HeroQuest

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1. In the Night Season - Score = 💀💀💀- Three Skulls

Sections: 135
Attempts to Beat: 3

Jeesh, Dave Morris sure was prolific in the 90's wasn't he? At this rate I'd be surprised to find out he had time for anything other than writing gamebooks. The HeroQuest series is a short one, at a mere 3 books, and is based upon the popular board game of the same name. Ahhh HeroQuest. The memories and non-memories I had of this board game. Memories because I vividly remember the commercial for the game in the early 90's, with its muscular barbarian (who I swore at the time was played by the WWF's Ultimate Warrior), and the creepy ending where one of the kids playing the game turns into an ugly orc who reaches towards the screen. The non-memories are because despite asking for the game from my parents for Christmas or my birthday, I never did get it. I was old enough by that point that I probably could have managed to get the money to buy it myself, but I never did that either for probably the same reason my parents never bought it for me, because both they and I knew that I had no one to play it with. As a result, I likely would have just spent my time setting it up and playing with myself in my bedroom. Wait, that came out wrong. Anyway, the point of that reminiscing was meant to convey that to this day I bitterly have never played the board game, so will not be able to say how much justice this gamebook does to the experience. 

The nostalgia is strong with this one. Which is strange because I never actually played it!

With that bit of regret out of the way, I now move on to the book itself. While the cover of the book here shows the title "The Fellowship of Four", that is actually the name of the novella that proceeds the gamebook adventure itself, as this is one of those novella/gamebook combos such as was found in the "Knightmare" series, which was also written by Dave Morris. As with the Knightmare series, I will not be reading or reviewing the novella portion, only the adventure. The adventure here is titled In the Night Season, and the intro tells us that I will be playing here as not one but four different characters, and that I will be in control of a party consisting of a Wizard, Elf, Barbarian, and Dwarf. Doesn't get much more fantasy-generic than that! The intro also suggests that if you can find others with copies of the book, you can each play as one of the characters, although I'm not sure why all of you just couldn't use the same book (I guess this was a sneaky sales pitch to sell more copies). However, as would have been the case in the late 80's and early 90's, I will be playing by myself and controlling all the characters. 

This leads to a surprising amount of initial record keeping when setting up my character sheet, as each of the 4 heroes comes with their own provided values (no randomization! yay!), in the attributes of: Body, Mind, Speed, and Combat. The Body stat is basically your Hit Points, as you can lose these points from traps or being injured in a fight, and should they fall to zero, that character is dead and the rest of the party continues on without them. The Mind stat indicates the character's mental resistance to sorcery. This stat can be tested for any of the characters at various times throughout the adventure, where you roll one die and must roll equal to or under the given value to pass the check. The Speed stat indicates the character's dexterity and movement, and can also be tested in a similar fashion to Mind. The Combat stat indicates how proficient a fighter the character is, and is used in the combat system. Before getting to that combat system though, throughout the adventure you will also need to keep track of your Battle Order, which is the order in which your party advances along while travelling. 

Ok, now the combat system. Should you encounter a group of foes, such as a swarm of bats, each member of your party "pairs off" with one of the foes depending on the order they are listed. (First in your Battle Order vs First enemy listed etc). Should there be more enemies than members in your party, then the first "excess" enemy also attacks the first member of your Battle Order, the second excess enemy joins in on the attack to your second member, and so on. Conversely, should there be more party members than enemies, then any "unmatched" hero can attack any of the enemies he wishes when it is his turn, provided there is room in the combat area to do this (ie. a tight corridor might require a member at the back of your party to sit the fight out unless one of your comrades dies), but you will be told before the fight begins whether there is room for everyone to join in. These individual battles occur in rounds, with you being provided the Combat score and Body Points of each enemy, and each of the fights going on simultaneously. Your hero then rolls one die, and if they roll equal to or under their Combat score, they do 1 Body Point of damage to the enemy. The enemy then takes its turn, and you roll against its Combat score, and if they hit they do you 1 Body Point of damage. Rinse and repeat until one of you is dead. I'm probably making it sound more complicated than it is, as it's rather quite simple, but I did feel like the fights were a right free-for-all, what with multiple individual skirmishes going on all over the place. In addition, both your Wizard and your Elf can forgo attacking with their weapon for a round and cast a one-time use spell instead, with these spells being listed and explained in the rules section. The Wizard has a whopping 9 spells he can use (the Elf only has 3), and they are all pretty cool, varying from Healing to Fire Damage spells. There is even a neat Genie spell, whereby you can call forth a genie who will then grant you one of 3 different boons. Again, these various spells can all only be used once per adventure, and you are meant to cross off each one as it is used. There are also some rules regarding Parrying here (rolling just to deflect an enemy's blow), but having played the adventure, I'm not sure why you would ever bother to do this.  

