Asuria Awakens

YOU BECOME the investigator when a religious sect claims that Asuria, the beneficent god of humanity, is returning to earth.

A generous and helpful god sounds like something good… but when Asuria died he left a note saying that if he comes back from the dead, then it’s a fake and you should kill it on sight.

And the emissary previously sent to investigate still hasn’t returned.

Then people start vanishing for a day or three, coming back with their emotions flattened and their memories a little off, bleeding black ichor and wires instead of blood.

And yet, you just know that something’s not right…

Review and Opinion

This is by far my favorite of the GA books I have done so far. (Note that I am not doing them in sequence.)

The illos in this book are in color, and the ones in this part are very Giger-esque.

It’s an epic journey through a steampunk magitech side of Orlandes that you’ve not seen before. It’s a dark and evil world, even more dark and evil than Revenant Rising where you’re in fact dead.

It has replicants! Steampunk submarines! Biomechanical monsters from beyond the stars slumbering under the sea until the stars are right! Humans being recycled for parts! And a nightmare creature which haunted the nightmares of many people my age!

I also enjoyed the writing. There was plenty of it, sometimes 3-5 pages of reading then another 2-3. I actually enjoy regular reading too, so this was just fine by me. The writing included witticisms such as paraphrasing lines from Alien, HAL-9000 references, tall tales of spiders in Miramar (Gamebook Adventure reference humor), and wisecracks about cannibalism. I was just tickled the whole time.

If you like Blade Runner, HP Lovecraft, Alien, Phantoms, or steampunk… you’ll probably love Asuria Awakens.

Errors

In the castle, leaving the SE tower does not in fact prevent you from re-entering.

In the castle, you can revisit the cellar repeatedly. This allows you to heal 3 Vitality per visit, as well as to harvest Green Gems for as long as you like.

Palace guards are like any other soldier: a benefit or a hazard. When they’re a benefit, it’s not your problem.

I ended up with a Defence of 9, I think because the thing wasn’t properly counting up my armor as redundant (a second helmet, a second shield). Fortunately the combat system maxes out at 6 dice, so this didn’t totally wreck the rest of the game.

The list of items I had and things I know, was so long that the inventory would not scroll that far. By late-mid-game I could not see what I had equipped, nor could I see my healing potions. Fortunately I could still use them in combat, but that was the only time I could use them.

There’s a puzzle of what would be simple algebra, but the font doesn’t render properly so the variables (symbols) are all the same. As a result, it’s not possible to solve the equations. This may be a feature of my older iPad though, as Stuart didn’t have that problem.

Maps

Publication

Written by Stuart Lloyd

Illustrated by Tony Hough

2015

Book 12 in the series

Other Players and Links

• Stuart Lloyd’s Blog posting announcing Asuria Awakens
• Tin Man Games’ page for Asuria Awakens