Your Prescription for Terror! Few Survive the Nightshift, Can You?
A.E. Jackson Review Score: 3 / 5 Ravens
How was this review scored?
Victoria Hancox is a leading purveyor of choice-based narrative. Her supernatural spin on gamebooks sends chills down her fans’ spines - and they love it! Nightshift delivers mounting suspense along with the atmospheric creepiness. The entire hospital is engulfed in a strange macabre miasma. The visceral horrors on display serve to unsettle and frighten readers. It’s all done well, and the full effect is achieved.
Players enter the role of a night shift nurse, who would normally arrive at the hospital around 9 PM and prepare to face whatever comes through the emergency room doors. In the past, as a nurse, you’ve patched up gunshot wounds, plated broken bones, and drained abscesses.
There are other nights you’ve spent the entire shift just watching TV, feeling bored, or trying to will the phone to ring. In a word - Waiting. Just waiting around for something to happen…
On this particular night, something does happen! What you do when your normal routine is turned upside down might save your life.
In this horror gamebook adventure, you are not a hero. Nope. You’re just a regular night shift hospital employee caught up in the worst nightmare of your life. Can you muster your wits and survive the night shift?
The tale starts off quickly by establishing the player's location and providing a dead coworker to thrust readers into a living nightmare. There is nothing worse than discovering your longtime workmate won’t be showing up to their next shift. Well, I suppose that depends on who you work with…
Most readers will soon become disoriented. Running through hospital corridors, up and down stairs, and through operating theaters. While building the scene, this run around sometimes makes the early story frustrating. Players may desire more substantial character or story development.