Let Me Off This Deathtrap! How to Survive a Global Pandemic Aboard a Cruise Ship
A.E. Jackson Review Score: 3 / 5 Ravens
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Few things were less appealing at the start of the COVID-19 global pandemic in March 2022 than climbing aboard a cruise ship for an extended voyage. At the time, our family had never taken a cruise. The horror stories that emerged from passengers stuck at sea during those first few months of the lockdown were abysmal.
Author Mark Tullius, and co-author John Palisano, felt the same but took their appalled grief in a totally different direction. They wrote an interactive fiction novel and released it on the world like the plague. Enjoy!
From the moment readers crack open their cabin door, they’ll find good writing that sticks to the cruising theme. The main character’s use of cruise references and subtle puns pulls readers into the setting. The authors also deliver much-needed clues about how a ship operates and what might be done to escape the living hell once it breaks out aboard the vessel.
Tullius and Palisano have captured the essence of living aboard a cruise ship during the global coronavirus pandemic. For those stuck at home rather than in a 180-square-foot floating cell, the choice-based narrative brings to life all the little thoughts, nuances, and subtleties of being at sea - during a pandemic.
Readers will be pleased to find both an interactive and traditional novel version of the story included in the same book. That was an unexpected bonus.
Try Not To Die In The Pandemic is an action-oriented interactive horror novel. Readers take on the role of Dylan, a teenager on a cruise with his family. The voyage is halted by the arrival of the Heliovirus, and the ship is docked in the San Francisco Bay. Things go from bad to worse when a band of murderous stowaways launch an effort to commandeer the ship.
The start of the tale takes a little while to establish the main character’s primary goal. What is it that Dylan wants? Of course, everyone aboard is stuck on the quarantined cruise ship and wants to get off. Other than getting food for the day, and trying to flirt with the love interest, Amy, what is Dylan’s driving motivation?
While the quality of the writing is good, fans of interactive fiction may find the work lacks complex narrative branches. Most choices result in a redirection of the plot or an unavoidable death sentence. However, each decision does serve to flavor the text and give another outcome which…