Series: Your Story Universe might let players participate as characters in their favorite movie and TV shows, but the good choices will cost them.
In Series: Your Story Universe, players have the chance to live out their wildest dreams in their favorite movies and TV shows. From The Breakfast Club to Saved By The Bell, players can jump into their favorite fictional worlds and become a character within them. It's just too bad that to continue playing, as well as to make certain decisions, it's going to cost them some real-world cash.
To begin Series, players must choose which world they want to play. The choices include a variety of movies and TV shows from the NBC/Universal library, including The Breakfast Club, Law & Order, Bridesmaids, Saved by the Bell, Xena, Vanderpump Rules and Sixteen Candles. After a story is selected, players can choose to customize their characters, choosing between genders, as well as choosing from a variety of hair color and styles, facial features, eye color and size and more. Once character creation is complete, the game alerts the player that clothing can make or break a scene, so characters are then prompted to choose their outfits. Then the story begins, and players find themselves dropped into the world of their chosen story. For example, The Breakfast Club begins with the main character doing something that lands that character in detention with the rest of the characters from that movie.
This is where the fun supposedly begins. Imagine being in detention with Claire, Andrew, Brian, Bender and Allison, with Vice Principal Vernon breathing down their necks. Gameplay involves reacting to what the other characters say and do, with dialogue that comes straight out of the movie. But what makes Series so interesting is that as the player progresses through various chapters, the situations go beyond the films and into brand new territory. For example, in The Breakfast Club, after detention, the main character gets invited to a house party.
However, this is also where Series begins to fail. These new stories that go outside of the original movies and TV shows aren't always well-written. There are also times when characters seem to act out of character. Sometimes, the dialogue is just dull, and getting through it to get to the next choice often feels cumbersome.
It gets even more annoying when players are faced with choices, and one is a "premium" choice. That means that this particular choice (which is more than likely the one most players would want to make) costs gems. And the gems run out quickly so that players are forced to either make the choice they didn't want to make or fork over real-world money to buy gems. The game also requires players to have tickets to play future episodes/chapters, and those seem to run out quickly. One hundred gems and 14 tickets run around $5, which should allow players to make a total of approximately four premium choices.
To say the game is a money grab is putting it lightly. Although players can earn gems and tickets through gameplay, they can't collect them fast enough to keep playing. So although the premise behind Series is a promising one, in the end, it's all about how much money players want to invest in a game that probably isn't worth it.
Series: Your Story Universe releases on the App Store and Google Play on April 25, 2019. Screen Rant was provided with a download code for the purposes of this review.