eBooks have proven to work very well on the iPhone, so why not a choose your own adventure book? An Assassin in Orlandes is the first in the Gamebook Adventures series which have been written exclusively for the iPhone. The story takes place in Orlandes City, the capital of Orlandes, where nobles are being systematically murdered by a ruthless assassin. After witnessing one of these murders, and then finding out that his ex-girlfriend has been kidnapped, your character is determined to find out who this assassin is. If you’ve never encountered one of these books before: you control your own adventure by choosing where to go at forks in the story, and battle using dice to determine the outcome.

The story is quite obviously the core of the game and if it lacked a decent plot or wasn’t well written there would be no point in reading it, luckily S.P. Osborne has written something both engaging and exciting. Yes, the storyline may be a little generic, but we enjoy all the twists and turns in the book as you travel from place to place in Orlandes City trying to track down the assassin. The story definitely withstands multiple readings (which are guaranteed to take place), but once you get far enough you’ll want to use one of your three precious bookmarks. These are save points that you can return to if you die, which eliminate the need to read the book from the very start each time, but once you’ve placed all three you can’t get them back.

Every choose your own adventure type book includes a few RPG elements and in An Assassin in Orlandes you have four stats: vitality, offence, defence and fitness. Both your offence and defence start at two and increase as you find better weapons and armour, whereas your vitality and fitness are established at the start of the game by a roll of the dice. These stats play a pretty important part on your journey since they determine whether you live or die in a fight. When you attack an enemy you roll a number of dice that is equal to your offence, while your opponent rolls the same number of dice as their defence. If the highest number you roll (on a single die) exceeds the highest number your opponent rolls then you’ll hit them and take the combined number of your dice off their vitality (health). If your number is below or equal then you’ll miss your opponent. This battle system works well for the most part but when you get more armour and weapons with many more dice it falls a part a little. Fights start to become tedious because both you and your opponent are more likely to roll a six and therefore the attack will be blocked.

What makes the game really enjoyable is its slick user interface. The whole of the story is presented on old, stained paper with an ancient-looking, but readable, font. And if the old style isn’t really your thing then you can change the font size, font style and paper style in the settings page to something a little more modern. Flicking through the pages is also easy with just a simple swipe and to move to a new section you click on one of the green arrows at the end of the passage. Throughout the text there are several pieces of artwork that help to bring the story to life. When you come across one of these it’s saved in the achievements section for you to view full screen in all its glory later. Tin Man Games have also made sure that the visuals during your battles are polished. The dice are rendered in full 3D and are thrown with a touch or shake of your device. We experienced some frame rate issues when the dice were bouncing about but that didn’t hinder the gameplay at all. When you defeat an opponent their name and stats are scribbled out which we thought was a nice touch.

Choose your own adventure books always seem tough to finish and at the time of writing this review we haven’t finished the book (not with a happy ending anyway). Luckily we’ve really enjoyed the game and while you aren’t directly in control of the character like in most modern games, the story is very engaging and we felt involved the whole time. For half the price of a physical book, Gamebook Adventures 1: An Assassin in Orlandes brings a great amount of enjoyment and is a fun game all the way. If you’re looking for a decent choose your own adventure book: this is the one to get. The developers also have two more books in the series on the way with The Siege of the Necromancer coming up next, so if you do complete the game you’ll have something to look forward to!

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More by this developer

Gamebook Adventures 2: The Siege of the Necromancer, B

Review by Ben Briggs, June 21, 2010