1. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
Authors: Steve Jackson (UK) and Ian Livingstone
Illustrators: Peter Andrew Jones (first two British covers), Richard Corben (American cover), Martin McKenna (British reissue cover), Russ Nicholson (interior)
First Published: 1982 (original British edition), November, 1983 (American edition)
Reissued: May, 2002 (still as book #1)
ISBN: 0-14-031538-1 (original British edition), 0-440-99381-4 (American edition), 1-84046-387-2 (reissued British edition)
Length: 400 sections
Number of Endings: 3 instant deaths, 1 victory, plus failure by
inadequate inventory or loss of Stamina points.
Plot Summary: You travel to Firetop Mountain, a dangerous place
inhabited by Zagor the Warlock, in search of treasure and adventure.
Translations: Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish, Swedish
My Thoughts:
This is a decent start to a good series, and it's easy
to see how people were hooked on gamebooks after playing this. It's more or
less plotless, but the dungeon environment it allows the reader to explore is
pleasantly quirky and greatly enhanced by Russ Nicholson's remarkable
artwork. I'm especially fond, for some mysterious reason, of the
delightfully repulsive ghoul pictured near section 275.
Gameplay is fast and fun, though also rather flawed. My biggest complaint is
the frequent use of a lazy pattern of game design. For example, say the
reader can go either east or west. If the reader goes east, there's no
turning back, but if the reader goes west, something important happens, and
the reader is subsequently herded east anyway. This pattern shows up again
and again in the book, and while it obviously made the writing process easier
for the authors, it's often a source of frustration for the player -- there
are times where it would be nice to turn back, but no such option is offered.
Certainly, it would have been difficult to increase the player's freedom of
movement without making the book overlong, but the linearity of this
particular story structure could probably have been masked a little better.
A lesser complaint is that the game's inventory system is poorly thought-out.
There's no inventory limit, but certain objects require you to drop an
existing item before picking them up. This almost makes sense for a heavy
shield (though not if you drop a light black glove to make room), but it's
totally senseless when later in the adventure you are required to drop an
item in order to pick up a key. Inventory is one place (though not the only
place) where Lone Wolf undeniably had an edge over Fighting
Fantasy.
A final feature of game design that I'm not sure whether to praise or
complain about is the final segment, where you have to open a chest using
keys gathered during earlier parts of the story. This is done using a fairly
clever mechanic (adding key numbers together to yield a section which shows
whether or not the keys fit), but it means that you can get within an inch of
victory again and again without ever actually winning. This makes replay
high, but it might be considered a bit cruel. Personally, I think it works
well enough for this book since the adventure's challenge level is low
overall, but it would be unspeakably nasty to place a similar twist in a
tougher adventure.
Also, if I may be picky, I'd like to point out that the very first paragraph
of the rules says that you start with a shield but that it subsequently seems
that you don't (especially since you can find one at one point in the
adventure). Probably just a little flaw missed in copy editing. Also, my
early British printing of the book is missing the letter "e" in the
word "grey" in the picture caption by section 122, though my more
recent printing includes the letter.
Anyway, overall, I think this book deserves its classic status. It's
challenging but not impossible, it has a number of memorable situations
(aided greatly by good artwork), it's fun to map, and it has some unusual
design elements (most notably the final key puzzle) despite being more or
less the first of its kind. Of course, it can also be blamed for typecasting
the whole genre of interactive books through its fantasy setting and its
emphasis of mechanics over storyline. While these things are a shame, they
can't really be used as direct criticisms of the book. Taken at face value,
it's a good bit of fun and worth reading the four or five times it'll most
likely take to emerge victorious.
