Book of Travels is quite an intriguing Early Access game available on Steam right now. Especially if you’re a fan of extremely chilled vibes, calming and relaxing role-playing game material. If you enjoy point and click games or games that involve quite a lot of exploration and reading, Book of Travels will appeal to you.
From indie developer Might and Delight, Book of Travels is an unconventional TMO (Tiny Multiplayer Online) game. Players will create their playable character and select from a number of pre-determined options made available to them. The character creator in Book of Travels focuses on personality and identity rather than stats and classes and this is great to see. You can even type in your own personal character descriptions too which is perfect for the more creative gamers out there. Want to write some epic backstory or lore to your character? Sure, go ahead and put it in the text box provided.
Once you’ve finally created your character, Book of Travels throws you straight into the deep end. Players will be treated to a short narrated story segment which will reveal some backstory and then you’re on your own in the world of Braided Shore.
You will move your character around in a gorgeous painted world that has 3D depth to it. In this world, players will be able to talk to NPCs to gain additional story details as well as take on enemies using a tension based combat system where striking or fleeing at the right time is necessary for survival.
There’s just something about Book of Travels that hooks you. From the second you enter the game world to the first time you encounter a bandit, Book of Travel’s world is just so gorgeous and captivating that you want to put more time into the game. Players will want to continue exploring, talking to NPCs and picking up random items in the game world. The further you progress, the more you learn too with skills and equipment being made available to you.
Book of Travels however is not without its flaws. As it stands right now, the game’s onboarding process seems to be rather lacklustre. As mentioned above, players will be thrown into the deep end and they are expected to learn more about the game and world by themselves while travelling through it. There isn’t much hand-holding here and this might frustrate some gamers who want a faster paced, action packed game. This game is not that and the tutorials just serve their purpose of getting you up to speed with game mechanics. Book of Travels is a slow paced, adventure role playing game that rewards you with tidbits of lore, story and more as you explore the ridiculously pretty world of Braided Shore.
Being an Early Access title, the game is lacking quite a lot of content and if you look at the current roadmap displayed on the Steam page you can see that there’s a lot still to come. There’s also numerous problems with it right now including areas that cannot be explored yet but are mentioned in quests and combat seemingly being quite unfair towards you. A quick glance at the Steam discussion forum indicates that some users are having issues with the game crashing too though we never experienced this on our side.
At its current price, Book of Travels might be worth picking up if you want to immerse yourself in a fantasy world with non-linear exploration and adventuring as its core premise. The Tiny Multiplayer Online aspects are exactly that. Tiny. Players will maybe encounter another player but these moments are fleeting and we’re not entirely sure if we even saw another player while we were in-game. Book of Travels is clearly a game that needs work and lots of it for it to truly excel but we’re really hoping it does. The gorgeous world of Braided Shore beckons and the relaxing, slow-paced atmospheric exploration aspects of the game is extremely refreshing to see.
Early Access to Book of Travels was provided to Gameblur to by the Publisher
