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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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First Impressions of Princess Jellyfish by Akiko Higashimura (Vol. 1): Funny, Feel-Good and Fabulous

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What's it about? 'Tsukimi Kurashita has a strange fascination with jellyfish. She’s loved them from a young age and has carried that love with her to her new life in the big city of Tokyo. There, she resides in Amamizukan, a safe haven for girl geeks who regularly gush over a range of things from trains to Japanese dolls. However, a chance meeting at a pet shop has Tsukimi crossing paths with one of the things that the residents of Amamizukan have been desperately trying to avoid – a beautiful and fashionable woman! But there’s much more to this woman than her trendy clothes! This odd encounter is only the beginning of a new and unexpected path for Tsukimi and her friends.' [Kindle edition blurb] Things I loved I'm a sucker for slice-of-life josei manga geared towards an older female audience – they're such unicorns! – so the premise of this and its quirkily charming art style immediately appealed to me.  I was also impressed by its focus on an often overlooked grou...
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My Recommendations for Cosy, Story-Rich PC Adventure Games (Non-Gamer Friendly)

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Whether you're new to gaming or just hankering after something to lose yourself in that isn't weighed down by complicated mechanics or repetitive grindfests, I've got the perfect list of adventure games for you. Crucially, these won't send your blood pressure soaring with jump scares or game over screens (just good old-fashioned emotional trauma). Many can even be – and are compelling enough to be – completed in just a few sittings (or even just one). And, as much as I love the classic adventure games, I've opted for more modern titles where you're unlikely to be stumped for months on end by mind-bending moon logic puzzles involving, say, having to craft a fake moustache disguise using cat hair, maple syrup and the last shreds of your sanity.  Night in the Woods At first glance, I wasn't sure how I felt about this game's quirky art style featuring cartoonish anthropomorphised characters, but as soon as I started playing it, any misgivings quickly dissip...
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