I loved the choose your own adventure books with a passion growing up.

I would go through so many different types, feeling nervous about every step, wondering where it will take me, but also inquisitive and fascinated about the journey.

Swordbreaker: Origins is a nice throwback to that, but with big hand-drawn pictures, karma ratings, and vast map of locations. The game has a whopping 620 scenes to open, many of which result in death and some that will progress your story in many ways.

That’s actually a massive eight different endings to see and even a New Game Plus God Mode where you can walk through without fear of death.

For each run, you only have three hearts per play through, so you need to make sure you’re visiting the right places, talking to the right people and preparing for any scenario. Because trust me, some of the ways you can die are odd and wouldn’t be out of place in a Sierra game.

You start out with a simple choice at first but this can branch out in so many different ways, seeing you fight vampires, mages, werewolves and bandits, even the dead. But there’s also some mini games along the way, like walking across a log while avoiding big gusts of wind or traversing a maze to get to a field of berries.

It’s a fun enough diversion for a while, with some pathways definitely being more interesting than others. Some scenes in particular have walls of text, large chunks of it not grammatically correct and mispelled. And some writing is definitely a bit questionable, especially when it comes to ‘barely clothed women’ and smacking elven queens on the bum.

Also the fact you can’t save the game along the way and can die quite easily can definitely be a bit tedious as you go back through the initial stages over and over. As mentioned, there’s a lot of ways to die, so it’s definitely not always a pleasant experience. Sometimes it’s as simple as making a Left or Right choice, which just feels random and not really like something you put much thought into.

But the game is an enjoyable enough distraction for time if you’re looking for a fantasy adventure to sink your teeth into and you’re a fan of the original Swordbreaker games. Not perfect. Not awful. A pass time all the same.