A GameLit Western.
Set in the Australian Outback.
At the end of their gap years, Keat Walker and his mates repeat their camping trip to Broken Hill. Repeating their schoolies trip seemed like the perfect chance to have a yarn about their adventures over the last year. Then the apocalypse happened.
Mana infuses the world overnight, and a country already containing the world's ten most poisonous snakes, crocodiles, and sharks, is overrun with monsters. Dungeons spring up, boss mobs roam the landscape, and there isn't a wiki to be found.
Facing the Australian outback, Keat has his best mate Nugget, Nugget's sister Mel (who he definitely did not have a thing with), Mel's new boyfriend from Melbourne, and a British backpacker.
Armed with only a BBQ fork he made in woodshop, his new class of Jackaroo, and the potential to tame the monsters now roaming the outback, Keat must find a way towards Broken Hill.
My Opinion: 135 pages, $2.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
This is a slice of life RPG apocalypse story set in Australia. It has a very regional start which may be an issue for some readers, but once it gets into the RPG apocalypse stuff it shines with good humor and fun adventures.
There are some storytelling issues. It takes a bit too long to get to the RPG apocalypse. The story uses the space before that to develop backgrounds, reference places and events, and establish relationships between characters. I understand why it was all done but I was frankly bored with it and felt a good bit could have been cut out without harm to the story. Especially since many of the location and cultural references were lost on me.
Reading this as someone that didn't grow up in Australia and hasn't visited it, it was challenging to imagine the place the story was set. Not only were there lots of local references and locations, few of them were described. I didn't have any idea if the locations were deserts, beach resorts, or mountains. Additionally, the use of regional slang, with no translation, made some scenes very confusing. This isn't bad necessarily, it just made connecting with the story challenging for me at the start.
Once you get into the actual RPG apocalypse though, most of those issues don't mean much. The story shows what it is, an action oriented story with lots of humor. I mean, the MC deliberately takes the class he's least suited to as a middle finger to the universe and his soul bound scaling weapon is a BBQ fork. The mid and end story plot is a little predictable but that doesn’t take away too much from the sheer fun of the story.
As far as game mechanics, it's mostly standard DnD rules with custom classes. There are stats, character sheets, levels XP, etc. The only unique game mechanic is the tenant system, where controlling property or towns means paying rent in the form of XP and gold. I think it's supposed to be some commentary on housing or land ownership in Australia, but the mechanic doesn't really come into play in this book, but seems like it'll serve as motivation for future adventures. In practice you can tell however that the mechanics are sometimes ignored in favor of a fun story.
Overall, a fun story once you get into the actual RPG apocalypse part of the story.
Score: 7.6 out of 10