Writing an online walk-through to a computer game of Borgesian complexity can take up a lot of time. So much so, it can be difficult to see things turning sour in the real world. As our narrator grapples with his players guide, life starts to intrude in troublesome ways. Things aren’t going so well with the live-in girlfriend and the job preparing cooked circular food is getting increasingly hard to stomach. To top it all, the best friend is clearly depressed and acting weirder by the day. But despite all this, his attention is focused on the Broken World?an engrossing, possibly addictive, adventure that takes him from town to town in a struggle with zombies, agents, puzzles, and mysteries. It’s not clear which of these worlds the real or the online is the more challenging, or where survival tips are more urgently needed. What is clear is that he must work out solutions to problems involving life, love, and happiness, not just in the Broken World, but in the real one too. For fans of Douglas Coupland and J.G. Ballard, The Broken World is an extremely original, off-beat novel – part fiction, part computer game – about life, love and happiness, not just in the real world, but in the online one too.
