Interacting with other players is an integral part of a multiplayer game. Book of Travels (Windows / Mac / Linux) would like to show you that this can also work completely without chat.
What is a TMORPG? Book of Travels removes the “Multi” in MMORPG and replaces it with “Tiny”. A maximum of 30 players should be on the road at the same time on a server and experience their very own adventure.
The focus in Book of Travels is clearly the RPG. So you explore an exciting world and experience a story in the process. By the way and rarely you should meet other players with whom you can interact, but without any chat.
How does the interaction work? Even if you don’t have to team up with other players in Book of Travels, the interaction with other travelers should be a highlight of the game experience. The developers therefore decided to forego chat altogether.
So the only thing left for you to do is to communicate via emotes, of which there are many, but still a lot will happen intuitively. The newly presented “Endeavors” offer a special form of challenge.
What are endeavors? The tasks come in four different categories:
- Physical Tasks: These endeavors are all about strength. So you can tackle them on your own, but they go faster with another player. Here you can expect things like clearing stones from a path.
- Mystical quests: They form a way to interact with the magical side of the world. These are also easy to solve alone, but can also be solved together. These are tasks like praying at a shrine or singing together.
- Social Assignments: This is about interacting with the world’s NPCs. Among other things, you will find teachers who do not want to teach you anything. But with these tasks you can get them to do it.
- Mechanical tasks: Would probably describe most of the other games as puzzles. They are supposed to be a lot of fun with multiple players and also have the greatest impact on the game. As an example of a mechanical task, the developer cites the repair of a boat to travel to a new part of the world.
The endeavors are all designed in such a way that you do not necessarily have to solve them and that you are not under time pressure. So you can always return to the task to solve it another time.
Games like Journey and Meadow have already proven that interaction with other players can work well. The latter even comes from the same developer as Book of Travels.
When can you play? An exact release date is not yet available. However, after a three-week postponement, the game will start the early access phase on August 30th on Steam. You can also pre-order the game via Kickstarter at the moment. The cheapest version gives you access to the game, your name in the credits and the game Meadow on top of that.