#56: Knights Of Doom

KNIGHTS OF DOOM

Jonathan Green

Reviewed by Mark Lain

This book has a problem. In fact, it has two problems – Spellbreaker and Dead Of Night. If it weren’t for the brilliance of these previous two books, Knights Of Doom would qualify as the last genuinely great FF from the original series. As it stands, if you have never read either of these other two books, KoD is indeed pretty great. If you have read either (or both), then it doesn’t take a genius to notice what is lifted from where and makes KoD seem like old news, even though it is still a good book all the same.

The entire structure (make your way around a pre-defined map of your homeland, visiting various towns and being sent on side missions in each) mirrors both books. This is not a criticism as such in that FFs can be given more structure if you can trace your route on a “published” map of the area (plus you may well know your homeland anyway) and get more of an idea of where you are going and how close you are to the end, but the fact that this is set in Ruddlestone again (where Spellbreaker is set) does make it seem a bit samey. You could equally, of course, argue that this flows logically on from Spellbreaker (and you are in a different bit of Ruddlestone) and that this gives coherence to Green’s chosen part of Titan. Each to their own with this but, structurally, this one does seem a bit stale to me if you play these books in their intended (released) sequence.

A bigger problem is that the concept is so close to Dead Of Night that it’s difficult to not see this as a clone. In both books YOU are a Templar charged with saving the land from an impending invasion of nasties. In DoN the scourge was Demonic, in KoD it is the Armies of Chaos that are attacking, but the feeing/effect is much the same. The Chaos aspect is unusual for FF as Chaos is rarely incorporated other than in random one-off run-ins as latter-part challenges in pre-set dungeon scenarios. In that sense it is nice to see Chaos playing a major role in a FF book. On the other hand, this does make this book feel far too close to Warhammer material and, due to this, it does feel a little “isolated” within the FF series as a whole. That said, Green does enjoy exploiting the history of Titan as laid-out in Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World and this is one of the beauties of Green’s FFs as they really do try to link into the wider FF universe. The wars with Chaos play a big part in Titan and this FF does follow on from that episode logically, even if most gamers will probably notice the Warhammer similarity before they make the association with Titan, as the former is more obvious.

The book flows in the same logical way as DoN in that the further you progress, the greater the evidence of invasion from Chaos. You travel from North to South and, the further South you get, the more over-run with Chaotics the environment becomes. This makes good sense and follows DoN’s logical flow from fact-finding to defence to final showdown in the eye of the storm. As with DoN, you also benefit from having a horse (that, as is always the case with horses in FFs including the one in DoN, dies or bolts part-way thru), a magic sword, and some special Templar skills. Here they are just called Special Skills and, whilst not quite as enemy-focussed as in DoN (where you are very specifically a Demon-slaying specialist), they are more balanced here between Warrior and Priest skills (which you would expect from a Templar as they were as much warriors as they were holy men) and seem to be more universally practical. You can choose four from a list of nine options (five Warrior type and four Priest type are on offer) and, to ensure you balance your character in a logically Templar-esque manner, you must choose at least one of each type. The write-ups of the Warrior skills often give you a clue as to what this adventure might involve, which is a handy inclusion: Battle Tactics makes you better at influencing and commanding armies (and you need to build up a decent-sized and strong force for the final section), Ride gives you the ability to guide a horse through tough terrain and also allows you to ride replacement mounts (a clue that you are probably going to unsurprisingly lose your horse at some point), Target and Weapon give you acuter fighting skills and/or accuracy (Weapon also allows you to carry and use a second weapon which is handy as you will almost certainly lose a weapon as the story progresses), and Tracking is a throwback to American Indian stereotypes. The Priest Special Skills are mostly lifted straight from DoN and serve the same purposes as those found in DoN – Arcane Lore is a variation of Speak Demon, Banish Spirit is literally Banish Undead, Commune is a more advanced version of Meditate that allows you to detect “vibrations” from the spirit world, whilst Holy Strike is the only new one here where you have the ability to fire a holy blast at your enemies (making fighting the Undead pretty easy for once.) The inclusion of these Skills adds much to the feeling of your character being highly trained and, as with DoN, works very well in the context and feel of this book, plus, again, there is no correct combination and Luck rolls can often do just as well to get you through Skill-based situations.

The inevitable inclusion of extra attributes that later FFs almost always seem to have is in evidence two-fold here with Honour being effectively the opposite of Evil in DoN whilst the always problematic Time tracks your progress compared to how much of Ruddlestone the Chaos armies have managed to take. I am always sceptical when Time is involved, as this does often restrict you to a pretty narrow true path and gives little allowance for digression or exploration. OK, I accept that thwarting a Chaos invasion is something of a race against time, but part of the fun of FF is in exploring. Given the number of side missions that are offered to you as this book progresses, it will take many replays to a) beat the Time trap, and b) actually find the extremely narrow true path. Annoyingly, the Time and Honour attributes seem to work against each other as the only way to build up the required number of Honour points you need for the Honour checkpoints is to help the locals and undertake side missions, but these side missions take ages and eat up vital time making passing the Time checkpoints all the harder.

The main criticism of Spellbreaker (Green’s first published FF) is the incredibly low percentage chance of actually completing it due to the sheer number of items you need and that is very much in evidence again here, with a shopping list that Ian Livingstone would be proud of. There are so many essential items that it is very easy to lose this book early on without even realising it and multiple replaying is essential to coming anywhere close to finding the true path as it is so extremely linear. It has also been suggested that the combats in Green’s books are unusually tough and no FF book comes tougher in this sense than KoD due to the sheer amount of combat that is involved. Add to that the fact that every other combat has adjusters and this really does feel relentlessly weighted against you encounter-wise. There is a slight gesture to fairness at the start of the book when you can plunder your starting castle’s armoury for special weapons that do extra damage etc, plus you can collect items along the way that will reduce opponents’ Attack Strengths and fighting the Undead is comparatively easy, but that does not hide the fact that I’ve never seen so many modifiers in use in a FF book and that some combats are just insanely difficult:

• ·         Cockatrice Sk7 St7 – deceptively easy as, every time it wins an Attack Round, you roll one die due to its poisonous breath. Roll 3, 4, or 5 and lose 1, 2 or 3 Skill, roll a 6 and you die
• ·         Chaos Knight Champion Sk12 St12 – if you don’t have Weapon (Lance) Special Skill you start off with AS -1, plus not having Ride is another AS -1. If it wins 2 Attack Rounds (highly likely with a Skill of 12 and your potentially only having a maximum Skill here of 10) you are unhorsed and lose 4 Stamina, followed by fighting with a further AS -2. In other words, if your Skill is only 7, you are potentially down to 3 Skill here!
• ·         Four Chaos Centaurs Sk10/9/10/9 St9/10/10/11 – if you don’t have Ride, again you have AS -2. If a Centaur hits you, you roll one die and take -3 Stamina damage on an odd number roll. If you hit a Centaur, again, you roll one die and an odd number means you only inflict -1 Stamina of damage to it
• ·         Hill Giant Sk9 St11 – roll one die every time it wins an Attack Round. If you roll a 5 you lose 3 Stamina. Roll a 6 and you are knocked over, taking 1 Attack Round to get back up which gives the Giant a free hit on you
• ·         Ogre Overseer Sk9 St10 – roll one die every time it wins an Attack Round. Roll a 6 and it steals your weapon, causing you to fight on with AS -3
• ·         Beast Man Champion Sk12 St14 – does -3 Stamina damage every time it hits you (again, likely to be quite often!)
• ·         Belgaroth Sk12 St17 – the final baddie. His armour means you only ever do him -1 Stamina damage, but he does you -3 Stamina and -1 Honour. If your Honour drops to zero, you have gone over to the dark side (but at least this tough battle is justified as he’s the big boss)
• ·         Beast Man Shaman Sk8 St7 – if he wins the first Attack Round you lose 5 Stamina
• ·         Chaos Warrior Sk10 St9 – does you -3 Stamina damage and you fight with AS -1 due to being on a battlement. If it ever gets AS 22 (ie it rolls a 12) you fall off and die
• ·         Knight of the Flame Sk12 St12 – does you -3 Stamina damage
• ·         Cailleach Sk12 St12 – Test your Skill before every Attack Round, fail and you are transfixed with fear allowing it to automatically win that round
• ·         Iron Golem Sk10 St16 – you only ever inflict -1 Stamina damage on it, but it always does you -3 Stamina damage. If you roll a double you have smashed your sword and then have to fight with AS -3. If it wins two consecutive Attack Rounds it throws you against a wall causing you one die of damage

The sheer number and difficulty of many of the combats makes winning this book with low starting attributes all but impossible and you will need above average scores in all of Skill, Stamina and Luck to stand any chance in general, as you are also faced with numerous Skill and Luck tests throughout the book as well, especially near the end, with many of these resulting in death if you fail them.

As this book is so incredibly difficult due to the combination of narrow true path, many items being needed, Honour vs Time, and a seemingly never-ending series of (often very tough) combats, you could be forgiven for thinking that there is no enjoyment to be had in playing it but, just like Spellbreaker before it, KoD is so rich in period atmosphere and historically detailed cameos that it makes for a very interesting gamebook. Along the way you can find yourself being accosted by what is basically Robin Hood and his Merry Men, get involved in a Wicker Man rescue attempt, visit a group of tumuli on a misty hill, kill various things that are tormenting the locals including a Necromage (another near-copy of a side mission in Dead Of Night) and the aforementioned nightmares that are the Cockatrice and the Cailleach, go on a boar hunt from Cleeve Manor (that turns out to lead to an unexpected plot twist much later in the book), and help a Dwarf defend his house from an all-night Hellhound attack (again, pretty much a copy of an incident in DoN.) All these (as unoriginal as some of them are) add a lot of fun and rich detail to the land of Ruddlestone (which was already richly presented in Spellbreaker so this adds even more) and really makes you feel involved in the plot. There is even an ongoing episode where a flying assassin’s dagger keeps bothering you at night, plus accidentally summoning the Demonic Slayer is a lighter moment in what is, overall, a very dark and serious book. There are a few other humorous aspects (if you spot them) where inns are called the Wild Goose and the Red Herring but you could miss these given that you are probably desperately trying to stay alive. It is also quite fun to feel that you are also up against it with the ignorant attitude of the locals, most of whom do not like the Templar Order, and you spend a lot of the earlier parts of the book trying to avoid being run out of town or being lynched by wandering bigots.

With all this on offer, this book is very involving and detailed, but (astounding level of difficulty aside) it does suffer from a Jonathan Green-ism that I have never particularly liked, namely the codeword idea. Spellbreaker did not include this, but from KoD onwards, reversed codewords (eg: reggad which causes the assassin’s dagger to keep harassing you) would play a large part in how the plots of his books unfold. For me this feature is very transparent and obvious and does not sit well with his atmospherically very successful and well-written books (barring, maybe, Curse Of The Mummy, which is easily his weakest effort.) Indeed, in many ways, Green’s FFs read better as novels (atmosphere, setting, interesting events, historical elements, consistent flow, etc) than they do as games (too difficult, very linear, out-of-place rubbish codeword concepts, etc.)

Interestingly, you are not only required to make your way to the final showdown alive and furnished with lots of items but you also need to solve (often very hard) puzzles to collect clues to getting into the final sections (the mathematical cheat-proofing that I always like to see in FFs is pleasingly present here) and amass groups of allies who will join you at the end and sacrifice themselves as part of a makeshift army you need to assemble to have any chance of getting through the final part. The climactic battle(s) make the rest of the book seem comparatively easy and there is a real feeling that a titanic showdown against Chaos is taking place. Green likes set-pieces (his many side missions and in-village cameos evidence this) and this final part of the book is exciting, intimidating and you really do feel doomed (which you probably are, in the unlikely event you have even got this far!)

Chaos imagery needs to be spikey and spindley and that is definitely the theme of the art throughout this book. Tony Hough’s HR Gyger influences come through again in his work here (like they do on the cover of #52 Night Dragon) and his Chaos images really do capture the feeling of terror that you are supposed to be feeling. Some of his human images are a little cartoony, but they do contrast well with the nasty appearance of the enemy of the piece. Hough also drew the cover and his art does seem to work better in colour. KoD’s cover is certainly not up to the standard of his Night Dragon cover work, but the limited pallet (purples and reds) does give a night-time feel and there is a strange otherworldliness to it that is appealing.

This is a hard book to summarise. If played with no previous knowledge of Dead Of Night it would seem exceptionally good, if exceptionally hard. As it stands, it is not original enough to be classed as an above-average book, but it has so much material/content depth and is very long and epic-feeling that it certainly holds up well, especially as it came so late in the original series. It is a good effort, but is just too difficult to be considered as essential. Play it and enjoy it for its atmosphere and the obvious effort that has gone into it, but don’t expect to be able to beat it – even the online solutions are only suggested approaches and are dependent on being very lucky with dice rolling! Incidentally, this is the only one of Jonathan Green’s FFs that hasn’t been re-issued (or published full stop) by Wizard Books meaning that collectors routinely pay £20+ for decent condition copies.

#40: Dead Of Night

DEAD OF NIGHT

Jim Bambra and Stephen Hand

Reviewed by Mark Lain

All-out Horror FFs are few and far between. The only ones that could really be said to qualify as Horror as opposed to Fantasy (or Sci-Fi, of course) are #10 House Of Hell, #38 Vault Of The Vampire (and its bug-riddled sequel #58 Revenge Of The Vampire), and this book, number 40 in the original series.

This book is easy to accidentally overlook for two reasons: 1) The title is hardly inspiring and doesn’t have the usual luridness and sense of inevitable doom that many FF books’ titles have; 2) The cover picture is pretty insipid and gives no indication at all of what lies within. And these two factors are a great shame as otherwise, this is a great effort and really injects some much-needed design originality and energy into the series after the fairly routine nature of many of the books that appeared in the 30s part of the series.

