Over the past few days I've been playing To Be or Not To Be, a choose-your-own-adventure book barely converted into a game. The gameplay is literally that of clicking through the lines of text and then choosing which option to follow. When I say "barely converted", I mean there are certain details which are normal for books but just downright weird in a game. For example, there's one plot point which multiple other paths converge on. At the end of it, you're asked which path you originally came from, which a book would have no way of knowing but a game does.
The game also keeps referring to itself as a book, which seems like an easy change to make. As far as I know, the game only adds a few things to the original book. There is artwork you can collect, usually by dying horribly. Four of the images are broken and will not save to the extras menu however many times you play it. There are 33 achievements for hitting certain events, like having Ophelia kill every named character or rapping with the comic gravedigger. There's also one section where the book asks you to perform a calculation to figure out which page to go to, which the game does for you. There's also one way that playing the game would be worse than reading the original book; the complete inability to save. As you play you unlock certain checkpoint, but they're defined by the game, not by you, and unlocking every achievement or piece of artwork would involve playing from each checkpoint multiple times, often clicking through choices you've chosen many times before. Save-scumming is a huge part of this kind of game, and I resent losing the ability to do it. In the book, of course, you'd just keep your finger on the page you were on. All that being said, I paid 99p for the game (normally £3.99), and all editions of the book are far more expensive on Amazon, even second-hand.
...so yeah, if you're trying to choose between the book and the game, I'd say the game. Especially if you were thinking of the kindle edition, because that's basically like playing the game only with even less functionality. I guess the question now is...should you play or read it at all?
Personally, while I am a bit of a Shakespeare fan, Hamlet isn't one I've ever paid attention to. I've never studied it, read it, listened to it being analysed on a podcast (I do listen to Chop Bard, just not those specific episodes as yet), or seen it performed, unless you count The Lion King or Strings, or the elements of it included in Wyrd Sisters, which was mostly MacBeth. I did know some bits of the plot, for example that Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, killed the old King and married his widow, triggering the main plot, Hamlet's girlfriend, Ophelia, drowned herself after going mad, and at some point there was a skull called Yorick whom Hamlet knew, Horatio. Oh, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. I did not hide those behind spoiler tags because the play is 400 years old, and is based on older stories. While this game isn't a copy of the play (and doesn't claim to be), it does include little skull markings indicating which choices Shakespeare would have chosen in creating the play. Following these choices leads you along the longest single route of the game, hitting most checkpoints, except those which require you play as Ophelia or Hamlet Sr. It also leads to a running joke that became rather grating, specifically, Ryan North mocking all of Shakespeare's originally choices. Not even in an intelligent way just "lol, so crazy, amirite?" It came off as a bit too much "What's up, fellow kids". Just trying way too hard.
That said, it was a pretty good way to climb into the play, get to know all the characters, and put things into context. If you were studying Hamlet for whatever reason - or just wanted to know more about it - this is far from the worst way to explore the play. I now understand the Yorick bit, for example. I also watched the move Ophelia after finishing the game, and I feel like I definitely got more out of it from having played this. Also, it was a great movie. It felt a little rushed, but, to be fair, they had less than two hours to play with, and they had some really nice elements. I love Horatio, because we are all here for our faithful non-problematic bros, Daisy Ridley gave a great performance as Ophelia, and I really liked Tom Felton as her brother, Laertes. He did a great grieving, confused, and heartbroken face. It's on Netflix (UK), I recommend it. I also really liked that [spoiler for Ophelia] Ophelia had a daughter who is related to most of the cast, and thus represents the life rising from the death and tragedy at the end of the play, not least because they're shown together in a field of poppies [end spoiler].
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