Entry tags:
Biggles CYOA (and stuff)
Okay, so the Biggles Choose Your Own Adventure/"Dark Intruder" book is indeed very fun, although it's actually really hard to win. I've now done two play-throughs and had to cheat both times to avoid running out of gas - I mean this literally, your airplane burns fuel as you travel - before I even managed to get to the criminals. But there are enough variables that the two playthroughs were really different from each other, so that was fun! And it's got a nice mix of options and randomness.
(I am a little disappointed that crashing and/or dying doesn't seem to be an option in this one. At worst you run low on fuel and have to go home. I mean, not that I *want* to crash and die, but it would be dramatic!)
Edit: Some notes on the book's gameplay with mild spoilers.
One particularly good bit of game design is that the very first text block in the book starts you off with a dice roll, so there are three different ways you can go from there that you hit at random, which makes starting over less of a pain than if you're stuck making the same series of choices until you can take another branch of the decision tree. You also pick one of four pieces of equipment (map, compass, binoculars, flashlight) at the beginning, which will determine how easy it is to succeed at various tasks. You then gain and lose equipment as you go along, although the mechanic for this is hilarious since you're mostly in a plane, so you find things on the floor or drop and break things when you hit turbulence ...
Anyway, on my first playthrough I collected all the equipment before bombing out because I had broken the one I needed. The second playthrough was completely different; I got downed in a storm, had to wait it out, then immediately found the criminals and bombed the same equipment check.
The one real problem with the game mechanics is that you run out of gas a little too fast. It's beyond challenging and into borderline impossible - I mean, I'm sure you *can* do it with some lucky breaks on the equipment and/or die rolls, but both times I had to pretend I had more gas than I really did, just to avoid having to start over right before you get to the actual catching-up-with-the-crooks part.
But in general, it's a well-done book! The pace is brisk, with each sections short and snappy; there are a bunch of illustrations and little mini-games like using the binoculars or flashlight as a decoder to "observe" something in an illustration. The one thing it doesn't have that games like this usually do is a lot of choice options. You mostly don't choose; you roll dice or use equipment to get where you're going. But it is fun, and the illustrations are nice ink ones that I'm enjoying a lot and should probably scan to share. Definitely a great find,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yhlee. :D
In other news, today was the kind of day that I absolutely needed after the flurry of garden and yard work the last week: cold, rainy, gray, a good excuse for staying inside.
I encountered two interesting prompt lists on Tumblr for June: June of Doom (h/c prompts) and Swoon June (romantic prompts). Perhaps I'll do something with some of these! I do wish the whump people on Tumblr hadn't embraced having multiple prompts per day, though; I know the idea is to give people things to choose from, but for me the limited options were part of the fun and I tend to get choice paralysis and not write anything at all.
(I am a little disappointed that crashing and/or dying doesn't seem to be an option in this one. At worst you run low on fuel and have to go home. I mean, not that I *want* to crash and die, but it would be dramatic!)
Edit: Some notes on the book's gameplay with mild spoilers.
One particularly good bit of game design is that the very first text block in the book starts you off with a dice roll, so there are three different ways you can go from there that you hit at random, which makes starting over less of a pain than if you're stuck making the same series of choices until you can take another branch of the decision tree. You also pick one of four pieces of equipment (map, compass, binoculars, flashlight) at the beginning, which will determine how easy it is to succeed at various tasks. You then gain and lose equipment as you go along, although the mechanic for this is hilarious since you're mostly in a plane, so you find things on the floor or drop and break things when you hit turbulence ...
Anyway, on my first playthrough I collected all the equipment before bombing out because I had broken the one I needed. The second playthrough was completely different; I got downed in a storm, had to wait it out, then immediately found the criminals and bombed the same equipment check.
The one real problem with the game mechanics is that you run out of gas a little too fast. It's beyond challenging and into borderline impossible - I mean, I'm sure you *can* do it with some lucky breaks on the equipment and/or die rolls, but both times I had to pretend I had more gas than I really did, just to avoid having to start over right before you get to the actual catching-up-with-the-crooks part.
But in general, it's a well-done book! The pace is brisk, with each sections short and snappy; there are a bunch of illustrations and little mini-games like using the binoculars or flashlight as a decoder to "observe" something in an illustration. The one thing it doesn't have that games like this usually do is a lot of choice options. You mostly don't choose; you roll dice or use equipment to get where you're going. But it is fun, and the illustrations are nice ink ones that I'm enjoying a lot and should probably scan to share. Definitely a great find,
yhlee. :DIn other news, today was the kind of day that I absolutely needed after the flurry of garden and yard work the last week: cold, rainy, gray, a good excuse for staying inside.
I encountered two interesting prompt lists on Tumblr for June: June of Doom (h/c prompts) and Swoon June (romantic prompts). Perhaps I'll do something with some of these! I do wish the whump people on Tumblr hadn't embraced having multiple prompts per day, though; I know the idea is to give people things to choose from, but for me the limited options were part of the fun and I tend to get choice paralysis and not write anything at all.
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And I meant to say, I agree about wanting only one prompt for those daily lists, and also that ‘You don’t want to do that’ is an excellent Biggles/EvS prompt.
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(At this point the rain can end anytime, though.)
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