Tomes and Quests: a Word RPG

june 2023 edit: dlc campaign released, added info at the end.
tomes and quests is a mixture of word game (gimme), rpg (don't mind if I do) and visual novel (don't mind if I don't). looking at the rating something must've gone badly wrong, but there have been numerous patches since release. didn't check what the issues were or what's different now, but since january 2022 things have been mostly fine.
the story deals with a group of kids playing some d&d or similar and they end up in the game somehow. good thing everybody is from a different clique, so they can cover the basic classes and elements. text display is pretty quick, without annoying sounds. should be instantaneous but it's good enough. the guy who's always hungry is a bit annoying (though I can relate), the dungeon master and most other characters are forgettable, but the girls have their moments.
15 quests, each with some turn-based scrabble-like combat, puzzle and story bits. getting stars from battle levels is the way to advance the story, but 5-starring everything is just for completionists or those who want to play more. win them once to get one star, replay for one more star against tougher enemies but potentially better loot, rinse and repeat. nothing happens if you fail a level and if a battle is too tough on higher difficulties, better come back later.
items can be swapped on the equip screen between levels (there's a swap icon during combat too, doesn't do anything). some are upgrades to your current gear (finding more of the same ups their rarity and stats), some different items with various bonuses, and tomes let you switch classes too. they only get xp when they are active, so you might want to switch things up to avoid fighting tough battles with a bunch of noobs.
not a fan of not being able to see enemy info besides their hp and element type, the rest only comes up for a second when it's their turn and the icon for their element covers the end of the health bar too. can't choose which character to attack with either, but can select enemies, so if you're about to deal fire damage, pick an ice-based foe, etc. the damage of your current word is shown on the enemy's health bar, as well as next to your weapon in the lower left corner.
the current selection of letters can be shuffled endlessly, but more tooltips would improve the experience greatly, or a help screen to show what's what. it's mostly self-explanatory or can be figured out as you get more gear with different attributes (those are the only things with a tooltip), but still. there are random tips in the corner after choosing a quest on the map, but providing a way to read them all in one place would be better.
coins sometimes show up on levels, collecting 20 lets you open a chest of random loot. levels can be replayed to farm money, but you'll be replaying them anyway for more stars. 147 of the possible 225 unlocks the last chapter, so 3 stars in each battle is almost enough to finish the game, but you'll be playing a lot if you want to max out every class (each character has 4 tomes by the end). it's probably a bug, but only starter class tomes have actual level numbers, the rest stayed at 0 or 1 for me, and while the starter tomes eventually went up to 20, end-of-level progress bars stopped at 19.
fighting with words is not all you do, puzzle levels (let's call them that) come in various forms, all with a 4-turn limit (one word = one turn). they don't contribute to the star-rating, success is measured with trophies there. getting all of them for the chapter unlocks some extra dialog, also not mandatory for completion, nor is it worth thriving for.
search involves uncovering a certain amount of tiles. letters can be placed anywhere, even tiles that aren't revealed, but the word has to connect to others on the board. even after reaching the goal, you have to keep making words until you run out of turns. it'd make sense if there was any kind of extra reward besides the story item or progression you get for completion, but as it is, it's just a waste of time.
on concentrate levels half the board is green, the rest is purple in different layouts. pick a side to make words on and aim for enough points to pass or get a perfect rating. sneak is another variety, gotta spell long enough words and once you succeed, the level ends, no time-wasting here. the problem is, a perfect rating is only possible if you spell a long enough word in the first turn. simply can't be done if you need to create a 6-letter word and use 5 of your 6 letters that don't make a word. lots of restarts to defeat rng.
escape is yet another special level. there's a small grid filled with letters, with only a few of your own to place and create words. disappearing letters get replaced with new ones, bombs that are part of words clear tiles as well. and destroy is the last one, with the goal of getting enough points within the turn limit.
there are story events that just want you to click, wait 6 seconds while the group is traveling or whatever, then click the ready event box to unlock the next one. no idea why it's a thing, might be a mobile leftover with longer times there and some in-app purchases to speed them up or something. they're all the more annoying because initiating and finishing the 'event' are both accompanied by a quick blackout of the screen.
graphics are fine, what you'd expect from a visual novel or a word game, audio is functional, nothing special. controls are mouse-only and straightforward, except placing letters could be smoother with bigger 'hitboxes' and right click should remove letters (clicking 'x' removes all of them). space advances dialog, esc closes windows and brings up the exit level pop-up, but how about putting the close button in the same corner in every window? surprisingly, alt+f4 brings up a confirmation prompt, doesn't just dump you back to the desktop.
settings are a joke and aren't available while playing. can't set the volume or change resolutions, no windowed mode toggle either, but alt+enter makes a considerably smaller window. separate toggles for music and sound, a bunch of languages (english or french for the story, more for the dictionary), and a toggle for the annoying automatic letter hints got patched in. can't restart levels either, quit and select it again, then click the instructions screen every time. really?
despite the lack of polish that shouldn't be hard to apply, I really enjoyed playing this, except the final bullshit battle, where you somehow had to deal 252 damage (for the first star) within 3 turns because the boss had an aoe attack that wiped the whole party almost immediately. I gave up after a few dozen retries and even though I couldn't edit player or enemy hp in the save (only coins, didn't care about that), I could skip this battle and watch the ending at least.
didn't 5-star everything, that may or may not have made it doable, but as I said, I enjoyed the game until that point and didn't want to ruin it with hours of potentially pointless grinding for a single encounter. not much later there was a quick rebalance patch, so the battle is not impossible anymore.
the game initially cost $10, now it's only 5, and another full-length campaign was released as paid dlc in march 2023. it's only $2 and literally doubles the amount of content. it's the continuation of the story, this time you're playing as the bad guys. different classes but everything else is the same. I found the late game pretty unbalanced, good stuff otherwise.

