Developer: Tin Man Games Pty Ltd.

Release Date: 10/17/2012

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I never really heard of Ian Livingstone’s Fighting Fantasy novels. I just ran across this on Google Play one day and was instantly immersed. This is a text-based adventure with some RPG elements thrown in. Think of this as a pick-your-own adventure with dice. Thankfully, the game handles most of the tedious work for you, like keeping track of items, stamina, and other stats. The story is really intriguing because of how mysterious the whole setting is. You play as a man who is captured and taken to a secluded castle. You later find out that people are being turned into zombies to become part of some crazy guy’s personal army. These aren’t just regular zombies and are a bit smart, as you will find out in the story.

When you get to a certain spot, you can choose to go in different directions; however, some have consequences and rewards. I found that going into a bedroom scored me a few medkits, some items, and maybe a weapon. Some paths lead to dead ends, and you have to restart at your last bookmark. This is very exciting, and I couldn’t put the game down. There are a lot of key items in this game, probably too many, and this is one fatal flaw the game has. I didn’t buy a steel pulley at the very beginning of the story, and it was a key item I needed. Near the end, I had to restart the entire book, which was very tedious and frustrating. I even tried other paths, but they all led to this path.

When you run into zombies, you have to fight. You can either use your weapon or a grenade. You roll the dice, and if you don’t like the roll, you can shake the device until you get the role you want. Some may consider this cheating, but if this feature wasn’t here, you would restart constantly. Some fights required a certain number or higher to defeat the enemy, and some scenes require you to roll to determine whether you survive said event. This is also exciting and makes things tense. However, there is one main issue that almost completely ruins the game. You have to kill all the zombies in order to finish the story. I got to the very end, and it said I didn’t kill them all, and my adventure is over. Huge bummer, and I felt like the book was a waste of time. I went back through them again and just couldn’t figure out how to kill them all. This was a huge mistake on the author’s part.

Other than that, the story is great, but I wish there were more characters. The art is excellent, and the dice-rolling gameplay is exciting and can get tense. I did find the music to repeat through the whole book and get annoying. I will check out more Fighting Fantasy novels, and hopefully I won’t run into an issue where I can’t finish it.

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