HIDDEN, Generic Adventures: Cyberpunk & Tech Noir by J. Pingo Lindstrom

This is the first in a series of Generic Adventures by J. Pingo Lindstrom and PenguinComics.com. And, I must say, they started with a bang. Hidden is Terminator in a Cyberpunk world. The Heroes are hired to seek out someone’s daughter. And then it get’s complicated. Written to be playable with any system, they use simple power/ability descriptors: Low, Medium and Strong, which works better than I thought it would. Unfortunately, the organization of the adventure is a bit clunky. Information in characters, their responses, and important details are split up into several different places, making it hard to keep track who’s who, and what they all know.

For story I’d give it 5 stars Organization, 3 stars

Overall, I’ll give it 4 stars.

~I’m Lord Skudley, and that’s my opinion.

I die all the times .It's up to your bad roll.It should have spicail options for helping more than this. But it's fun for me and my boy cause we cheated it.Now I try another your books.

Short & Cute!

Fun little diversion and I think it strikes a nice balance not being too simple or complex.

My 8yo son got a big kick out of it!

Obligatory this game cost me 1 quarter and lasted about as long as a real game of pinball. ;)

It is entertaining the first time, but then you realize that there is no choice whatsoever, and not even an illusion of choice. Essentially you roll a die a million times and then you die. I understand the author's intention, but it just doesn't work. Here are the issues:

• The mechanics are extremely simplistic, but in a bad way. You have just one stat - HP - and it doubles as your combat skill (you roll under or equal HP to hit). So as soon as you start losing HP, you get worse - you hit less often, so you get hit more often. If you get hit, you are pretty much dead.
• Starting out is extremely harsh. You start with just 2 HP with a weak weapon, and right away you can encounter an enemy that can one-shot you, because he deals 2 damage with each hit. You can also randomly step into traps, and there is no option to spot them or avoid them or anything - you just take damage. If you are lucky, they won't one shot you.
• And you don't have any control over what happens. You just roll, roll, roll, and die. No, choosing to go left or right to roll on essentially the same random table is not a choice, not even close. In, say, the microgamebooks from the Chronicles of Arborell series, you feel in control. You can learn traps and monsters and learn to avoid them, and on subsequent plays you can learn to build your character better to overcome the challenges. In a game like Deathmaze, you don't really have any control, but the gameplay is so fast and fluid that you don't have time to think about that, and the game gives you a great sense of exploration. Here - no control. Your character is always the same, and you just roll ad nauseam. You could roll a d1000 and on a 000 you'd win, otherwise you'd die. And it'd be about the same amount of fun.

I really wanted to like it, and the presentation and artwork are really nice, but it just feels random, boring and pointless. Sorry for being so negative, but I'm severely disappointed.

Excellent solo adventuring. Great story telling.

The magazine is short, which is why I took off one pip in the rating. Aside from that, the article is spot on. It covers the topic of speed-writing an adventure quite well. I look forward to applying the techniques. It seems so easy, and obvious, once the author points it all out... "Why didn't I think of that?" To me, that is a sign of some genius work at hand. Looking forward to the next one. This is definitely worth the cost for the 'how to' article.

Some nice artwork, decent, artistic layout, well done, really. I suspect the author will continue to improve his offerings over time. I look forward to seeing more from him. Cheers!

Good 15 minute diversion. I used a digital die and note. Very basic sample to demonstrate their real paid gamebooks. Good throwback to 1980s gamebooks but without the rich flavor text in this sample. Will try the other free ones. The main flaw is that grinding is required to keep earning gold to buy items, but since it has random rolls, you must keep turning right over and over again and you will eventually perish on your first run against a skeleton or trap. In other words, I probably would have made it a bit easier for a sample and not force the reader to keep going to the merchant for health, and to get three crystals from a treasure chest. Good potential for a very niche audience of solo game book players who have RPG + leveling up expectations.

I ordered this about 6 months ago. There were errors that made it unplayable due to missing information. Re-downloaded it a month later. Less errors but some persist. I wrote a review then removed it after the author said they were addressed. Six month later same errors still persist. Waiting for another update for a game I look forward to enjoying eventually.

I have all the solo adventures and this was by far my favorite. Not only was there more story options but great simple mechanics that help to steer the outcome ot the adventure. I actually moded the game and played this adventure not as solo but brought along my wife's character for the ride. We played it as a GM less RPG game and truly enjoyed storyline. There were some minor errors in words but I am really not picky about such things since my grammar is not up to par:) I truely hope there is a continued story with this depth or more. The writer has done a great job in my humble opinion and I hope my review sparks more imagination for future adventures. PS --- the Death Skull squad wiped us out (LOL).

Win or lose you die. A stupid waste of time! Not an even remotely good way to sell the game.

Bad spelling errors - ex. "loose" instead of 'lose' - and possessives where plurals are needed.

Really needs to be carefully edited for these issues

I found this game to be mildly entertaining but it got old pretty quick.

• Pros:
  • The artwork I thought fit the genre very well
  • The author is descriptive
  • It can be played with just a d6 (I think that is nice when you don't have your polys with you)
• Cons:
  • It gets monotonous
  • You die very quickly quite often
  • It seems like you are playing the same adventure over and over

It may be just how the dice were rolling and I have not played this a lot so your experience may be different. I do not regret buying this as it was not expensive. I just think that overall it could be a lot better but it could be a lot worse.

I AM NEW TO THE RPG GAMING AND PICKED THIS ONE UP TO GET MY FEET WET SO TO SPEAK. SOLO IS AT THE TIME MY ONLY OPTION AS I TRAVEL ALOT AND CURRENTLY LOOKING INTO THE NEWER DIGITAL COMMUNITIES FOR RPG TABLETOPS.

This game literally saved my life. I was in a monumental depression resulted from my divorce with the Queen of England and loss of my 30 kids to rampaging alchoholic Squirrels. When I was just about to end it all and go face up those very squirrels... I stumbled upon this gem in DriveThruRPG. A free pinball game. Remembering my past sexual affairs with a pinball machine in the 60's, I knew that I was in for a treat. I am 600 hours in this one session, and I have not thought about squirrels since hour 300. Thank you, and I miss you Elizabeth. Oh and the game is pretty cool.

Not much of a story and quite repetetive. The art is appropriate to the theme, but the style is inconsistent.