Chooseco, $6.99, ISBN 978-1-933390-06-2
Paranormal, 2006

House of Danger is more of a “Place that Used to Be a Prison of Danger”, but the more accurate title wouldn’t be as marketable. Like most of the early reissued Choose Your Own Adventure books, this one is a revised version, with new gender-neutral illustrations and all.

Okay, remember that this gamebook is for kids so logic may not apply. Basically, you are… in your late teens, I’d guess, since you drive in here. Then again, we have the police letting you, a civilian, actually take over an investigation, so we really shouldn’t even be trying to sort out things logically here. Anyway, you are an aspiring PI who, one day while you are alone at home, receives a phone call from a stranger claiming that “they” are coming to get him. He calls again, and you immediately remember that this one was written back in 1982 when you are told that you need a special device to track down the number of the guy who called. The phones here are still wired to the wall, people.

So, that’s basically it. Whatever you choose to do will lead you to different story arcs that can involve ghosts, time travel, science gone awry, alien intelligence, and the occasional head-scratching twist. There are some interesting concepts here, but House of Danger suffers from how everything here seems tacked on without much effort to make them more fleshed out. Basically, things just happen and you have no idea why. You just get through one thing, and then it’s the next thing to get through, repeat and rinse. The whole adventure is like going through a series of events in a daze – you have no good idea what is really happening.

House of Danger would probably provide some diversion for the kids it is targeted at, but older readers may find this one a bit too lacking in substance to be worth a second run.