Adventuregame Comics 2: The Beyond

 

A change of pace for today's puzzling, a modern-day Choose Your Own Adventure equivalent by the Jason Shiga, the creator of the magnificent Meanwhile... amongst others. This one is book two in an undefined series, nominally the followup to Leviathan in book one, but a discrete adventure in itself with no holdover from that previous book. Same style though -- you are at a funfair, do you go on the coconut shy (page 2) or the big dipper (page 3), that sort of thing.

This time there's a short prologue adventure to get into the swing of things, plus an unrelated epilogue -- the meat of the book has a nice little mechanic of the player having to work out what page to turn to by combining other items -- a book-based version of Unlock if you like.

I really enjoyed this, although - as is my want - by mapping each option out you soon realise that the story barrels onwards pretty much regardless of what you do, so replayability isn't great if you're seeking different paths or branching stories or even wildly different endings. Having said that there's a neat idea to get to the "best" ending, which reminds one very much of a piece of Metal Gear Solid meta back in the day.