Unusually for FF, the plot here is largely personal. Yes, you also have a secondary residual task of saving the world (for a change), but your primary driver is to rescue your parents from the Demon Lord Myurr with whom you have had a long-running feud. He has now abducted your parents and wants to use them as the sacrifice in his demonic ritual to unleash himself and his nasty hordes on the land and generally ruin everything for everyone, and you have to travel from the South of Gallantaria to the North, passing through areas that show increased evidence of demonic infestation, to ultimately find Myurr’s stronghold and try to save your parents/the world before it’s too late. Even more unusually, YOU even have a name (or more of a title really: Demon-Slayer.) Yet more unusually, the plot works really well, flows logically and all makes sense. YOU are a specialist demon-hunting Templar which means you have quite a starting arsenal of kit and tricks to help you on your way, including a horse (that either runs off or dies at the half-way point depending on which route you take), holy water, a cross (all very logically Templar-esque pieces of equipment), and a sword called Nightbane. All this stuff proves variously useful or useless (depending on the situation you are in) and adds layers of realism and depth to your character as you try to decide what to use and when. Most importantly (in terms of characterisation) is that you have special demon-hunter-type Talents: Banish Undead, Dark Veil, Heal, Holy Circle, Meditation, Sense Demon, and Speak Demon. You get a choice of three (and, in a couple of neat later plot twists, you can gain a fourth one or even lose one and be reduced to only two Talents) that can be used as substitutes for combats, help you gain clues as to what is on the cards, ingratiate you with the locals (normally in return for goods and services like Gold Pieces or free food/board), or just generally give you an option other than brute force by which to progress. I really like to see this idea used in FF books and it makes those books that feature the concept of using character-type-specific special abilities stand out (some other excellent examples of special skill deployment to enhance gameplay are #20 Sword Of The Samurai and #56 Knights Of Doom.) It is very important that, in cases where a ”pick from a list of skills” option is offered, there is not an optimum combination (which is a problem with the use of this feature in #29 Midnight Rogue where you are screwed if you don’t have particular skills) – this adds re-playability (to see what happens if you have other Talents) and removes the problem of losing before you’ve even started simply by making a bad choice of useful or interesting-sounding abilities that actually turn out to be hopeless. In Dead Of Night, there is no perfect combination of Talents – each is handy or otherwise in certain scenarios, but there is always an alternative option should you not have a given talent or it doesn’t seem right to use it and there are some occasions where using the wrong one is bad news, especially Meditate, although common sense will often tell you whether using a Talent seems sensible and adds to your feeing the character, as a trained demon-hunter would surely know how to use his/her own talents to best effect.

Comments have been made by some reviewers that the plot just seems to be a series of unconnected cameos, but that is surely not the case. In the South people are growing concerned due to rumours of demon infestation, but the further North you go the worse it becomes. The Midlands are in the midst of fending off an ongoing demon attack, and the North itself is already lost to the demons. This makes perfect sense and really makes you feel that you are gradually entering the eye of the storm. Admittedly, each location you visit involves a cameo of sorts, but each is part of the overall plot concept and it would hardly be much of an adventure if nothing happened anywhere you went. Even the weather gets worse the further North you go and it really does start to feel oppressive as you make your way through the book, with sudden heavy rainfall, deep mud to wade through, and increased attacks from increasingly powerful types of demon. The Northern sections themselves are the highlights of the book. There is a plague town (Astonbury) that adds conceptual atmosphere but is totally unreachable, but the final third or so of the book is where the imaginativeness and superbly-handled atmosphere really kick in hard, especially in the towns of Axmoor (totally swallowed-up by a living demonic unpleasantness called a Land Blight) and Dunningham (protected by an illusion and watched-over by the eye thing from Mordor.) The Axmoor episode is one of the most warped concepts in any FF ever, mixing steampunk ideas with body horror and something out of a Jeunet-Caro movie. It is also brilliant in its execution. When you first arrive in Axmoor you are offered two ways into the “thing” you are faced with – either through the “door” or, hilariously, via a hole in the ground that turns out to be its arse (I kid you not.) If you choose the arse route it is possible to die from fart asphyxiation (although the book phrases it more subtly) and eventually either route results in travelling through the creature’s innards including a prison containing the captured locals who will fuel the Land Blight and a heart room where you need to turn the correct dial to cut its heart’s blood supply off and kill it. This is a key moment in the book which rewards you very well. The Dunningham section starts with you being “helped” by a character who gives you conflicting information from which you need to extract the truth. There is the option to play dress-up and infiltrate an Orc base, but the main task here (and the second key event) is to put out the deadly Mordor eye that looks out from a bell-tower. Either from (or on the way to) Axmoor you can also visit the village of Stamford which is in the thick of a major demon infestation. Help the local family to defend themselves and you are, again, rewarded richly. This adds even more plot logic and depth as you can see more of the demon scourge taking hold, but there is also a glitch here (even if it is one that can be exploited to your advantage) as it is possible to go between Axmoor and Stamford an infinite number of times, gain hundreds of Skill and Luck points, and render yourself immortal ready for the final really tough showdown. Not a problem if you are a cheat (or realise that you’ve already been there once), but it does detract from the challenge somewhat.

The subject of difficulty level is always a thorny one in FF books. More often than not the really good ones are extremely hard to complete or some that have good design turn out to be too easy. Dead Of Night is not really all that difficult in real terms, but it is also far from simple as Myurr's tricks and traps are everywhere. The combats are not too tough and combat can be used very sparingly by substituting battles for use of your Talents (you are a holy man of sorts, after all.) There is one seemingly impossible combat with a group of Moon Demons (Sk 11 St 24) but circumstances intervene after a couple of attack rounds and you don’t have to see this one out to its conclusion. Double-figured stats are used very sparingly and you can count on one hand the number of extra tough foes you have to fight and they are all in very key moments of the book so seem to suit the plot when they appear. It is more in the use of Talents and the making of certain bad decisions that the tougher aspects of this book show through. You have an Evil stat which reflects any deeds you do that might be more akin to a Demon than a Templar. It starts at zero and only increases on rare occasions so the feeling that some FF books give of inevitable failure due to a potentially lethal stat increasing every other paragraph is not present and will only ever increase if you use Talents that include a “demonic” act (Dark Veil, especially) or if you walk away from locals in obvious peril and leave them to die (ie mostly by not helping them to defend themselves in some way.) At critical points (again, used very sparingly) you are asked to Test Your Evil which works in reverse to how Skill or Luck tests work – ie you want to roll OVER your Evil score, so the lower the Evil the better. Fail the test and you will normally be seduced by the dark side. This adds an element that the player can really dread happening and that seems all the more important on the rare occasions that it is used. In the more traditional sense of FF difficulty, the number of instant deaths is very low (only 25) and they all seem very logical and fair when they happen (eg: straying too far into an obviously dangerous quagmire or trying to ignore the advice not to go to the plague village), plus they are described in such juicy and graphic detail that it is worth going the wrong way just to find out how you die next! There is nothing obviously arbitrary anywhere in this book and it is very well designed and all the more enjoyable to play for this.

There are some moments where this book is exceptionally generous in how it rewards you for passing key plot tests. Notwithstanding the accidental Axmoor/Stamford cheat, it is also possible to gain 4 Luck points for defeating a Necromancer, plus Stamina bonuses can be found in many places (normally for doing the things that you’d gain Evil points for not doing, so there’s a double-incentive to properly play as a Templar and “be” your character.) There are also some very clever twists along the way, in particular a stage where, by using the secret paragraph reference you can have discovered earlier in the book, it turns out that it was a trap and that you have walked straight into it by accessing the hidden section. You do not see this in gamebooks very often and it is a refreshing change to the usual FF approach where you cannot win without finding whatever secret references you need to reach – it is almost as if the writers are trying to deconstruct a standard (and by book #40, pretty tired) FF concept here.

