#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.

#1: Star Rider

STAR RIDER

Carole Carreck

Reviewed by Mark Lain

The first release in the short-lived Starlight series of adventures aimed at a female market epitomises why these gamebooks never took off. From the outset, this book is patronising, turgid, and distinctly trapped in a mid-80s world of wealth, materialism and shallowness. The opening section reminds YOU umpteen times that you have no money and that you have struggled to get the cash together to buy the object of your dreams (a horse) so that you can pursue your equestrian ambitions.

To be fair, if the introductory section doesn’t totally put you off bothering to play the book, the initial act (finding a stable, training yourself and your horse ready for the Badminton trials) is fairly interesting and you do get a feeling of your character quickly developing as a rider. Sadly, once competitiveness and the lure of mysterious and quiet rich men kicks in, the story becomes boring, repetitive, and, all of a sudden ends, as if Carreck either ran out of ideas or realised this was a no-hoper and just decided to conclude it before it became unbearable!

In actual fact, plot-wise (ignoring the jarring switch in tone and abrupt ending), this gamebook could have been a real winner for anyone interested in horses and there is a sense of quite savvy marketing in the selection of subject matter, plus the fact that it all flows logically, even if your meteoric rise from an upstart newbie to a member of the Olympic team very quickly may be a little far-fetched, especially as you seem to have very little control over your horse during the trials section and seem to rely on luck to get by. I know nothing about equestrian culture, but Carreck quite evidently knows a fair bit about it and you are nicely submerged in a world of horses, jealousy, and competition which is probably quite realistic. The language used does include some specialist terms and situations, but you don’t necessarily feel lost when reading this book as it merges into the text neatly and it does not present everything as if it was jargon in the way that some of the more annoyingly “knowing” series entries would - Starlight #4 Danger On The Air is a nightmare for knowingly using speech marks around any vocabulary even vaguely industry-specific, for example.

The jump-cutting structure of the storyline is a good thing in that it avoids boring episodes of training, but there is a missed opportunity here to allow your character to gain experience and develop skills specific to the theme. There are no stats of any kind to illustrate your character’s strengths and weaknesses, and some kind of Experience marker would have added considerably to your involvement with your character, especially as it would give you an indication and expectation of how easy or hard (or even likely) your success would be. As it stands, you just seem to jump from being no-one to becoming someone in a totally unrealistic manner. To compound this issue, the crucial later stages of the story when you are in trials rely purely on you choosing the right paragraph in a series of 50/50 situations. No actual character ability comes into the equation, neither even does the element of chance that dice rolling would give – your success is based purely on picking the right section. In a world as specific as a sporting event, skill and development influence any chance of success, so there is no realism here at all, which is a shame given the otherwise generally logical progression of the plot.

Further to the lack of any kind of character prowess coming into play, this book is ridiculously easy to beat. There are numerous endings to add a small amount of variety, but even the desired outcome of getting to the Olympics appears on at least four different paragraphs and, assuming you don’t either make an insane choice such as getting drunk the night before a major trial, half-killing your horse, or wrongly deciding who to ally yourself to early on, or get unlucky in the 50/50 situations, once you reach a certain point you cannot fail to win. Pardon the pun, but the usual gamebook end challenge that can cause you to fall at the final hurdle is all but absent, making this is a largely unrewarding affair and there is certainly no feeling of achievement when you beat it.

The lack of any kind of stats to give you an image of your character and make YOU feel more real is part of a major failing of this book in that there are no rules at all – no dice, no element of chance of any kind... you just get straight on with it. By contrast to your character’s one-dimensional nature, the NPCs are actually quite fleshed-out making you feel even more alien. The characterisations are all stereotypes to the point of being hackneyed (the mysterious quiet rich bloke, the nasty she-devil love rival, the Mr Nice Guy secondary male, the scheming no-good person, the slightly manic and over-the-top best friend, etc etc) but at least you can picture them and understand their roles easily, whereas YOU just seem to be gliding through the proceedings trying to become a success, which makes the ease of winning all the more incomprehensible.

One saving grace of this book over the majority of the Starlight books that would follow it is that you are not rail-roaded into getting romantically involved with at least one of the male NPCs. You can control your destiny in this respect, even if the romance aspect is played down in this book by comparison with the other five. There is also a noticeable maturity in the character you play. In traditional role-play books (at least, in those where age is not explicitly specified) it is almost always assumed that you are of an indefinite but obviously adult and experienced (in terms of adventuring) age. In Star Rider you can get served in pubs so are assumed to be over 18, there is an outcome where you decide to get married, plus one of your initial decisions is where to live so you must have left home. All this clearly sets your character up as being a young adult. As a counterpoint, the relative simplicity (in difficulty terms) of this book and its overall feeling of being fairly facile, suggests a target audience of pre-pubescents or, if not, then early teenagers with absolutely no sense of irony!

