2005-07-23 Nancy Holder has fun with the interactive story format

The first "Stake Your Destiny" adventure for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" had some problems that might dissuade fans from checking out this next offering, but this one is a definitive improvement. In putting together "Keep Me in Mind," author Nancy Holder plays with the format and comes up with some nice loops. Sometimes your choices will be determined by whether you are in Snyder's office as opposed to doing sneaky book cover research, and other times what matters is whether or you know how you know. Also, do not think that making your choice based on what the page number options are is going to give you a clue: I followed that path and got to an ending in like eight moves (not that I could duplicate it and I was not really taking notes that time through).

This particular "BtVS" adventure begins with a letter from Giles to Buffy that explains the rules of the game without being too blatant and reviews some of the early adventures of the Slayer. Then Buffy comes home from patrolling with Angel and then gets dropped off at Sunnydale High by her mom, who is looking forward to a mother-daughter shopping date that night. But Cordelia is passing out flyers for a 10 percent discount at the grand opening of Shoe Planet. The first choice is to go with Cordy or have Buffy remember that her mom has plastic, and you are off. Much more than that I would not want to say because a key part of the adventure is finding out what is going on and who is behind it all. There are lots of familiar faces, representing both the living and the dead (and undead), and they get to be part of the clues, so looking at the back of this paperback because that gives away too much of the game (I avoided the temptation and am certainly happy that I did).

My major complaint with the format of the first book was that it really prevented readers from playing the game straight up. If you did what you think is the smart move it did not always pan out, so you might as well flip a coin rather than trying to ask yourself, "What would Buffy do?" But when Holder comes up with a situation where flipping a coin would be an appropriate approach (e.g., going left or right, up on the roof or search in the alley), it really is that way. Then there are the time when she gives you four options, three of which take you to the same result while the odd one gives you a slight detour before arriving at the same place. So it is clear Holder is having some fun with this format and one of the best things I can say about this adventure is that I did not keep running into the same endings repeatedly and I was rather happy to see how long it took me to get to a familiar one. It was actually fun to get to the same page but head off in a different direction because of the aforementioned loops.

There are (I think) nine ending to "Keep Me in Mind," and this time Buffy (or somebody close to her) does not die most of the time. In fact, some of the endings are rather mundane, which is also part of the fun and I certainly appreciate the irony of doing homework possibly being a fate worse than death for Buffy. In fact, it is because of the creativity Holder shows working out this story within the strictures of the "Stake Your Destiny" format that I ended up rounding up on this one. You are not going to have a really great "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" story in this format, although you can skirt some interesting possibilities as happens here, so the criteria is whether you can have some fun, and Holder does provide that.