The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales

The Bookwalker is a narrative adventure in which you play as Etienne Quist, a writer-turned-thief with the ability to dive into books. Use your powers to journey between reality and book worlds, and steal legendary items like Thor's Hammer and Excalibur to restore your ability to write.

The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales is a adventure, singleplayer and atmospheric game developed by DO MY BEST and published by tinyBuild.
Released on June 22nd 2023 is available only on Windows in 10 languages: English, Russian, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese - Brazil and Simplified Chinese.

It has received 1,758 reviews of which 1,642 were positive and 116 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.9 out of 10. 😎

The game is currently priced at 5.91€ on Steam and has a 60% discount.

The Steam community has classified The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales into these genres:

Adventure Singleplayer Atmospheric Isometric Noir Story Rich Lore-Rich Dark Fantasy Surreal Mystery First-Person Dystopian Point & Click Thriller Exploration Detective Narration Drama Puzzle Visual Novel

Media & Screenshots

Get an in-depth look at The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales through various videos and screenshots.

screenshot_ss_e3bba43a287682e168decbf84ea32965ac1e152f.1920x1080.jpg

screenshot_ss_18e4afab3b1856a413d949e1dc5ae623a668994c.1920x1080.jpg

screenshot_ss_00917705bd4fe59cd66fe9203abdabd9d54ebf34.1920x1080.jpg

screenshot_ss_da2579408de575abfb59577335e7145b3fbdb6f5.1920x1080.jpg

screenshot_ss_af24200f94e8a5f2f493b21804ab20ef46fe5bbd.1920x1080.jpg

screenshot_ss_b23ab0f823f90e9812dde3efa39d17f9e1c751e7.1920x1080.jpg

screenshot_ss_8393287e5d584a9e9ab542cdaec57c33c255506f.1920x1080.jpg

screenshot_ss_11a8cbf4a27e1fea6ff57f4ffff441d0811dcb2a.1920x1080.jpg

screenshot_ss_0609fe15c0c6e478f310f2d724ebdcf241e60e66.1920x1080.jpg

screenshot_ss_a9b051fa51dc5fb7e3c05006d4750772f021d62b.1920x1080.jpg

Requirements

These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.

Windows

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS *: Windows 7 and up
Processor: Dual-core
Memory: 6 GB RAM
Graphics: GTX 760 and up
Storage: 12 GB available space

Reviews

Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.

Oct. 2024

Despite the vaguely YA trappings of a story about a creative inflicted with writer's block as capital punishment, The Bookwalker is a game that more closely resembles books like Kafka's The Trial, Dostoyevsky's Notes From a Dead House and Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading in its telling of a failure hero who wants to escape his shackles under an everpresent yet unseen bureaucracy but struggles to abide by the anti-societal pragmatism rejecting his fate comes to demand Roderick is also best lantern friend

Oct. 2024

Its one of those games which I really, really enjoyed and couldn't stop playing... until the game just ended hahaha. The concept is really cool , the art is amazing and basically I enjoyed every second of it. Really exited to keep a close eye on the developer and see what they come up with next <3

March 2024

I wish the game was much longer, either with more books to explore or be able to take a slower pace and go deeper in particular books, but overall a fantastic game. I really enjoyed the progression of the story, and particularly the companion you travel with. The combat is simple but enough to give you little breaks from puzzle or dialogue heavy sections, and exploration was fairly natural without needing too much back tracking.

March 2024

A good experience overall. Interesting scenarios, little bloat, some compelling writing. The marketing might be a bit misleading. It's essentially a point and click adventure, but with little of the typical nonsense that comes with the genre. The turn-based combat is very minimal and inconsequential. There is no fail state, you just get to retry the few combat encounters with full health and mana again.

