Thee Assassin by PinoyGaming

Review by Frostedge

Well, this kind of gamebook is my thing, so I’ll give you my two cents.

Right off the bat, the story says I have the option to “Ambush the hidden assassin?” even though there was no suggestion or reference that the hiding individual was indeed an assassin, and not just a highwayman or something.

Utilising common sense, I decided to then attack this assassin pre-emptively, by summoning icebolts... Yes, apparently, we’ve crawled into the skin of a wizard, and we didn’t even know it. Funny, how that works, might want to reference that somewhere. The assassin then blocks the icebolt, sets it on fire, and hurls it back at you. The basic law of thermodynamics prevents ice from catching fire, so I’m interested as to what laws of nature your story follows. If indeed you meant to say that the icebolt melted, and the assassin threw a fireball in return, that would make much more sense.

We are then met with Sajamar, the rogue wizard. The only option is to murder this man in cold blood by using a spoken curse called “abradekadava”, which bears a stupid amount of similarity to Abrakedabra, or Avada Kedavra. It does not flow well on the tongue. Also, why does this particular spell need to be cast through speech, even though the icebolt was cast from silence? And why the heck didn’t we get to use this spell from the get-go?

I then decided to loot the assassin/wizard/rogue/person that I didn’t particularly know, that ended with me arriving in Balut, happy to have killed some guy I don’t particularly know. The story then abruptly ended with me going greedy with power and becoming Sauron (no, really). The game itself then says I got the Lord of the Rings ending, which is just plain uninspired at best.

To add, +90% of the lines begin with the word “You”. Put some variety into your text. It’s also rather short, I’ve taken longer to write this review than actually played your gamebook.

I would rate it two stars, if only for the effort put into it. The ending, though, dropped the score a whole star, not because it ended bad, but because it was poorly ended.