Like No Other: The Legend of The Twin Books Review

In a nutshell – Like No Other is a decent enough point and click adventure game. Along with this comes a very easy achievement list, in-case you’re hunting for that next 1000G game, this could be it as it comes with 10 achievements attached, 8 of which are story related and can’t be missed. Whilst the other two are very simple to achieve, even without a guide at hand.

Like No Other Is a short but sweet 1, maybe 2-hour long game depending on your play-style developed by Actoon Studio. (Also developed Wind Peaks)

The Story of The Twin Books

In Like No Other: The Legend Of The Twin Books, you play as Dan – a rookie first timer when it comes to adventuring. You’ll be tasked with exploring the abandoned town of Red Pines, trying to work out the mystery surrounding the legend of the Twin Books.

According to this legend, there was once a very talented artist who managed to create a near perfect replica of the legendary Spirits’ Book and the museum staff mistakenly left behind the original when the town of Red Pines was abandoned. So, Dan decides to give it all up to go and see if these rumours about the Spirits’ Book are indeed true.

Annoyingly, the story feels kind of vague and isn’t really portrayed properly to the player. Whilst being a somewhat enjoyable journey, I found myself doing a few things I felt had no correlation towards actually… searching for a book? It’s hard to draw a line, as one part in particular, feels like its thrown in for some padding. But overall, it kind of works?

(The above picture perfectly sums up my time within the story)

Gameplay

Serving up a single player short story that doesn’t overstay its welcome with a point and click styled approach. You’ll traverse over 23 different rooms (or areas if you will), none of which uses procedural generation. These are spread across only two levels, which sounds as though it’s lacking, but I don’t think you need many more levels for the type of game this is.

Aside from the basic controls of a usual P&C style game, you’ll of course have to search and explore to find a key to a door to make progress, or be confronted with some not too hard, but not too easy puzzles in order to make progress.

During your hunt for a legendary book, you can also take some time to scour each and every area you arrive at to find Caches. Dan seems quite pleased with himself when he finds one, although the reason for them or why we would want to collect them, remains a mystery.

A lot of the tasks revolve around finding fuses, messing around with a power supply and solving a puzzle to make progress. However, there was one section in particular involving some stealth which totally stuck me off guard due to how humorous this very short section actually was, especially if you got caught.

As the game proudly touts on its Steam Store page “No death/violence” which I feel helped mould the humour into the stealth section particularly. Would there have been deaths incorporated into the game, I feel this section could have been handled very differently.

As someone who personally loves a gore-fest but doesn’t need every game to have some kind of blood, gore or violence, this makes for a nice change of pace.

Final Thoughts

Currently marked up on the Xbox Store for £13.49, I would recommend this game to avid point and click fan. If you’re looking at this one solely based off of the achievements list, I suppose it’s down to you whether or not that price tag is worth the buy in for that gamer-score.

Like No Other: The Legend Of The Twin Books does certain things well and at its core is an enjoyable point and click game, however I feel it lets itself down a little with the vague story – considering it should be one of the main focuses for this type of game.

I’m looking forward to future Actoon Studios projects and seeing what they come up with next. Hopefully whatever their next venture, it’s safe to say they certainly have a suitable foundation to build from.

DISCLAIMER: Reviewer has played Like No Other for 2 hours with a 100% completion. 10/10 achievements, 1000/1000 Gamerscore.