House of Danger Preview

Many of us remember choose your own adventure books from our childhoods. Our series of choice was Goosebumps but perhaps many of today’s gamers preferred Fighting Fantasy or the classic ‘Choose Your Own Adventure Series’ from the 1980's and 90's. If you have fond memories of these books then you can relive this adventure in a new form, around the table with friends, in a new series of games coming from Z-Man Games, the first of which is called House of Danger.

The Gameplay

In Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger, you, and up to seven friends are a psychic detectives, haunted by the mystery of the missing owner of the Marsden mansion. With only a water bottle, your trusty pocketknife, and confidence in your detective skills, you set out to solve the mystery in this cooperative adventure.

With only an initial visual to go on, you’ll work your way through a deck of cards, representing the first chapter of the story. As the story evolves you’ll encounter tests and choices, and will have to agree your path based on limited information in order to progress, gain more skills and objects and meet your objective.

There are five chapters to the story included in the box, allowing you to pause between gaming sessions, but once you’ve played through the story, you’ll have spoilers and might not play it again on multiple occasions.

House of Danger - Coming Soon

After a demo of House of Danger at the UK Games Expo, we think it might be best as a solo game, although it could also be a fun game to play with the same group throughout the whole five-chapter story. The game adds a little more than you'd see from just reading a book. It has unique items that might give you a one-off ability and also two tracks for your stats that affect the difficulty of your encounters and can also be affected by whether you die throughout the story.

If you love narrative games like T.I.M.E. Stories then check out House of Danger for an amusing, tongue in cheek take on the Choose Your Own Adventure genre and a game with story at its heart. We’re looking forward to checking out the game in the next few months and seeing where this series goes in the future.