Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger is a new narrative adventure game from Z-Man games. 

We’ve never played a game like it before and it offered our family a one of a kind gaming experience.

How does it work?

In this game you play the role of an aspiring detective and psychic investigator hoping to solve the mystery of your recurring nightmares that have been haunting you for weeks. You know they are different than just mere dreams and that they are trying to tell you something important. So you set off on your investigation.

Players will take turns reading story cards that work in the style of a choose your own adventure book. Each story section will lead you to a cross roads where you must make decisions about what to do next.

Each choice you make will send you to a different story card where you will continue reading, following the story and encountering many different challenges, some that you will be required to face and other that you can choose to face, if you dare. 

The player board controls your Psychic Scale and Danger Meter. (You have to say Danger Meter in the most dramatic voice possible.)

The Danger Meter will move up and down during the game based on your choices throughout the story. When you encounter a challenge you’ll consult the Danger Meter which will tell you what you must roll to win the challenge. If the Danger Meter is at a 3, then you must roll a 3 or greater to win. Anything less than that will result in a loss.

Along your journey you will discover various challenge boosters that you can use to help you get through tricky challenges. However, any 1 rolled during a challenge will result in an automatic loss, even with a challenge booster, so you must be careful!

The Psychic Scale represents your level of extrasensory powers. Different actions that you take throughout your adventure will raise or lower your Psychic Scale level. The higher your level the more beneficial your rewards will be, sometimes resulting in Premonitions that will help warn you of dangers ahead. 

House of Danger is separated into five chapters. When you reach a story card that indicates that you have achieved your goal then you may move on to the next chapter. Each chapter can take up to about an hour to complete, depending on your choices.

Because this is a Choose Your Own Adventure story, there are several ways that the game can conclude in Chapter 5. The ending you arrive at will be entirely dependent on the choices you have made throughout the game and the items that you uncovered. 

What’s in the box?

Along with the game board, die, and placement markers for the Danger Meter and Psychic Scale, this game comes with 160 story cards, and 129 clue cards. There is a LOT of content on these cards and because of the nature of the game, choosing your adventure and following or not following certain paths, there will be many cards that you won’t uncover during your first play through. 

So what did we really think?

We had a TON of fun playing through this!

While it has a game spin, it really isn’t so much a board game as it is a narrative experience. The game element really helps immerse you in the story and adds a fun element of suspense as you must roll a die to determine your fate in the challenges. 

While some wont like the luck element, it didn’t really bother us. You uncover a variety of challenge boosters along that way that you can strategically use to help you out.

Yes, we still had some horrific die rolls that resulted in us losing some challenges, but that’s part of the fun. The whole point of the game is to add a fun twist to the reading experience and it really hits the mark. 

We like that dying during the game doesn’t result in anything too dreadful as far as the play experience. You still get to keep playing, just simply follow the card instructions and go to the indicated story card. 

Heck, sometimes the funniest moments in the game result form poor decisions that end in you dying! 

And that’s the true gem of this game. It is a lot of fun and lends itself to a ton of laughs. 

We LOVED playing this with our kids. 

While the box says 10+, this is a great game to pick up and play as a family. 

We read to our kids every single day. It is such an important part of their development and a great way to spend time together. Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger makes reading together a fun and different experience.

Since our kids are a bit too young to read the cards, we read to them and then they take turns making the decisions. The story itself is so funny and is easy to read in a suspenseful and exciting way; the kids just eat it up and hang off our every word. 

It’s also a great way to help them work through problems like when and how to use challenge boosters, letting them read what the Danger Meter is set to and talking about the chances of rolling the required number. And because the game is meant to be fun, if the die doesn’t break their way, it’s no big deal, it’s just part of the story!

Is it worth it?

This isn’t a strategy heavy board game. It’s a completely silly, fun adventure. Like we said, it’s really not so much a game as it is a narrative experience. You can pick this up for about $25 and we feel like we got our money’s worth out of it. Heck, we couldn’t take our family out to eat for that and this is far less stressful than going to a restaurant with four kids!

Add in the fact that you have five chapters to play, you can spread it out over five nights and it comes out to $5 bucks a chapter. A steal!

Some have said that you can really only play it once, and while it’s true that you will know part of the story, or which paths not to take, there are over 160 story cards and we still have a good chunk of those that we didn’t get to! 

I see this becoming a yearly family Halloween favorite! 

We highly recommend Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger for a fun evening experience, whether its just a solo adventure, a couples journey, or a full on family night. You’re bound to have a lot of laughs and a great time.

**UPDATE**
If you’ve already played House of Danger and are interested in a new adventure, there has since been released another game in the Choose Your Own Adventure series called: War with the Evil Power Master

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