2. The Citadel of Chaos
Author: Steve Jackson (UK)
Illustrators: Emmanuel (first British cover), Ian Miller (second British cover), Richard Corben (American cover), Kevin Jenkins (British reissue cover), Russ Nicholson (interior)
First Published: 1983 (original British edition), November, 1983 (American edition)
Reissued: May, 2002 (still as book #2)
ISBN: 0-14-031603-5 (original British edition), 0-440-91280-6 (American edition), 1-84046-389-9 (reissued British edition)
Length: 400 sections
Number of Endings: 19 instant failures, 1 victory, plus failure by
inadequate inventory, insufficient spells or loss of Stamina points.
Plot Summary: You are a wizard-in-training sent to infiltrate the
citadel of Balthus Dire, an evil demi-sorcerer. Your mission is to prevent
him from unleashing an army upon the innocent Vale of Willow by assassinating
him in his lair.
Translations: Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish, Swedish
My Thoughts:
The first thing that struck me about this book was its
magic system, which isn't nearly as interesting as Steve Jackson's later work
on Sorcery but which starts the adventure off on
an interesting note by giving the reader a list of talents to pick from,
Lone Wolf style. The next thing I noticed was the fact that the
back-story seems very D&D-inspired, though this observation is
based mainly on the conspicuous use of the phrases "Lawful Good"
and "Chaotic."
Upon getting into the actual gameplay, I'd have to say that it's a more solid
design than Warlock of Firetop Mountain, but it's somehow a bit less
engaging. This may be partially due to the fact that I don't have as many
nostalgic memories of this book than of the previous volume, but I'd say that
the sometimes rushed-looking artwork and Steve Jackson's less-than-thrilling
prose didn't help either. Jackson's talents definitely lie more with game
design than with actual writing -- his text just seems flat most of the time,
and his tendency towards padding out sections by mentioning passageways that
you can't follow is simply annoying. I also found that some of his
encounters (like the whirlwind-woman) feel utterly pointless and silly. He
does deserve credit for the occasional amusing detail, though, and it was
nice to know that female goblins do exist (see section 339).
Despite my complaints, there are a number of very nice features to the book.
The challenge level seems about right -- you have to play quite a few times
to win, but each time you play, you learn new and helpful things which can be
applied to the next trip. It's also true that you can roll extremely awful
ability scores yet still emerge victorious. Probably the highlight of the
whole book is the final confrontation with Balthus Dire, which gives you a
lot of options and keeps the tension high throughout. The fact that victory
leads you to a potentially-unsatisfying ending is my only complaint about the
whole end sequence, and the open-ended final paragraph isn't really all that
terrible. Actually, I wish I'd read this book more thoroughly before writing
my first Kobolds Ate My Baby! solo adventure, as
the encounter with Tabriz in my book could have been enhanced by including a
tribute to this scene. Oh well.
Errata: If you leave the library (18) to approach the dining
area (31), it says you come from the Game Room. This is a bit jarring, but
it doesn't seem to actually harm the flow of the adventure.
3. The Forest of Doom
Author: Ian Livingstone
Illustrators: Iain McCaig (British cover), Richard Corben (American cover), Martin McKenna (British reissue cover), Malcolm Barter (interior)
First Published: 1983 (British edition), February, 1984 (American edition)
Reissued: February, 2003 (as book #8)
ISBN: 0-14-031604-3 (original British edition), 0-440-92679-3 (American edition), 1-84046-429-1 (reissued British edition)
Length: 400 sections
Number of Endings: 3 instant failures, 1 victory, plus death by
Stamina loss or bad Luck.
Plot Summary: You encounter a dying dwarf and decide to finish the
quest that he gave his life attempting to complete: to enter a dangerous,
monster-filled forest in search of a precious hammer that the dwarfs of
Stonebridge need to fight off the trolls that threaten their home.
Translations: Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish, Swedish
My Thoughts:
This book is really quite typical of the early
fantasy-themed entries in the series -- it's relatively plotless, it features
minimalistic writing that's extremely short on dialogue, and it doesn't do
anything particularly unusual with the core rules. Really the only thing
that distinguishes it from the past two adventures is the fact that it's set
in an outdoor environment, which makes a nice change from the claustrophobic
dungeons of its predecessors. Unfortunately, despite the mild novelty of its
setting, the book isn't all that memorable. Apart from introducing Yaztromo
and the dwarfs of Stonebridge, it doesn't contain much that I'd consider
terribly imaginative. Of course, the less-than-thrilling story could be
forgiven if it were supported by great gameplay. Alas, that's not really the
case here...
