Game Reviews

Gamebook Adventures 9: Sultans of Rema

Star onStar onStar onStar onStar off
Get
Gamebook Adventures 9: Sultans of Rema

Sultans of Rema flies by at a remarkable pace. It's a Gamebook on the edge, throwing in twists and turns almost every time you digitally flip a page.

Where Tin Man's Fighting Fantasy books have you reaching for a digital dice more often than not, here there's a focus on choice over luck, with your decisions having far-reaching consequences on the story.

Add in an intriguing tale of corruption, murder, and magic in a desert waste, and you're left with a decent way to waste a couple of hours.

Sand in your pants

The game starts with a boat ride, and a few pages of exposition that fill you in on the world and your character. Even if you've never played a Gamebook Adventures title before the lore never gets too heavy, and once the adventure starts it isn't that important.

There's a decent lump of exploring your surroundings, and making seemly innocuous choices, like visiting a book shop, can have consequences later in the game.

You have to balance that desire to see everything with the very real possibility that a harmless decision can easily lead to an untimely death.

At the start of your adventure you've got three difficulty choices. Classic lets you play the game as intended, with permadeath and no sticking your digital fingers between the pages, Adventurer adds a few more concessions, and Casual lets you cheat your face off at every given opportunity.

The combat is handled with chucked handfuls of dice, and feels a little less in-depth that the scraps you'll find in Fighting Fantasy. Still, it doesn't descend into the repetitive tit-for-tat HP chipping that can sometimes blight a FF battle.

Sand it over

Sometimes the text is a bit on the clunky side, especially for the first ten minutes, but once the book gets into its stride it doesn't slow down, pounding through chases, rebellions, slogs through the desert, and naps in monster-infested crags.

Sultans of Rema is a solid, entertaining romp, with the odd dice roll and deadly choice thrown in for good measure. If you like your fantasy of the swash-buckling variety, and your games of the pen-and-paper ilk, then you're probably going to get along very well with Tin Man's latest.

Gamebook Adventures 9: Sultans of Rema

A fast paced and entertaining adventure, once it gets going Sultans of Rema will have you on the edge of your seat
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.