That's not all to keep track of though, as there is also an inventory system here. The Barbarian and Dwarf come with 3 inventory slots each they can use to carry any items or equipment that your party finds or buys, while the Elf and Wizard only get 2 such slots each. In reality the slots are even less than that though, because as per the character sheet, the weapons each hero is carrying (Bastard Sword for the Barbarian, Battleaxe for the Dwarf, Dagger for the Wizard, and Sword for the Elf) takes up one of their slots! Additionally, the Dwarf begins with a money pouch containing 20 silver pieces, which also takes up a slot. So as a party, you only have 5 empty inventory slots when you begin the game. If you then come across something you want to take with you and have no place to put it, you obviously need to drop something you already have. This was definitely a case of less is more, because the deceptively lower level of inventory space meant I did have to put some thought into what I bought or picked up as I played through the quest, and this can become very important during the endgame.   

The adventure itself kicks off with our party visiting an inn located inside the country of Knochlor, "an eldritch country beyond Blackfire Pass". That means almost nothing to me, and I have no idea if this area is somehow related to the novella, but nevertheless our evening drink is interrupted when a villager comes bursting into the inn and rushes over to some village elders in order to speak to them. Curiosity on your part soon reveals that a girl from the village, Perdita, has been abducted, with an evil local man known as Grim Dugald fingered as the prime suspect. Being the heroic group that you are, you volunteer to go to Dugald's "haunted manse" and rescue the girl. You get the chance to buy some equipment using the Dwarf's money before you leave, and then head off over the moonlit moors.

At this point you are given the option of 3 different routes to take in order to get to the manse, as you can choose to: (a) go through a group of ancient burial mounds (I'm sure nothing will happen there right?), (b) travel along a cart path that goes past a ruined castle, or (c) take a path that winds through some misty hollows. To be fair, something happens along all the routes, and this is probably one of the better things about the adventure, as trying all 3 of these routes adds some replayability to a rather short quest. I found all the paths to be quite interesting, with one in particular involving a pair of ghostly knights locked in eternal combat standing out as a great visual. Strangely, all 3 of the routes also allow you to just bypass their respective "mini-stories" and just go straight to the manse, which would make the adventure feel incredibly short if you ask me. 

When I arrived at the manse itself, I was greatly looking forward to exploring a haunted house, but found the area to be a bit disappointing. You are given the initial option of exploring 3 different areas, as you can go upstairs, search a room on the ground floor, or go down into the cellar. The upstairs option felt the most interesting to me, but selecting it you are just told that the stairway is rotten so you have no choice but to turn around and pick something else. What a tease! You will eventually find yourself needing to go into the cellar, and this is where the adventure turns into more of a typical dungeon crawl, as you find an exit from the cellar that leads into underground caverns. You will need to fight some enemies down here, collect some items, and locate and free Perdita before retracing your steps back upstairs where Grim Dugald is waiting to confront you for the final battle. 

