Fighting Fantasy - Books 51-55

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51. Island of the Undead  - Score = 7.8   Tier = Good

Sections: 400
Attempts to Beat: 44

I return to the Fighting Fantasy series with this very good effort from series veteran Keith Martin (Carl Sargent), but my word what a marathon it was to beat this one! We play here as a member of a coastal fishing village which maintains a mutually beneficial alliance with a group of wizards that live on nearby Solani Island, which lies just off the coast. The wizards have agreed to use their magic to keep the seas around our village calm and free from the violent storms that would otherwise plague it, allowing us to prosper thanks to the voluminous amount of fish this allows us to catch, not only to consume for ourselves but to also sell and trade with nearby towns as well. In return, we provide the wizards with any supplies they might need for their personal use on the island, and additionally agree to leave them in peace to conduct their magical research and experiments. This relationship proves successful for both parties for many years, until suddenly the protection provided by the wizards abruptly ceases, and our village is once again beset by the violent storms that prevent us from plying our trade. Wondering what has happened on the island that has caused the wizards to abandon their part of the bargain, we send a party out in a boat to head over to the island, with our character being a member of this crew. Unfortunately, one of those pesky storms just happens to wreck our boat on the voyage, and we find ourselves washed up on the shore of the island of the wizards as the only survivor of the disaster. Armed with only a knife, we have little choice but to explore the island on our own to figure out what happened to the wizards, and so the adventure begins with a mystery to solve, which is always a good thing. 

What isn't a good thing though is the Adventure Sheet for this book. Is this the worst such Sheet in the series so far or what? This thing is just a massive exercise in head-scratching! First off, there is a box to record your "Honour" score, even though the rules preceding the Adventure Sheet made no mention of such a stat. Well, perhaps it's just something you learn about as you play? Nope! There is nothing to do with this Honour score at any point during the adventure. The exact same thing could be said about the next box on the Sheet, the one entitled "Time Elapsed". Again, no mention of this in the rules, nor was there any indication while playing the book that any kind of time mechanic is involved. But let's not stop there, because the very next box also makes no sense, as it's entitled "Enemy Encounter". Were we meant to record every enemy we meet (and there are many in this book) in this tiny little box? Why? The page facing the Adventure Sheet has the usual Encounter Boxes, so maybe something happens should we "encounter" a certain number of "enemies"? Nah. So yeah, this whole row of boxes makes no sense, and right off the bat this did not inspire a lot of confidence for the adventure to come. How does something like this get by everybody? Anyway, one stat that the rules DO mention is your Presence score, which is determined before you begin and can start at any value between 5-7. This score is then meant to indicate how much the inhabitants of the island are aware of your presence there, with actions that call attention to yourself usually requiring you to increase this score as you play, and then this stat can be tested at various times to see how certain creatures or individuals might react to you. We also get to start with a whopping 12 Provisions, which felt like a lot to me but hey, who am I to look a gift horse-radish in the mouth.  

There is no other way to say this, but this is a loooooooong adventure! It initially gives you the illusion of being open-ended, immediately giving you a list of locations on the island you can explore in any order you wish, but you eventually learn that if you want to beat the book, you have to do things in a particular order, which thus makes it far more linear than it first appears. Not wanting to miss anything, I will go over the various parts of the adventure below.

