Booknound Brigade, just like the books from which it draws inspiration, can become an excellent travel companion: a challenging metroidvania with clear mechanics, amusing and intelligent in its many ideas.

All in all, Bookbound Brigade is a pretty fantastic and enjoyable platformer. Don’t let its colorful exterior fool you, this little game has enough challenge to hang with other big boy Metroidvania titles. If you’re new to platformers, you might find it a bit too difficult, but finally beating that stage or figuring out how to cross a particularly difficult platform feels so satisfying when you succeed.

Regardless of its shortcomings, Bookbound Brigade is a fun game with pretty inventive ideas and its shortcomings could be fixed with future updates.

Quotation forthcoming.

There are some good ideas to be found in Bookbound Brigade, and when everything clicks into place, it can be a lot of fun. But between the unreliable map, the tedious combat, the tired sense of humour, and the missed opportunity to do anything noteworthy with the "literary mash-up premise", Bookbound Brigade's good ideas are overshadowed by poor execution.

I really wanted to like Bookbound Brigade, but its flaws are too great to overlook. There are moments when it all comes together and you get a real sense of achievement from navigating a tricky section of traps or figuring out a nice environmental puzzles, but these are too often overshadowed by boring combat and the chore that is getting around the world. Unlike the books and stories that Bookbound Brigade is inspired by, good writing is not enough to salvage this story.

I did not enjoy my time with Bookbound Brigade, but I do say that with a heavy heart. I really wanted to like the game. It has a lot of character and some nice work has gone into its visual design. But its problems are insurmountable and ultimately you’re left with a game that’s too frustrating and filled with too many issues to ever be fun to play. At least Bookbound Brigade tries some different ideas on for size. They don’t fit, but at least the developer tries. Isn’t that what counts? “It’s not the winning, but the taking part.” Sadly, nobody’s a winner playing Bookbound Brigade, and there’s nothing to celebrate by taking part, either.