Last updated on November 27th, 2025 at 09:12 pm
Pendragon Rising – Adventure Game Review
Pendragon Rising is a Adventure/Roleplaying/Books game from Choice of Games LLC, first launched in 3rd December 2015.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 70+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Pendragon Rising Stand Out
Seize the throne in the age of King Arthur! Lead an army of Britons against the darkest of enemies in this epic interactive medieval fantasy novel.
"Pendragon Rising" is a thrilling 112,000-word interactive novel by Ian Thomas, where your choices control the story. It's entirely text-based–without graphics or sound effects–and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
As the bastard offspring of the aging ruler Pendragon, you’ll fight to save Britain from a demon-tainted enemy and claim the crown you deserve. Command an army as Arthur, brave son of Uther, or Arta, fearless daughter of Utta.
Charge heroically to the front of battle, or use tricks to defeat your foes. Dally with your childhood companion, or seek romance elsewhere. Hold the line with your closest friends against foreign invaders and their sinister magics. Find friendship, forge alliances, uncover plots, and triumph over creatures of nightmare to win a future for your people and your kingdom.
Will you be mercenary or merciful? Seductive or solitary? Most importantly, can you lead your allies to drive back the darkness, and seize your place as Pendragon of Britain?
• A 112,000-word fantasy set in medieval Britain.
• A Celtic take on the story of King Arthur against a dark background of war and strange magics.
• Play as male or female, gay or straight.
• Win over allies to swell the ranks of your army as you fight for the future of the kingdom.
• Earn the acclaim of your people by performing heroic deeds that will turn your name into legend.
• Claim your place as an unmatched warrior, a silver-tongued diplomat, or an inspirational leader.
This Adventure game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Pendragon Rising is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 27th June 2023
Recent improvements include:
Bug fixes. If you enjoy "Pendragon Rising", please leave us a written review. It really helps!
Download & Availability
Pendragon Rising is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Pendragon Rising on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
This game was excellent, though we would love it if the writer of this game would create a game starring Merlin, or a female counterpart.
This was an amazing game we absolutely loved it and we really wish there was a sequel but it didnt even let us save a file so the chances are sadly low.
Honestly we didnt love this game. The writing is over done and when read playing the female side seems forced and impractical. Relationships feel disconnected and character choice is limited.
When you play something called pendragon you usually want to play something with knights in gleaming armor and high castles. This game will give you the dawn of Britain with barbarian clans fighting over piles of sticks and mud. And had awful to try and remember names. They try to make it somewhat period accurate, so everyone you meet is steeped in backwards tradition (like thinking winning a tournament makes you fit to lead an army and that your priests actually have magic powers ((they dont)) ) which is incredibly frustrating to navigate around, basically being forced to constantly make choices that would appease a bunch of unwashed idiots or loose your head. We also dont like the gendered system where either women or warriors or men are warriors. Why? If your trying to make it time period accurate and enforce gender roles, just make it men because at that point offering the choice is undermining your goal anyway. If your going to undermine your goal anyway, toss the sexism out the window and get rid of the gender roles.
This was the first time we played one of these games. We were totally immersed in it and was unable to stop playing from start to finish. We really enjoyed ourselves, and we cant wait to play again to see what happens making different choices. We loved the feeling of being in the time of King Arthurs Britain after the Romans left. We loved being able to play as a woman warrior in a strong women warrior culture. We felt strongly pulled by the various choices presented to us, more and more as the story progressed. We would highly recommend this game.
The creators of this game weaved together a fantastic story line with characters you'll enjoy getting to know and playing. You'll get hours of enjoyment here, highly recommended.
One of the few games we paid for. It was a great immersive story. You got drawn in quickly. It was interesting to see how your decisions decided the story. We were sad to see it end. We hope more chapters come along.
An excellent foray into the Arthurian legends. If you're familiar with it or not, you'll enjoy this tale of storied legends.
We've been fascinated with King Arthur for the past 25 years, so we were super excited to play this game. It did not disappoint! We're ready for more.
We really enjoyed this, it does have a good replay value and the story is great. Writing is good with good defined characters. We were delightfully surprised with this one.
This was one of our favorite interactive fiction games. We really enjoyed the world building with the fantasy Britain and the characters were interesting, written with consistency, and relatable our one complaint is that some of the game elements didn't hold up to the narrative very well. Examples like where our character was a very low warrior skill but was still able to fight in lots of battles and defeat legendary enemies, and before a major battle we made a speech proclaiming for the old gods and our Christian allies were displeased, but apparently not that much. It just felt like certain things needed to happen regardless of our input. Still though, highly enjoyable story and writing, well worth a play through.