-Section 1. Ok, I gotta start here. And by this, I literally mean the first numbered section of the book. In this section we begin walking along the shore toward the interior of the island, and come across a body lying in the surf. Thanks to the title of the book, it should come as no surprise that this dead body promptly rises to attack us, and we find ourselves in the first combat of the adventure against a Sea Zombie, who has stats of Skill=6 and Stamina=7. Now, we are told when we began the quest that because we are only equipped with a knife, that should we score a hit we need to roll again, and if we get a 1-4 we only do 1 point of Stamina damage, and if we roll 5-6 we do the usual 2 points of damage, and this will continue until we can locate a sword. Similarly, until we can locate a shield, we must fight combats with a -1 to our Attack Strength. The first one of these is the problem here, as obviously we have not yet had enough time to find a sword, so that every time we fight this Zombie (which you obviously do right away every single time you start the book), it can take twice as many hits to kill him as it normally would. Combine that with the low Skill score of the Zombie, not to mention having to roll a second time whenever you score a hit to see how much damage you inflict, and this just resulted in a hell of a lot of seemingly pointless dice-rolling over the many attempts this book took me to complete. At this point, combined with that Adventure Sheet fiasco, my expectations for the adventure had officially hit rock bottom. 

Wait, what were the stats of that Sea Zombie again....

SIX SEVVVVVEN! (I had to use this meme at some point.) 

- The Island Hub. Thank goodness that the book starts to get much better here, as after making it off the beach you are given a choice from among several options as to which part of the island you want to explore, and you get the chance to do them in pretty much any order you want. I don't think you can win unless you do them in a specific order of course, but you don't know that at first, and truth be told I don't have a problem with it anyway, as working out the correct order to do things is a main part of the fun, and using the hub-style approach means you can "work out" what to do in each area first before assembling the greater puzzle at play in the gamebook. In this first half of the adventure, you will find yourself investigating in various order: a lighthouse, a shipwreck, a monastery, a cliffside, a forest, and even some kind of other-worldly ethereal realm. Some of these deserve special mention following:. 

- The Cliffside. Ok, I'm going to backtrack just a little bit on what I said about the book getting much better and get this one out of the way, because if you go here first, you will likely find yourself fighting an Octopus in order to get that much coveted sword that you need in order to bring your damage in combat back to normal. The problem is, as with the Sea Zombie, you don't have the sword yet when you fight the Octopus, so are once again stuck usually doing only one measly point of damage per hit, which turns this combat into an exercise in continuous dice-rolling also. Sigh. But hey, at least you finally have that freaking sword! The shield that you still need to find turns out to be problematic as well, but I will get to that later.   

- The Lighthouse. Alright, now on to the good stuff! The island lighthouse, which had been powered by magic in order to keep approaching ships safe from the surrounding rocks, is no longer functioning, and you need to find a way to get it working again. This isn't a large area by any means, but it did do something I thought was brilliant in that when you make it to the top of the lighthouse, you are instructed to write down the section number you are on, and should you find the means to power the lighthouse up again, you can then return to this section without having to backtrack all the way here. This also helps to eliminate the usual continuity problems that might arise in having you go through all the same sections just to get back here again, and I'm now wondering why something like this isn't implemented more often.  

- The Monastery. Former home to the monks on the island, which has since been left in a state of shambles, apparently from some form of attack from the undead. Bigger than the lighthouse, but still not what I would call a large area, the monastery contains a boatload of goodies to uncover, along with some nice encounters that include a mysterious elemental creature along with the now-transformed-into-a-member-of-the-undead former head of the monastery himself. I enjoyed this area a lot, BUT, there are couple of things that must be mentioned here that could cause frustration. First, there is a Luck test that must be passed here otherwise you can't win the adventure, and whenever success or failure hinges on one single roll, I tend to get annoyed. Although at least this roll should be in your favour most times. The second thing is that there is a note that you discover here shown in an illustration that has been torn into 4 pieces, and you need to re-assemble the pieces so that you can read the note and get information vital to winning the game. My problem here is actually two-fold, as short of cutting up your book, you will probably need to write out the note by hand yourself, which felt a bit laborious. The other part might just be my own issue, but I had a hell of a time making out the spelling of a name contained in the note thanks to the handwriting it is written in combined with where the note is torn. This is important later as you need to turn this name into a numbered code to access a hidden section, and I just ended up using trial-and-error as to what I thought this name MIGHT be. Again, rather laborious. 

