Day Three

• Game: The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 (King Art Games).
• Release Month: February.
• Source: The Steam Explorer Sale (still going! Ends Dec 1st!).
• Quick Look: Here. (Vinny/Alex.)
• Started: 28/11.
• Finished: 30/11.

Hey guys, guess what I've still been playing? By happy coincidence, however, I appear to have reached the game's conclusion minutes before I was due to stop and write the day's entry. Funny how I broached the possibility of an anti-climactic ending, huh? In lieu of anything more in-depth, since I've exhausted almost all my talking points for an adventure game that can't include the story, specific puzzles or any of the jokes, here's a handful of additional observations about the game.

I didn't mention these so far, but the game has a number of wholly optional mini-games. These tend to involve little self-contained puzzles or contests against various opponents that sit outside the usual "find item/hotspot, use item/hotspot" inventory puzzle format. Possibly the developers of TheBUTT wanted to keep these elements independent for the same of its adventure game "purity", while throwing them in there for a bit of variety, a few jokey costumes and maybe an achievement or two. For example, you can play Nim against someone and win for an achievement and a key item, or if you can't be bothered trying to beat the AI at a sophisticated strategic game you can distract this person by pretending to play it while another character steals said item. Another instance involves moving around a maze in a turn-based fashion while evading an enemy and various traps - sorta like that new iOS Lara Croft Go game - but all it produces is a sexy exotic dancer costume for Nate (crossdressing is still an endless font of humor around these parts, it seems) that has no other purpose. I'm very much on board with making these mini-games optional; my only issue is that I missed a couple by moving the story ahead before I could try them out. If you're planning on playing this game yourself: feel free to play any of these mini-games as they appear, but don't be stressed if you can't beat them since they aren't necessary to progress. Seems like practical advice, if you ask me.

The game has an oddly episodic quality to it. I've talked about my somewhat confusing definition of episodic as it pertains to adventure games before: it simply means that it'll refresh the number of moving parts, often by dropping the player character(s) into a new area of the game, and closes off previous areas that have served their purpose to limit the number of hotspots the player has to worry about. Sometimes you'll progress through a door to have it close behind you, which at first seems restrictive but then comes as a relief because there's no need to ever go back. (I think adventure games are unique in this regard; if I get shut out of a place in an FPS or RPG or a SpaceWhipper in particular, I'm usually not going to be happy about it because I'll feel like I missed something valuable.) Anyway, what I mean in TheBUTT's case is that the game is comprised of various set-pieces, like Wilbur trying to solve the Headmaster's unreasonable tasks, and solving each one causes the story to suddenly lurch forward and present a new character solving new troubles. That's every adventure game, I'll grant you, but here the various set-pieces felt especially disjointed. Each one was largely unrelated to the last, and while the game had a central ongoing plot it rarely seemed to intrude until you'd solved everything that needed to be done for that particular area and let the story take over again. The game never dipped in quality, fortunately, but this sort of disjointedness did make it seem a little interminable at times. Made it hard to judge how close you were to the end too, given how often new and unexpected developments would occur: the only reliable yardstick is the game's achievement list, most of which are arbitrarily handed out after milestone puzzles.

I never did encounter a game-breaking bug, but the minor ones that kept popping up got weirder and weirder. At one point, I clicked on some background dressing with Critter only for him to start talking in Ivo's voice. Turns out it was possible to bring her to the same location, though she wasn't in my party at the time, so hearing her suddenly pipe up about the architecture was a little disturbing. Animation issues would frequently warp characters around, sometimes replacing them where others were standing, so when the game decides to show a montage-esque passage of time with characters warping around the screen, it took a moment to register that the game wasn't screwing up again. I swear one of the VAs forgot to do their voice for a specific character and started talking like a different one instead for a few lines. Really unusual stuff, and coupled with the abrupt ending I suspect the game was shoved out of the door before it could be fully polished. It is an immense adventure game, in its defense, and it didn't look like the art or script took a hit during its production time so maybe this is a "no harm, no foul" situation. If frequent minor bugs are a dealbreaker for you, though, here's my official heads up.

My opinion on TheBUTT really hasn't changed since yesterday. It's still a worthy purchase for any adventure game fan, both for its quality and for its value for money in terms of length. The ending was abrupt but almost welcome after such a long game, and it left more than a few cliffhangers behind for a possible sequel to explore. I genuinely believe that this could be one of those adventure games that would benefit from the modern Telltale episode-based system: its numerous disembodied scenarios are practically built that way already, and the game gets a lot of mileage out of recurring characters and running gags that would befit an episodic format where you wouldn't forget who everyone was because it had been years since the last installment. Plus, it's the sort of setup that can keep a smaller developer solvent as they work on successive episodes. Still, there's probably downsides too. It's not my place to dictate how The Book of Unwritten Tales franchise moves forward after this, but I hope they consider it. It'd be a shame to wait another three to six years to see everyone in Aventasia again.

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