Book of Travels looks to be an art house style game of relaxation, exploration, and making new friends. A Kickstart project for the game launched on October 24th, goes for 17 more days, and has already funded over 400% of their initial goal.
By Scuttle Gamez
Hello everyone. This is my first kickstart game review on Scuttle Gamez, so the format might change in the future and it won’t follow the established style of reviews before. Hope you enjoy, and let’s get into it!
Book of Travels expects to release sometime in 2020 for $30 on Steam, and will have no subscription fee to play.
The Concept:
Book of Travels is a kickstarter game currently in its funding phase that has the look of an art house style game of relaxation and exploration.
The idea behind Book of Travels is to create a limited online game that focuses on meaningful player interactions and exploration. While always online and effectively falling into the mmo genre, the developers prefer to think of the title as a TMO (Tiny Multiplayer Online) game. Players numbers will be kept low per-server, and interactions between them will be text free and done only through emotes, symbols, and expressions.
Beyond social elements, the game looks to want a focus on exploration and character growth. There will be many active and passive skills in the game, earned through experiences your character will discover, and the developer’s desire is that role playing will be the driving function of all interaction with the world, its players, and its mechanics.
One interesting example of character growth in the game mentioned was how a player character might react to witnessing a death. Their character will be impacted by it, and that negative impact will grow with each passing day. However, if the player visits the deceased’s grave site that negative might evolve and become something more. In essence, the idea is to have the world shape the character, and the character shape the world.
The World:
The universe of Book of Travels is set to be one of magic and discovery. The society within is one of change via industrial revolution, but is deeply entrenched in tradition as well.
There will be magic, spirits, conflict, and strange mysteries to uncover. Book of Travels draws its world inspirations from eastern mythology and fables, with dashes of historical reality too.
The developers stress that while the game will include combat and conflict, the focus is in other areas.
The goal for Book of Travels is to create a living world for players to live in. Toward that end, quests and stories will be non-linear and randomized, there will be a full day night cycle, and there is no overarching plot or ending. The game is about the journey, not wherever a character might set down to rest once they’ve seen their fill.
The Art:
Book of Travels is a hand-painted 2d art game built within a 3d world. From what I can see, it looks to be a beautiful game with grand vistas and flowing weather effects upon a canvas made by a truly skilled hand. The art style reminds me of a pop-up book, and indeed, it turns out that is exactly what the developers were going for.
Much of the art has the look of an eastern flair, which would make sense considering the world’s lore.
I can’t talk about the music as of yet, as there is none to hear, but if it’s anything near the quality of the art I bet it will be well worth purchasing a soundtrack all on its own.
The Project
Book of travels is in development by Might & Delight Games, an indie studio out of Sweden responsible for past hits such as Shelter and Shelter 2.
Might and Delights games claim the project is already funded up through production, but began a kickstarter fund to expand on what is already present and to gain more backer feedback.
So far, they’ve raised 121 k, have been funded to 420% of their initial goal, and have 17 days remaining in their funding window.
If interested, you can head on over to their kickstart page and become a backer for various in and out of game rewards. Some rewards include exclusive skills, items, discord invitations and discussions, and even the ability to help create a custom character in the game.
So far, the project has met the majority of their stretch goals that brought new items, skills, and a new travel system to the game. A player music system, which would allow players to make bands and play songs together, and new areas to be added yet remain to be claimed.
The Verdict:
This looks like an interesting game. It’s a niche game, that’s for sure, but in a world of develop by committee and live services I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
I’m a little hesitant about a lot of what the developers are wanting for the game, as it smacks of pretension and even reminds me of a lot of the early Fable game series promises and failures. That’s my cynicism speaking though, and if the game turns out to be everything it wants to be, I would quite enjoy giving it a try.
One thing is for sure, the game caught my attention, and that’s something to brag about in such a over saturated indie market.
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