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The Ghosts of Craven Manor: A Ghostly Time Travelling Game Book
This book is an interactive novel which takes you on a ghostly, time travelling adventure with multiple paths and puzzles that you must solve to reach one of multiple, thrilling endings. You are Dave Ingram. When you and your fiancée are given a chance to move into Craven Manor, you think that you have just been given the deal of a lifetime. That is until you discover the house is haunted. When your fiancée is possessed by one of the spirits inhabiting the house, you learn that the only way to free her is with the aid of a time travelling amulet. In an attempt to remove the ghosts from the house, you must travel through time and learn the truth about what happened there, so that you can either fight the threat in the present, or possibly attempt to prevent it in the past. The choice is yours.
- GenresGamebooks
276 pages, Paperback
Published May 6, 2019
About the author
Joseph Daniels
18 books6 followersMy background is mainly in theatre and film, where I originally pursued careers in acting, directing, producing, editing and screen writing. Most of this work was writing screenplays for independent companies, some of which were made into low budget films and others which remained on the page.
Eventually after settling down with my partner, I left the theatrical life behind and decided to concentrate my efforts on writing fantasy novels. In time this reignited my passion for all things fantasy, including the fighting fantasy books from the 80s and led to me discovering my true calling in writing game books.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 20, 2019
If you’ve never read a Choose Your Own Adventure book, definitely check out Joseph Daniels’ The Ghosts of Craven Manor! Daniels combines two of my favorite things, video games and books, into one awesome tale. You play as Dave Ingram, a man who must investigate the haunting of Craven Manor in order to save his fiancé, a journey that’ll even take him through time. The mechanics seemed daunting at first but you quickly get used to them and they really added to the fun of the story. Daniels really created something special that I hope more people will check out!
June 4, 2020
Really enjoyed this gamebook - a lot going on while you try and figure out a whodunnit mixed with ghosts and time travel. The ability to reverse time is a nice mechanic to sneak peek at choices with a chance to return backwards and redo a decision legitimately (sometimes required). I also found the "future knowledge" a good way of making sure that you work properly for items/information/people that you need to help you in your quest. Rules are very minimal at the start and explained in portions as and when you encounter and need to use. It is a gamebook that good record keeping as you go along - I ended up restarting my first read through as my notes were a mess. An explanation that for some items you need to record the passage number where you found the item in order to use it in the future would have been helpful much earlier in the reading. It's also a reasonable time investment and needs you to pay attention to detail, but it is worth it for an interesting story with intriguing characters and several red herrings along the way.
July 17, 2019
I really enjoyed the challenging nature of the book. It is a combination of the note-taking nature of Aaron Emmel's Midnight Legion gamebook series and a relatively complex hub-based exploration akin to Alone Against the Dark (Call of Cthulhu solo adventure) but executed with high quality and a storyline that is convincing with multi-dimensional characters that you can empathize with. I wish the instructions were more clear around the need to record room section numbers for some of the items you pick up and the fact that coded messages can only be decoded through instructions found in the book (I initially thought they were Caesar cipher encryptions). All in all, it was a gripping tale which had me glued to the book for hours on end and I would place it among the top if not the best gamebook that I have read. My advice to other players is to dedicate a full page or more to take all the notes (future knowledge, inventory, names, other information etc.). As someone who grew up with Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, it is great to see innovative takes on the gamebook system like this one and I can't wait to read more interactive fiction from Joseph.
June 9, 2019
Fantastic book, although really hard. Its a great challenge for anyone who finds gamebooks too easy. I agree with one of your other readers in that its important to get get all the ghost messages decoded as soon as possible as well as making plenty of notes. Also, I'd advise readers to not make the same mistake I did with combining items; you are meant to combine the room numbers as listed in the mansion room list (eg. 13), NOT the actual passage number you picked up the item in. I made myself go around in circles because of that. Also, I recommend pursuing the optional stones (I won't spoil anymore than that) as soon as you can. I'm not even sure some of the necessary times manipulations to get the best endings would be possible if you don't pick those up (although maybe I'm wrong). Anyway, fantastic read.