In terms of design, we have already covered the logical flow and overall well-planned plotting of this book (especially well executed as it was written by two people) and almost all of what is included is original (except for the blatant Lord Of The Rings rip-off in Dunningham), interesting, and well-paced to give a sense of urgency to your mission. Once you reach Axmoor and then Dunningham it becomes apparent that the writers are not just aiming for atmosphere and coherence of theme, but that they also want to really make this book stand out as highly original in terms of what it throws at you. As the book progresses, it moves from voyage of discovery (in the South), through survivalism (the middle part in the rain when you lose your horse, then come up against evidence of demons quickly taking over), then into very dark horror territory (the North.) Having survived the Land Blight and the Mordor eye thing, the book switches into another even darker mode entirely with a series of twisted puzzles for you to make your way through. First comes a house that keeps teleporting you back to its front door if you take a wrong turn, followed by a trial/test involving a Sorcerer who has been duped by Myurr into thinking his intentions are all for the good. Successfully convince him otherwise and he helps you, fail to put him right and he makes you undertake a very tough (in fact, it’s the hardest part of the book by far, but it is avoidable) test involving negotiating a MC Escher stair network. Following this comes a manic almost Vincent Price-esque moment where you have to deal with an insane (and evil) musical instrument called (and I love this name!) a Demonic Pandemonium. Next comes a maze of doorways that is confusing but doesn’t go on so long as to get irritating (like The Maze Of Zagor does in The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain) and then an encounter where you must fight Myurr’s final guard using combat only. This is quite interesting as it forces you to not always avoid combats by relying on your talents and reminds us that this is still FF. Finally comes the very climactic and elaborate showdown with Myurr himself. Being the final baddie he is very strong (Sk 14 St 25) but this is one of the best designed and most involved final combats in any FF book and easily equals the superb wizard battle at the end of The Citadel Of Chaos. You have various options in each attack round (including traditionally hitting him with a weapon, if you have the correct magical one, that is) and can substitute fighting for throwing holy water at him or trying to find his Achilles’ Heel by smashing up the objects in his chamber. It’s tough, but it is also the final showdown so it needs to be tough, given the mess he’s managed to make of Gallantaria, and demonstrates how powerful an adversary he really is. With the number of stat bonuses you can have gained (even without going backwards and forwards between Axmoor and Stamford) and the fact that combats can often be avoided by using your Talents, this combat is less unwinnable than it may initially seem and there is a lot to be said for the various choices/options you have during this battle.

The book as a whole has a very dark Horror tone to it and this comes through very well in the writing. In addition to this, the art by the always brilliant Martin McKenna emphasizes the atmosphere even more and the overall “feel” of this book comes across particularly effectively. The cover, on the other hand, shares little in terms of theme to the contents but, with a book this good, the cover could just as easily have been a blank white page. In some ways, the brilliance of the book itself is a welcome surprise and the cover could even have been deliberately misleading!

All things considered, bar the jarring Lord Of The Rings steal (which doesn’t fit in well with the otherwise original and imaginative material presented here), and the uninspiring cover, this is a brilliant entry into the series and the all-out dark horror genre approach works very well. This book and #38 Vault Of The Vampire were the beginning of a return to form that would be apparent in many of the FF books released going forwards. This is one of the as-yet unre-released books from the original series that desperately needs to be re-published.

#33: Sky Lord

SKY LORD

Martin Allen

Reviewed by Mark Lain

That this book would be the last Sci-Fi FF is no great surprise. That it was ever even remotely considered worthy of being released in the FF series is rather harder to believe as this is easily the worst FF book of all time.

The one great failing of this book is that it is almost agonisingly inane and it tries to pass itself off as a decent entry, but after a few paragraphs you find yourself becoming frustrated with its total lack of obvious purpose. Is this supposed to be an ironic book and, if so, why try to play it straight (or is that the irony)? If it is meant to be a satire, then make it come across that way as is the case with the “lighter” Sci-Fi FFs such as Appointment With FEAR or Star Strider. If this book was ever intended to be taken seriously then Martin Allen is frankly deluded – did he really believe this book was good or was this an intentional coup de grace for FF Sci-Fi? I’ve got this image in my head of the FF production team trying to find a submission that is so excruciatingly bad that everyone will be grateful never to see another Sc-Fi FF again and they certainly excelled themselves with this one! God forbid that anything worse ever got put forward...

Some FFs are criticised and categorised as “bad books” due to their excessive ease or (more often) unfairly hard difficulty levels. Sky Lord is inconsistent with this to the point of seeming schizophrenic, swinging from seemingly impossible problems that there should be no way out of (eg: the several times you can crash-land your ship) that you suddenly survive, through to situations that (as far as you can tell) seem to be going well but suddenly end in a one-sentence instant death section (of which there are loads the further you get into the book.) For example, it seems that writing your ship off by hitting the surface of a planet just leaves you with a few bruises and you can step away from the incident and brush yourself off. However, crash into another ship and you are vaporised. You might think that trashing your only means of space transport is bad news, but a run-in with someone who can conveniently reverse time soon sorts that problem out. A little bit of wacky disbelief suspension is all well and good, but this is just the first of a catalogue of ridiculous situations that this book presents. The only way to really appreciate this problem is to play it, but, amongst other daft episodes, the reader can be presented with:

• ·         A character called Woderwick who is actually called “Roderick”, but the NPC can’t pronounce it (yawn, we’ve all seen The Life Of Brian, which is actually funny, incidentally) – oh, and he has a talking cat too
• ·         Confused (and borderline psychotic) robots called Bric and Brac (the sort of thing you find in kids’ programmes)
• ·         An in-flight assault on your ship from a sort of Space Moron called (oh so wittily) a Redneck (it wears a red scarf around its neck – in fact, it’s the thing on the cover)
• ·         A game very similar to the Vortex in The Adventure Game where you have to trace the safe route across a grid (this also happens in the only very slightly less abysmal Space Assassin) using a very vague clue to help you
• ·         A truly baffling series of choices involving pitch and yaw of your ship during encounters with large ships that is nothing more than pure guess-work and will more often than not end up killing you
• ·         A stop-off at a space station that has been infested with orange gelatinous blobs that are running riot and causing mayhem – although they mostly chase you around a bit, leading to another arbitrary and incomprehensible series of choices that aren’t really choices as you have no idea what it is you are electing to do (and will more often than not end up killing you – see above!)
• ·         A sort of surrealist final world with different “Domes” in it that are so random that they have no obvious association with each other, save for having been presumably designed by an architect under the influence of very strong hallucinogens

...And the effects of very strong hallucinogens are one of the over-riding feelings that this book gives you. It is easily the trippiest of all the FFs (far unintentionally weirder than the actually very pretentious and intentionally bizarre Black Vein Prophecy) and reading it really is an indescribable experience as it hits you with silly scenario after silly scenario, intermingled with a huge number of arbitrary ways to die.