- The Shipwreck. Hands down one of the better areas of the book to explore, and I say that despite the fact that, like The Monastery, there are some issues that crop up with it. The good news though is that this area does a wonderful job of capturing the atmosphere of being inside a broken ship smashed over some rocks just off the shore (not that I have ever been in that actual situation). You can choose to explore the hold, go below decks, investigate the captain's quarters, or try to break into the room of a mysterious passenger, and everything just FEELS like you are inside a shipwreck. Again, there are all kinds of goodies to collect here, and everything you manage to locate feels like it will have an essential purpose later on (which I'm learning in the case of Keith Martin's books is probably true!). The couple of minor problems I had were that: (1) there is an insta-death triggered just from exploring one of the opening options, which felt rather cheap to me. I mean, the option in question was just as likely to contain an item essential to beating the whole book as it was an automatic game over, so who isn't going to check that out? (2) There is a fight against a Ghoul here where I died more times than at any other place in the book. The Ghoul's stats aren't super high at Skill=9, Stamina=11, except that you won't have a shield yet so are stuck fighting it at -1 Attack Strength. The bigger problem though is that should the Ghoul hit you 3 times, you are now paralyzed and suffer an insta-death. Harsh! I'm not saying this is necessarily a huge problem with the book, just that it makes it extremely tough for anything other than a Skill 11 or 12 adventurer, and I died a few times even when I did have Skill 11! Although needing those kind of starting stats to beat a Fighting Fantasy book has kind of become par for the course by now. But now I move on to my real issue....            

- The Magical Door Puzzle. Alright, so this was one of the bigger bugbears I had with the adventure. While investigating the shipwreck, you come across a door below deck that is locked by magic. There is a symbol on the door (shown in a full page illustration), and you are told that it contains a hidden number of the section you need to turn to next should you wish to open it. And that's all you get. The symbol shows a circle broken up into 6 segments, with each segment showing various alphabetic letters around its edges. And oh brother did I stare at this for a long time. I've noticed that for myself with puzzles, if I generally don't come up with the solution right away, I'm in a lot of trouble. I incorrectly assumed I was looking for a number (isn't that what the instructions said?), so tried all the usual solutions (such as A=1, B=2, etc.) to no avail. Not coming up with anything that appeared correct, I thought "Well, there are likely some goodies behind this door for sure, but probably not anything essential to beating the book right?" Wrong! After several playthroughs of ignoring the door and trying to make due without, (and then remembering what author I was dealing with here), I reluctantly came to the conclusion that this puzzle was going to have to be cracked in order to beat the book, much like an earlier Martin effort, Tower of Destruction. Thank goodness I had played an even earlier book by Keith Martin, Vault of the Vampire, which contained a similar puzzle, or I might still be staring at this one right now. Even then it still took me awhile to remember that earlier puzzle existed, and when I finally did, I felt a bit foolish that it took me so long. So, using that prior knowledge, I was able to decode the message on the door, which told me to turn to.........wait, the message actually doesn't give you a section number, but some kind of riddle instead, which you also then have to solve to get the correct section number! Okay, so it's not the most difficult riddle in the world, but it's a bit on the vague side, and requires you making an assumption or two. (Not to mention it containing a spelling error). And yes, as it turns out getting past this door is essential to beating the adventure, as there is a Magic Sword contained here that you cannot win without. I'm all for puzzles in gamebooks, even hard ones, but they should probably lead to a helpful item rather than an essential one, otherwise they run the risk of totally locking a player out from completing the adventure. 

To paraphrase the late, great comedian, Norm Macdonald...

"I thought I was dumb when I didn't know the answer. Now I think I'm even dumber, because after having seen the solution, I still don't know the answer." 