July 20, 2024
The Ghosts of Craven Manor
This book is incredibly intricate. There are puzzles galore, little fighting and an incredible amount of note taking required. In fact, it would have been better if the adventure sheet at the back was more fleshed out with each room listed so that you could tick rooms off and add other clues in a more structured way. This wouldn't half have cut down on the admin.
Whilst you can blaze through a lot of game books, and thoroughly enjoy them in the process, this one is different. It's the closest thing I've ever found to an old point and click adventure game, think Monkey Island 2, but without the humour and much more macabre. You visit locations, pick up kit and clues, go somewhere or sometime else, use that clue, find something out for another time or place, use it there and then return many steps later to the first location to use another clue to then repeat the cycle. Intricate, like I say. Also very involved.
There are loads of secret references beyond the future knowledge and at times these can be hard to keep on top of. There are also a lot of clues hidden in the blurb. You really have to read every sentence or miss out on an essential clue that was hidden in the background blurb. Also there is some lateral thinking involved at times, which can be a bit tricky. There are alpha-numeric codes, which is fair enough, as there are keys provided each time. However, the decoding what the spooks are saying is rather tedious when it is a long passage, with three different codes to deal with, some are easier than others.
All of this makes the book sound like it's hard work – and it is, but it's also extremely enjoyable and the difficulty level is pitched just to the right side of being acceptable. It's not like other books where you feel as if you're being confronted with one Mensa test after the other.
There are various endings to this book, some happier than others. One nice touch is that there are sometimes various ways to obtain an objective, which is no bad thing.
Funnily enough, this was a late purchase. The cover really didn't draw me in and simply doesn't do justice to the contents. Once you've read the book, the cover makes sense, but until then, it all seemed a bit nondescript and forgettable to me.
I really enjoyed this book. It was a real challenge and incredibly rewarding to complete. I'm also glad that every game book isn't constructed like it.
This book is incredibly intricate. There are puzzles galore, little fighting and an incredible amount of note taking required. In fact, it would have been better if the adventure sheet at the back was more fleshed out with each room listed so that you could tick rooms off and add other clues in a more structured way. This wouldn't half have cut down on the admin.
Whilst you can blaze through a lot of game books, and thoroughly enjoy them in the process, this one is different. It's the closest thing I've ever found to an old point and click adventure game, think Monkey Island 2, but without the humour and much more macabre. You visit locations, pick up kit and clues, go somewhere or sometime else, use that clue, find something out for another time or place, use it there and then return many steps later to the first location to use another clue to then repeat the cycle. Intricate, like I say. Also very involved.
There are loads of secret references beyond the future knowledge and at times these can be hard to keep on top of. There are also a lot of clues hidden in the blurb. You really have to read every sentence or miss out on an essential clue that was hidden in the background blurb. Also there is some lateral thinking involved at times, which can be a bit tricky. There are alpha-numeric codes, which is fair enough, as there are keys provided each time. However, the decoding what the spooks are saying is rather tedious when it is a long passage, with three different codes to deal with, some are easier than others.
All of this makes the book sound like it's hard work – and it is, but it's also extremely enjoyable and the difficulty level is pitched just to the right side of being acceptable. It's not like other books where you feel as if you're being confronted with one Mensa test after the other.
There are various endings to this book, some happier than others. One nice touch is that there are sometimes various ways to obtain an objective, which is no bad thing.
Funnily enough, this was a late purchase. The cover really didn't draw me in and simply doesn't do justice to the contents. Once you've read the book, the cover makes sense, but until then, it all seemed a bit nondescript and forgettable to me.
I really enjoyed this book. It was a real challenge and incredibly rewarding to complete. I'm also glad that every game book isn't constructed like it.
March 15, 2025
This gamebook could have been the best of its kind. The author has placed so much detail and introduced so many mechanics into this title that playing it the first time is a bit like going through a tutorial. This is something common in modern video games but it’s a learning curve I’ve never experienced in a gamebook before! Fortunately the writer does a good job of introducing features such as time jumping, using future knowledge and open exploration well, introducing each concept at separate times and with clear explanations.
