Item - Le labyrinthe du cyclope

(Review based on the Spanish translation.)

This horror gamebook is similar in format to the Give Yourself Goosebumps series, but also includes an original (and rather rudimentary) game system. At several points in the story, the reader is asked to flip through the book's pages and stop at one at random; depending on the picture found at the bottom of the page, the reader may either win or lose a fight (or either fail or succeed when trying to detect something, to escape from an enemy, or to determine whether a door is locked or not). This mechanism is more interesting than the crude randomization schemes found in Find Your Fate or Give Yourself Goosebumps books, though it also makes achieving a successful outcome more difficult than it should be (which made me rather uninterested in playing by the rules). Rules complaints aside, this book is a fun read (with some endings being more gruesome than those commonly found in American gamebooks). Where it fails the most is in the design. While the book gives you a variety of areas to explore, you only need to visit one of them in order to successfully complete the adventure (with all the others leading you back to the central hub if you survive them). The game would have been more interesting if the reader needed to achieve some objective in each area before moving on to the conclusion. As things stand, however, it's quite possible to stumble on the correct path the first or second time you read the book, which reduces the motivation to play again and explore the other areas. Unusually, at the end of the book three non-interactive short horror stories are included.

Overall, this is a decent read if you need to waste some time, but it is definitely not a masterpiece.

More reviews by Guillermo