I was intrigued by the disgraceful Victorian style of The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales, which was first shown at the Future Game Show. I decided to play its demo and see for myself about this tale-thief.

Bookwalker plays primarily like a point-and-click adventure, but also has turn-based battles and tight resource management, a combination reminiscent of last year's Sunday Gold. Bookwalker also boasts an interesting dual-world mechanic, switching between first-person exploration of an apartment in the "real" world and isometric puzzles and battles in the "fictional" world.

You play as a writer in a surreal alternate world where words have magical powers, but you have been branded a writer (both figuratively and literally) for breaking the "writer's code." Black market contactors offer to release you in exchange for entering the dreamlike reality of various books and extracting items from them into the real world. In the first heist featured in the demo, you'll be in a medieval prison, going after an elixir of immortality, which is not what it appears to be.

One thing I already appreciate is how willingly The Book Walker punks me. In one of the first rooms of the prison, a key lay enticingly on a grate. I touched that key, and oh no! The steam rose up and got so hot that it burned my fingers and I dropped them on the next floor. Downstairs I found the key again, this time startled by a noise elsewhere, and dropped it again. I went downstairs and finally got my prize, only to be a little pissed off at my traveling companions who had picked it up in this new reality.

I also enjoy the strange alternate realities The Bookwalker constructs, especially how the first-person exploration of the "real" world contrasts with the isometric puzzles of the book's layers. you can check out a demo of The Bookwalker on Steam right now, The full game will be released on June 22.