This story has to be one of the best ones made for us to enjoy, it follows the tale with realism and mythology mixed well. Almost every choice we made had some kind of consequence, the subject of religion felt realistic in this story because it portrayed the hassle religions had in those days. We do wish they focused on characters background stories more as well. SPOILERS The sudden halt during the war felt a bit anticlimactic, they only let you go through half the war before the end of the war come in line after a few sentences, maybe focus on how the time during this bloody fight you become more cold as you slash through so many enemies, we got the slight hint the author tried to do this but didn't focus on it to much. END SPOILER All in all we don't regret buying this one.
This is our second favorite Choice of Games story right behind Life of a Mobster. It's beautifully written, and very exciting. Our only complaint is the Morgan romance. She gets pregnant with your child, and then learns that you are her half-brother (her mother tells her when you are not present). But at the end she just leaves, and never tells you that her reason for leaving is because she is your half-sister. It left the romance aspect of this a bit unresolved. But other than that it was great.
The Morgan romance ruined everything for us.
We've played a lot of choice of games. This is one of our favorites. Definitely recommend.
Absolutely fantastic, it is extremely well written and a very entertaining.
A great game in every way, can't wait to replay it.
You fall easily in love with the characters. The choices you make change everything, Even choosing to love someone!!! Love it played it over and over again.
This game is really good there just needs to be more! Maybe a sequel but definitely more in an update or something.
Wonderful game , only downfall plot holes like romance with Morgan does Arthur or arta every find out the relation and How the ending is abrupt.
We seriously wish there were more games like this one because this game is the best we've seen in a while! Every choice you make, we'd say affects the majority of the game. There are some glitches, like when a sentence repeats itself (which can easily be fixed by tapping on it, weird). Overall, we'd give this a play if you enjoy CYOA games or if you want to try something new. Great job, Choice of Games.
We bought this game the moment we got the email and we've never been more impressed by a "Choice Of" The different endings that can be obtained are great! We've only found two so far but we will work on all of them. Well worth it and we hope there will be a sequel. There is just so much potential. Great work everyone.
This game is well thought. Literally ever choice you makes effects the out come majorly! Good game.
This game was so awesome! We couldn't stop reading. Great story, interesting characters, and very well written. We hope there is more to come.
We absolutely loved the game "Lords of Aswick", by Hosted Games and this goes right up there. This game is great, and we thought the setting was just perfect. We love the medieval times, especially the pagan areas of Europe. The magic in this game was also a very nice touch. If you are some one who is unfamiliar with the time period, it's fine. It's still a great read. You'll learn plenty of geographic names as well. Perhaps some people might not like this game because it may feel like your choices aren't so important, but we think it makes it more realistic. Anyways, loved it. Hope the author continues making these stories.
We wish there was a way to go back to the page before you die or complete the game. Other than that the game was great and very well made. Nice job.
Awesome. The chance to play the uncertainty of the era from which the Arthur myth was born is so rare, and the balance between the Old Gods and the birth of Christendom is a really fun element. Hope there is a sequel, and it would be so cool if, in said sequel, you were able to continue to make choices that are free of the outdated Arthurian tropes. Not easy to do, but this first game proves it is very possible.
It's an ok story that makes you feel like you're in charge of how a war ends. The ending was very short and didn't really feel quite satisfying but the ability to choose how to end the war and small choices in the beginning having consequences was interesting. Overall an ok game if you like a war involving magic, a little weird religion, and fighting.
It's pretty interesting so far and pretty well written, but we there seems to be quite a lot of bugs in this app. For example, when we choose to hang back to heal the wounded while the king/queen fights the Saxon champion, it greatly increases our ruthlessness for some reason, when it probably should increase compassion instead. Another example is that something Gaia says when Blodwyn confronts you in the banquet hall, is repeated twice in a run on sentence. However, the the second example we mentioned here fixes itself when we close the app and open it back up again. Still, it's a bug and a weird one at that. Please fix these bugs and glitches.
Frankly, it felt too short to us.
So we thought we'd really like this story, as fantasy and and medieval times are something we enjoy. But, we really didn't. There was a lot of violence (which we didn't like) and we found ourselves feeling kinda disgusted more than once (not necessarily because of the violence..). We think we would have liked the story more if the main character wasn't playing an active role in battle. And the characters…we wasn't really liking any of them. No one seemed very trustworthy/non-barbarian like to us XP. To be fair, we guess we'll just say it really wasn't our cup of tea. And we'll just leave it at that.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.6
- Size: 24.21 MB
- iOS: 11.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References, Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes, Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes
- Developer: Choice of Games LLC
Last updated: 27th June 2023 | Genre: Adventure, Roleplaying | Developer: Choice of Games LLC