The story itself is gripping yet hardly original. A mansion full of ghosts and solving historical murders is nothing new but the author sells it well enough and the writing is confident enough to encourage the reader to feel they are the centre of the mystery.
Unfortunately other areas of the writing aren’t quite so strong: the author works so hard on the mechanics of the game that he forgets to, or eschews describing the manor, the centrepiece of the entire story itself, beyond a couple of words. As I tried to picture myself encountering the house for the first time, I really couldn’t, so I just pictured the house from Amityville instead. Another area of writing I felt was lacking was the major scene that sets the whole adventure rolling. It should have been shocking, emotional and described in detail, pulling the reader deeply into the tale. Instead it was really just cruised over.
As the story progresses the book walks a fine line between detailed and deep, and burdensome, due to the rules and notes the reader needs to record and remember. This is certainly a big step beyond gamebooks of old that only required a couple of numbers to be jotted down and the odd throw of the dice. Although I prefer old school paper editions of books, this is one occasion when I was glad to be reading the kindle version of a book, since I needed to highlight, bookmark and make notes on screen simply to keep track of everything.
Sadly for me, the balance between detail and burden tipped over when I was required to decipher a long ghostly message. I feel the author made a mistake by using a code system that merely substituted one letter for another. This made a chore for the reader of manually reading a letter, looking along a grid and finding the substitute letter. After the first twenty letters or so my brain began to swarm, trying to remember whether the letter in my head was the one I was writing or searching for. I felt that a different type of code, or simply a hidden deciphered version of the messages either on paper or on a website somewhere, would have been a far easier system. I also felt the combat mechanic in the game served no purpose and was added only because the author felt that combat should be included. I simply ignored it.
It’s a shame because this was clearly a story and game that a whole lot of effort and passion went in to, and with a bit more playtesting it could have been a true classic, with the time travel and mystery aspects really gripping the reader’s attention. I’m still definitely going to read some more books by this author in future, as he clearly has a lot to offer and I believe that a classic may either be out there or on its way from this writer.
The story itself is gripping yet hardly original. A mansion full of ghosts and solving historical murders is nothing new but the author sells it well enough and the writing is confident enough to encourage the reader to feel they are the centre of the mystery.
Unfortunately other areas of the writing aren’t quite so strong: the author works so hard on the mechanics of the game that he forgets to, or eschews describing the manor, the centrepiece of the entire story itself, beyond a couple of words. As I tried to picture myself encountering the house for the first time, I really couldn’t, so I just pictured the house from Amityville instead. Another area of writing I felt was lacking was the major scene that sets the whole adventure rolling. It should have been shocking, emotional and described in detail, pulling the reader deeply into the tale. Instead it was really just cruised over.
As the story progresses the book walks a fine line between detailed and deep, and burdensome, due to the rules and notes the reader needs to record and remember. This is certainly a big step beyond gamebooks of old that only required a couple of numbers to be jotted down and the odd throw of the dice. Although I prefer old school paper editions of books, this is one occasion when I was glad to be reading the kindle version of a book, since I needed to highlight, bookmark and make notes on screen simply to keep track of everything.
Sadly for me, the balance between detail and burden tipped over when I was required to decipher a long ghostly message. I feel the author made a mistake by using a code system that merely substituted one letter for another. This made a chore for the reader of manually reading a letter, looking along a grid and finding the substitute letter. After the first twenty letters or so my brain began to swarm, trying to remember whether the letter in my head was the one I was writing or searching for. I felt that a different type of code, or simply a hidden deciphered version of the messages either on paper or on a website somewhere, would have been a far easier system. I also felt the combat mechanic in the game served no purpose and was added only because the author felt that combat should be included. I simply ignored it.
It’s a shame because this was clearly a story and game that a whole lot of effort and passion went in to, and with a bit more playtesting it could have been a true classic, with the time travel and mystery aspects really gripping the reader’s attention. I’m still definitely going to read some more books by this author in future, as he clearly has a lot to offer and I believe that a classic may either be out there or on its way from this writer.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews