Two magically immersive video games cast as "choose your path"-style adventures kick off a series set in an abandoned arcade.Both games are conventional types, running separate courses despite the interwoven format. In a setup, "you" find the arcade in a long-closed mall and opt either to join Space Pirates in fighting the evil Galactic Authority or to take on a trio of undead necromancers. In either case, big icons that look like game controllers offer multiple options for next movesall split into short (sometimes one- or two-line) snippets of narrative on widely separated pagesnearly all of which lead, a few options along in the plotlines, to being eaten by animated toys, squeezed by an Abominable Snowmancer, blasted into "little bits of space trash," or some other form of sudden death. Not only does the requisite flipping prevent the development of any sort of dramatic pacing, there's so much back-ing and forth-ing that gamers, even (or perhaps particularly) dedicated ones, will quickly grow weary of it. Moreover, to no evident purpose beyond padding the page count, some passages recur word for word multiple times. Aside from the icons, a scanty assortment of line-drawn prize tokens, robots, and melodramatically posed monsters are the only visuals.Unexceptional of both concept and play, more hampered than enhanced by its format. (Horror/science fiction. 11-13) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Like the perennially popular Choose-Your-Own-Adventure theory, this first Play-Your-Way book gives readers plot options, allowing them to weave their way back and forth among half a dozen choices. The conceit though is that the adventures all relate to old-fashioned (i.e., 1980s-type) video games that abound in the haunted arcade of an abandoned shopping mall. The protagonist is you, bravely making your lone way into the mall, only to be confronted by a creepy arcade host who offers a challenge: play one of two games that lead to a new world of choices. Will it be Space Battles or Crypt Quest? Will the reader choose a maneuver that pays off, or one that leaves you DEAD?! (No worries you can always start back over at the point where you made your fatal choice.) Nostalgic digital-style fonts and portrayals of old-style controls give the book flair. Not for the linear-minded, but those readers who enjoy video games will be on board for the dizzying turns and restarts, making the series a likely hit.--Cruze, Karen Copyright 2018 Booklist