Guided by the Elders, the leaders of your society on D'Karr, your people have gathered and stored in the Wall of Knowledge all that has been learnt about your world and what is simply referred to as "the space beyond". As a Level 2 construct, you have yet to be allowed even limited access to the Wall, being instructed for now to simply gather more crystals for use in information storage. While your fellow constructs are content with their role and alternate between work and hibernation, you are not...

Simon Christopher Chapman's gamebook is ready to play.

Play it here

MPerera
Sat Jan 1 02:31:11 2022

Got all the way to the Stone Golem and was then killed. Interesting adventure, will try again.

Yaztromo
Tue Jan 11 20:10:39 2022

The choices are random, but I can understand there is quite an interesting back story there.

Paul
Wed Jan 12 22:23:09 2022

This is a cool idea for an adventure but endlessly picking what direction you go in without anymore information is tedious and repetive

Paul
Wed Jan 12 22:26:29 2022

Trying it again there is way too much trial and error. Im using the right click button to play this adventure lol

Andy P
Sat Jul 16 15:04:02 2022
Skull - non-optimum ending reached

Dull. A simple maze that doesn't even adhere to its own geography. Boring to read, irritating to play.

Rappe
Fri Sep 16 16:42:17 2022
Skull - non-optimum ending reached

Three tries. Best i did was find the blue -red black and yellow gems.

x
Fri Mar 10 21:44:24 2023
Skull - non-optimum ending reached

sudden death for just taking a wrong path. not cool

Gemini
Wed Jul 19 13:09:01 2023
Skull - non-optimum ending reached

Dead in three moves ... great ... uhmm

YARD
Sat Aug 19 15:46:38 2023
Star - optimum ending reached

So, it seems like even on this website, I'm the first one who has actually bothered to complete it?

Either way, I'll agree with all the preceding comments that it's quite a disappointment. The premise is really promising, but not a whole lot is done with it, and the random encounters the rift is used to justify are nowhere near as meaningful as they could be. If anything, the narrative ends up going in one of the less interesting directions possible for this.

I'll admit that the unusual decision to make most combat encounters deal 3 damage makes you think a little harder about your decisions, and it is something more gamebooks might benefit from. However, going through the maze, with its clearly arbitrary geography, is very much trial-and-error (I ultimately resorted to typing up notes, which I have not done for any other adventure here yet), as is eventually understanding which gem to use when, which screws up what should have been a fun process.

Oh, and that completely arbitrary choice of direction at the end, which either leads you to an ending or an instakill, and with seemingly no foreshadowing, is not fun. Neither is guessing the path out of five a point a little before that, or some of those instakill skill checks.

Altogether, it reminds me quite a lot of Golem Gauntlet (another adventure with fixed stats and a somewhat similar structure) but that one is just so much better-written, it's hardly a contest.

Lastly, some typos.

19
"lifelessly off you left"

48
"clothed entirely in black robes, which also covers its face"

53
"You cautiously walk down the dark passage, feeling your wall along the wall."

105
"GIANT AMEOBA" (wrong spelling).

21
"You materialize... and instantly de-materalize!"

86

"You reason the dimensional accident has obviously effected"

YARD
Sat Aug 19 15:51:07 2023

And this actually makes me think of something: could we have

a) the ability to sort playable works in additional ways? I.e. by the number of comments, or perhaps the number of "completed" comments. While there are clearly not going to be dedicated reviews, that should be an interesting alternative.

b) failing that, at least some clarification that the playable gamebooks in the sidebar are sorted by submission date, and not anything more important than that? Someone new to this can easily assume that the order refers to perceived quality.

YARD
Mon Aug 21 10:16:28 2023

Wait, so this work and Golem Gauntlet are both by the same author, and this one was written years after Golem Gauntlet? How?!

...Come to think of it, I might have heard something of a supposed writer's curse where the writer who reaches a breakout success with the very first book is then likely to disappoint with the second, but I was hoping the gamebook world would be more insulated to this. Oh well, it is what it is.

MPerera
Mon Sep 4 00:00:50 2023
Star - optimum ending reached

Won, but it was a tiring and not very interesting process. Mostly a matter of collecting gems and guessing which direction to go in or which block to step on.

Charlotte
Sat Apr 6 01:40:08 2024
Skull - non-optimum ending reached

Is this even possible?

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