The adventure is highly item-driven, which is something of a trademark of
Ian Livingstone adventures; unfortunately, though, it's not done very well
here. At the start of the adventure, you can purchase a wide variety of
magic items, and this part of the game is roughly equivalent to picking
spells in the previous adventure, though it's more tedious since you have to
pay different amounts of money for different items. What I found really
disappointing, though, was the way that these items are ultimately used.
When you come to a place where you can use an item, you are asked if you have
it. If you do, you use it successfully; if not, something bad happens
(though rarely something fatal). This isn't very exciting -- I'd much rather
be given a list of items to try and have to figure out which one works; that
would be more suspenseful, and it would also offer the potential of multiple
solutions to certain problems. As things stand, encounters are either boring
or frustrating, with little middle ground.
Another major problem with the book is the way it loops back on itself. If
you reach Stonebridge without both parts of the hammer, you have a chance of
going back to section one, restocking with Yaztromo and starting all over
again. I definitely like the possibility of a second chance (and third
chance, and fourth chance...), and it's a nice way of balancing the fact that
you have basically no hope at all of finding the hammer on your first try.
Unfortunately, this leads to all manner of continuity problems, since the
book doesn't even try to address the possibility that you've already slain
monsters and taken treasures. This leaves the player wondering how to handle
things the second time around, and it interferes with the realism of the
book. The problem couldn't really have been fixed without greatly increasing
the size of the book, but that doesn't change the fact that it detracts from
the reader's experience.
Perhaps I'm being a bit too harsh -- although this book isn't particularly
exceptional, it's also far from being a disaster. It's a fun diversion, and
it seems free from errors as long as you can suspend your disbelief about the
whole looping thing. Its art isn't bad, either. In fact, compared to some
of the unplayable, broken garbage I've encountered during my time as a
gamebook collector, it shines like gold. Within the context of this series,
though, it's average at best and rather seriously flawed at worst. It's not
a classic, but it's worth playing if you're a completist (or have nothing
better on hand).
4. Starship Traveller
Author: Steve Jackson (UK)
Illustrators: Peter Andrew Jones (interior and British cover), Richard Corben (American cover)
First Published: 1983 (British edition), April, 1984 (American edition)
ISBN: 0-14-031637-X (British edition), 0-440-98241-3 (American edition)
Length: 343 sections
Number of Endings: 13 instant failures, 1 victory, plus death by
Stamina loss or bad Luck.
Plot Summary: Your spacecraft has been pulled through a black hole
into a parallel universe, and you must somehow find your way back home.
Translations: Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish, Swedish
My Thoughts:
This book is something of a milestone in the
series -- the first to try a genre other than fantasy. It is not widely
considered to be a great success, however; even the author admitted to being
a bit disappointed with it, if only because of its brevity. This brevity
actually confuses me, as a random-encounter-filled space adventure seems like
just about the easiest sort of gamebook to pad out to full length. In any
case, despite its problems, it does have some nice features, but I have to
agree that it's pretty disappointing overall.
The major problem is that this is a fun gamebook to play, but a frustrating
one to win. The first time you play, it's really entertaining to create a
whole ship's crew and have fun with the Star Trek formula that the
book plays with. The dilemma of figuring out which crew members to take with
you to a given planet is a nice touch ("Do I risk my science officer or
just bring a bunch of expendable security guards?"), and the whole feel
of the book is refreshingly different. The problem is that after a few tries
at exploring the universe, it becomes obvious that winning requires a lot of
tedious work.
