I enjoyed the puzzle-y game-y comic book The Beyond, by Jason Shiga, though I played it wrong. Like his previous work Leviathan, The Beyond is a choose-your-own-adventure book, but comics instead of plain ol' text. This game's gimmick: you encounter some special items, each of those special items has a number. Sometimes when the instructions tell you which page to turn to, you use an item and add its number, so the item affects what happens next in the plot. It's a neat gimmick.
I played it wrong. I followed instructions: in the game, I found an item. Later on, I used the item and that affected what happened next in the plot, neat. But I failed to notice that in the comic, my character had left that item behind. Later on, I encountered other special-number items, and then a situation where I could use them. Not realizing that my character had left the first special-number item behind, I "used" it, again adding its number to decide which page to turn to—and jumped to a page in the book that the author didn't expect. So I was looking at a bit of comic with an abrupt transition. But I knew that Jason Shiga is a tricky writer, and I can be pretty tricky myself, so I "cleverly" constructed a probable plotline in my head, bridged the strange transition from my old situation to my new situation, figured that the author had just elided some parts and expected me to figure out what had happened. Then I encountered a puzzle where I was supposed to use my knowledge of the number that had brought me to this point…but of course I had used the wrong number. So when I applied my "knowledge," things got weirder and I figured out that I should start over. And when I played again, I finally noticed how the book was trying to call my attention to that first item getting left behind. Ahem. Anyhow. I eventually finished the comic-game legit.
I notice that the computer game version of this comic-game-thingy is coming out in a few days. Maybe it will have an "inventory" system that keeps track of which items you carry with you (or leave behind); maybe it won't, though. I dunno. Anyhow, if you like books, get the book. If you like computer games, get the game. It's tricky, and if you're too-clever-by-half, you can make it even trickier.
