Game: Road of Kings

Gamebooks have made a big comeback on mobile devices recently. But for all the nostalgia and entertainment they provide, I can't help but feel most of them are a wasted opportunity. On a multimedia touchscreen device, why limit yourself to static pictures and text? Road of Kings attempts to take the concept to a new level by mixing in elements of rouge-like adventure games. You play a barbarian warrior who has 100 days to amass a fortune of gold big enough to buy yourself a chieftainship.The action takes place on a top-down hex map of a fantasy kingdom. There are towns to visit, ruins to explore, and monsters and other heroes to encounter, which you can either fight or have join your party; if you choose the latter option, you must then feed them by buying food or risking hunting in the wilderness."So far, so ordinary. What's intriguing about Road of Kings is the combination of chance encounters and scripted story. Travellers on the road or the contents of long-forgotten ruins are generated randomly, but many locations on the map provide a richer vein of adventure.Enter one of these and the game map is overlaid by a text window describing your encounters and offering you choices in the vein of a "choose your own adventure" book. The locations of these change occasionally, but once you're in a given adventure the script remains the same. And you'll need to experiment and learn the rewarding choices if you want to succeed in your quest.