The Book Of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles

Another fantastically funny, charming and witty game from this series. I find it hard to see how anyone who likes this genre of game could play this without laughing. While the story isn't as complex as that of the original it has as much wit and feel good factor. The puzzle quality hasn't suffered despite it being a bit shorter. It has a more restricted set of locations and a smaller soundtrack but is still just so much fun while being engaging in its puzzles and plot. Another game from King Art where i almost felt sad when i finished it.

Well, to be fair, it's also a few other things where this game fell a bit flat compared to the first game in this series... But one of the things that made the first Unwritten Tale so great was the gnome with the German accent! I loved him. All video game gnomes should hereby have German accents! (I speak of actual German accents, mind you, not the stereotypical "accent" that American actors adopt when they're playing Nazis). Apart from missing gnomes with Germans accents - WHY ISN'T HE IN THE GAME?!?!?! - the game also suffers from a couple of other issues. Like the original, any puzzles that's not about using things on other things are too few and far between. -Unlike- the first game, it's re-using the same area rather too much. And this area is a rather boring one, being mostly made out of ice. Finally, much of the game is played with a character that doesn't speak intelligibly. I guess this was an attempt to obscure the puzzles by not having the character give hints on what one can do with each item... But what it mainly achieved was that I ended up doing more tedious trial-and-error style of gameplay. All things considered, this ends up a perfectly average and adequate game in the point-and-click genre. But this is also a bit disappointing because there's a game in the series that already did things quite a bit better. Oh, and where's that gnome?!?!?!

Fantastic prequel to the Book of Unwritten Tales. While the original games were even better, this part of the series is a worthy addition - high-quality, beautiful visuals, interesting and funny characters, well-written, thought-out story and great music all come together to make an excellent game. There's a bit of unneeded filler, as other reviews have pointed out (some walking that could've been left out, etc.) but at the end I think it didn't take much away from the fun. Highly recommended and I hope the developers continue making games with the characters they introduced in this series. If they manage to keep the story quality high, I'd buy any number of adventure games from them.

note: I have not played the first "the book of unwritten tales" so i can't compare this game to that game. There is also a possibility that i missed out on jokes or references because of this. I did enjoy my time with this game for the most part. The presentation is nice and i enjoyed the voice acting in the game. The lack of support for 16:9 ratio kind of sucks but it is hardly a deal breaker. There could also have been a bit more environments in the game but overall i enjoyed the presentation of the game and i found it to pretty charming. The story and character was also pretty charming and they kept me interested throughout the game. I wouldn't call anything especially good but they were enjoyable enough even though there could have been some more characters in the game. Overall i found everything except the puzzles to be enjoyable though nothing amazing. There are however a lot of really nonsensical puzzles in this game and i can't imagine that people could figure them out without simply trying every possible combination. It might just be me who is dumb and i am sure that there are people who really enjoy the challenge but they were just to many nonsensical and far fetched puzzles in the game for my taste. And it did somewhat screw up my enjoyment of the game. If you are fine with that then this game is a charming and competent adventure game.