Game Impressions I bought and played Assassin in Orlandes one week ago. At the same time I bought Sorcery! and a couple Fight Fantasy books. I enjoyed Assassin more than the Steve Jackson books surprisingly. The Assassin gamebook was more polished, smoother, and more responsive. It appeared to coded for the iphone in mind as opposed to the clunkier (at least for the FF series) Steve Jackson apps. Good points: Simple, easy to understand mechanics. Fairly well written; although it's a not great book on it's own but serviceable and entertaining. Cons: The combat system gets tedious at later in the book. Combat involves rolling X number of dice to attack and the opponent rolling Y number of dice to defend, where ties and below are failed attacks. It boils down to who rolled at least 1 six and who didn't roll any sixes. With 4-5 dice per roll in the latter half of the book, combat can take tediously long time. By default the dice are animated, which amplifies the time it takes. You can turn off the dice animations; I had to or otherwise I would have quit the game. You can use a fitness stat, to add +1 to your roll. So that if you rolled at least 1 six, it becomes a 7 and unblockable. But each time you use fitness you decrease it by 1 point and losing a fitness roll = -1 to your roll. So you need to a high fitness stat and even then you can only use it so much.
What's New In Version 2.0 - Brand new upgrade to take advantage of iPhone 4 features including higher resolution artwork throughout - Main menu orientation change from landscape to portrait to maintain consistency with other titles - New difficulty levels - Classic, Bookworm and Novice - Orlandes Uncovered update - Minor bug and logic fixes - Re-working of the story that makes it easier to find a certain item crucial to completing the gamebook - New icons selectable at the base of a page to take you to inventory, settings and main menu
Hats off to you guys for these books. I picked all three up because of the sale (No disrespect intended, but USD 2.99 is my sweet spot for this style of game) and am having a great time. Completed most of the achievements in book one, and moving onto book two now. I don't know if this has been reported as a bug by someone else, or if the problem is unique to me, but the cover art for book one is not displaying in the achievements screen. It works fine in book two.
I have the same bug with the cover art. Also, I have a question regarding the last part of book one, when I see Kari and guards take me to prison I have three options, if I have lockpick, acid or none. I know where to find lockpick but I can't find acid anywhere, I played the whole book a lot of times. Another thing that bothers me is that if I choose to go through the front door to the Eltane castle, instead the cliff side, I can never get out of prison, that's why I suppose the acid is somewhere in the castle eltane but the only two things I've found are Eltane Ring and some kind of healing in the apothecary. Some kind of clarification would be appreciated
SPOILER ALERT - Do not read if you are still playing GA1 We've checked this through and it seems to be a config bug that has crept in during the last build. We'll make sure to fix this in a new update. Hope it hasn't ruined your enjoyment too much. Yes, as you have wisely deduced, if you go enter the castle from one direction then there is no way of finding the lockpicks therefore you need some acid. The acid isn't found in the castle. Have you thoroughly investigated a small mining town based in a valley somewhere on your travels? There you may find your answer.
Ah, no I have not checked that town since I was low on vitality and was afraid that I'll encounter some horrible monster Tnx for clearing that up for me. Also I have another bug to report, sometimes when I'm rolling dices one of them kinda hangs and the whole game freezes so I have to manually close the app, just pressing the home button doesn't help because that puts the game in the background. It's not that big of a deal because it returns me to the last bookmark but still every time I get a bit scared that it will erase my progress. It happened to me about 6 times in Assassin and only once in the Necromancer, but I play Assassin more frenquently.
Yeah, we've had some feedback from people with older devices about some crashing. It's basically a memory issue which goes by unseen on more recent hardware. We've addressed this problem so expect it to be more stable in an update. Sorry 'bout that.
It's ok, but I don't have a very old device, at least I think my 3gs is not that old Any plans on returning to Orlandes in another gamebook? I absolutely love this one, it's my favorite of all your gamebooks, the atmosphere is just great, so it would be cool if we could come back
Hmm that's strange. My testing device is a 3GS and I have had no problems. Having said that we have had memory issues on older devices so it could be that you need to clear that. This problem should be all cleared up with the next update anyway (for all 3 gamebooks) which is currently in submission with Apple. Yes, GA1 has certainly become a firm favourite with our fans - and for good reason! We will be returning to Orlandes City soon in an upcoming gamebook where you will see a completely different side to the city. Right I've already said too much! Thanks for your support!
