Today I would like to talk about an indie game called Monk Took Book. I have recently finished it; thus, I believe that now I’ve got enough material to make a decent review. It’s not a very big game, I finished it in about a week. I would also like to mention that it’s a multiplayer game for up to four people. It’s not really intended for a solo experience on its default settings. However, I played it alone, which is possible but not recommended on default difficulty for comfortable play. Although, more on that later.

The Premise

To sum up, this game is about collecting all 105 book types in your little island library. You, and your friend if you don’t play solo, are tasked with keeping the library free of pests and protecting it from invaders. You’re given several buildings to store the books in. You yourself and your friends decide where to put the books and how to organize everything which is one of the main parts of the gameplay. The second part is that during the night your fellow monks come in and ask for some books which they will return back in a day. During the night you must find these books during the limited time you are given while defending yourself and your books against many unwanted night visitors.

The Gameplay

Gameplay can be separated into two parts: the day and the night. The day has got no time limit and you can only encounter pests like rats and spiders. The night is limited it time. You will be given more time the more buildings you unlock, but I’d say the limit has never bothered me even when I was still playing on the default multiplayer-oriented settings.

To begin with, during the day you receive the new books that you have to put on the shelves and maintain. Maintenance is important because well-kept books will help you earn more and will burn in fires for longer. That is, if you choose to keep a lot of torches around. I mostly kept one torch in my hand during the night before upgrading them, so I’ve only experienced a fire once by the end of my run.

Secondly, you have to collect the returned books from the table. It’s nice that the rats cannot damage your books there but at some point the piles will be very high and easily fall on the ground. It wasn’t really annoying but for a long time you may have a problem with earning enough to both buy shelves and upgrade your abilities, so it may still be stressful. I first found some real difficulty when I had to expand to another building. It was an area that was farther than the rest and shall any poltergeists appear there during the night, I may not come fast enough to recover the books they’d scatter around.

As for the night part, it was fairly easy to memorise the books you needed. The viking invaders and even the poltergeists didn’t possess much threat for me, so I played with the default setting. Now, when I got my first raid, I turned those off immediately. Just like in Valheim, for a solo experience those raids felt more of a hindrance to the progress than a challenge. As for the dread Abbot, I did fight him once, it was rather easy, but when more enemies started to appear at the same time, I realised that it’s hard for me to keep my focus on everything. I probably could have left him, but he sometimes gets to you very quietly, so you don’t notice him until too late. He was an interesting challenge, though.

Another thing that had to go over time was the poltergeists. They are fun but very annoying because if you lose a book, the next day you are given a replacement without any new books, thus, they can stop your collection. Therefore, the more I filled the second building, the more I was convinced that they had to go for my solo journey.

In the end, I had only viking invaders during the night because I wanted to finish the game. Next time I play, I want to keep the rats and spiders. They are annoying but they do add some dynamic to the gameplay. I also have an idea to try a haunted library and only have poltergeists and the Dread Abbot as my night enemies. Here I should probably mention that the potions allow you to enable or disable each enemy type and their frequency. It’s very convenient and adds some replayability.

My single player experience

The first thing I have to say is that when I had to extend to different buildings was the moment when I understood why this game was built as a multiplayer. It simply becomes hard to keep up with everything alone. I usually don’t want to change from normal difficulty but here I was convinced that not doing so will just make me frustrated and overwhelmed after time. Luckily, it all can be adjusted. For anyone who might think that I’m not a true gamer if I play on easy, trust me, I’m a casual player and will never be a pro gamer. My reaction is lacking. Besides, the games are supposed to be played for fun, at least this game. Thus, I suggest for anyone to play with the options to discover the most fun configuration for you.

Another thing that I have already discussed above, the raids. They are not a solo challenge. You may not have enough health or firearms against fifteen enemies. The same thing with poltergeists scattering books all over the place. It was fine at first, but over time it just felt frustrating.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the process regardless of how frustrating it was at times. The way I was thinking about where to make each section and how to better organise the place. It was extremely fun and I can imagine it being even more fun with friends. Another thing that was pleasing is remembering the books you need and thinking of the most efficient route around the island to collect them all. It might be just me but I always appreciate an efficient strategy.

The end game

So, after getting all the different variants of books I was given the message that I can continue playing on the same save file or I can just start a new one. I found it very interesting because the message also told me that after some time I will run out of space to put books into which means that the game does not account how much space you need for all the books you own. It was a bit disheartening because I hoped to fill in my whole library and simply continue playing without worrying about the new books coming in. Turned out the game wasn’t built for it. It’s not necessarily bad but it also means that after a while you just have to turn off the rats or they will always eat your books. Now I wonder if there is a limit to how many books I can have on an island. Hm…

Final thoughts

In conclusion, I want to say once more that I absolutely love the game and I cannot recommend it enough. I liked it as a puzzle and as a memory game. My dream has always been to become a librarian or an archivist and tend to my precious paper children, so this game was also my dream come true at least in a video game form.

The final thing I wanted to mention is the unique books in this game. All books have a rarity from common to unique and I thought that unique books you will only get one per save file. Turns out no. You can have multiple. I just found it funny since such books are meant to be, well, unique.