I have always enjoyed Drew Hayes’ stuff. It’s usually entertaining and smart, and has a little fun with all the tropes of whatever pop culture/nerd genre might be involved. A Decade of Death and Decisions is most of these things but it’s also a little different. In 2013, Hayes started a narrative game on his website wherein he posted a short chapter of a Halloween story, and then a poll at the end concerning a choice about what should happen next, and based on reader votes, he’d compose the next chapter, kind of like Choose Your Own Adventure (if you’re old enough to know those). Sometimes there would be dead ends, where the main character dies, but the story then restarts at the same spot with a better decision. IF readers got through all 13 days before Halloween with no dead ends, there might be a little bonus story. Each year there would be a theme (getting sucked into a sequence of classic horror movies, the Halloween wish, trick or treating, the office party, etc.), but there was something of a continuous narrative arc, and central mystery/ies. Merlin, his spooky lady friend Victoria (they’re just friends) who has some connection to the spirit of the season, their eternally drunk/high buddy Jim, and eventually one or two more end up on some sort of Halloween adventure. My first introduction was about 2/3 of the way through when the main narrative was something spooky going on at Frat Co, Merlin’s brother Thad’s company, during the company Halloween party. Magical shenanigans ensue, and everyone has to figure what the threat is and how to neutralize it (a game of beer pong against a bunch of ghosts is involved).
In 2022, readers and Hayes worked to something of a conclusion. The entire 130 chapter (plus bonus or two) with hints about the main mystery embedded as puzzles is now a book. It’s Hayes fun, but also driven by outside influences. I’m almost a little sorry that the discussion board that accompanied the polls wasn’t included, since that part was interesting. I will also say this thing badly needed a proofread, especially for the first few “years”. There are some uneven spots (the candy world bit is borderline squicky), and sometimes the hints, puzzles, and dead ends don’t always make total sense. For example, even if one assumes that a hint might have been a red herring designed to mislead at one point pretty far in, the reasoning behind the result is a little unclear. To be fair, this really isn’t the kind of thing that’s meant to be perfectly logical. And the ending is actually a pretty good one; even if the deus ex machina (almost literally) is a little silly, it makes sense in the context, and closes out the narrative pretty nicely.