Last updated on December 7th, 2025 at 12:15 pm
Broadway: 1849 – Roleplaying Game Review
Broadway: 1849 is a Roleplaying/Books/Adventure game from Choice of Games LLC, first launched in 21st November 2017.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 25+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Broadway: 1849 Stand Out
Fight your way to box office glory, while fending off the gangs of New York! Manage a theatre in a game of high-stakes business, dangerous romance, and risky alliances set in the rough-and-tumble world of 19th century New York. You'll brave riots, fires, and political spies as you take on a city of jealous rivals, brilliant artists, and stalwart politicians.
"Broadway: 1849" is a 150,000-word interactive historical adventure novel by Robert Davis. It's entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
Will you succeed by your smart business sense or enlist the city’s gangs to push your competition out of business? Can you manage the diva personalities of your actors? What about a ghost haunting your theatre's stage?
Are you a flashy producer playing to please the crowd with circus acts? Do you try to earn the respect of the city's leaders with fine art? Can you wrangle the press into writing the best reviews?
• Play as male, female, or non-binary; gay, straight, bi, or asexual.
• Compete with rivals to stage the biggest shows and gain the largest audience!
• Choose a cast from the city's brightest talent.
• Investigate the hidden secrets of your theatre.
• Rush to defuse a deadly bomb, or let it explode and plunge the city into chaos.
• Nurture young talent or feed your own ambition for the spotlight.
• Rub shoulders with the city's most notorious criminals, or bring their misdeeds to light.
• Help a deserving friend escape the clutches of an unscrupulous businessman.
• Join forces with a criminal gang or side with the mayor’s push for order.
When forced to choose you'll decide whether to fight for peace or let the city burn.
This Roleplaying game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Broadway: 1849 is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 27th June 2023
Recent improvements include:
Bug fixes. If you enjoy "Broadway: 1849", please leave us a written review. It really helps!
Download & Availability
Broadway: 1849 is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Broadway: 1849 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:
We love these theater/movie ones you do best.
We agree with other reviewers in hoping that the subplots and choices get fleshed out in a second edition. The real draw here is the historical accuracy of the events and interacting with famous characters. Well done and highly recommended.
If you're looking for a more hardcore history gaming experience, this should suit you well.
This is an exciting game with delightful characters and tons of historical detail. Its much more than a management sim; youre also tasked with finding your way in 19th C. New York society and culture. You make alliances or enemies with actual people from the time (and a few memorable characters from literature). Its not only your ability to mount a successful play but also your skill in making the right friends that can avert disaster and lead to box office triumph. The game is fast-paced, immersive, and it has good replay value. The writing is vivid, light-hearted, and very readable. Highly recommended.
Would have been good if not for some glitches. For instance we chose to know that we were being swindled by the street con artist and the game continued as if we had fallen for the con.
This is a really enjoyable choose-your-own-adventure set in a fascinating, volatile time and place. Its a jam-packed cabinet of curiosities, filled with vivid characters and memorable scenes. Highly recommended.
On our second playthrough now, but if you've enjoyed other Choice Of offerings, know that this one runs a little shorter than the rest. A compelling setting and several points of intrigue, but the amount of parameters your choices have an effect on can be confusing. Sometimes it went on too long without choices, or choices were made for you when branching paths felt expected. The main draw of the game, making creative and practical decisions for theatre, came too few and far in between. The plays felt like a backdrop, unlike the more process-focused offering in "Hollywood Visionary," where you had more say in the creative process. The rivalry was too plain to sustain interest and the supernatural subplot was rushed. We'd love to see an update fleshing out the subplots, adding a few choices to improve the pacing and agency, making the villain less one-dimensional, and making the (optional) romantic subplots more than a blip. Also was not expecting the first actor we picked to automatically be picked for every new play, and some characters dropped off the map completely. You'll still get your money's worth, but this needed a longer beta.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.9
- Size: 24.36 MB
- iOS: 11.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References, Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: Choice of Games LLC
Last updated: 27th June 2023 | Genre: Roleplaying, Books | Developer: Choice of Games LLC