Pocket Reality +12

I am enjoying this game. The premise is that a new world generates each day and you have a few factions (like Pizzas, Cabbages, and Cookies), and you build up your loyalty with each one by helping them or harming their enemies. Loyalty is like currency which is accumulated each second at a rate which is dependent upon your engagement with them. If you fail at a task, you lose stamina but increase your stats, so all is not lost. I am a fan of the different situations which come up. It can also be played in many ways. For instance, I power through it and tackle each scenario. Sometimes that means I'm done in ten minutes. However, if a scenario is tough you can wait two minutes and get a new one, so you can probably play a lot more strategically and let it stretch out much longer. Anyway, I enjoy the permissive and open nature of this game, as well as the humor that's been added throughout.

Remember the good old days of reading choose-your-own-adventure books? The new Pocket Reality delivers that sense of wonder with a healthy dose of the surreal.

Each day, the app generates a new world with its own four factions (such as Sheep/Tricycle/Lamp/Ukulele) and a set of locations and NPCs based on them. Your job is to interact with these characters and set pieces by making decisions…so many decisions.

Each choice that you make (other than travel) involves either a skill check (Strength, Knowledge or Influence) or spending currency related to one of the factions (which gradually increments over time). Failing a skill check burns one of your ten stamina points, with the journey ending at zero, but as a consolation, permanently raising the stat in question(even in future stories.)

Now for the fun stuff; the story! So much imagination has been thrown into this simple, all-text indie. Choose sides in a wild battle, or play them against each other? Set up two lovers, or try to be the spoiler? Make an everlasting friendship with the colossus-piano you’ve been adventuring on, or strip-mine him for resources? It’s all up to you!

It’s an incredibly fun game but the lack of a wiki or discord makes things difficult. For example, I initially thought the best strategy was to travel to different locations and do the highest success task but actually it’s rewarding to pick lower success tasks and not travel and stay in the same spot until the two minutes are up. I still feel like there’s gameplay elements I’m missing. Also the game needs some sort of cloud save