Ground Zero

Taking inspiration from the Wasteland series, Fallout Series, and others, Ground Zero is exactly what you'd expect from a post-apocalyptic CYOA, and that's not necessarily bad.

Different branches lead to different adventures varying from survivor-on-survivor squabbles to city-sized sieges, and although the routes to get to these different scenarios aren't exactly obvious at first glance, the tired cliché (among others) of a one-man-army in the apocalypse aren't entertained too much; most heroic (and suicidal) antics get you killed fairly quickly, and the ones that do keep you alive are best left to more ambiguous fantasies for you to live out off-screen. To that extent, even sudden losses and dead-end branches give you a sort of grounding to reality while the conventionally less-explored ideas (like becoming a mutant) get much more air time.

If surviving in a whacky, sand-filled world without dealing with the clutter of video games sounds like something that would pique your interest, this CYOA is it.

This is my favourite Endmaster story with one of the best intros in Interactive fiction. He paints a picture of the character's personality and the absurdity of dystopian militarism in perfectly written paragraphs.

Then the story opens with very different and immersive branches filled with that acid humour that characterizes Endmaster, which goes so well with a capitalist dystopian environment. The options are great, each death game is an experience, that makes those endings more satisfying that the few scattered good endings. I recommend it to anyone and more to Fallout fans.

An involved CYOA about a nuke going off that yields Fallout-style effects. Paths are deep and satisfyingly complex, varied, and the player character is competent. The storyline is a reasonable simulation of enduring the start of a nuclear post-apocalyptic wasteland (waving away some of the more clinical details associated with nuclear fallout).

The focus on gameplay coupled with the length and competence of the player character makes this a very interesting game well worth playing through. There are images that also enhance the atmosphere.