Captive, Tears of a Goddess, Loup Garou, Your Town, and Sherlock Holmes: Four Investigations

Designers: Various (Emmanuel Manuro, Moon, Shuky, CED)
Artists: Various (MC, Ben Jurdic, 2D, CED)
Publishers: Makaka Editions/Van Ryder Games
Players: 1
Ages: 10+
Times Played: Captive (9 times, purchased copy); Tears (14, purchased copy); Loup (8, purchased copy); Sherlock (2, purchased copy); Your Town (10, purchased copy)
Previous Coverage: Captive and Knights

OK, let’s start over. I wrote this review once.  At that point I was 2 plays into Your Town, and thought I had a good enough sense to put most of my words down.

In an effort to avoid spoilers, I did this thing where I walked around and found photos that could be representative of the numbers you’re looking for in the panels.  Then the review read out of order because you were suppose to jump to the panel indicated in the image. Something like this:

Twice, in fact; the pictures I had taken the first time I didn’t like enough.  (There are two other reviews held up waiting on me to take field trips, one involves a bus and one involves an airplane.)

But I wasn’t 100% sold on my execution, and then I played Your Town some more, and decided this needed to be less about me and more about how great these books are, so I’m scrapping that.

First, we’ll talk about them overall.  Then we’ll get into book specifics.

OVERVIEW

These 5 books were recently published in English language editions from Van Ryder Games, after having been out for several years in French from Makaka Editions, and Captive previously appearing in English from Blue Orange (though only licensed for Europe).

At a broad level, these are solo Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style books, with some RPG elements. In Captive, you’re rescuing your daughter from kidnappers.  Tears of a Goddess has you recovering some stolen artifacts. In Loup Garou, you’ll find yourself a werewolf trying to survive. Your Town offers you the chance to be mayor of a small town.  In Sherlock, as Holmes or Watson or a combination, you have four mysteries to solve. Continue reading →