Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf Complete
The classic adventure gamebooks of old return to the iPad with style
£9.99 Developer BulkyPix, lonewolfthegame.com
Works with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, iOS 6 or later
iPads are great for reading, whether catching up on news on your commute or a lazy Sunday morning with a book and a cup of coffee. So it’s fitting that Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf Complete, a new video game adaptation of the long-running adventure game series, is all about reading.
Lone Wolf falls somewhere between the interactive fiction of
Device6 and a traditional RPG. After reading through the story, you must choose your own adventure like the books of old, relying on predetermined skills such as camouflage, animal mind melds or good old-fashioned face punching. Your choices genuinely affect the course of the story – companions that join your party, available actions in future encounters – and the game forces you to commit to that course. The plot is the usual hokey fantasy nonsense, but a sense of urgency keeps it compelling.
No matter what your choices, you’ll eventually get into a scrap. Lone Wolf’s battles aren’t far off Final Fantasy’s Active Time Battle: a careful balancing of stat bars through efficient use of weapons and techniques. Every attack has a cooldown period, including blocking, and you must learn to control enemy hordes with stuns and magic attacks. Tactical decisions don’t end when the fight is won: meditating to heal is another gamble that can lead to an ambush.
Look past the clichés and the clunky user interface and Lone Wolf will engross you in its world more than RPGs with 10 times the budget. It’s a smart and surprising take on the genre. Alan Williamson