This is actually a problem with the entire Fighting Fantasy
series so far -- winning requires an extraordinary amount of effort in
mapping and dying and starting over, which means that by the time you're
getting close to victory, you've really sort of lost track of the story, its
immersiveness destroyed by constant interruptions to sketch maps and take
notes. The ultimate victory doesn't come from being heroic and solving
puzzles, it instead comes from figuring out how the author's mind works and
deconstructing the book. There's really no way that the characters in these
books could ever be successful; victory only comes from knowledge that the
player has which the character could never learn. This makes the whole
experience rather hollow, and Starship Traveller made me more
painfully aware of this problem than previous books.
In any case, winning this book is much the same as winning Warlock of
Firetop Mountain -- you need to collect a bunch of numbers and then do
some math on them to find the right place to go, and somewhere along the way
there's a gratuitous maze. For me, this structure was okay once, but it's
more frustrating the second time around. It doesn't help that the numbers
you need to collect are harder to find than the keys in Warlock or
that once you find a number, there's no indication in the text that you may
need it later, so first-time readers may fail even if they have followed the
right path. Speaking of the right path, I do find it interesting that,
unless I am mistaken, you can win this book without touching the dice once.
One last complaint -- this book seems to have utterly failed to inspire any
decent artwork. The interior illustrations are unengaging, the British cover
is technically good but seems to me a strange and unrepresentative scene to
portray, and the American cover is just awful. This book is unique enough
to be memorable on its own, but good artwork might have made me enjoy it a
little bit more. Ultimately, this is a better adventure for a casual reader
who wants to play Star Trek for a couple hours than it is for a
serious gamebook reader who wants a satisfying thrill of victory.
5. City of Thieves
Author: Ian Livingstone
Illustrators: Iain McCaig (interior and British cover), Richard Corben (American cover), Martin McKenna (British reissue cover)
First Published: 1983 (original British edition), July, 1984 (American edition)
Reissued: August, 2002 (still as book #5)
ISBN: 0-14-031645-0 (original British edition), 0-440-91374-8 (American edition), 1-84046-397-X (reissued British edition)
Length: 400 sections
Number of Endings: 10 instant failures, 1 victory, plus death by
Stamina loss or bad Luck.
Plot Summary: While visiting the town of Silverton you get involved
in a quest to lift a curse by defeating the evil Zanbar Bone. Unfortunately,
in order to learn how to destroy the fiend, you must seek the advice of an
old wizard who lives in the dangerous and crime-infested Port Blacksand.
Translations: Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish, Swedish
My Thoughts:
In terms of setting and story, this is probably
the deepest book in the series thus far. There's still not a whole lot to
it, but the book's basic scenario is set up in a fairly lengthy introduction
(complete with actual dialogue!) and the setting of Port Blacksand is fairly
believable and consistent (though for a town of despicable thieves, there
seem to be an awful lot of honest, friendly people about). This decent text
is further enhanced by some of the best illustrations since the first book
in the series (though I'm not very impressed by Zanbar Bone's appearance,
especially on the covers).
The gameplay aspect of the book is also fairly strong. This is, I suspect,
the earliest "scavenger hunt" gamebook involving a quest to gather
all manner of weird thingies needed to achieve some goal (Castle of
Lost Souls, the adventure serialized in White Dwarf magazine and
later reprinted as part of the Golden Dragon series, is another
notable example). The satisfaction inherent in finding each essential item
tends to make this sort of book especially fun, and the prospect of finding
new goodies in unexplored nooks and crannies makes replaying after death
fairly tolerable. The challenge of successfully managing your money adds
further interest, and, as usual, careful mapping is essential! My biggest
complaint is the fact that the endgame segment (after you leave Port
Blacksand) is a bit too hard, with the challenging combats and guessing
games being more annoying than exciting at such a late point in the
adventure.
Of course, the limitations of the gamebook format are made obvious from time
to time, detracting from the quality of the gameplay -- as in Warlock of
Firetop Mountain, there are times where you have to head in direction X,
grab an item, then backtrack in direction Y and move on. If you head in
direction Y to begin with, you miss the crucial item and are doomed to
failure. As before, this really points out the linearity of the adventure
and serves mainly to frustrate the reader.