I bought this one since I've thouroghly enjoyed choose your own adventure books before, and the addition of combat sounded awesome. I must say that this game did not dissapoint, it was amazing! promptly after finishing I picked up the other two! I'm also really happy to hear that there will be another gamebook based in Orlandes! You guys did an amazing job on these!
Hi Osmiral. Thanks for your kind comments. It's posts like these that keep all of us involved with Gamebook Adventures highly motivated! If you have time we'd really appreciate an app store review too.
Has anyone here managed to have all of the information when searching the Hall of Records, or is it a red herring? I've mapped out every possible way at the start of the game, and have concluded (on v2.0 at least, have yet to re-experiment on v2.1) that it's impossible to have the location and both names all at once. - Finding the location results in not being able to return to the victim to find his name - Finding the name of the victim results in not getting the location - Nothing after leaving the victim will give you the victim's name until after the Hall of Records. Does anyone have any ideas? I can figure out everything else across the rest of the game fine, aside from having the ring when going to Gaol (which I think may have been patched since?), but that Hall of Records option has been bugging me since I started playing!
Just wanted to let you all know, I think The Tin Man has been infected by the Orlandrian Plague because he insisted that we put Assassin on sale today for $0.99. http://tinmangames.com.au/blog/?p=1059 If you know anyone who was on the fence about Gamebooks, now is the time to try it out! -Cheers! Ben
Hey, I've always wanted to write & draw a gamebook, and I've actually made a sci-fi choose your own adventure piece for my science class many years ago I was wondering what it takes to be able to write/draw for you guys? I can write many genres and have a wild imagination. Here's my thread in services for trade: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=76034 And an example of a story: http://www.writersbeat.com/showthread.php?t=28004 Thanks^^
Hey Frooby, Your best bet is to send some samples of your work and a pitch for your gamebook idea to info AT tinmangames.com.au (or if you already have a book written, send that along) That will get you into the pipeline and we will be able to have a look. At the moment we have quite a backlog of books that are either being written as i type this or are already done and just waiting to get into production so I cant guarantee anything will happen soon But that will get you into the system at least Cheers! -Ben
Just a quick reminder before I leave for my winter break, both GA1 and GA4 are still on sale until Jan 1st. Merry Christmas from Tin Man Games!
Re-playing GA1 over the break resulted in a funny bug: (I won't turn down the achievement, but I didn't roll those 6's... )
Hmm, that would be odd if the last die was not a 6. Unless you mean that 'you' didnt roll them because the enemy got the 3 6's, in which case it is working as intented Since you get to roll for both, if you get the 3 sixes or three ones for either you or the enemy, then you get the achievement However, if that die that is covered was in fact not a six; then, well that is a problem Cheers! -B
As shown below, the enemy dice are all 6's, sounds like it's working as intended. I took the achievement to mean my character rolling the sixes (as I'd call my opponent rolling three sixes unlucky fir me! )
Whew! I was a bit worried that perhaps the dice above were not in sync with the dice below, and that would be quite unexpected (and quite a bad bug really But yeah, I guess the idea is that when you are rolling for the enemy you are effectively taking on that 'role' (roll? ) And so while rolling a handful of sixes is not so good for your character, it is 'lucky' for the roller (in this case, the baddie (and practically, we wanted it to be a bit easier to get those achievements, We originally had them at four ones or four sixes, and that was just too rare, so we opened it up to 3 ones or 3 sixes for either side, so most people who play through once or twice should be able to get those achievements. ) as an aside: I dont know if you follow the Tin Man Games blog, but we had one reader send in a 6 - 6's screenshot: http://tinmangames.com.au/blog/?p=1077 this made us start up a casual 'contest' that if you get 6 sixes and send us a screenshot we will give you 2 free books (and if you already have them all, you will get the next ones on us Cheers! -B
