A Solo Adventure
Author: Alexander Scott
Illustrators: Chris Collingwood (cover), Anthony Kerins and Jane Walmsley (interior)
First Published: 1984
ISBN: 0-14-031811-9
Length: 48 pages (pp 120-167; 161 sections)
Number of Endings: 10 (not including sections which only conditionally end in death)
Plot Summary: You are an assassin, and an attempt to abduct you leads
you into an adventure...
My Thoughts: This is a decent little adventure. The author's
decision to make the reader's character an assassin is certainly an
unexpected change of pace, and the adventure's design is quite entertaining.
There are lots of areas to explore and keys to collect, and completing the
mission is nearly impossible without making a map. Fortunately, mapping the
adventure is both easy and fun, and with a successfully-drawn map, it's
possible to win without having to take too many risks. Unfortunately, the
adventure's twist ending makes the coherence of the whole plot a little
questionable, but this doesn't detract from the gameplay in any way. What
does make the gameplay a bit of a pain, though, is the combat system. The
attacker rolls against the Attack attribute, and if a hit is scored, the
defender has a chance to cancel the damage by rolling against Defense. This
may work for group adventures, but in the solo adventure, where many Attack
and Defense attributes are in the area of 35% or so, it's just too hard to
score a hit, causing battles to drag on for far too long. Thankfully, combat
is relatively infrequent if you play cautiously...
Hint: Some attributes are definitely used a lot more than others;
keep this in mind during character creation.