Ever wish your real-life was more like a video game?
Be careful what you wish for…
Felix thinks he is losing his mind when he starts getting game-like quest notifications on his phone. But then things get really strange when he realizes he is able to level-up in real life.
After gaining the rare Beastmaster class and bonding himself to a particularly bloodthirsty housecat, Felix finds himself in a race against time to defeat his high school nemesis - who may now be a 7-foot tall Ogre with anger issues - and save the world.
When zombies roam the streets and even the squirrels are out for blood, Felix finds out that it’s not that easy when your life becomes…
Gamified.
My Opinion: 507 pages, $4.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
The author does a bang up job creating a likable underdog you want to root for in just the opening few pages. I really did like the main character (MC) and though the story didn’t go quite where I thought it would it was still entertaining.
The game mechanics will be familiar to anyone that reads LitRPG, though the MCs class, Beastmaster, hasn’t been used much before. There’s also the normal health, mana, XP, Levels, skills, abilities. Though the actual abilities used by the various characters can seem a little wand wavy, as they’re often ‘discovered’ or willed into existence to solve a particular problem, they are well balanced. Nothing is OP on its own, but each ability has a balancing deficit.
The story starts our fairly slice of life setting up the loser MC who discovers an RPG interface that gives him a bonus to dealing with the bullies, jocks, and mean-girl cheerleaders that plague his existence. It's an interesting way to mix in Real Life RPG stuff into the story. However, by the middle of the story it shifts to the spread of this RPG overlay becoming a serious problem that has to be defeated at its source before it makes the world into a bunch of mindless NPCs. How this happens and what the mysterious threat and the obstacles that need to be overcome is revealed a little slowly, but well.
Overall, it’s a good story. I liked the early Real Life RPG stuff a bit more than the late story but it was all quite entertaining. The fights have a variety of monsters/enemies, the banter between the eventual team members was good, and there’s a good early development of the MC that made you want to root for him.
Score: 7.6 out of 10