Get Ready to Unleash the Loup Garou

Aaoooooo ... No...please, no. Don't start singing "Werewolves of London." Ahem.
Are you ready to be a hero? To enter a world of adventure, mystery, and difficult decisions? Then settle in and get comfortable as you prepare for one wild ride.
Loup Garou takes you right into the heart of a story where you become the main character and embark on a marvelous journey of courageous battles and careful choices as you uncover clues to ultimately save your master.
Ready to dive in?

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What Is It?

Loup Garou is a Graphic Novel Adventure. Think of a combination of Choose Your Own Adventure Books like Goosebumps (TBT, am I right, but like...everyday) and Role Playing Games like Dungeons and Dragons. You have a character with trackable stats who you have to make decisions for and guide through the panels of the story by making thoughtful choices and learning along the way which paths lead to good and which paths lead to ... well, death.

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Who Is It For?

The game recommends ages 14+, and I would probably agree with that. It's not super complicated by nature, but you do have a lot of reading to do and, again, a lot of choices to make, it's a rather long narrative to grasp and navigate, so it could be harder for a younger audience. Plus the theme is (Spoilers) werewolves, amongst other monstrous beings so it may also be a bit scary for younger audiences. I'd also recommend this one to gamers who enjoy RPGs and can really plop themselves into the greater story.

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Quality of Components

The component is really just the book itself for the most part. My copy was actually a ding and dent copy, so it had some damage when it started out, but it is worth mentioning that the more I flipped (and believe me, it was a lot), the looser the back pages became until a few actually got detached altogether. It's still perfectly playable, but keep that in mind in case you'd like to be a little more gentle when reading. My playthrough got a little ... intense. Other than that, the cover is nice and sturdy, the pages are glossy without too much glare, and the artwork is absolutely gorgeous. The book also had a character sheet and a disc in the back, which are fine quality as well, but if you don't want to remove those from the book (which would possibly damage the integrity of the binding as well), you can print more character sheets online and roll a die instead of using the disc instead.

PROS

• Great story! Very engaging, stays interesting the whole time, and creates a very immersive experience for the reader - you can play for hours and still be super into it... Yes, I played it for hours at a time. No shame!
• The reprintable character and skill sheets are a big plus for me cause I didn't really want to erase when I died, I just started over
• Great value game because it takes a while to play through, and like I mentioned above, there's so much to see that you could play again easily and make different decisions to explore even more
• Very hands on between flipping pages and tracking stuff, you really do feel like you're in the middle of it all
• There are a bunch of different skills routes/options to explore too! So you could try out different skills each time as well!
• You can share the wealth! After you play you can print more replacement character sheets and lend it to a friend so a bunch of people can enjoy the adventure!
  

CONS

• The flipping is super constant, you never stay on one page very long, which can get a little tedious
• If you're like me and having trouble keeping track of stats in any kind of game, I recommend grabbing some different colored tokens to track your hit points and magic points more easily
• Spoiler ahead - maybe - I guess it depends on your idea of a spoiler...anywho, there didn't appear to be a ton of ways to heal, in comparison to the number of battles I endured, which was frustrating. But, that could definitely vary a lot depending on your paths, so it's not a hard and fast con at all times
• It's a 1-person adventure, which is a slight con for me just because I prefer things that I can do with my fiance or my friends, I'm not huge on playing stuff alone. I tried it 2-player with my fiance and it wasn't awful, but with the amount of flipping you do, he got tired of sharing the book and didn't want to play anymore. His loss! haha.
  

Difficulty

Based on my playthroughs (I died a few times until I finally got to play it fully through and survived)I'd give it a 4/5 for difficulty. There is a bunch of stuff going on in the story that all needs your attention at once if you want to do well. You want to take a lot of notes so you remember certain elements that may come up again. It's still plenty of fun, but it is not exactly a walk in the park.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I thought this was such a cool game experience. To me it was really similar to T.I.M.E Stories (you go through a story, gather information, and reset if you lose/die) and as a fan of that game, this was easy for me to get into just as much. I highly recommend taking notes as you go and really put yourself into the character to get the most out of it. If you get the chance to try this or another Graphic Novel Adventure, try it out!
Happy Gaming~

Additional Information:
Author - Moon
Illustrator - 2D
Translation - JF Gagne
Publisher -Van Ryder Games

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*