We’ve already briefly mentioned the inconsistent difficulty level and this is no more apparent than in the two different styles of combat that the rules cater for (and the rules were not very well planned as the first combat you are likely to get into is of a third type that the book “guides” you through when it needs to.) Standard (ie traditional FF –style) one-on-one combat is unusually easy with most opponents being so weak as to present no challenge at all (unless your stats are very bad) – even the supposedly highly trained killing machines called Prefectas are useless and have low stats. The special addition of small craft combat is a whole other ball game. You have a Rating score which is your combat prowess from 1 to 6. In a combat, whoever has the higher rating automatically attacks first. This does add a sense of realism when faced with experienced opponents and your Rating even goes up by 1 point every time you win one against something with a higher Rating than yours so this book actually includes Experience Points, which ought to be a good thing. Sadly, this is ruined by the fact that many of your opponents have higher Ratings than you, putting you at a regular disadvantage, plus you cannot ever realistically have a Rating above 6. Added to this is the Lasers stat. You roll one die and need to roll under your Lasers which are between 1 and 6 again. All well and good, until you encounter either of the two foes with Lasers of 5 (not likely to miss) or the one with a Lasers score of 6 who cannot ever miss. The small craft combat is so weighted against you that you are unlikely to survive more than one or two skirmishes. The third combat type you can find yourself in is that against big ships which, as noted above, involves a series of meaningless choices where you are highly likely to either collide and die or set some sort of thermonuclear device off by accident and, er, die. The accidental deaths are made all the more likely as the names of the weapons you are offered the chance to use are also fairly confusing so you might as well just toss a coin to decide what to do next as you are otherwise pretty clueless. Other than combats, almost every other element of challenge is similarly unbalanced throughout. There are two “plot the safe route across the grid” games that are mostly just guesswork and luck rather than a challenge of any kind – they do involve looking at printed grids in the front cover, but these don’t really aid you at all and are even missing completely from the later printings which makes no difference to whether you make it through them or not. There are several situations where doing the most counter-intuitive thing turns out to be the correct option (is this surrealism or just more stupidity?) such as several episodes where NPCs ask for your help or offer you their help with the outcome normally being bad news for you. Unfortunately, you need to go along with most of them to find the true path so the element of your using your common sense and problem-solving skills is totally absent which is very annoying and it seems that the stupider the decision you make, the better it turns out to be.

If you can (be bothered to) wend your way through all the ridiculous stages of this book, the end is actually quite good (or the surprise twist is, anyway), even if the final foe (the last living Prefecta) is as pathetically weak as every other Skill/Stamina-based combat in this book. This brings us to the actual plot itself. YOU are a four-armed space warrior thing called Jang Mistral (not often you have a name in FF, probably to avoid you feeling distanced from being YOU) who is sent on an assassination mission (typical FF fare there then) to kill the space fugitive called L’Bastin who jumped planet after getting indicted on your homeworld for getting various of his colleagues/underlings fired, replacing them with exact clones, and then embezzling their wages. He has now holed himself up on a planet he’s built and defends himself with his crack troops called Prefectas (half-dog creatures that are also known rather un-funnily as “Yappies”.) The opening intro is long but vivid and is by far the best part of the book. The background does motivate you to go on your mission (the ones that involve killing off loonies and getting glory in return are always quite satisfying) and it is well written in what seems to be a semi-humorous style. Sadly, from paragraph 1 onwards, the rest of the book is total drivel. Yes, the plot concept makes sense, but the deranged way that everything then unfolds in front of you just defies any description at all. This is way beyond anything that disbelief suspension can allow for! FF is supposed to feel real, this just feels stupid.

The indescribably bad structure and design of this book does not just encompass unbalanced combats, dramatic swings in difficulty level, and desperately puerile episodes, but also the NPCs and encounters are named in such a way that you cannot see them as anything other than a very bad joke and there is certainly no feeling of foreboding created when you meet any of them. A select list of stupid and/or crappy encounter names includes NPCs with names like Captain Big-Ears, Fog Farkin, Ruthless Rod, and Ludo Kludwig, alongside general encounters with naming conventions including Crafty Corporal, Pugnacious Private, Snappy Sergeant, Fat Spider (this actually is a spider, by the way), Clumsy Mutant, Drooling Mutant, Big Hulk, Even Bigger Hulk, Foppish Dignitary, and something called a Gobblepotamus.

A frequent problem with Sc-Fi FFs is the lack of much to collect and that is similarly the case here. You can pick up a few bits and pieces along the way (and some are essential to success), but the bulk of the item-finding happens early on where you are presented with a series of lists to pick two things from each time. These listed items quickly get used, though, so you are mostly just left counting your 10 Provision Tablets (this particular future’s development of Provisions that each restores 4 Stamina so they have not progressed in the strength-restoring sense at all) and the 10 Credits you start the game with. The 10 Credits make it seem like there might be some astute purchases or trading to do along the way. Unsurprisingly (for a book that is such a mess) this is not the case and you only get two occasions where you need Credits at all.

The way this book is written should be its saviour, but contributes hugely to its downfall. The initial tongue-in-cheek feel that the intro gives is not maintained beyond the start and the rest of the book swings between being either smug (in a knowingly-surreal way) or the work of someone who really is doing their damnedest to destroy their own book in that it never seems to know what tone it is aiming for or whether this is all-out farce or something else. The sad thing is that this is not at all badly written (barring the very off-hand one-liner instant deaths), it’s just the material is so bad that the lack of an obvious register is made all the more apparent. Whilst the prose and descriptions work in the strictest sense of the two words (but certainly not in quality of material), any moments of dialogue are risible, especially with robots that call you “mate” and that always seem to have gone haywire. 

The artwork in Sci-Fi FFs is almost always panned, but the art here is probably the book’s best feature. I’m not saying the art is necessarily good as such, it’s just not as bad as the actual book, even though some of it is from a Third Party perspective where you can see your ship taking off and the like which does remove the element of the pictures being what you are seeing. The very bright yellow cover really appeals to me as it is very different to the often dark or menacing FF covers. It’s a shame the contents are so bad.

Sci-Fi FFs are often also very linear and that is definitely the case with Sky Lord. The true path (ie the one that avoids the numerous instant deaths) will take several attempts to find, assuming you can face replaying this book. Given the relative impossibility of the ship-based combats, it’s very likely that you will quickly find yourself cheating should you be curious or masochistic enough to find out what happens in the rest of the book.

If you want to experience what the sound of the bottom of the FF barrel being scraped is like, then play this just for curiosity’s sake as I guarantee that the only way to properly understand how diabolical this book is is to read it. If you want to play a better FF, just select any other one ever released!

The Citadel Of Chaos (CBM64)

THE CITADEL OF CHAOS

Darryl J Mattocks & Simon J Ball

Reviewed by Mark Lain

After the almost totally unrelated nature of The Puffin Personal Computer Collection’s first FF release (TWOFM), the designers of the second conversion produced something so faithful to the original that you would expect it to be pretty damn good. The book’s strengths lay in its urgency, imagery, relative (and logical) brevity, and the novelty (at the time) inclusion of magic to give variety to your character and how to handle him or her. The big frustration for anyone who has ever played the computer version is that it takes a winning formula, changes basically nothing, yet the presentation is so turgid and cack-handed that the brilliance of the source material is all but lost.

From what I can establish, very few people actually bought this for the Commodore 64 (or if they did, they binned them in disgust, possibly?) as original cassette copies seem to be by far the least commonly seen of all the FF computer games on eBay or Amazon and even pictures are few and far between. I used to own a CBM64 cassette in my general FF memorabilia collection, but the Spectrum version seems to not exist. The problem of playing this now is worsened by the fact that emulator ROMs of this are also difficult to find. The generally pretty exhaustive World Of Spectrum states it as Missing In Action and it was certainly advertised for Spectrum but all evidence suggests that this conversion only ever materialised for CBM64. After extensive searching, I eventually found a working d64 file for the CBM64 version, but there is no doubt that this one is tough to track down. Sadly, it is really not worth the time and effort to find it.

On loading the game up, the first thing you are struck by is the screechy and intrusive music that plays relentlessly throughout the game, sometimes creating completely the wrong impression of what’s going on. There is a particularly annoying sound (similar to the one associated with Wile E Coyote falling into ravines) that makes you think something might be going wrong but generally just seems to be a recurring part of the soundtrack. In places, the “music” inexplicably ends and then starts back up again when you least expect (or want) it to and it is not long before your ears are close to bleeding. If the stupid white noise doesn’t give you a headache after a few minutes of playing, the game’s other big programming failings probably will.