Speaking of frustrating the reader, I did find that the book overstays its
welcome a little bit. There is a great sense of relief at successfully
completing the Port Blacksand section of the book, and this is spoiled
somewhat by an overly difficult endgame sequence. First there's a really,
really tough fight, then there's a new trap-filled area to explore, and
finally there's a 66% chance of losing the adventure at the last possible
instant due to a choice that depends solely on luck. I don't mind challenge,
but this is simply unfair!
Although far from perfect, the book manages to overcome its flaws. The story
has a unique enough flavor to be memorable, the challenge level is high
enough to require thought but low enough to avoid being impossibly
frustrating (except during the ludicrous endgame), and the illustrations
nicely complement everything else. If you need a fix of classic Fighting
Fantasy, you really can't go too far wrong here.
Errata: The heading on the page containing sections 342 and 343
actually reads "342-243" in the two British copies of the book
that I own. The problem is corrected in the American reprint, which is
interesting, since American editions of British gamebooks usually contain
the same errors as their British counterparts.
6. Deathtrap Dungeon
Author: Ian Livingstone
Illustrators: Iain McCaig (interior and original British cover), Richard Corben (American cover), Mel Grant (British reissue cover)
First Published: 1984 (British edition), September, 1984 (American edition)
Reissued: May, 2002 (as book #3)
ISBN: 0-14-031708-2 (British edition), 0-440-91717-4 (American edition), 1-84046-388-0 (reissued British edition)
Length: 400 sections
Number of Endings: 31 instant failures, 1 victory, plus death by
Stamina loss or bad Luck.
Plot Summary: Every year, the town of Fang celebrates the Trial of
Champions, a special event in which adventurers are sent into Baron
Sukumvit's deadly, trap-filled dungeon. The one resourceful soul capable
of surviving all the way through will win a vast prize. So far, no one has
won, but there's a first time for everything, and you're determined to give
it a shot....
Translations: Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish, Swedish
My Thoughts:
After a few adventures in open spaces, this book
delves back into the dungeon. Interestingly enough, it features the exact
same author/illustrator team as the previous volume. In any case, the
dungeon presented here is quite a memorable one -- there are few Fighting
Fantasy fans who don't have a certain fondness for Baron Sukumvit's
unforgettable trap-filled creation. Despite the nostalgia, though, I found
this book a rather mixed bag.
There are quite a few good things to be found here. Probably the best thing
about the book is the way it shows the series' setting beginning to evolve
into a living world. By placing Fang near Port Blacksand, the author gives
the reader a first sense of the fact that these books take place in a common
land, and by giving frequent signs of fellow-adventurers' activities, the
book makes its dungeon seem like a more lively place than, say, Firetop
Mountain. Finally, while the explanation of the Trial of Champions is rather
hard to swallow, it's also a lot of fun, and one of the better excuses for a
maze full of random dangerous stuff that I've come across.
There are problems, though. For one thing, it really feels, from a
structural standpoint, an awful lot like a rehash of the first book in the
series (though the concluding puzzle, basically a game of Mastermind,
is rather more clever than the key-adding of the first volume). This sense
of deja vu is not the book's biggest flaw, however. The big problem is, once
again, unbelievably excessive difficulty.
I have complained in the past that the stories of most Fighting
Fantasy books tend to get lost in all the mapping and note-taking that
the player has to do in order to win them. This problem is particularly bad
here. In most of the earlier books, whenever I would roll up a Skill 12
character, I would experience a certain amount of breathtaking suspense,
since I knew I had a shot at victory, however slim. In this book, I soon
realized that there were so many instant death traps that Skill didn't
matter, and that I'd have no chance of winning until I knew the dungeon
inside and out.
