Item - Futago shima kara no dasshutsu shōnen wa modoritai to omotta [ ふたご島からの脱出 少年は戻りたいと思った]

This book is set in a fantasy setting and features two protagonists, a teenage boy with amnesia and a teenage girl from a village in one of the islands. Unlike Joe Dever’s Combat Heroes or Fighting Fantasy: Clash of the Princes where two players each read a dedicated book for their character, this is a solo play experience with the reader going back and forth between the two books. The actions take place on the same island and the two protagonists interact with each other. The two share the same code chart, and actions of one character unlocks the path forward for another character. The adventure covers an area across six connected maps and the characters gain access to a new map area as they progress through the adventure. You can visit any area that you unlocked in the map, and can go back to locations in earlier maps. One book covers the boy's adventure (250 sections) and another covers the girl's adventure (250 sections). The third book (113 sections) is a prequel spinoff where you play a character mentioned in the main books. You need to take copious amount of notes and check a lot of code words, with code words helping keep track of your decisions and progress. Similar to the first book in the series (Escape from the Werewolf Village), you need to solve innovative puzzles to progress. The puzzles are similar to ones you see in escape rooms and relatively easier than the first book (but still plenty challenging), likely because the book's website does not have hints for any of them. One puzzle requires you to link the two books together and align two other puzzle pieces.

You still have to go to the publisher’s website for the book to access the final question, but the main ending is now a section in the book and not hosted on the website.

This is a long adventure and the amount of time it took to complete the book is on par with Fabled Lands book 7 and Steam Highwayman book 2 but the strong and compelling story made the journey very satisfying. I read the Korean translation and I am not aware of the book being translated into other languages, but if you can read Japanese or Korean and can get a hold of a copy, this will surely be a memorable experience.

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