After having expanded my play time on this game I have to say while it's an ok game... it doesn't really fit the presentation that the blurb promised. This is a basic scrabble game with graphics and not much else. It's functional in what it does but doesn't stand out. I'm not sorry I spent the money... it is a distraction but I really doubt I'll play it again when I finish. There doesn't appear to be that much of a draw beyond playing the basic scrabble. Maybe they'll upgrade it abit and I'll look forward to it but I'm not holding my breath.
I guess that I have to state that the Thumbs Up is wrong... but I'm not sure how to rectify it. The game is shallow and just doesn't fulfil the promise of what might have been. Not even bargain bin material I'm afraid.

Pros:
- I really like the concept of flavoring a Scrabble game and making it center around an RPG. It’s a unique touch to make the game stand apart from the millions of other generic words games out there.
- I thought the art was nicely done. Anyone expecting a ton of different expressions or poses doesn’t understand the point of such a game – even in huge games like Hades, there are limited poses/looks per character as they go through dialogue.
- Also, the designs of the enemies and the different armors were super cool-looking!
- I loved the diversity of the characters. It’s nice to see RPG spaces becoming more inclusive!
- The story was simple, but made for a more interesting time than just going through a wordplay game.
- The fact that you can see how much “damage” your word will do to an enemy is an imperfect system (see below), but very useful most of the time.
- The different mini-games to break up the larger word puzzles were challenging and a nice change from doing the same 9x9 grid over and over.
- Really reminded me of every DnD campaign I’ve ever been a part of – you have a big challenge, but oops, you keep getting pulled into side quests! A cheeky little nod to how RPGs tend to run, which I enjoyed.
Cons:
- Having a hint pop up after what felt like 10 seconds was not just distracting, but actively annoying. It would be nice to have a longer delay, or a “click for hint” option.
- Main grids REALLY should be 15x15, as in a standard Scrabble game. It’s too difficult to fit in long words, so most of your words end up being 5 characters or less.
- Some way to access what each hero is strong/weak against while in a puzzle is desperately needed. Several times I quit a puzzle to go back to the Hero screen and remind myself how the elements work. (Other than Fire being strong against Ice, the rest didn’t click intuitively.)
- The enemies’ element symbols cover up the last ~10% of their health bars. I kept thinking I’d destroyed an enemy, only to be wrong because I couldn’t see their projected remaining health.
- The “bomb” mini-game seemed to accept me dragging and dropping a letter into pretty much ANY space, which meant I basically cheated my way through each of those sections.
Overall, I think the game needs some touch-ups that would greatly ease/enhance player experience, but it’s not unenjoyable as-is. I could see myself firing it up for a few quick levels here and there, especially in pursuit of the different achievements!

If you like relaxing games in a fantastic univers and a creative Storyline, this is the game for you. You play this game of Scrabble with a touch of D&D's skills. This is the story of a group of kids who end up in a D&D game. Fight the monsters with you intellectual habilities to complete the Quests, play more to unlock new Territories to explore and see how the lovely the 3 main characters increase their power and progress in the adventure. The designs of the game/characters are super nice and mystical. I recommend this game if you love Adventures and CrossWords.

Tomes and Quest est le genre de jeu qui a le potentiel de se retrouver dans les écoles primaire pour développer le vocabulaire des enfant tout en s'amusant. La courbe d'apprentissage est bien adaptée, les visuels et les dialogues font penser aux Manga, et ça fait même penser à Jumanji!
Tomes and Quest is the kind of game that has the potential to be found in primary schools to develop children's vocabulary while having fun. The learning curve is well adapted, the visuals and the dialogues are reminiscent of Manga, and it even makes one think of Jumanji!

The character art for the game is really great, It's very nice that it's all inclusive cast also.
If you like playing scrabble and word games, you'll definitively have fun playing this. The levels are also very short, which is nice when you have a few moments to play and you have a busy schedule. The characters have different elements that if you use against the right type can do more damage. The type of gameplay changes every level or so with different ways to play, which makes it fresh. definitely worth the price.

If you're looking for a great RPG with deep character building and a complex narrative, you're looking in the wrong place. But if you're looking for a fun little word game with a twist, this is for you. The story is very simple, but that's okay because you'll mostly speed through it to get to the next puzzle anyway.
The RPG fight mechanics are reminiscent enough of early JRPG tactics (think early Final Fantasy) to appear cute and nostalgic at first, but they're surprisingly impactful. If you're content to one-star every encounter, then you're basically playing scrabble and can largely ignore those mechanics. But once you start trying to 5-star an encounter and the difficulty ramps up, you'll find yourself thinking more strategically. Do I play this high value letter now, or do I save it for the next character's turn because they do fire damage against the frost troll and I'll get more damage? Do I play this high-scoring word now, or can I afford to play a smaller word so I can access that 2x multiplier next turn? Will I survive long enough to?
It's an added dimension to a classic word game. If you like Final Fantasy, you should go play that. If you like Scrabble AND Final Fantasy, you'll probably get a kick out of this.