The main adventure sheet/combat screens are in garish colours, with the images of what you are fighting being in very bold greens, reds, purples, etc that look like a child has gone berserk with colouring pens and ruined your copy of the book’s art pages! The text screen is less stroke-inducing, but your eyes will soon tire of a sky blue background with a white panel positioned centre-screen that has constantly scrolling gothic text appearing on it to the extent that, when you turn away or the screen changes, the image is burned into your corneas for a few seconds as if you have left the same image on the screen of a plasma TV for too long.

The biggest problem by far with this version is that it is excruciatingly slow and quickly becomes frustrating. It takes an age just to create your character. The dice rolling animations are admittedly pretty quick which means you get your four stats together fairly efficiently, but the process of choosing spells is torture. You have to wade through several screens of the already mentioned scrolling text on white panel on sky blue background, each listing three spells per screen. You select a spell by pressing a corresponding number. Unfortunately, after screen one, the spell numbers carry on increasing (eg 4 thru 6 on screen two), but the selection buttons switch back to 1 thru 3 making things very confusing until you get used to it. The spells are exactly those from the book, but this time you get no explanation or even slight indication as to what they do so, unless you have prior experience of the book, you are left to draw your own conclusions about their purpose. There is a nice added touch where the spells have three-letter codes that you need to know to be able to use them (lifted from Sorcery! presumably), but this doesn’t really help you if you don’t know what it is you are trying to achieve by casting any of them.

Once your character is created (and you can give him or her a name this time, not that it makes much of a difference to anything), you are then thrown into a relentless (and very slow) cycle of scrolling text/white panel/blue background screens with scatterings of the adventure sheet or the very similar combat screens thrown in where appropriate. There are many points where it seems that the game has crashed (especially if the music has done you a favour and briefly stopped for a moment), only for it to come back to life and move on. This is particularly noticeable after combats where there is a long pause before your adventure sheet logs any items etc, followed by a longer pause before the next text screen appears. Due to the awkward and sluggish way this game runs, all the snappiness and momentum that is present in the book version is totally absent here and even the opening coda of getting into the courtyard and then into the tower itself seems to go on for an age.

Similarly, the lack of split-screen between words and art to complement and visualise the text (as would appear in the computer adaptations of Seas Of Blood, Rebel Planet and Temple Of Terror) that had made some of the best early text adventures such as The Hobbit or Lord Of The Rings work so well, makes this seem like a very alien experience. Russ Nicholson’s art in the book presented Steve Jackson’s setting perfectly with atmosphere to spare. Ridiculously brightly coloured text screens do not have the same effect and this really does go to show how well matched the text and images in the book really were. Any sense of dark mystery (in the early stages) and/or lavish decadence (in the latter sections) that should be felt are not likely to be and the whole way this is presented is botched in the extreme. There is a perfunctory nod to imagery that you only ever get if you engage in combat, whereby your foes appear in a small box centre screen but, as noted above, these are so appallingly rendered that, if you can even make anything out, you are still none the wiser about what the thing you are trying to kill looks like. No feeling of terror is given either by seeing what you are up against or by reading its description, given that the text takes forever to work its way onto the screen. Even the opening title screen is pixelly, but it is the only evidence of any attempt to set the scene, so we have to be thankful for that at least.

Magic is handled in what could have been a manner to rival the exemplary approach used in the Sorcery! books where you are placed into character by having to learn codes to allow you to use spells. This is an actual departure from the original book and is welcome in the sense that we get some slight variety, but you are never given any options of which spells to use. If you are able to use a spell, you are asked to key in the code of the one you want to try, almost always with the outcome that the spell you chose has no effect. I am in two minds about this. On the one hand, if you are the Grand Wizard of Yore’s star pupil you will probably know a fair bit about what spells will do what and in what situations, so this is quite realistic and demands that the player learns their lines, as it were. On the other hand, it gets very frustrating when your spells rarely do anything because you chose wrongly and you do start to wonder why you even have magic if all your spells will just get wasted, leaving you with none left for the big magic showdown at the end. The book offers you a handful to choose from at the most in magic use situations giving you at least a half-decent chance of doing something right. There is a neat touch that isn’t in the book where, on casting a spell, you sort of commune with the elemental plain (invoking the maelstrom from Maelstrom, maybe?), but this manifests itself by making the adventure sheet screen flash manically which just accelerates the onset of the headache that this game will almost certainly give you.

Other than the slight differences in spell use, there is precious little digression from the book and this is very much a literal copy of the source material with not enough variation to make it worth playing. The book version is far better executed and this computer attempt gives completely the wrong impression of what to expect from the book, for those who might play the computer version first. Yes, Steve Jackson’s words are the same, but the book worked on levels beyond just the text itself.

As this release appeared in 1984, it uses the much worse original book cover with Emmanuel’s picture of Balthus Dire’s hordes emerging from the Black Tower, being led by the black furry thing that made the first cover picture look so silly. But at least it isn’t cropped and is faithful to the book which might be an indication that this is basically the book in computer form to encourage potential buyers who were disappointed by the irrelevant TWOFM computer game to part with their cash. I assume it didn’t work as it seems that there aren’t many copies of this out there. It is worth noting that this and the third computer adaptation (The Forest Of Doom) were advertised together, including the planned released (as with TWOFM before them) of Software Pack editions (with the cassette and book bundled together) for both. FOD definitely appeared in this form for both the Spectrum and CMB64 as did COC for the Commodore 64, but there is scant evidence that a COC software pack ever got produced for the Spectrum or, for that matter, that the Spectrum edition ever even saw the light of day at all. Is this because it sold poorly? Or could it be due to people noticing that there was no discernable difference between the book and the computer game so they thought it wise to avoid making it too obvious to the buying public? Who knows, but there is no doubt that this is the weakest of all the 80s FF computer games and that it is all but ruined by its horrible visual presentation combined with its painfully snail-like pace.

If this game has one saving grace, it is with the dice roll generator. Two dice appear on screen and randomise numbers to simulate rolling real dice. This works exactly as dice would, giving a totally random element of chance and fate and really does make this feel like a RPG. These would appear in many of the subsequent 1980s FF conversions and are very effective, considering the limitations of the hardware at the time these were coded.

It is a great shame that this has been cocked-up so spectacularly as a faithful (but not totally slavishly similar) FF adaptation would have been welcome. Unfortunately, we would have to wait for Adventure International/AdventureSoft to enter the FF market before this would really happen and COC’s elusiveness is no loss to the world.

Rebel Planet (ZX Spectrum/CBM64/Amstrad/BBC/Acorn)

REBEL PLANET

AdventureSoft UK Ltd

Reviewed by Mark Lain

The 5^th of the six original adaptations of FF books for home computers appeared in 1986. Like Seas Of Blood before it and Temple Of Terror after it, RP was released in versions for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad, BBC Micro and the woefully underpowered Acorn Electron. The latter two efforts were text only with no graphics, whilst the Spectrum, CBM64 and Amstrad versions were split-screen with graphics on the upper half and text on the lower.

