Escape from a Video Game

I’ve always loved the choose your own adventure genre since I was a child, and that compelled me to check this book out.

I think kids will really enjoy this book as it’s filled with adventure and action. The best part is that it’s chock-full of puzzles and brain teasers, which is something I haven’t seen in other choose your own plot stories.

Other than making choices, the puzzles and other activities add to the fun of the story and make it even more interactive.

I would really recommend this book for all kids. Not only does it have a super engaging story, it also has brain teasers, to help them improve their thinking skills.

Okay, even though I know this book is supposed to be written for kids, I have happy memories of reading both the Choose Your Own Adventure, and the Fighting Fantasy books as a child. In fact, I don't know if I would be such a voracious reader today if I hadn't become addicted to those books. Home computers were a new thing, and the closed I got to a RPG was Sphinx Adventure on the BBC Micro. I had to pick up this book to relive my past - and I was not disappointed. I really enjoyed the story and playing the game whilst I read the book. I think it would have been a lot easy to enjoy a paperback rather than the eBook version, but that's not Brady's fault. If you are a past reader of CYOA books, or if your kids have never read one of them - buy this. Highly recommended.

The one good thing about this choose-your-own adventure book, for me, was that we were instructed to play it through, ideally dying and flicking back to the previous page as little as possible, and then to map it all out – the whole thing is designed as if we're in a computer adventure game, and we're supposed to unlock each and every turn for the bonus easter eggs. Now, in reviewing these things I do map each and every turn, and cover every fork as I go along anyway, so I was only happy to oblige. But would this junior read oblige and entertain me, and the non-reviewing junior me just here for fun?

Well, in a word, yes. I do think the sense of it sarcastically undermining the whole video game concept, by archly taking the mickey, dropped off for a straight drama of infiltration into the baddie's secret lair, but it still didn't lose much. I liked the fact I'd actually got some way before I did die for the first time, and I'd honestly started out in choosing the counter-intuitive route ("I'll just map this side path that obviously kills me because it's so obviously the wrong choice, then go back to the main track – oh, no, I've solved that section…"). Any reader here will find curveballs thrown at them.

What I also liked is the save point structure – die, and you get a piece of the code for the easter eggs, and you get told to go back to the prior key choice – it's not like everyone cheats in these books anyway, and nobody ever starts from page one a second time. That allows for much less frustration here – as does something else. If you are mapping this, the section of the book heavily involving puzzles recycles many of its death pages at multiple times, so you get to recognise the same numbers as end points.

All in all we have a strong COYA for the under-thirteens, where you turn to whichever page entry you're instructed when you get to select an option. There is no use of dice to bring a bit of chance into things, and where there is something like a combat system it's quite a decently novel one. And if a sub-thirteen version of me had had this all those years ago I think it would have gone down rather well – the book does subvert the whole wish-fulfilment thing of wanting to live life as if you're in a computer game, while also providing the immediacy needed of these books, so you think this crazy adventure is happening to you yourself. The fact this can be slightly crazy and coherent at the same time is to its merit, as is the fact this is perfectly self-contained, and purchase of the whole five book set that came before is not needed. So the choice is a pretty easy one – go for it.

Just like the Choose Your Own Adventure of days past, or living your own Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, this was a fantastically fun book. Highly recommend it.

What a ride!! This book is fun and funny! The choices and the way to escape is surprising but also educational and it's cool to find your beat as you go along (still find yourself dead even when you think you've cracked the code). I would highly recommend this book for anyone with children in their lives that may not be as into reading. I can see this book becoming an easy favorite for any child that picks it up.

This is a fantastic "choose your own adventure" book with puzzles and delightful gimmicks. Although it is probably intended as more of a "boy book," it really is a "video game lover" book that I wouldn't hesitate to book talk to most any middle school class..