Rating: 4 Stars
I picked up this interactive comic book at BookExpo this year. Comics are not normally my thing but this one looked intriguing. Glad that I did! It was fun, imaginative and I enjoyed playing through it (which I did several times with different outcomes).
It is a fantasy quest set in 19th century Paris. You are tasked with finding 30 power crystals and are instructed to bring them to the Eiffel Tower in order to complete it and make the city safe. You choose what character you wish to be and start your quest by choosing a numbered door. Then you find the corresponding number within the comic panels and follow the instructions.
Simple enough, but it does take a little time to get up to speed on how to play. I liked that you could make your own choices and are not stuck with just one outcome. I tried not writing everything down at first. Big mistake! I could not keep straight what tools I had acquired or how many crystals I had unless I kept a tally. At the beginning is a few pages for the reader/player to use in tracking all the “stuff”.
The illustrations were fabulous and done much better than your normal comic. The pages were glossy and extra thick to allow for the abuse the comic will get over its lifetime as kids play and replay the quest. I was not fond of the idea of using a crayon as a spinner for the wheel found in the back that you cut out. As suggested, I opted for using dice and found this more to my liking.
The major negative is the flipping, flipping and flipping of pages as you are constantly being directed to a new panel. Once I got used to it the quest played smoothly. It just took me a little bit to adjust to the non-comic book format of going to the next panel in order.
I received a free copy in exchange for honest review.