Avatar of the Wolf Reviews

Overall I really loved this story. I kind of wish it had been longer, but it was really good regardless. My only complaint though was that towards the end, without warning, it changed some of my choices which I really didn't appreciate. All in all though, I would give this a 7.5/10.

A very fun, interactive storybook game! I was very pleasently surprised with this game; it's different. It's a game, but it's a game you read. I also love the vivid descriptions the author uses, and the world in the book changes to your name, gender, orientation, and choices. The mythology is so interesting as well, and it ties into the mystery of "Who Killed the Wolf God" like a silk ribbon. As you delve further and further into your quest, you find some very eye opening plot twists and unlikely friends and foes. It kept me really on edge, eondering what was going to happen next and who was going to help or hinder me. 5/5 Stars. Highly recommend!!!

It was good. My ending was good but felt like a cliff hanger. The ending in my opinion really lacked. It should have continued or should have a part 2 coming out at the least. The choices were very by the book, though with some they didn't fit with how my character had been made. The romance was bland at best, and the mystery of who killed the Wolf god was very obvious. If a part two is made it will significantly help the story. In my opinion ending it after only this long was a poor choice. I felt like I did not really have enough timme to really come into my own character. Right at the end is when I finally felt, "Oh, I am finally me now". But then it just ended in what in my opinion was the middle of a story that could turn out to be really well done if continued. I will be waiting to see if there is another one.

This is by far the best Choice of Games adventure I have ever had the pleasure of reading. There's obviously some personal preference in that, so other people can have perfectly valid reasons for not liking it, but to me it was a truly enjoyable experience. It has some cons, primarily that the stat system can be confusing, something that is usually a dealbreaker to me, but here I never felt like I was being punished late in the story for a choice I made at the beginning. The highest praise I can give this story is that it felt like I was going on an adventure as I read it, something not all CoG adventures manage to accomplish.

I didn’t like my first playthrough of this game one bit, but the second was far better, and the third one as well. As such, I’m glad I didn’t give up on it after getting the worst ending I’ve ever gotten. My consecutive playthroughs turned out pretty good. But all I can say without spoiling anything is that it’s very hard to tell what stats the choices will test in the final chapter which can result in bad endings that feel like they come at you right out of the blue. As for the romances, there really isn’t much of any. You can end up in bed with someone after talking to them once, and that’s pretty much it. The story follows the same trend where the narrative rushes ahead without taking the time to flesh anything out. The locations, people, lore, and circumstances all seem to blend together as a result. Indeed, each playthrough is just an hour or two, depending on how quickly you read, but loaded with enough great ideas to have been able to last for several times that, in my opinion. (5/10)

Avatar of the Wolf by Bendi Barrett is a text-based adventure game published by Choice of Games and using CoG’s ChoiceScript engine. The ChoiceScript engine is also used by all of Choice of Games’ games, as well as by all Hosted Games games (Hosted Games, despite being listed as a separate publisher in the store, is just a brand used by CoG). If you haven’t played any of the other ChoiceScript games, they play like a hybrid between RPGs and chose-your-own-adventure novels. At each page, you are presented with a multiple-choice question about what your character does. Unlike the paper CYOA books, you also have stats, which are altered based on your choices. Some choices may seem to have no immediate effect on the story, but they can alter your stats, which can unlock certain options much further down the road. Now, I will warn you, since I know it will turn off a lot of gamers: [b][i]CHOICESCRIPT GAMES ARE ENTIRELY TEXT-BASED! THIS GAME CONTAINS NO GRAPHICS OR SOUND OF ANY KIND. IF YOU PLAY GAMES PRIMARILY FOR THE GRAPHICS, YOU SHOULD NOT GET THIS GAME.[/i][/b] Okay, are they gone? Good, let’s get on to the game. Avatar of the Wolf is set in a dark fantasy world, which until recently was dominated by a pantheon of six gods: Bear, Eal, Gazelle, Hawk, Spider, and Wolf. The people of the world were also divided in to three tribes, called Clearwater, Highwalk, and Quietly Swimming (you get to choose your character’s tribe in the first chapter). Aside from your tribe, you will also quickly be prompted to decide on your character’s name, gender and sexual orientation. Up until right before the story started, your character was the titular Avatar of Wolf: a mortal chosen as a vessel by the god to manifest in the world. But right as the story starts, Wolf has vanished completely. The pantheon of gods now has only five members, and no one knows what happened to Wolf or even if he still exists. Now, the remaining gods, and their followers, are squabbling over the remaining power. There’s also a faction of mortals called the Rising Sun, whose objective is to eliminate the gods altogether. You are caught in the middle of everything. Depending on your choices, you can team up with one of the existing factions, found your own, destroy the remaining gods or become a god yourself. Now, on to your stats in this game. The stats page has your stats divided into four sections: Self, Skills, Disposition, and Favor. Self includes the basic information about your character: name, gender, tribe, and orientation, all of which you decide in the first chapter. Your tribe affects how some characters react to you. Your orientation only matters if you want your character to pursue romance in the game. I don’t think your name ever has any effect on the story or the choices you are presented, aside from being spoken in the dialogue many times. Next up are your character’s Skills. Skills don’t affect what choices you are presented with, but they do alter the effects of those choices. Here’s where Avatar of the Wolf becomes less like a paper-bound choose-your-own-adventure novel and more like a game. Anyhow, the skills you get in this game are Survival, Combat, Ritual, Quick-Thinking, Sensitivity, Influence, and Restraint. The next section of stats is your Dispositions. This section includes two pairs of linked stats. The first pair is Action/Deliberation. Each can range from 0 to 100, and the sum of your Action and Deliberation is always 100. You also have Selfishness/Equity, another pair of linked stats that always add up to 100. Unlike skills, disposition effects what choices you are given. For example, if your Action gets too high, you may be unable to take a choice that involves waiting. Finally, your character has Favor. This section tracks your relation to various important NPCs and factions, including each of the remaining gods and the Rising Sun. Having a positive relation with important characters can open up options much later in the game, and can have a huge effect on the ending. This section of the stats page did occasionally shake my suspension of disbelief: the game tells you if certain NPCs have a positive or negative view of your character, even if your character wouldn’t know how they were perceived. Normally I don’t mind knowing information that my character doesn’t in a game, but in this game, Favor is the only think you learn that your character wouldn’t know. Everything else in the game is presented entirely from your character’s perspective, and this one exception through me off. All in all, Avatar of the Wolf contains a richly detailed world and an intriguing variable storyline. The wide range of choices means that you could easily play this game more than a dozen times without things feeling repetitive. Or, at least, everything after chapter one wont’ seem repetitive, since you need the first chapter to set things up. You’ll need to play through many times if you want all the achievements, and the game offers enough to make it an enjoyable experience.