- The Barrow. This is the otherworldly area I mentioned earlier, where you find yourself exploring a spooky burial mound. You have your choice of investigating 3 different tunnels with a couple of them being red herrings, and Martin even makes the obvious choice the correct one (sneaky bugger!). What makes this area so cool is that you can acquire a Spirit ally here who will accompany you for a short time. This Spirit was once a slave to the wizards, and now only wishes to finally rest in peace, but can only do so if you can locate his bones somewhere on the nearby Plain of Swords where a battle took place long ago, and give him a proper burial. The Spirit is not just excess baggage either, as he comes with three boons that can be used to do things such as replenish your Stamina, or more importantly, cure diseases. While not adding a ton of gameplay necessarily, I thought this was a great little mini-quest added to the middle of the proceedings, and successfully retrieving and giving him a proper burial actually did make me feel like a good person when I was able to do so. More mini-quests like this one please!  

Alright, so once you feel you have fully explored the various opening areas of the island, you are ready to head for the Black Tower where the wizards reside. In order to do this, you first need to make your way through a swamp, and then across that pesky Plain of Swords. Both of these areas provide several different ways that you can travel through them, although in the case of the Plain of Swords, I believe if you don't go a particular way then you can't win, but that's really nothing new here. This route through the Plain involves what can be a tricky fight against a Hydra Snake, that because of its 2 heads (doesn't a Hydra have at least 3 heads?), gets 2 attacks per round to your one. However, you can optionally choose to attack just one of the Hydra's heads instead, with different rules explained in the text should you wish to take that approach. This is as good an example as any to call attention to something that Martin does very well throughout the adventure, in that almost every combat you get involved in has some sort of special rules attached to it (like that earlier Ghoul fight also for example). This helps to keep each combat fresh and unique, and although the Hydra Snake fight rules can seem a bit convoluted at first, they are normally fairly simple extra rules, and I enjoyed them a lot. 

After this extra bit of travel, you finally arrive at your ultimate destination, the Black Tower itself. Interestingly, the wizards do not dwell at the top of the Tower as you might expect, but in the underground dungeon area. And this I'm sorry to say is where the adventure starts to sag a bit. After all those interesting and atmospheric areas we got to explore spread out across the island, the book now devolves into a more typical dungeon crawl, with you being asked if you want to go down the left or right corridor, or open the door on the left or the right. I found these dungeons to be mostly devoid of anything interesting with the exception of the wizards themselves, who we learn is each a Master of one of the 4 elements of Earth, Fire, Air, or Water. Thank goodness these Masters (or their spirits anyway), are given some personality, or this underground sequence would have been rather dry. In a nice touch, you will need to learn the true names of the various Masters as you make your way through the gamebook, and then when the moment of truth for each of them comes, you need to convert those names into the section number to go to next (by using the A=1, B=2, method that I unsuccessfully had tried on the magical door earlier). You also learn the secret to the mystery of what happened on the island, as perhaps unsurprisingly one of the Masters meddled with forces he shouldn't have and attempted to take over. After dealing with the first 3 Masters, you make your way to the final confrontation with this last Master and the ultimate mastermind behind everything.

I have to admit to being disappointed with the final reveal as to what happened on the island, as it didn't feel to me all that original or even altogether unexpected. That said, I was rather pleased with the final battles here, with one exception that I will get to in a minute. The final combats are some of those multi-stage affairs that work much better as a final boss fight rather than just giving you standard stats and telling you to start rolling. The adventure even does something really cool here, by telling you at one point that you have time to take 5 actions before turning to the next section, such as eating a provision, using a potion, or spreading some venom on your sword blade. The one exception I mentioned though occurs here, because when you decide on your 5 actions and turn to the next section, you are immediately asked if you took one particular action, and if you didn't, it's automatic game over. Ugh! As someone who fell victim to this my first time here, I will say that again....Ugh! I mean, you might as well just have asked me if I had the the item in question before having me go to the trouble of taking the 5 actions and wasting my time. These final battles do involve some enemies with high Skills, but this is offset by the fact that you likely won't make it anywhere close to the end without a high Skill score yourself, and also that the adventure offers up some places where you can acquire an item that can add +1 to your Attack Strength (and I assume these can be stacked), allowing you to properly "power up" for the end game. Once you defeat the last big bad, your character decides to help themselves to some of the treasure laying about before making their way back to their village, but the thought occurred to me that your village is still in the same trouble it was before, as the wizards are still all dead, and therefore those nasty storms will still be destroying the fishing livelihood of your village. Oh well, easy come, easy go I guess. I got my gold, the rest of you are on your own!        

