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Choose Your Own Adventure Retrospective: The Curse of Batterslea Hall by Richard Brightfield

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The Curse of Batterslea Hall  was always my favourite CYOA book – it was also, for reasons I'll get into, one of the more unusual ones. It sparked my later love of adventure games and inspired some of my sketchy early attempts at creative writing (including a thinly veiled recreation on 90s 'edutainment' program Storybook Weaver ). It also deepened my devastation when I returned home one fateful school night to discover my mum had donated my extensive CYOA collection – precious gems tremblingly unearthed from the dusty Mills and Boon-straining shelves of my local Scope – back to charity. Around twenty years later, and I took the obvious next step for a mildly lockdown-crazed 90s kid squinting down the barrel of their thirties: sourced a copy inflated by just four times the original cover price through eBay. But was it worth it, and does it still hold up? Dust off your bootcut jeans and fire up your Walkman – it's adventurin' time, 90s* style... The premise Battersl
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Discworld Game Review: Whimsical, Nostalgic, Impossible

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While it's difficult to find a legit (cough) copy nowadays, Discworld is worth revisiting if only as a curious and charming relic of a bygone age (1995!), when the adventure game reigned and creative puzzles and witty dialogue were everything. This also hails from an era when authors collaborating with games developers made perfect sense. The result is a game infused with the hallmark (if sometimes arcane) humour of the legendary Terry Pratchett, which is especially delectable when combined with the voice work of British treasures Eric Idle, Tony Robinson and Rob Brydon, among others (available only on the newer version).

The music is uncomplex (but then that comes with the age of the game), but whimsical and appropriate, complementing the quirkily appealing cartoonish background art. And, while this is far from high res and needs to be played in windowed mode, I've always felt that this type of hand-drawn art style has weathered the ravages of time much better than 3D game prototypes.

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It must be said, however, that this game is also notoriously difficult. So difficult, in fact, that it is near-impossible to complete without a guide. There is next to nothing in the way of direction, while many of the puzzles bear little direct relation to the plot and are unsolvable by methods involving logic alone. In any later game, this would be put down to poor game design, so it could simply be the pink, fuzzy glow of nostalgia that makes me rate this a three rather than two-star game.

Verdict: A charming and creative dose of nostalgia, but notoriously difficult.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

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