Usborne Books, £4.99, ISBN 978-1-4095-8330-1
Puzzle Gamebook, 2015

Sticker Puzzle Dungeon follows the formula of the rest of the puzzle gamebooks in this line – you find things, you paste stickers next to those things, et cetera. There are many things to look out for, some puzzles to solve, and a maze here and there to figure out. It’s meant for young kids, but this one is probably best given to slightly older young kids, as there are more puzzles here that challenge the kid a little more than just “Look here! Find things!”

You will be helping Carla and her cat Ginger as they look for Carla’s MIA friend Billy. Billy recently invented some glow-in-the-dark paint, and he decided that he needed to go to the darkest place in town to test it out. Hence, he ran off into Puzzle Dungeon, because that’s what kids do when they want to be clever. When he didn’t show up like he said he would, Carla decides to seek him out herself. So there she goes. There are menacing spiders, poisonous snakes, seemingly inescapable dungeons… how on earth did the adults let such a place exist for kids to wander off into anyway?

As mentioned, this one is a bit more tricky, as it actually challenges kids to think outside the box a bit, such as reading clues written and flipped in an 180 manner as well as to analyze some things on the picture spread to come to a logical conclusion. Okay, so the story is pretty silly, but it’s not as bad as, say, that in Sticker Puzzle Mountain. It won’t stand out from the other puzzle gamebooks in this line, as it’s very much on the formulaic side, but it’s nice to look at, quite fun to figure out, and not bad at all at the end of the day.