Now, all throughout the adventure you will no doubt have been noticing things like coffins and undead brides, so that you will probably have long ago guessed what Dugald's big secret is. (If the option to buy items such as garlic, holy water, and a silver dagger in the starting village didn't already give it away). By the way, does any seasoned gamebook player NOT know to always take the garlic when given a chance? Anyway, the final battle with Dugald is appropriately thematic, if even 4-against-one seems a bit like overkill. The adventure tries to get around this by giving Dugald very high stats, but in a nice touch, you can lower his stats should you have destroyed his coffin earlier.

In another nice touch, there are a couple of different ways to win, and you don't even need to beat Dugald, as you are given the option of fleeing from him before the fight even begins, and to my great surprise, you can actually do this and still win the adventure as long as you rescued Perdita from the manse, you then just need to avoid Dugald's pursuing ghostly hunters as you race back to the village. You can also choose to fight and destroy him of course, should you have one of the items required to vanquish him for good (as if you defeat him in combat, he immediately starts to regenerate). I won using the destroy him path, but the fleeing from the bad guy and still winning path was something I don't recall seeing before, and I thought this was another nice touch from Morris, if even this path might be somewhat anti-climactic, and requires very little of the player. 

At 135 mostly shorter sections, this is obviously not a long adventure, but even still it felt rather on the easy side. This was even more true once I realized you could bypass quite a bit of it with no harm done, and you didn't even need to defeat the bad guy. I never would have guessed that last part going in however, and it rates as a decent mini-item hunt if you try to gather the things that will allow you to destroy Dugald once and for all. When it comes to the combat though, your party of 4 adventurers is WAYYYYYY overpowered. The Barbarian is a killing machine, almost never missing, and the Wizard with his plethora of powerful spells can make any fight a joke, and even then I think you could win rather easily without using ANY of the spells. The Elf and Dwarf are no slouches either, with a 2 out of 3 chance to hit every time they attack, not to mention the Elf also having several spells he can use. Combine this with the high Body Point totals given to your characters relative to the enemies you face (with the exception of Grim Dugald himself), and I was absolutely pwning my adversaries throughout the whole adventure. The good news is that combats are rather sparse throughout the quest, and this makes sense, as most of them are mass melee battles between multiple opponents that require you to roll dice quite a few times for each round. I did get a chuckle from a visual I had when each hero in my party "squared off" with one individual bat apiece when you encounter a bat swarm!   

I also have to say that his adventure includes one of those "choose failure" options thrown in right at the beginning. I really dislike these as it always feels to me like the author is trolling the readers, but it felt a bit worse than usual here, because the way it is worded, "minding your own business" when the villager bursts in to talk to the elders, didn't seem like that egregious a decision. Maybe I was just playing it cool and waiting for them to come to me? But instead, you will find yourself being severely reprimanded for being such a poor adventurer, and it's game over. (Morris really rips you a new one here). Harsh!

As to be expected from Dave Morris though, it is also very well written, and quite atmospheric in several places. One aspect I found jarring however is that your party is made up of 4 different characters, yet they never say anything to each other! I guess this is supposed to reflect how each of the heroes could be being controlled by a different player who would thus provide their own commentary, but when you are playing this solo, it feels something akin to "creepy". We as a group are facing all these trials and tribulations against horrible monsters and ghostly phantoms, and no one ever utters a word to one another? Just another day at the office I guess! 

Ranking: This is probably a higher score than the review might indicate, because despite some complaints, I still had a good bit of fun here, which at the end of the day is what it's all about. I felt the controlling of 4 different characters didn't work very well, the combat was just way too easy, and while I've always liked the simplicity of one-time use magic spells in gamebooks because I enjoy the discovery of learning the best place in the adventure to use each one, here they felt somewhat extraneous, if even the descriptions of several of them were quite cool. Where it gains points is in the item hunt aspect, the overall atmosphere, and several quite good "mini-sequences" to uncover. All-in-all a decent start to the series for those looking for a "quick fix" adventure, and I look forward to the next one.