The Book of Unwritten Tales
Worth it · Narrative · 2012
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $19.99.
- Length
- 13h
- Value
- $1.54/hr
- Reviews
- 91% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, Direct-X 9c compliant video card with 128 MB RAM, PixelShader 2.0, 6 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
In a world torn by war, the aged gremlin archaeologist Mortimer MacGuffin harbors the dark secret of a powerful artifact.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
The lowest price on record is $1.99, set in September 2014. 93 discounts in the 14 years on record. They run about 75 percent off, roughly 7 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 6 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 7 weeks.
On value it sits in the top 3 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 93 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 93 percent. Among the games that feel like it, King's Quest (free, scores 79) beats it on value, while it beats Sam & Max Hit the Road ($5.99, scores 70).
Critics scored it 82. Players sit 9 points higher at 91 percent, which usually means a game that plays better than it reviews.
2 of the 344 Steam-purchase reviews sampled here come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written May 2020 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 60 percent of the 100 reviews written there were positive, against 91 percent overall, and those are 6 percent of everything written about it.
What players say
A very old school but fun point and click game. The game offers character switching in order to solve some easy - medium level puzzles. Good voice acting, and storyline.
A fun adventure game with a great sense of humor. If you enjoy classic point-and-click adventures with clever puzzles and charming writing, this delivers. It doesn't take itself too seriously and that's what makes it great.
This is basically Monkey Island meets Lord of the Rings. It's a classic point and click adventure game in a fantasy setting, with a ton of tongue-in-cheek and troperiffic humor. It's quite long (although not 25 hours long like my total playtime might suggest), but a lot of fun, with snappy dialogue and likeable characters.
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
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The Book of Unwritten Tales scores 72/100 on the BANG Score (worth it). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/215160/the-book-of-unwritten-talesThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 6, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.