As expected in a solo game, each entry states the different entries it leads to. Following the good practice of Alone Against the Dark, each entry also includes the entries that it can be accessed from.
When it comes to content the adventure is one of the best solo adventures I have played up to now
When deconstructing the adventure I counted some 39 different endings, both successful and unsuccessful. There are many gruesome deaths, madness, and successful resolutions of varying degrees. The adventure works with keywords like ‘barefoot’, ‘backwater’, ‘stockhouse’ etc. When a keyword is encountered in an entry, the player notes it and can use it in future entries when prompted. This alters both the options one has depending on what he has encountered up to then, as well as how successful he was in successfully concluding the adventure.
As expected, the pdf has a very limited amount of bookmarks, mostly noting down the introductory aspects of the adventure. Each entry has live links both to the entries it leads to, as well as the entries https://hookupdate.net/nl/dating-handicap/ it is accessible from.
If you fail, go to 607
The strong points: The adventure’s technical aspects are outright perfect. Once again I appreciated how entries reference not only the entries they lead to, but also the entries that lead to them. It looks pointless until you lose your grip on your book, lay it down and lose the page, and effectively lose all your progress up to then.
Solo adventures by definition have a lot of page-flipping, and Chaosium took two steps in order to seriously reduce it. Firstly, and in contrast to Alone Against the Dark that had a few offending entries, now all entries are contained in the same page. Secondly and most importantly however, many entries which rely on yes/no choices or successful/failed rolls have the resolution entries immediately follow the prompt entry. As an example, you are in the canyon at 605, and you need to roll. If your roll is successful, go to 606. That’s fantastic, seeing how I can now enjoy the adventure, take notes, and immerse myself in the narrative, rather than keep flipping in order to consult a die result. We are all adults here; if somebody is as stupid as to ruin his entertainment by looking at entries in the same page that he didn’t have access to, doesn’t mean that everybody should be penalized by pointless page-flipping.
It might not offer different personalities to tackle it, yet the leading character is customizable. It is always easier to portray a character that you have helped create since you understand better how he works, both as a sum of statistics as well as a personality. The adventure’s structure is robust. It feels like a labyrinth in some ways, with the player needing to navigate different types of terrain, take hard decisions in order to press on or quit, lose his guide or other expedition members etc. Loopbacks exist, allowing you to fully explore some places without feeling railroaded. This makes the adventure extremely replayable, not only for the sheer satisfaction of exploring all courses of action, but also to experience everything from the beginning, especially if some time has elapsed between your plays. The dangers are diverse. The supernatural is out there, yet to get there you must first overcome physical challenges and disagreements over what to do. The designers incorporated the conflicting nature of your findings inside the adventure. You are a scientist, yet how are you supposed to behave when your rational mind tells you one thing, while everything else tells you something else?