You have to wonder exactly what the point is of a FF book adaptation for pc that turns out to just be rolling text on a screen with no visuals, so the BBC and Acorn attempts gain little from the conversion, other than the inconvenience of having to load the game, followed by having to stare at a screen and punch your moves into a keyboard until you either win, lose, or get a migraine. The three versions with graphics work far better, as would be expected, and the graphics are actually quite effective given the era. OK, they are a bit pixely and maybe a little over-the-top colour-wise, but they do suit the atmosphere and setting of the piece and are certainly more varied than the book version’s fairly insipid artwork. To my eye, the Commodore graphics are a little “softer” and less garish on this game than the Spectrum/Amstrad versions, but each to their own with this as I do find the Spectrum graphics from the mid-80s onwards quite harsh anyway. At least each change of location has its own image so the graphics change a lot and move with you, which is a nice touch and draws you into the proceedings (even though it would have been far more effective in the 80s as we are used to much more realistic graphics now.) As a neat touch, on some screens small animations even occur, such as on the bridge of your ship where a sense of forward movement is created by Elite-style stars travelling towards you. This works very well indeed.

The adventure itself is not a literal transplant of the book to the computer which is good inasmuch as it avoids a dull re-tread of familiar material with the added novelty (in 3 out of 5 cases, at least) of colour graphics with a few moving bits. Instead, this is a free and loose re-working whilst the overall mission and general themes are retained. Only three planets are involved (the decadent Radax is missed out) which removes most of the socio-political material that appears in the book, but you do get to explore your ship and there are several key items dotted about it, plus there is the challenge of negotiating the airlock every time you get in or out of it, which adds some playability. It took me ages to even work out how to get out of the ship, so this is clearly an extra added layer of thinking and realism that has been included so we need to be grateful that this little feature was programmed as the ship is hardly featured in the book version (save for the final trip to Arcadian.) The same basic premise is carried-over from the book so you are trying to achieve the same thing which gives the comforting feeling that this really is a FF computer game and I’d imagine most of its market was from FF fans so a link was necessary to avoid it seeming like a meaningless cash-in on the FF brand. However, the plot flow is suitably varied from the book to make it a worthwhile playing experience, without seeming like a duplicate with nothing new to interest you and encourage you to re-play.

In terms of gameplay, this has a lot going for it, although it is not without its snags. There is a very specific order of events needed to complete the game and it will take dozens of plays and re-plays to come even close to finding the true path. Whether anyone has managed it without the solution in front of them I can’t say, but, even as a seasoned FF player, I cannot see that many people would crack this given how convoluted the solution is. A complex game is a welcome challenge (although text adventures were notoriously difficult anyway) and there is much to discover in this game so the challenge level is good if a little weighted against you in terms of having to fathom out some tricky actions. A great inclusion is cause and effect (a feature of the book version as well) where an earlier action can/will impact what happens later on. The difference with the computer version is that it remembers what you’ve done and penalises you instantly once you reach the affected stage (eg: if you avoid the UFO at the start you get arrested as soon as you’ve found your way out of your airlock and into the first spaceport.) In the book you could cheat and pretend you hadn’t committed whatever misdeed means you are now in trouble, but the computer game knows and is remorseless. A nice piece of cheat-proofing that teaches you not to attempt the offending move again next time! This is also a clever bit of programming for the era and adds realism and fluidity to the proceedings.

Finding the solution definitely requires considerable thought on the player’s behalf (maybe more so than many of the books and other FF computer games where you can kill your way through a fair chunk of what you come up against) making it extremely difficult, but rewarding when you manage to crack each part of it. There is considerable realism in some of the fiddlier bits such as the constant need to get out and put away various items (remembering to remove your key card from the on-ship drinks machine and needing to keep hiding your laser sword are particularly thorough inclusions), but this also means you spend a lot of time keying in moves which does give something of a “stop-start” feel to it all. The ship sections can seem especially awkward in this sense as you key loads of commands in without achieving very much and progress throughout the game overall is slow. To compound this, there are some episodes where the time it takes you to decide what to do and punch it in is the same amount of time it takes whatever you are up against to decide it’s lost patience and “pulverise” you, as the game puts it. A big plus, however, is that this also adds a real-time feel and urgency to the game (you are on a covert suicide mission after all and will get rumbled if the authorities suspect you are up to no good) and the feature where you have to remember to check your energy levels and eat to avoid “energy depletion” is very realistic in this sense.

The question of typing in commands is a sticking-point for this game in more ways than just the sheer time involved in doing it. The blurb boasts that the game can understand 400 words which is impressive for a mid-80s game, but the way it handles vocabulary is inconsistent at best. Some commands need to be lengthy and very obvious in their meaning before the game lets you do them, whilst others can be simplified, and there is a lot of trial and error involved in figuring out which are which. In some cases, there is an inconsistency in how these are handled and as far as I can tell at least one of the words listed in the instructions doesn’t work at all. The game is well-known for its vocabulary bugs (although the CBM64 version seems to be more forgiving with this than the other versions) and this can mean that some of the more obscure or involved moves can take forever to fathom out, making the game even harder in this respect.

Whilst the book was undeniably tough, the binary solution mechanism was incredibly difficult to even notice, let alone get your head around. In this version, the binary is played down (thankfully) and whilst the all-important access codes are still in binary, there are only two of them and they are far more self-evident when your contacts give you them, which is something of a relief when you consider that simply getting out of your own ship is an obstacle to be overcome in the computer version!

One of the most FF-like features of the previous (bar WOFM) FF computer game adaptations was the dice-roll generator where big animated dice appear on screen and randomise numbers in front of you to add an element of RPG-ness and familiarity, as well as giving you a fair chance of success or failure. In RP this has been removed which is a plus and a minus: on the up-side, this makes it feel more free-flowing and more like a traditional real-time computer game as opposed to a RPG where you are regularly reaching for the dice to decide what happens next, but the downside is that you are at the mercy of what the game decides to do to you next and combats do seem like non-events as you either just kill your foe or quickly die without anything really happening in between. But, as the key here is stealth and cunning, you could also argue that combat is surplus to requirements and this does mirror the book where fighting is not encouraged and killing something almost always complicates and hinders your mission.

As this game appeared in the period when computer games came in double cassette boxes rather than the smaller type, the larger packaging afforded by this is very nicely put together. The cassette insert replicates the book’s cover in full and the wrap-around spine and back cover parts are in FF green (with FF logo) to make this feel like it really is part of the FF cannon (only this and the subsequent Temple Of Terror would be presented in this way.) An A4-sized insert explaining the background to your mission and the various control commands helps you to know what it is you’re trying to do and how to go about doing it and the package overall has a quality look to it. As was often the case with the later Spectrum/CBM64/Amstrad games, there is a loading screen image (of a green Arcadian’s face) for you to look at whilst you wait the three or so minutes for the game to load up and, whilst this doesn’t actually do anything, it does set the scene and all this together shows that a lot of effort has been put into the presentation of this game, which I, for one, appreciate.

As a point of note, this was the first FF computer adaptation to not explicitly use the Fighting Fantasy Software branding. Yes, the FF logo is on the back of the box insert and is on the cassette itself, but as Adventure International had gone bust part way through this game’s creation, AdventureSoft UK (the developers) joined forces with US Gold and this became the brand that would eventually distribute Rebel Planet. It also caused a complete reorganisation of the release schedule of the FF computer adaptations, as RP was meant to be released AFTER Temple Of Terror. The actual development schedule was also drastically revised, with the planned Appointment With FEAR and Demons Of The Deep being abandoned completely in favour of Sword Of The Samurai.

Rebel Planet is probably my favourite of the six original FF computer games. It replaces gamebook style touchy-feely features such as dice generators with a greater emphasis on causality and real-time urgency and survivalism. The little touches of movement in some of the imagery adds realism and the variation on a theme makes this seem not so familiar that it is old news whilst avoiding being so tangential that it bears no resemblance to the source material. It is challenging and interesting enough to quickly get you hooked, even if the command system takes ages to master and some of what you have to do takes a long time to work out. All things considered, this is definitely a worthwhile game to play and is far from just a home computer cash-in.

