Spellcaster: The Forgotten Spell Review

I usually love the choose your own adventure games because, even though they lack the visual greatness of your regular big budget games, they have something that few games offer: an amazing story. Spellcaster: The Forgotten Spell is not an exception and this gamebook for iOS manages to send you in a beautiful fantasy land as soon as you start playing.

If you’re not familiar with the gamebook adventure games, let me tell you in a few words how they are played (and, therefore, how you will play Spellcaster: The Forgotten Spell): the game is actually a novel where you can choose your own path. Whenever you are faced with a choice, you make your decision and turn to the indicated page. Each decision will affect how the story goes, how your character develops and how your adventure ends. There are puzzles along the way – extremely difficult puzzles in this case – and there is treachery and more than initially meets the eye. In other words, an epic adventure!

In Spellcaster: The Forgotten Spell you play as a little child who finds out that he’s pretty special: he can cast spells. For that reason, some evil creature wants him dead and it’s up for you to guide the little fellow to safety. In a land filled with fantasy creatures, like faeries and goblins and trolls and dwarves, with magic everywhere and dangers around each corner, this adventure is one to be truly enjoyed in one go. Because, yes, you simply can’t put it aside.

An interesting element of this particular gamebook is the level of interactivity: you don’t just read and choose your own path like in a regular novel, you also have to solve puzzles if you want to progress. From basic ones like casting spells (although casting the right spell is the challenge here) to much more complicated ones where you will get dizzy, the game offers much needed variety and even more reason for you to keep going.

There are some difficult choices to make, of course, and generally none is the obvious one, which makes the game even more interesting. I tried to play the game “correctly” until I found out that there’s no such way here. Instead, I always followed my heart and instincts and made the whole experience a lot more personal, which is what I recommend you to do. You will end up caring about your character and the few good guys that you’ll meet along the way and you will do your best to win this. So it’s up for you to do it!

The story of the game is extremely well written and even though the unfamiliar words (like nun and oobanata and so on) make the reading a bit more difficult at parts, you will probably have a ton of fun even if you are not a real fan of this type of games. For $3.99, it might seem a bit expensive to some, but trust me that it’s worth every penny. It’s a trip to a magical land that you can take over and over again and each time it could be different. What could you want more?

iTunes link: Spellcaster: The Forgotten Spell
Final rating: 8