Tales Demo

Books are powerful if they are read at the right time, because they can change your view of the world, or at the very least your view concerning certain subjects. Thus, they are fundamental when it comes to an individual’s education and their path in life. On the other hand, reading can also be a fun activity that helps you imagine different worlds and escape reality for a while.

Tales is a retro point & click adventure game in which you play the role of a librarian who finds out that he can enter books and visit fascinating worlds, as well as interact with characters and find out more about them than the books let on. In essence, the gameplay is all about solving puzzles and using the items you find to find the answer to every riddle.

The main character’s name is Alfred Wash, and he manages to get a job as a librarian. Things get wild from his first day on the job, on the other hand, because he somehow manages to unleash a curse on the shelves. Thus, Merlin the wizard asks for his help to repel the curse and bring everything back to normal, although this requires extensive traveling through many of the books on the shelves.

You have the chance to meet a variety of famous fictional or real characters as you explore every book, including wizards, emperors and mythical creatures. Not only that, but some of the puzzles require you to chat with these characters and extract information from them, which is quite exciting. On the other hand, the dialog is a bit rough, mainly because the writing quality is not exactly top-notch either.

As for the visual presentation, the game truly looks like it was released two decades ago, complete with pixelated graphics and basic gameplay mechanics. This should be a great selling point for some, but it may annoy other players who are expecting a bit more from a modern title. Thankfully, the graphics do not really matter all that much in a point & click game.

Tales is a bit rough when it comes to the writing and the gameplay, especially since it tends to be a bit too straightforward and linear sometimes. However, the demo is certainly too short to form a pertinent opinion, so things might be a bit better in the complete game.