Ratings and Reviews by End Master

This was another one I stumbled on while looking up “Choose Your Own Adventure” stuff in the early 2000s. I didn’t know until just recently that it was VERY loosely based on the author’s own family members, though even back when I first played it I figured it involved real people based on the pictures linked to the cast descriptions.

And there’s A LARGE cast of characters. While it’s not necessary to read through the cast description before playing, you might want to, just so you aren’t completely lost because the game is as they say “lol random” enough as it is.

There is no real plot involved, you play as Brad who is very much a basement dwelling loser. You basically wake up like you always do and from there you can get into some adventures ranging from mundane to very weird. And when I say weird, I mean it. There is no real logic about anything that happens.

The endings you can get are arbitrarily scored. You can sort of guess if you got a better one or not depending on how high the number is, but that’s about it. Since there’s always references about how you can’t find your pants and how much you like this one girl, you can kind of consider those your main “general goals” though you’re only going to be able to achieve ONE of those and I’ll leave it to you to figure out which one is possible.

Technically there is a “winning” ending which unlocks a “hardcore” mode which starts things off differently. Hardcore mode is impossible to “win” though, but given the brand of humor going on in the story, that’s to be expected.

So getting to the humor, well it’s hit or miss and I imagine it won’t be for everyone. I found it pretty entertaining though. There are some obscure references that probably only a select few might get. For example there’s a reference to an old computer RPG called Telegard. I smiled when I recognized that one. There’s even a grue reference at one point.

As one might expect with a game so large and absurd about a basement dwelling loser, the content is firmly on the “R” rated side in places. There’s no actual sex scenes, but Brad is definitely a creeper.

While I can see the author moved on with other things in life, I am happy to see that they didn’t do what the author of “Jerk Your Own Adventure” did and censor their work. They didn’t disown it either. I can definitely respect that.

So I stumbled on this one years ago when I was looking up “Choose Your Own Adventure” stuff in the early 2000s. A little hesitant to click on the link at first, but thankfully it wasn’t some massive porn site and was a simple CYOA.

The whole premise is coming home from work and finding the perfect way to…well let’s call it relieving “stress.”

While the game obviously is all about self-love, there actually isn’t any porn involved. Even the pictures are mostly just normal pictures of every day items or rooms. There’s maybe a couple pictures that have a really blurry image of some girl on a screen or magazine, but since it’s intentionally blurry, it isn’t like you can see much.

I remember playing through it and laughing quite a bit. It’s purpose to be humorous was clear what with the narrator insulting the protagonist constantly and the amusing “bad endings” though the “good endings” were funny too. I’d sometimes come back to it when I was linking it to other people who were looking for funny CYOAs.

I’m not exactly sure what and when it happened, but when I came back to it recently to add to this very database, I played through it and found that it was now censored.

Now it’s not completely censored of course and I’m not sure if this was due to a bunch of whiners complaining to the author or what exactly. Authors “disowning” their past work is always an eye roll inducing thing, but watering stuff down and keeping it around in some “safe” form is bad in a whole other way.

In any case it’s censored enough that it severely lowered my opinion of it enough that this won’t be getting the five stars I originally was going to give it. I can’t really respect work much if the author doesn’t have the courage to stand by it.