Ultimately, I ended up sending dozens of adventurers to horrible fates just
to get a rough idea of what I'd have to do to emerge victorious. I wasn't
trying to win, even when I rolled Skill 12 characters; I was just mapping. I
knew I stood no chance of victory without loads of foreknowledge. This
reduced the book from an adventure to a mechanical exercise, which is a
shame. It was also rather displeasing that even after all this work, there
was no easy path available -- it's very frustrating when you have mapped
every inch of a gamebook and still can't win without a certain amount
of dice-fudging.
In the end, I'm not quite sure what to conclude about the book. It's a
classic, but it's a rather flawed one (like most of the early entries in this
series). It has some good writing and entertaining ideas, but if you play to
win, you're likely to be too busy scribbling notes to actually appreciate the
tale too much. The more I return to these books, the more I realize that the
style of early Fighting Fantasy adventures just isn't to my taste; it
will be interesting to see how I feel about the later volumes, though!
Errata: (thanks to Ed Jolley for noting these) In section 242, you
fall unconscious to the floor, but if you make a good enough roll to get to
48, you're informed that you avoid falling unconscious to the floor. Hmm.
Also an art/text inconsistency: in 164, you follow boot prints, but when
you see the person who made them in the illustration by 299, he's barefoot.
7. Island of the Lizard King
Author: Ian Livingstone
Illustrators: Iain McCaig (original British cover), Richard Corben (American cover), Martin McKenna (British reissue cover), Alan Langford (interior)
First Published: 1984 (British edition), January, 1985 (American edition)
Reissued: December, 2003 (as book #17)
ISBN: 0-14-031743-0 (British edition), 0-440-94027-3 (American edition), 1-84046-491-7 (reissued British edition)
Length: 400 sections
Number of Endings: 10 instant failures, 1 victory, plus death by
Stamina loss or bad Luck.
Plot Summary: While visiting an old friend, you discover that his
village has been attacked by reptilian kidnappers from a nearby island; you
vow to stop their foul activities....
Translations: Danish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish
My Thoughts:
This, the third Ian Livingstone book in a row, is
sort of a conclusion to a trilogy; just as Deathtrap Dungeon mentions
that you've come to Fang from Port Blacksand, so this book mentions that
you're journeying on from Fang to a new destination. Although this adventure
is often overlooked by fans of the series, it has some merit. Certainly,
it's not as innovative or important as City of Thieves, but it's a lot
more fun to play than Deathtrap Dungeon, even it doesn't have as
creative or compelling a backstory. This book also holds a rather special
place in my heart since it's one of the mere two Fighting Fantasy
adventures that I managed to complete back in the old days before I learned
that it takes hours of devotion and excessive mapping to survive most of
these things.
Now that I've examined the book more closely for review purposes, I'm not too
surprised that I won it all those years ago. It's not very hard at all,
especially when you look at it next to the viciousness of Livingstone's two
previous entries in the series. It's almost entirely linear, so there aren't
too many chances to get lost; it's nice to be able to play a gamebook without
having to stop and map things out every two seconds. It's also extremely
forgiving -- even if you miss a few items or fail a crucial test, you usually
still have a shot at victory if you're clever and a little lucky. Even the
numerous combats in the story aren't insurmountable, thanks to numerous
pieces of armor and special weapons scattered about. Perhaps in another
context I might have actually complained that the book is too easy, but at
this point in the series, I consider it a relief.
The biggest problem with the book is that it's not all that memorable. It
starts off well, with Mungo being a fairly detailed character (for this
series, at least), but once he's out of the picture (and it doesn't take
long!), it becomes a fairly blurry series of random encounters that feel like
a slightly more tropical rehash of Forest of Doom. It all leads up to
a final, large-scale battle that should be exciting but ends up feeling
merely like a missed opportunity to do something innovative. The Lizard King
himself, too, doesn't live up to his potential, especially if you face him
with sufficient foreknowledge to have an advantage over him; it almost makes
one long for another shot at facing Balthus Dire. Perhaps the author was
simply getting tired by this point; I certainly wouldn't be surprised -- he
churned out a lot of pages in just a few months. It's a shame, though, that
the miraculously non-frustrating gameplay didn't get a good accompanying
story. This isn't a bad adventure, but it could have been a great one.
