The choose-your-own adventure style is compelling and most of the books have gripping storylines. Books are engaging and the characters do show distinct personalities. Yet this game is cripplingly expensive.
The biggest pity with this is that Pixelberry has done so much for important causes, especially body image in young people. However, their charitable work is completely undone byThe choose-your-own adventure style is compelling and most of the books have gripping storylines. Books are engaging and the characters do show distinct personalities. Yet this game is cripplingly expensive.
The biggest pity with this is that Pixelberry has done so much for important causes, especially body image in young people. However, their charitable work is completely undone by the unreasonable in-app purchase system. Most mobile games rely upon "whales" to make their revenue; a term used to refer to addicted users who spend far more than they can afford to keep playing.
The premise of "Choices" is that key decisions your character makes affect the storyline forever. However, character development of your persona - and those of the NPCs - is almost entirely dependent on premium currency.
Each chapter takes about 10 minutes to play through and will contain 1-3 premium choices. Such decisions cost $3 each (in $AUS, but overseas prices are similarly unreasonable). All up, it works about to an eye-watering $60-$90 per book if you want to make all of the choices that lead to character development. A book takes about 2-3 hours to get through, which works out to $20-$30 per hour!
The content is further artificially spread out by the fact that only 2 chapters may be played every three hours (this process can be sped up by paying more). It also takes premium currency to replay chapters, so the opportunity to go back later and change a decision is severely limited. Therefore each time a compelling decision arises, the game will prompt you to buy more in-game currency. Such practices, which encourage addictive habits and overspending in-game, are to the detriment of a company like Pixelberry whose inclusive messages throughout their games can be so powerful.
It's hard not to see all of the ticked boxes of a Skinner-box app: far too expensive, coercion into buying more premium currency and, effectively, a "pay-to-win" system.… Expand
Choices: Stories You PlayYour Score0 out of 10User Score
