Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“THE COLDEST WAR – ELEVENTH DOCTOR MEETS CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-BOREDOM”

A snowy showdown with the Sycorax that forgets to let you do much choosing

The Coldest War by Colin Brake is the first Decide Your Destiny gamebook to feature the Eleventh Doctor, but any excitement that might generate is quickly frozen by the story’s sluggish start, minimal interactivity, and misjudged use of the format. Like every book in the series, the reader is thrust into the TARDIS with little preamble, but rather than diving into the action, Brake strands you in endless corridors of exposition and non-decisions.

Far too much of the early book takes place within the TARDIS, padding out sections with repetitive and meandering scenes. You'd think a gamebook would at least aim to be engaging from the get-go—but instead, Coldest War spends dozens of pages with the player essentially spinning their wheels.

CHOOSING FOR EVERYONE BUT YOURSELF

The central problem here is one common to weaker entries in the Choose Your Own Adventure format: instead of choosing what you do, the book repeatedly asks you to decide what other characters—namely the Doctor, Amy, or even the Sycorax—should do. Should Amy turn left or right? Should the Sycorax attack or retreat? These decisions don’t immerse the reader; they make you feel like a passive director rather than an active participant.

And when you are finally allowed to make a genuine choice for yourself, it’s the most uninspired kind imaginable. “Pick a corridor, any corridor.” There’s no strategic thinking or interesting dilemma, just hollow interactivity for the sake of ticking the format’s boxes.

THE SYCORAX ARRIVE… BRIEFLY

Eventually, the story does leave the TARDIS and lurches into an icy landscape where the Sycorax make an appearance. The choice-driven nature means their involvement varies depending on your path, but none of it carries much impact. There’s no real tension, no significant puzzle to solve, and no meaningful threat. The Doctor and Amy have little agency, and the player character is relegated to little more than a bystander.

When the plot finally picks up—if you’ve stuck with it that long—it rushes towards a conclusion with barely any narrative weight. The Sycorax’s plan is foiled in a perfunctory manner, the characters barely develop, and your choices seem to matter even less than usual.

BROKEN PUZZLES AND LOST POTENTIAL

Brake also incorporated an extra layer of interactivity through online puzzles that once accompanied the book. The idea was promising: solve puzzles on the web and unlock additional content. Unfortunately, the website has since gone offline, meaning these sections are now dead ends. While the book allows you to skip over them without impacting the story, it removes a significant chunk of intended interactivity—arguably the only fresh idea the book had going for it.

Without the puzzles, what’s left is a formulaic and frustratingly hollow experience that even die-hard fans of the Eleventh Doctor may struggle to enjoy.

📝VERDICT: 29/100

The Coldest War freezes out everything that could make a Decide Your Destiny book fun. The sluggish pacing, lack of agency, and shallow story make it a tedious trudge through half-baked choices and uninspired writing. The Sycorax are underused, the Doctor and Amy are barely involved, and the defunct web puzzles only highlight the missed potential. As an introduction to the Eleventh Doctor in this format, it’s a limp, forgettable outing—and arguably one of the coldest duds in the series.