Choose Your Own ADVENTURE: War with the Evil Power Master
About
Second in the Choose your own adventure games created in 2019.
Inspired from book #37 in the Choose your own adventure series by R.A. Montgomery, this game takes a much different approach from the first "House of Danger" and plays to completion in a single session of about an hour.
With a total of 9 planets with mini stories and multiple endings there is a bit of replay ability in the game as you only play 3-6 planets per game.
Thoughts
Tim:
1/5
I picked this one up for $7 on the clearance shelf and that seems to be a good price for it. I just can't recommend this game for anyone. A true shame as it seems the problems are deliberate design choices.
Each of the worlds is a self-contained mini adventure with 2-3 challenges. Each of the challenges is a straightforward roll the die and try to get a high number. What I don't understand is that the game seems to be designed so that you fail more often than you succeed, which is just a baffling design choice. Who wants to lose most of the time? The game gets progressively more difficult in three stages with stage one having a 50% success rate, and stages 3 and 4 having 33% and 17% respectively. There are supposed to be items that can be used to increase your chances but they are far and few between and almost never increase your odds to better than 50% even when you have them.
With our first game ending after only 3 planets due to a couple bad dice roles in a row, I thought some of the issue was the whim of the dice. In games where there are few total dice rolls, a few lucky or unlucky roles are way to influential. So, similar to the game Time Stories with the same problem, I made a set of cards for a "random yet balanced" 1d6 result. 18 cards with 3 1's, 3 2's, etc. My guess is that a complete game will be played with less than 18 total dice roles and this would at least give a result that is neither lucky, or unlucky.
Our second playthrough showed this to be the case with the game as long as possible and us being 2 points from losing. The entire game was 15 dice roles. While we did win, it was all down to a "roll a 5 or better" or you lose period with nothing you can do to effect the outcome. Not really a satisfying ending.
Laura:
1/5 (3/5 if my tweaks were implemented)
I really wanted to like this one, as the writing, while being a little juvenile, is pretty humorous, and it felt like you got to make choices that mattered. However, it didn't seem to be that way while playing, as it was just luck that we won our first two encounters. It seems unnecessarily mean to create a game where the players will likely fail multiple times, and for pretty dumb reasons while having the deck stacked against them. Make sure you roll a six, or... a six. Else, you'll die. Did you get the power booster? Great! Don't roll a one, else you'll lose the round AND the use of the booster in future encounters. The game felt like it was playtested with a bunch of depressed masochists. "Yes, after a long search, I would like to accidentally trip on my shoelaces and kill all the crewmembers and lose the game!"
I think just a few tweaks would improve it: Lower the challenge level to "probably passable" instead of "likely failure even with extra help" and lower the encounter points so you won't get to the end in three or four encounters. I know that it would reduce replayability, but right as it stands, I'm not wanting to replay it anyway!
Trivia
- The original Choose your own adventure books were written between 1979-1998 and number 184.
- The first book with a branching storyline was "Consider the Consequences" by Doris Webster published in 1930.
- "Tracker Books" seem to be the first commercially successful game books written in the 1970's.
- Find more Gamebook rabbit holes with "Tunnels and Trolls" and "Fighting Fantasy"
- 6,264/20,698 on BBG.
4-13-2021