Jan. 2024

Alright. The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales is done and dusted. This was an interesting game with surprisingly good world building. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3132587924 In The Bookwalker, the known world is basically run by book publishers, and authors hold great power. However, those powers need to be watched, and so there are Book Police, who make sure authors aren’t breaking any laws, such as stealing objects from books and smuggling them into the real world, and likewise that they aren’t bringing characters into the real world. You play as Etienne, an author who was sentenced to thirty years of indentured servitude, wherein he must select a mega publisher to work for and that will serve as his probation officer. With good behavior and loyalty, he might be able to shave two years from his sentence. To enforce punishment to wayward authors, those sentenced are forced to wear special shackles which are supposed to hinder them enough to prevent them from using their author powers in addition to preventing them from authoring their own books. Which includes the ability to enter books (the walking part of the title) and affect the outcome of stories, if not outright change them. Or as mentioned, do things like smuggle objects out of said books for sale on the black market. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3130968068 Anyway, being as how Etienne is sentenced to thirty years of not being able to write for himself, he seeks a way to break his shackles and is offered an opportunity to have his shackles removed (illegally) if he’ll enter six different books with the goal of retrieving a specific item from each for his new benefactor. The items include the Sword Excalibur and Thor’s hamner Mjolnir. In his first mission, he encounters a character who has been trapped in an object and placed in a wholly different novel than the one he was written into. This character has amnesia, but is wise, kind, and becomes both Etienne’s companion and his voice if reason. Gameplay-wise, while in each novel, The Bookwalker is mostly a puzzle game with some simple turn based combat with a reasonable amount of exploration in point and click fashion. In the real world, you’re basically confined to your apartment building and will click on various items to add to the story. And, while in a book, you can leave the book anytime you want to come back to the real world in order to find objects that you can bring back into the book to help solve puzzles. There are seven books in total. Six with objects to retrieve and one more for good measure. The is no voice acting. Speech is handled in mumble fashion. The graphics are very nice with good variety and two distinctly different styles between the third person view in the real world and isometric view while in the books themselves. I honestly was so focused on the story and gameplay that I can’t really recall if there was music or not, lol. Safe to say that if there was, it wasn’t prominent. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3132587827 All in all, I quite enjoyed The Bookwalker, and the story resolution had a nice little surprise that was very satisfying. It took 6.1 hours to complete. You’ll probably need to play each chapter twice to get all the cheevos if that’s your thing. This game is fully Steam Deck compatible, and outside of one weird bug where the real world and book world smashed together, freezing the game, I encountered no technical issues. The autosave feature was generous, so zero progression was lost. I bought this on sale on Steam recently (recently as of the time of this writing), but cost vs value is there at full price IMO. It may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but I think it’s well worth experiencing and can definitely be considered an IndieGem. If you found this review helpful and would be interested in supporting my Curator group, Robilar's Reviews, it would be appreciated. Cheers. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32549618/ Also follow IndieGems for more reviews like this one. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/

Similar games

View all

Tchia

Similarity 70%

Price -58% 12.45€

Rating 8.3

Release 21 Mar 2024

View

Mars: War Logs

Similarity 69%

Price -80% 0.99€

Rating 7.3

Release 26 Apr 2013

View

The Thaumaturge

Similarity 66%

Price -59% 14.39€

Rating 8.1

Release 04 Mar 2024

View

NORCO

Similarity 66%

Price -86% 2.13€

Rating 8.9

Release 24 Mar 2022

View

Disco Elysium - The Final Cut

Similarity 65%

Price -84% 6.49€

Rating 9.2

Release 15 Oct 2019

View

Sanitarium

Similarity 63%

Price -50% 6.39€

Rating 8.9

Release 29 Oct 2014

View

Garten of Banban 7

Similarity 61%

Price -20% 7.80€

Rating 8.0

Release 10 May 2024

View

Garten of Banban 6

Similarity 61%

Price -20% 7.80€

Rating 7.3

Release 20 Dec 2023

View

Garten of Banban 4

Similarity 61%

Price -20% 7.80€

Rating 7.3

Release 11 Aug 2023

View

Garten of Banban 3

Similarity 61%

Price -20% 3.99€

Rating 7.1

Release 05 May 2023

View

Garten of Banban 2

Similarity 61%

Price -50% 2.49€

Rating 6.5

Release 03 Mar 2023

View

The Almost Gone

Similarity 61%

Price 9.99€

Rating 7.7

Release 25 Jun 2020

View

More games like The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales

Data sources

The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.

Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.

Last Updates