One of Choice of Games' best. The conclusion throws a half-dozen thought-provoking moral dilemmas at you in quick succession, asking what it means to be loyal to an ideal or to a tribe and whether such loyalty is praiseworthy. I've played it through once and hope to do so a few more times to see more alternate endings. Admittedly, problem-solving aspects are a little straightforward; they can often be resolved by looking for a choice that includes a synonym for your highest stat.

The story is quite short and pretty straightforward: the cruel and vicious Wolf god, who inhabited your body since childhood, is gone, and you need to make a journey to find what happened to him. At first glance, there's not much room for roleplaying and choices, but despite the railroad-ness (place A, then place B, later place C, etc), it's a false impression. The games offers you tons of approaches. Will you stay on the Wolf's path or choose another? Will you keep your hands clean? Do you feel lost without your god, or enjoy your freedom? What are your thoughts on the pantheon? How do you feel about the Rising Sun, a group that intends to bring a new order to the world?.. It is a very personal story. I played it three times, and the Gentle Night ending made me drown in feelings. Highly recommended.

For years, cruel god inhabited your body, but now he's gone. What happened to him? You don't know, but decision what to do with your newfound freedom is entirely yours. Will you remain loyal to your master, forge your own path without his influence or maybe even challenge other gods and try to take place among them? "Avatar of the Wolf" is one of the best COG title - interesting mythology, solid writing, engaging story and lots of options. I fully recommend it.

I like this game. However it has some very irritating issues. Firstly, it is unclear exactly which choices use or will raise specific stats, more bothersome it isn't clear what each stat does. The most opaque of these is Influence, at this point I've played through the game four times and have only managed to raise it above 1 once (I got it to 2 by the end of the game.) Now like I said I'm not entirely sure what this stat does, I seemed to be able to influence people sometimes and not other times, was that because of other stats? Would I have been more successful with higher influence? No clue. Others are pretty cut and dry, Combat makes you fight better, Ritual lets you use magic like effects, Survival and Sensitivity are less clear. Quick thinking I have no idea about. Restraint is an interesting one that has a cool narrative idea behind it but doesn't seem to do much. Basically it seems like it is almost a currency, built up through actions that you can use to push against the influence of your god if you want or need to. Neat idea, but it only came up once in 4 playthroughs. The problem even with the clear cut ones is, it's unclear what will improve them and the writing can imply due to its mythic nature that you are quite powerful but then you get a less favourable result, and it's only through trial and error that you realize that there even was a better result. This means that when you're going through the game it can be a little obscure what is influencing what, making choices harder. Story wise, the game is really interesting. It combines mythic storytelling with a sort of loss of the old ways rise of the new conflict. This is mostly well explored, but could be further developed. The romances are not a huge part of the story but are present and interesting, like most things in a questing story they are only rest stops on your characters journey. I like the ideas, but partially due to the mythic storytelling and the obscuring of the stats influence it can be difficult to know what your end goal should be or how to get there. Even when you figure that out, you are left feeling like there is something you missed. The setting is interesting if somewhat vague, the characters each have their own voice even if we don't spend much time with them. I will say that there were some parts that felt really effective and I wish this was a longer more involved game so I could play around with it more. Any time you want to spend more time in a games world is a good thing. Some of the decisions feel a little irrelevant, but this again is mostly because it's tough to know how influental your stats are when making them. An example was, I was named leader of a group, but when I tried to assert my leadership they just ignored me. I wasn't sure which stat I was using to manipulate the situation except that it wasn't Combat. The last issue is a technical one, there was an instance where a choice I made at the end wasn't reflected. This wasn't due to the writing as it referenced the possibility of my making the choice but said I didn't. This can happen when these games first launch but considering these games are entirely hinging on their story having scenes not trigger can be a let down. All in all I like the game but these issues should be ironed out and if the author makes these kinds of games in the future they should include a tooltip or page that explains the stats and what they do. 7/10 an update that addresses these issues would make this game pretty great. I'd also be down for a sequel.