8. Scorpion Swamp
Author: Steve Jackson (US)
Illustrators: Duncan Smith (interior and British cover), R. Courtney (American cover)
First Published: 1984 (British edition), March, 1985 (American edition)
ISBN: 0-14-031829-1 (British edition), 0-440-97676-6 (American edition)
Length: 400 sections
Number of Endings: 20, not counting death by Stamina loss or bad
Luck.
Plot Summary: You've acquired a magical ring which allows you to
detect evil and always identify north, so you figure it's time to make a map
of the unmappable Scorpion Swamp; of course, the patronage of a mage adds
further incentive....
Translations: French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish
My Thoughts:
It never ceases to amaze me that the first book
in the series not written by Steve Jackson or Ian Livingstone was written by
a different person also named Steve Jackson. In any case, I'm glad that the
American Steve Jackson did manage to get involved in the series, as he's a
good gamebook designer and this is one of my favorite adventures. Unlike
most books in the series, the design here is completely non-linear. You can
wander through the swamp in whatever order you want, even revisiting old
locations. This freedom of movement is made possible by the book's wonderful
mapping system -- each area is explicitly numbered and its exits clearly
defined, making it both fun and easy to create an unambiguous map of the
swamp. Things are further enlivened by the introduction of spellcasting
(though in a different form from that found in Citadel of Chaos) to
the gameplay.
The challenge level of the book isn't very high, and this has been the source
of quite a few complaints over the years. Personally, though, I think the
fact that the book provides three distinct quests to finish more than makes
up for the ease with which any single quest can be completed. The difficulty
is scalable -- while it's possible to play as safely as possible and stick
to the parameters of a given mission, there's nothing to stop someone looking
for a real challenge from trying to complete the conditions of multiple
quests at once or even to map the entire swamp inch by inch. This sort of
flexibility is a rare and wonderful thing, especially in this series, and it
makes Scorpion Swamp something special.
Although its story and writing aren't as notable as its gameplay, even in
this area, I think this book is a respectable entry in the series. The usual
Fighting Fantasy minimalism is in place, but there are plenty of odd
encounters that stick with the reader (the swamp's Masters, the three mages,
and even weird beasts like the crab grass are all worthy of note). As usual,
the text is greatly enhanced by excellent artwork, though the original
British cover is remarkably poor considering that it was done by the same
artist as the far superior interior work. Small complaints aside, it just
doesn't get much better than this, at least in the realm of plot-light
fantasy adventuring.
9. Caverns of the Snow Witch
Author: Ian Livingstone
Illustrators: Les Edwards (both British covers), R. Courtney (American cover), Gary Ward and Edward Crosby (interior)
First Published: 1984 (British edition), May, 1985 (American edition)
Reissued: April, 2003 (as book #10)
ISBN: 0-14-031830-5 (original British edition), 0-440-91126-5 (American edition), 0-84046-432-1 (reissued British edition)
Length: 400 sections
Number of Endings: 24 instant failures, 1 victory, plus death by
Stamina loss or bad Luck.
Plot Summary: A simple job involving the protection of a caravan
eventually turns into an expedition into the icy passages of the evil Snow
Witch....
Translations: Bulgarian, Danish, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish
My Thoughts:
After a bit of blessed relief, we're back into
nasty territory again. This book is Ian Livingstone at his worst: a linear
sequence of excessively difficult but not especially interesting encounters
complete with a stupid, luck-based guessing game poorly disguised as a
climactic battle. This sort of thing is growing extremely tiresome. A
character with a Skill of less than 10 simply stands no chance (despite what
the lousy lying introduction says), and since the book is a long sequence of
tough fights followed by lots of random ways to die senselessly, reaching
victory is not challenging, it's merely frustrating. Although the final few
events of the book are fairly interesting, most of the story is so weak and
dull that it does nothing to redeem the awful gameplay. We have the same
orcs and dwarves we've seen before, the most original creature in sight is
the Brain Slayer (a lame rip-off of D&D's Mind Flayer), and the Snow Witch
herself doesn't really do anything to distinguish herself as a memorable
villain.
