Friday 20 May 2016

Gamebook Friday: Alice's Night of the Kraken in Wonderland

People have been saying some rather nice things about my two most recent gamebooks on Amazon lately, which is always very pleasing for an author.

First of all, here's a review from Amazon.com about Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland:

"This book is so creative and cool! Its basically Dungeons and Dragons meets Goosebumps choose your own path set in Wonderland... To do combat you either need two 6-sided dice or a pack of 52 playing cards, depending on how you want to play/what you have available, but you don't need to do combat to enjoy, you can read through and pretend you win every battle!"

And then there's this review from Amazon.co.uk about Doctor Who: Choose the Future: Night of the Kraken:

"In all honesty I was hoping for, but not expecting, a fully-fledged adventure gamebook where I would be fighting Sontarans armed with some dice and a pencil. But Doctor Who doesn’t entirely lend itself to that medium and ‘Night of the Kraken’ is still more in the ‘choose your own adventure’ bracket than adventure gamebook. 

"However, it is a well written and structured adventure aimed at a much older audience than the ‘Decide Your Destiny’ books. The reader also, sort of, gets to play the Doctor. The book is written in the second person rather than the first, which is the more traditional for adventure gamebooks, so you direct his actions rather than being him. This does feel more suitable for Doctor Who. 

"Despite its relatively short length of 150 sections there’s a fairly intriguing story and a relatively complex adventure. The author creates a believable historical setting with plenty of atmosphere that engrosses the reader in the interactive setting. 

"One of the major strengths of the adventure is that there are two quite independent explanations for events depending upon what options you select relatively earlier on. The less obvious one is reasonably tricky to find so this gives the book extra potential for replay. 

"As normal with gamebooks there are several possible endings. These are mostly partial victories where you win by immoral methods or genocidal tactics. To gain one of the few true victories you must succeed by being faithful to the spirit/character of the Doctor. It is also possible to kill the Doctor off, and the only way to ‘regenerate’ is to return to page one. 

"This is possibly the best crossover yet between adventure gamebooks and Doctor Who. It is a strong start to the new ‘Choose the Future’ series."

I've you've read  Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland or Doctor Who: Choose the Future: Night of the Kraken, why not go and line and post your own review?


No comments: