Review - Companionable Darkness

Today I look at the final (as of this writing) adventure in the Scarthey solo adventure series; Companionable Darkness.

Companionable Darkness is a return to the more traditional structure of solo adventures.  The player navigates through a branching story tree based on their decisions and interacts with a variety of characters, monsters, and challenges along the way.

The story in Companionable Darkness begins with the player character filling the role of a caravan/body-guard.  An incident occurs early on that leads to conflict and the player must lead their NPC companions to solve a mystery and hopefully save an innocent.

I will start off by saying that Companionable Darkness is the strongest entry in the series so far.  My largest criticism of the first adventure in the series is that it was too short, although Companionable Darkness is only a dozen or so entries longer each entry has significantly more story and action and ultimately feels much more filled out.  Other than format my biggest issue with the second adventure in the series is that there was very little bordering on no story at all, this time out there is a decent story being told and a bunch of NPCs to play and interact with to make the world feel more real and lived in.

My criticisms of this adventure would be that once again a few things were missed that should have been caught in editing or proof-reading passes, this time out the issues aren't significant but it would have been nice to remove the distractions.  My only other criticism would be the fact that very early on all the characters are introduced and there is no apparent antagonist, which means the player is just waiting for the inevitable Scooby Doo style unmasking of one of the earlier 'friendly' NPCs.  I have to say though neither of those issues detract from the overall experience and I still really enjoyed my play through.

If someone were going to play only one solo adventure from Rising Phoenix Games I would definitely choose Companionable Darkness currently available from DrivethruRPG at https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/265387/Companionable-Darkness?term=companionable for $3.95.

-Jay