#2: Riddle Of The Runaway

            RIDDLE OF THE RUNAWAY          

Heather Fisher

Reviewed by Mark Lain

After a generally desperate start to the series, the second offering in the “Fighting Fantasy for girls” Starlight cycle seems far more promising from the outset. The premise of your being a junior at a private detective agency is far more intriguing than just trying to be good at horse-riding (as with #1 Star Rider) and this gives is a distinct element of mystery and discovery to encourage you to open and play this book.

Reading through the rules makes this seem far closer to what we would expect from a gamebook. On a fundamental level, there actually ARE some rules in this book, and these cover three key areas where fate can intervene in your success, as opposed to just guessing the right route to victory. The rules themselves involve three Elements: Decision (aka just picking what to do), Chance (flipping a coin to decide your success or failure), and Fate (the most elaborate rule that works in two distinct ways, a Group based on your real Zodiac sign, and a Lucky Number where you have to crunch the digits in your date of birth and keep crunching them until you finish with a single digit which is your Lucky Number itself.) Decision is a misnomer as this is hardly a rule given that without any decisions to make this would be a novel, not a gamebook, so we can hardly count that as revolutionary game design. Chance is far closer to traditional role-play systems, reducing a 1 in 6 scenario (when rolling a die) to a 50/50 situation, but it does at least add an element of unpredictability and does not leave you in total control of what can happen to you, which is a good thing and adds suspense and risk. The Fate idea is by far the most unusual and original as the individual “properties” of the actual player him- or, as was intended by Puffin, her-self can have a direct impact on how events pan out. There is no advantage or disadvantage to being born at any particular time, but it does add variety to the direction the book takes you in and really makes YOU feel like your character is an extension of yourself as opposed to a separate entity that you are enacting. Already this book is clearly designed to be much more of a role-playing experience than Star Rider was, so things are looking hopeful.

The mission itself (and you do actually have a given task this time, rather than simple ambition) is to track down the vanished heir to a fortune and prevent any interested parties’ shenanigans from stopping the inheritance going where it should. Whilst this seems perfectly plausible, the plot suffers from several gaping holes that can seriously reduce its credibility as more of the story unfolds. It quickly becomes apparent that the “irresistible” (to get some starry-eyed girl appeal in) true heir has run off to America and joined a band. Ignoring the obvious stereotype that boys in bands have to, by definition, be irresistible to girls, etc, you have to assume that there is somehow no popular culture communication system between the USA and the UK in 1985, otherwise the key intrigue is no surprise at all, given that we are told that Charlie and the Chipmunks (the horrendously-named band he has joined) are (in Texas, at least) “more popular than The Stones”... or is Texas very guarded about its music scene, maybe? As the band are touring the entire US we can assume that their appeal is not limited to Texas alone, so this really does not make much sense. Likewise, if the band is as successful as is suggested, what difference would the inheritance actually make to the person you are sent to find? Does this band have the least lucrative record deal ever and the members are making hardly any money in spite of their huge success? Totally illogical, even by gamebook premise standards!

Gaping plot holes aside, the adventure itself works in three ways. For the most part, YOU are tearing around America, travelling from one famous city to another ad nauseum, getting closer (but not quite close enough) to your prey at each stopping point. Whilst this is happening, you are also required to try to keep his gold-digging arch nemesis brother at bay, and attempt to make an ally out of anyone who can get you into the “runaway”’s inner circle, the eventual choice being either his initially shady but actually very helpful sister or his scheming band-mate lover (the Charlie of the group’s name) who just wants to get her hands on his cash. The three plot aspects do make your task varied and a little tricky as there are a lot of decisions to make along the way. The trip around America quickly gets repetitive and tedious and you do find yourself wishing it would end soon. So there are clear pros and cons to affect your enjoyment/interest, although the danger and intrigue just about outweigh the irritating travelogue and the overall experience is an interesting one to play out on the whole. Also, as with all the Starlight books, your character is of the undefined, but clearly young adult, kind, to create a sort of positive strong female role-model for the young girl that is its intended audience.

Other than the three-tier rule system, this gamebook also introduces the “turn to x, then turn to y” idea which, whilst a little restrictive in terms of choice at times, does add a nice element of cause and effect, where one decision inevitably affects a subsequent situation. This is a good inclusion which avoids total linearity, although the actual journey itself is still very linear. There are several routes to the optimum ending, but these are arrived at along the same paths, leaving little re-playability, other than to find out what would happen if you made certain different choices.

Whilst the first book in this series required a concerted effort to lose, but you could fail all the same, Riddle Of The Runaway has no outright fail paragraphs. Instead, at least one ending gives you the chance to decide whether you are happy to settle for it (the romance outcome that these books always include) or re-trace your steps to find something more akin to “winning”. In other cases, you are told you have failed, but are then given a reprieve to back-track to a previous stage and/or start all over entirely, should you not be willing to accept defeat. This is a mixed blessing. On the one hand it would be a shame to have to re-tread ground already covered (especially all the travelling from one city to another), but on the other hand the bottom line is that you CANNOT lose unless you just give up. Whilst the premise and plot layers may present a challenge, you are ultimately left feeling a bit let-down when you realise that winning is no great achievement, but there is still enough interest here to make this a diverting, if generally very average, playing experience.

In terms of construction, this book betters many of the other Starlight offerings in that the number of sections that do nothing other than lead you to other sections without any choice(s) is comparatively low for this series. Yes, there are still many of these, but the number of choices or outcomes decided by the Chance or Fate mechanics makes this feel far more interactive and far less like a middle-of-the-road children’s novel. In a similar vein, the number of sections is amongst the lowest of any standard Puffin gamebook, at only 300. The general paragraph count in Starlight is 350, so this book does seem comparatively thin in a physical sense, but the adventure itself does take some time to play through and certainly lasts longer than the usual 30 minutes or so of play that this series normally offers you, so the paragraphs are clearly being made the most of, rather than just padding out the story as is the case in some other Starlight efforts.

Heather Fisher’s writing style is generally very snappy and, through this, there is a distinct feeling of urgency to the story. Whilst she falls into the trap of some stereotyping (the Texan in particular, is cringe-worthy, and the scheming harpy girlfriend is very annoying), the prose does not grate on the reader and avoids being condescending in the way that books 1 and 4 in this series are.

The internal illustrations are by sometime FF artist Bob Harvey, who is one of my least favourite FF artists. His sketchy approach (whilst being a feature of art in Starlight books) gives an empty feel and there is something ugly and surly about his human images, in particular. Whilst the drawings may create a sense of danger, overall it seems like you are in a very unsavoury world, which is awkward given that the setting for this and all Starlight books is the real world. James Bareham’s cover is a typically awful Starlight affair, with the usual collage of faces, this time surrounded by New York’s Twin Towers, a will, and a band on stage. Its almost sepia-toned brown and green colouring makes it seem very dour, but at least the intriguing blurb on the back cover is enough to make you want to play in spite of the crappy cover art.

With this book, the series definitely showed improvement and there is promise in the swing from saccharine ambition stories to genuinely mysterious and risky “missions.” This is far from great, but it is interesting enough to keep you guessing and, other than being too easy given its forgiving nature, you are motivated to finish this passable effort, unlike the dreadful Star Rider.