Some of the book's problems are likely due to the fact that it is an expanded
version of an adventure from Warlock magazine. In
the original version, the reader kills the Snow Witch and it's all over. In
the book, though, that's only the halfway point, and there are lots more
irritating locations to die horribly in. Every time the book seems to be
about finished, something new, unrelated and tedious seems to crop up. Even
after the whole Snow Witch plot is over, you still have to suffer through
lots and lots of random events and obstacles featuring mostly-gratuitous
references to early entries in the series, eventually revealing this story to
be a prequel to The Forest of Doom. This adventure wasn't anything
special to begin with, and apart from a couple of nifty moments, this added
material only makes it overstay its welcome further. I suppose it could be
said that the book has more NPC interaction and a more epic scope than
previous volumes, but for these features to be significant, they'd have to be
well-executed. Since they don't manage to be all that interesting, only long
and irritating, they barely seem worth mentioning. The only real improvement
in the book over the magazine version is the new artwork, which has a quite
appealing semi-woodcut-like look to it. Interesting stuff!
I've probably said it before, but it's worth saying again. A well-designed
gamebook allows a reader to quickly retrace his or her steps up to the point
of death upon each replay or at least try out some new things along the way.
If, by the time a player has explored every possible path, he or she still
ends up dying off consistently near the beginning of the story, something is
obviously wrong, and the gamebook is clearly not going to be very much fun.
This book suffers from this problem severely, and it's an unforgiveable flaw
in my opinion. The only good that came of the whole mess was that I figured
out a way of streamlining combat resolution: roll two different-colored
pairs of dice at once and see which pair rolls higher; it's faster than
rolling one pair twice and is easier on the memory. Not especially clever, I
admit, but helpful nonetheless.... In any case, even this accelerated combat
wasn't enough to help me win -- eventually I resorted to designating
computer-RPG-inspired "save points" so that I wouldn't have to
struggle through the early stages of the book over and over. Yeah, it's
technically cheating, but my conscience is mostly clear.
10. House of Hell
11. Talisman of Death
12. Space Assassin
13. Freeway Fighter
14. Temple of Terror
15. The Rings of Kether
16. Seas of Blood
17. Appointment with F.E.A.R.
18. Rebel Planet
19. Demons of the Deep
20. Sword of the Samurai
21. Trial of Champions
22. Robot Commando
23. Masks of Mayhem
24. Creature of Havoc
25. Beneath Nightmare Castle
26. Crypt of the Sorcerer
27. Star Strider
28. Phantoms of Fear
29. Midnight Rogue
30. Chasms of Malice
31. Battleblade Warrior
32. Slaves of the Abyss
33. Sky Lord
34. Stealer of Souls
35. Daggers of Darkness
36. Armies of Death
37. Portal of Evil
38. Vault of the Vampire
39. Fangs of Fury
40. Dead of Night
41. Master of Chaos
42. Black Vein Prophecy
43. The Keep of the Lich-Lord
44. Legend of the Shadow Warriors
45. Spectral Stalkers
46. Tower of Destruction
47. The Crimson Tide
48. Moonrunner
49. Siege of Sardath
50. Return to Firetop Mountain
51. Island of the Undead
52. Night Dragon
53. Spellbreaker
54. Legend of Zagor
55. Deathmoor
56. Knights of Doom
57. Mage Hunter
58. Revenge of the Vampire
59. Curse of the Mummy
60. Bloodbones
This book was announced (and apparently completely written) but never
actually released. Don't believe everything you see on Amazon.com, either!
