“Quality is the deadline,” opens the PR email that landed in my inbox this morning. This is a reference to the upcoming Book of Travels, which just had its Early Access launch pushed back to late August. The intended launch was August 9, and Early Access is now slated for release on August 30, 2021.
Creative Director Jakob Tuchten followed the “Quality is the deadline” quote with this statement:
Right now we’re in a good place, but the fine-tuning we’ll do in these extra three weeks will ensure that the depth of the gameworld meets our ambitions, the same ambitions we’ve outlined to our backers and community. Quality is and has always been our only goal, and we have faith in our community and hope that they’ll understand that the result will be better with the wait.
In case you’re not familiar, Book of Travels is described as a TMORPG. This is a play on the term MMORPG (which stands for “Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game”), only this is instead a “Tiny Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game.” According to a blog post by the devs, this will be played online, but interactions with other players will be rare. Conceptually, this almost sounds like the original vision for No Man’s Sky back before that launched, where you might happen upon another player at some point in your journey, but chances of doing so are slim to none (as it turns out, No Man’s Sky didn’t deliver on that promise, but the game has blossomed into something truly special at this point, so those old promises don’t hold a lot of weight anymore).
Anyway, Book of Travels has a beautiful art style, and based on what we’ve seen in trailers, it looks like it features a lovingly crafted world that will be worth getting lost in.
If you want to follow this one, you can wishlist it on Steam, and in the meantime, you can check out the gorgeous reveal trailer for Book of Travels below.