The internal art here is by Peter Wilkes who illustrated three of the six books in this series. His work is sketchy and lacks depth in terms of background (although his shading is nicely done), not that you’d really notice as the bulk of the drawings are of horses doing various things, inter-mingled with the occasional picture of someone staring doe-eyed at you. In a book where the subject is horses, you could anticipate some horsey imagery, but the illustrations here do labour the point a bit. The cover by Steve Jones (presumably not the one out of the Sex Pistols?) is frankly appalling and really does not give you any incentive to open the book with its combination of a collage of heads, some fields, a flashy car, a horse, and some drugs, all in bizarre soft pastel colours. Starlight books are known for having poor covers, but this one is easily the worst of the lot.

Other than a (largely) logical plot and a non-intrusive approach to a specialised subject matter, this book is, for the most part, a condescending and uninspiring experience. In the highly unlikely event that you don’t beat it on the first playthrough, there is little here to encourage repeat plays other than if you are totally obsessed with horses (which may be what Puffin’s marketing people were hoping for, incidentally!) As a story for non-demanding children it could work, but as a game it has little to recommend, especially as many of the sections just tell you to turn to another section, rather than offering you many actual choices so you do often feel that you have little control over anything other than the major decisions, plus whether to fall in love or not, ultimately giving the feeling that you are reading a below-par children's book rather than playing a gamebook.

All in all, this is not an auspicious debut for the series.

Starlight Adventures

STARLIGHT ADVENTURES

Series Overview by Mark Lain

The short-lived and relatively unknown Starlight Adventures series were intended as Puffin’s female answer to Fighting Fantasy. Plots were designed around what the production team presumably felt were girl-centric ideas (horses, nurses, good-looking boys, etc) and the common thread was sassy and ambitious young women keen to do well in life. The setting was the modern world (well, 1985) and frequent cultural references help to trap these books in a time-warp, in particular, an ongoing obsession with Duran Duran that keeps surfacing in several of the books, along with 80s fashion motifs and an over-riding sense of mid-80s capitalism as success and wealth feature heavily as the ultimate aims of these books (and your characters quite often seem to be expected to be impressed by these.)

To see these as “adventures” is stretching a point. The majority certainly have an element of Enid Blyton-ish uncovering of wrong-doing (one is even set at the seaside, albeit in Greece) so there is a sense of discovery more than of traditional adventuring, whilst one is something of a manic pursuit across America (which I suppose you could say is a modern “adventure” of sorts), but the idea of a “mission” as such is absent, rather your character’s ambition and the discovery that you are in the midst of various forms of treachery is the prime motive.

Unusually for adventure gamebooks, these books are gender-specific in that your character is always female. This is not an issue as such, but it does make the playing experience feel slightly distant and alien if a male is reading them. On the plus side, there is also an element of ironic fun to be had from trying to avoid being seduced by various plotting men (and sometimes letting temptation get the better of you as a minor aim of some of these is to find happiness in romance) and in being reminded in general what made people tick in the mid-80s as well as the retrospectively very apparent feeling that there is a patronising womens’ lib thing going on here that is now very anachronistic (even though you are almost always made out to be quite attractive looking and you can use this to your advantage.)

In most cases, there are no rules to speak of and there is no system of any kind in these books. Instead each book has its own mechanics, ranging from having no system whatsoever (ie your decisions are all that can affect your progress) meaning there is no element of gaming-style chance at all, through dice rolls and/or coin tosses to determine key outcomes, occasional zodiacal influences, right up to a complex system of Lucky Numbers based on your date of birth!

The low challenge level of this series coupled with the relative brevity of an end-to-end playthrough make these books seem rather simplistic (with two specific exceptions: #3 Island Of Secrets and #6 Trance) as in some cases it is very hard to lose and there are even one or two where losing is not actually possible at all! In this sense, the simpler entries feel quite close to the often inane Choose Your Own Adventure series of gamebooks. However, dues must be given to the more involved books in the Starlight cannon, and two in particular are quite tough and take several playthroughs to even start to figure out what is going on, which does add an element of intrigue.

None of these books have ever been re-printed (not even by Puffin) and, in fact, I have no recollection of ever seeing any of them in the shops even when they first came out. Until recently, they were very tough to track down, although tatty second hand copies are starting to surface at very low prices (possibly because the sellers don’t know what they are?) on several online sales sites. To say the series deserves a re-appraisal is to probably give it too much credit as, whilst they are (mostly) inoffensive and there are far worse ways to spend a spare half an hour, none of them really capture the imagination and they are ultimately quite mundane. Their rapid disappearance is no real surprise as Starlight is the only one of Puffin’s numerous Adventure Gamebooks series that could be said to be a commercial as well as critical failure.