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Amazing Scriptures: A Book of Mormon Adventure of Comics and Mazes
Play your way through your favorite Book of Mormon stories! This one-of-a-kind comic book is filled with mazes and adventures to explore. Navigate through a choose-your-own-adventure story and collect all the items you need to become a master of each intricately designed maze. Perfect for entertaining kids of all ages on those slow Sunday afternoons or any day of the week!
32 pages, Paperback
Published July 10, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 20, 2023
When I was little, my older brother used to draw mazes for me at church on the sacrament meeting program. He would put things like a sword and shield in parts of the maze that you had to pick up before defeating the evil dragon! This book is a suped-up version of those. It's Book of Mormon themed. Mazes connect to one another across page spreads and there are doors that only unlock if you have a certain key or item (which you can get in another part of the maze). If you hit a dead end, you're supposed to "cast lots" and roll a six-sided die to see if you get "hindered" (and then you track your hindered points).
First off, I admire what Shurtliff is doing. He is really pushing the limits of what maze books can look like. This is a really experimental type of fiction that feels a lot like a videogame.
This is not a casual read. I had to sit down, pull out a piece of paper (you really need a piece of paper to keep track of all the keys) and trace my path through the mazes. Of course, when I got stuck, I simply remembered which routes were available to me and started scanning pages for keys that I missed! I got stuck in one place, but made an educated guess about where I should be able to go next and it seemed to work out. I was amazed that there was actually an "open world" feel to the first part where I was trying to find all the keys. I think the visual information helped me to feel like my characters were moving through locations and not like I was just going back to a certain page to find another page (iykyk).
This book is meant to be part of a series of maze books. That means that while you can choose whether or not Laman , there isn't a follow-up for this decision. That makes it difficult for me to say if the decisions in the game are meaningful.
I think that the design could be streamlined a bit. If I were tweaking it, I would remove the hindering system (even though random events make it feel more like a tabletop game) and instead of having "page #: event #", I would make unique event numbers for all of the comic events. If this interferes with the maze markers, you could front-load the mazes and give them their own event numbers (so the mazes could be events 4-10, then the first comic event 11). I think this would reduce the amount of fussiness with the numbers. There must have been a reason Shurtliff didn't do it this way, maybe he needed the maze numbers to be page numbers? I would also remove the section of Sam's cave, although the part where you can fall into a pit maze was probably my favorite possibility of the hindering system. With the extra pages, I would add additional narrative events to the key objects to make it seem less like a key-hunt. Although, I think that is my personal, grown-up preference for less maze and more narrative. Maybe my younger self would have really liked the maze portions. I was also puzzled about all of the hindering events that remove bananas, when I could only find one banana the whole game! Maybe I just need to look closer?
First off, I admire what Shurtliff is doing. He is really pushing the limits of what maze books can look like. This is a really experimental type of fiction that feels a lot like a videogame.
This is not a casual read. I had to sit down, pull out a piece of paper (you really need a piece of paper to keep track of all the keys) and trace my path through the mazes. Of course, when I got stuck, I simply remembered which routes were available to me and started scanning pages for keys that I missed! I got stuck in one place, but made an educated guess about where I should be able to go next and it seemed to work out. I was amazed that there was actually an "open world" feel to the first part where I was trying to find all the keys. I think the visual information helped me to feel like my characters were moving through locations and not like I was just going back to a certain page to find another page (iykyk).
This book is meant to be part of a series of maze books. That means that while you can choose whether or not Laman , there isn't a follow-up for this decision. That makes it difficult for me to say if the decisions in the game are meaningful.
I think that the design could be streamlined a bit. If I were tweaking it, I would remove the hindering system (even though random events make it feel more like a tabletop game) and instead of having "page #: event #", I would make unique event numbers for all of the comic events. If this interferes with the maze markers, you could front-load the mazes and give them their own event numbers (so the mazes could be events 4-10, then the first comic event 11). I think this would reduce the amount of fussiness with the numbers. There must have been a reason Shurtliff didn't do it this way, maybe he needed the maze numbers to be page numbers? I would also remove the section of Sam's cave, although the part where you can fall into a pit maze was probably my favorite possibility of the hindering system. With the extra pages, I would add additional narrative events to the key objects to make it seem less like a key-hunt. Although, I think that is my personal, grown-up preference for less maze and more narrative. Maybe my younger self would have really liked the maze portions. I was also puzzled about all of the hindering events that remove bananas, when I could only find one banana the whole game! Maybe I just need to look closer?
October 24, 2018
My comic-book reading, star wars-loving daughter was sold on this instantly. I personally appreciated the creativity and originality in which the characters came to life for Shurtliff, and the way in which he makes this story into a fantastical adventure for others to share. I also found this to be a super fun road-trip game that took up very little space, and which we could play together as a family for a great night in.
It seems a bit odd to call this a book: it is a comic book, board game, a maze and a choose-your-own adventure style activity. It is focused on Nephi, Sam, Laman and Lemuel, and as a reader, you follow the comic in a choose-your-own-adventure style as one of the characters (though you also need to toss a die in parts) and follow the lads as they try to obtain a book from Laban. The names of the characters are the only parts that reflect scripture, but because my daughter was familiar with the names and the story, the game jumped off of the page for her!
There isn’t much literary depth to the comic, nor is spiritual enlightenment on the table, but the book is fun—just plain fun. And that makes it BRILLIANT. It took me a little bit to get my head around the character names as I had a fairly narrow perspective on individuals with those names based on the Book of Mormon story found in 1st Nephi. Once I dropped the idea that this was supposed to teach religiosity, the thing flowed perfectly. A great thing for the whole family to read and do together!
It seems a bit odd to call this a book: it is a comic book, board game, a maze and a choose-your-own adventure style activity. It is focused on Nephi, Sam, Laman and Lemuel, and as a reader, you follow the comic in a choose-your-own-adventure style as one of the characters (though you also need to toss a die in parts) and follow the lads as they try to obtain a book from Laban. The names of the characters are the only parts that reflect scripture, but because my daughter was familiar with the names and the story, the game jumped off of the page for her!
There isn’t much literary depth to the comic, nor is spiritual enlightenment on the table, but the book is fun—just plain fun. And that makes it BRILLIANT. It took me a little bit to get my head around the character names as I had a fairly narrow perspective on individuals with those names based on the Book of Mormon story found in 1st Nephi. Once I dropped the idea that this was supposed to teach religiosity, the thing flowed perfectly. A great thing for the whole family to read and do together!
November 25, 2018
In all honesty, the book arrived at out house and promptly went missing. As a busy parent, I chose to not worry too much… but after a few days, I finally asked. My daughter had absconded with it to her room: it was her new favourite thing and she wasn’t too into letting me “borrow” it. I did convince her that we could read it together, and much to both of our delight, we did. It seems a bit odd to call this a book: it is a comic book, board game, a maze and a choose-your-own adventure style activity... to read the rest of this review, please check it out at the Exponent blog!
https://www.the-exponent.com/christma...
https://www.the-exponent.com/christma...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews