Daedalic Entertainment’s newest Point-and-Click has a slightly odd backstory – not just because it puts the player in control of three different characters in a somber, gritty, medieval setting. It’s mostly because Pillars of the Earth is based off of a book, a book about architecture.

There are a lot of reasons this seems like an incredibly bizarre decision, the first being that the heroes of point-and-click games are almost all invariably witty and funny or aloof and amusing and a part of a larger, complicated, creative, and funny world (Deponia, Sam and Max, Grim Fandango, Monkey Island – the list goes on).

Point-and-click protagonists are rarely serious travelers in destitute cruel environments. The setting for Pillars of the Earth though don’t really give any characters the option of being silly. It’s a place where people are hung unfairly, wives die during childbirth, and protagonists struggle against starvation to survive.

We fully expect it to depart from some of the hardships and monotony of the book – which it does, from what we’ve played – but it feels like it’s worth reiterating, the story centers around the drama from trying to build a cathedral, specifically about the development of Gothic architecture out of the older Romanesque architecture of the time – which doesn’t usually scream interactive player experience.

Games have been based off books before – the Witcher series for one – but they are usually books about swords and sorcery. Books about politics and struggling during difficult economic times and the corruption of the religious ruling class don’t exactly hit the normal cues for gamers. If one of them was a werewolf, or if the church were being ruled by demons, then maybe, but it should be cemented here and now – this is just a historical fiction.

Despite all of that, initial reactions to the game are quite positive, and depending on how the game does, perhaps Daedalic will look into other books as well. This could mean a foray into the types of books we might expect – Sherlock Holmes books or sci-fi epics like Dune are novels that seem more obviously suited to point-and-click – or maybe Daedalic has struck gold with a new kind of point-and-click, one set in a struggling, serious setting. If so, maybe the next generation of point-and-click will be the sort of thing we play on a rainy day instead of the lighthearted fun we are used to.