adventure games, The Book of Unwritten Tales 2. They have arrived to Steam’s Early Access program releasing Chapter 1 and receiving as much user feedback, fixing bugs and implementing features as best as they can. Now, they are fully released!

It is quite difficult to explain the plot of a sequel without actually spoiling anything. So just to be general, we will see the team of Ivo the princess elf, Wilbur the gnome mage, Nate the adventurer and Critter, all back after the action filled ending of the first game. You will find most of them in stable positions, but as a new adventure rises upon them, they take the decision to find out what it wrong with the world this time, and why is magic involved? Princess Ivo enters a very important stage of her life, and she does not know how to figure it out. Nate and Critter end up in quite a pickle presented in the first minutes of Chapter 1. Wilbur is appointed as a teacher in the School of Wizardry and Witchcraft in Seastone, as he struggles to fulfill this task, an old friend from the sewers lets him know that the Arch-Mage is in danger and must find out why and who is behind the plot. The game takes places in the fantasy world of Aventásia, filled with humor, adventure and with some weird events.

Book of Unwritten Tales 2, as well as its prequel, are point-and-click adventure games. Each area is set with numerous puzzles that work as brain teasers for the player. One of the highlights of this mechanic is that you can alternate between puzzles as you are presented many at the same time. You can play as the four main characters as they are presented to you and allowed their control and solve their location’s puzzles while admiring a thrilling new story. You will meet secondary characters that will aid you in solving puzzles by giving you clues, ingredient lists and even ingredients (sometimes without having to do nothing for them!).

There are many new features added in relation to the first game, also some that have improved, such as:

Cloud Saves: Great addition! The first game you would have to manually get the save files from one computer to another.
Steam Trading Cards: As a popular addition that most current released games offer.
Achievements: Now you can keep track of the big tasks and not just have them in a distant memory. They also make a game more ‘complete’ and completion satisfying. Some even are cleverly placed during your progression.
New Tutorial Intro: It will explain you the point and click mechanics of looking at things and then using them. It is an appropriate addition but feels a bit weird after you have already played the first game. Either way, it is a welcoming feature for new players.
The game is fairly well optimized: First game would take a considerate time loading levels, now it almost instantly take you to the next area. Putting up their best cards on this current gaming world!
Soundtrack: New fantasy themed compositions, recorded with a live orchestra!
Character design updates: Characters look more charismatic; more detailed, and show more of their personality. Each of the main characters simply looks outstanding. Not to mention the addition of changing to new cool outfits (at will).
Inventory: You no longer have an OS X dock with items that pop up as you hover down the screen, now you have a square inventory on the lower right corner of the screen, you can mix your items and use them here.
PRESS SPACE BAR: This will show all environment interactables. I’ll get to this point further in the review as it’s a complete game changer.

Speaking of which! Almost every interactable in the game offers at least 2 different dialogue lines. It is quite hard to exhaust the dialogue that an NPC or an object offers. The game is simply rich with lore content that sometimes can be silly, not useful, but very enjoyable. Sometimes you must exhaust dialogues as specific stages of a puzzle will only trigger if then. Fortunately, you can always try your imagination, most of it not all solutions are simply bizarre and clever, and some even bring a surprise turn around. As for the new SPACE BAR function, it completely destroys old-school pixel hunting. Most players struggle with point-and-click games because they can’t find a simple object that sometimes blends too well with the environment, but now you can easily identify everything you can chat with (or chat with yourself).

The game’s humor is filled with references, going through Final Fantasy VII, Skyrim, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Scrubs (yeap), and more. Each making funny jokes about their best assets; it is always an interesting content proposal as its purpose is to unite the magical fantasy world into one.

Graphics are very impressive. The game’s scenery is illustrated with a top notch fantasy feel. Some parts may look a bit blurry but in cases it gives a sensation of depth. As for the animations, they are very fluid and cartoonish. Character motions are a lot more elaborate than they were in the prequel, now they interact a bit more with the items they get involved with and with other NPCs, and not just to a regular hand motion. As I mentioned before, the new character visual upgrades look a lot more alive and less robotic. Also unlocking new outfits seems like a nice little cosmetic addition that most point-and-click games don’t have.

The original soundtrack is better than ever! It is a very well mixed fantasy music recorded by a live orchestra; this is a lot of work put into such an essential element of a game. Music loops in and out during a level but the melody itself is appropriate to the specific scenario. Sometimes music can compete in the mix with special FX, such as the “progress victory” melody can get most of its dynamic range, almost insulting the background music, I feel as if it should some sort of “ducking” when this happens to make it more noticeable. There are also some missing sounds for environment objects and rarely a missing character line which you can only listen to its reverbed noise.

This is Early Access after all, the point of it being to help devs by supplying them feedback for gameplay issues. There are some minor graphical glitches and game stopping bugs (tutorial screen stuck before checking an engine) that were addressed in the game’s Steam Forums as fixed, but probably not entirely on all platforms, also some weird screen glitches that can later be fixed by going back to the main menu. Overall stability is pretty well though.

The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 had a successful kickstarter campaign, and now it is here again to make us enjoy great puzzles, have great laughs, and admire an interesting lore that truly deserves to be written in a book (and played by gamers).