Review: A fun introduction to interactive fiction for youngsters
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 24, 2014
"Joe, Sam, & Fred's Pirate's Treasure Adventure" is an easy to read interactive story for youngsters. It's the second story in the author's "Choose Your Own Story" series, and like the first story, it features three friends: Joe the elephant, Sam the dog, and Fred the mouse. In this story, the three friends decide to go on a quest to find pirate treasure. At times during the story, the reader is offered two choices of action to take. The story then continues based on the choice made, with several more branching points with decisions to be made by the reader. The outcome of the story depends on the choices made, but this is a children's book, so all outcomes are happy ones.The colorful cartoon-like graphics are nicely done, and the story has enough action and suspense to keep a youngster's attention for the time required to complete the story. The real fun comes from rereading the story to see what alternate outcomes result from making different choices.I've read several complex text-only interactive fiction novels, and I enjoyed them very much with their numerous possible outcomes, but younger kids wouldn't enjoy these, and some of them have adult themes anyway. "Joe, Sam, & Fred's Pirate's Treasure Adventure," however, is clearly aimed at young children, and it's excellent for introducing them in a fun way to graphical interactive stories.One suggestion: There is at least one path through the story that leads to a dead end (after an avalanche blocks the path with snow), so you have to go back to the beginning and start over. It would be helpful to have links there to either return to the beginning or return to the previous decision point.A review copy of the book was provided by the author.