Item - Un bosque lleno de aventuras

This Mexican gamebook is thoroughly uninteresting. The first thing that strikes me as odd is that many of the choices are structured in a rather disconcerting way. As my reviews of the Plot-Your-Own Horror Stories series will testify, I'm not averse to unorthodox choice design, but this book shows more laziness than creativity in this respect. Nearly all of the choices are of the 'do you want to follow kid X or kid Y?', 'do you want to know who is behind the rock or why the sky suddenly turned dark?' variety. More than a real design, the book is told like a bedtime story for children where the author improvises after hearing the option chosen by the audience, and thus in some cases the story branches into results which are mutually exclusive, a flaw which might confuse the reader. The storylines seem aimed at very young children, are bland and uninvolving, and despite some of them having potential, no real effort to make them entertaining or even didactical can be seen. There are no bad endings and thus there is no sense of strategy related to the gameplay.

In short, a good Skylark Choose your Own Adventure book will be a much better way to introduce young children to the hobby than this forgettable mess.

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