And there we have it! This might be a positive or a negative depending on your point of view, but it bears repeating that my goodness the successful path through this gamebook is an incredibly long one. How in the hell does this book have the same number of sections as say, The Citadel of Chaos for example? In a strange way, it seems like a feat that should be applauded, but on my winning playthrough I felt as though I must have read close to 350 of the 400 sections! If you like to take a "tour of the gamebook" when you play one (being able to see just about everything there is to see in one go) then this entry might be the poster child for such a design. I can see the attraction to be honest, as I definitely feel like you get your money's worth, but I could also see where for some this might feel like you have taken on a second job in just trying to beat it. There is a colossal amount of items and information that you need to locate here, and I found that I had to be in the right state of mind before attempting to play it. Thankfully Keith Martin's writing is typically good for him, with a nice air of desolation and mystery hanging over the whole island. 

Something else that I need to talk about is the matter of Provisions in this adventure. To say they are bountiful would be an understatement, as you begin with a whopping 12 and there are numerous places to gather more (not to mention a couple of places to pick up Stamina restoring potions as well). That, combined with the sheer number of items you need to gather, got me to wondering about the whole encumbrance system at work here, and although this could be said about most Fighting Fantasy books I suppose, it was this book that got me wondering something about all this the most, and that is, why is there a limit to how many Provisions you can carry? When we start the game, we are told that we cannot exceed 12, but why if there is apparently no limit to how many other items you can find yourself lugging around? So I can pick up that wooden pole and shove it in my backpack for instance, but grabbing one more sandwich is the bridge too far? Weird. I will say though that this particular adventure does something pretty cool in the form of allowing you to find and collect empty bottles as you travel along, and then you can later use these empties to store potions and such. A rather neat idea, if even if adds even more things for you to collect.   

Ranking: Just based on the design alone, this entry is very impressive, although I think there are a few things that hold it back from greatness. Could it possibly be even "over-designed'? I won't go as far as to say that, as I mostly enjoyed the complexity, if not the length of the adventure, but I could definitely see if some players thought that this was just too much of a good thing. (Does this book set a Fighting Fantasy record for most essential things to collect and information to uncover?) The door puzzle was something of a roadblock, and I am sick to (un)death of rolling against that opening Sea Zombie, but overall this is a very good gamebook thanks to the sheer amount of things to find and secrets to uncover, which plays out very well against the creepy atmospheric backdrop of this seemingly abandoned island. Those opening island exploration sequences were great, and although I thought the adventure started to sag a bit once you finally get inside the Tower and it reverts to a more typical dungeon crawl (with Martin even flat out calling it a dungeon), it begins to rebound again as you get closer to the end and start confronting all the various wizards and the power controlling them, even though I personally found the final payoff to the mystery of the book a little weak. It's probably a bit longer than what I want from a Fighting Fantasy gamebook too, but I'm not going to hold an adventure that provides me this much gameplay against it either.

On a review note, this is the third Fighting Fantasy book in a row now (following Siege of Sardath and Return to Firetop Mountain), that has taken me a really long time to finish. I'm used to longer and harder FF books of course, but they are usually sprinkled in here and there, not thrown at me in rapid succession like this. If this is how the rest of the "50's" run of the series is going to go, I might have to take more breaks between these books in order to work in some other series, otherwise I might spend 5 months just playing the 5 FF gamebooks from 51-55!