OVERALL RANKINGS
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11. Challenge of the Promethean Guild - Score = 💀💀💀 1/2 - Three and a Half Skulls
Attempts to Beat: 20
Returning to the Proteus magazine entries, I kick off the back half of the series with this adventure from Elizabeth Caldwell, which is the first in the range of a "science fantasy" nature. (Although perhaps you could argue that Shinderg's Tomb was technically one of these as well). We are told in the introduction that the world on which we find ourselves is one where magic and science co-exist, where dragons fly the skies and androids walk the streets. Other than that, no backstory is given, and we do not even know the name of the world on which the adventure takes place. For a full size gamebook I would find this a glaring omission, but for these quick-hit magazine adventures, there is something to be said for just jumping right into the action without bogging the reader down in lots of world-building exposition. The adventure opens with your character, along with three other hopefuls, attempting to join the mysterious Promethean Guild, which is a group of legendary thieves and assassins for hire who in something of a contradiction, have the ultimate aim of eliminating evil while also making their members rich in the process by virtue of the high fees charged for their services. As one might expect, joining this illustrious guild is no easy task, and requires you to pass 3 separate trials held within their hidden underground mountain testing lair. Upon entering the lair, we are confronted with a choice among 3 doors, with each one containing one of the tests. We are initially told that the 3 tests involve: (a) the theft of a precious object, (b) the finding of pieces of a key within a maze that will allow us to escape, and (c) a cat-and-mouse game against an enemy in the underground catacombs where you both try to draw first blood from the other. We are not told which door hides which test, and so must pick one at random to begin our trials.
The game system returns with the attributes of Dexterity, Strength, and Skill, where Dexterity stands in for Skill from the "Fighting Fantasy" series and is used to calculate your attack strength in combat, Strength stands in for Stamina or Life points, and Skill equates to a catch-all attribute that takes into consideration your adeptness in doing such things as picking locks or detecting ambushes, and will be tested with a dice check at various times throughout the quest to see if you pass or fail. Seeing as how lasers exist in this world, there is an interesting rule relating to combat, whereby should you win the first combat round, you score 6 points of damage against your opponent as opposed to the usual 2 points, because you are able to hit them with a blast fired out from the hilt of your sword. This only applies to you and not your opponent, and only if you win the very first round of combat, with all subsequent rounds then playing out as normal because it takes time for your laser to recharge. I thought this was a great addition, as it actually gave you a bit more of a fighting chance to defeat some of the high-powered enemies found in the adventure, of which there are several. Other than that, all you have to begin are a supply of 6 rations which restore 5 Strength points each, and you are likely to need every one of them thanks to the existence of those dangerous enemies.
The adventure itself is essentially 3 mini-quests involving the 3 different trials, and the best thing the adventure does is allow you to do them in any order you wish. This means that you can either try to figure out what you need to do for each of them one at a time, or go back and forth between them all should you become tired with one and wish to mix things up a bit. Each of the trials takes place in an underground "dungeon" setting, and is quite fleshed out, providing a few different routes to take to reach your objective. Looking at each of the trials individually below:
Trial 1 - Theft of a precious object - I felt this was the easiest and shortest of the trials, but contained some interesting and fair puzzles that needed to be solved as we make our way through various tunnels and rooms before battling an android for possession of the required object. I took to saving this quest for last once I discovered some of the dice rolls that needed to be made in order to pass the other trials, as there was no point in going through this one over and over only to so often fail due to one poor roll elsewhere.
Trial 2 - Find pieces of a key to escape a maze - The longest of the trials, this has you first needing to find the key itself, then find the 5 different hexagonal rubies that fit into it and allow it to open the door at the end of the trial. This was a tough one, with any wrong turning near the beginning of the dungeon meaning a likely miss of one of the essential pieces required to complete the test. Frustratingly, one of the required key pieces can only be obtained by playing a slot machine game, where you roll one die and need to get a 4 or higher to obtain the piece. You get a couple of cracks at it, so you should be able to get the piece on the majority of your playthroughs, but it can be annoying (and I speak from experience) to roll lower than 4 on both your tries at it, knowing you now can't win and there is nothing at all you could have done about it. This harked back to another Caldwell adventure, the otherwise exceptional Treasures of the Cursed Pyramid, which contained a similar required roll. There was a missed opportunity to do something cool here, by giving you a chance to acquire an additional key piece elsewhere should you fail this slot game, by perhaps having to fight a dangerous creature later on in the dungeon that you otherwise would have avoided had you won the slot game. Oh well. In addition to that, there are also a couple of high powered enemies you will need to fight in this trial, including a Robot Fighter with Dexterity 12! True, you only need to get him down to half Strength points before he powers down, but this still means you have to damage him for 10 points, and pretty much consigns any low Dexterity characters to failure.
This trial then concludes by having you navigate an actual maze, and I am beginning to wonder what it is with Proteus and these boring as hell mazes. The layout of the maze itself is actually pretty good, as it covers 3 separate levels, with ladders going up between the levels at various spots throughout. This made it initially fun to map, as I was doing so in almost a 3-D sense. So what is the problem? Well as it turns out, there is absolutely NOTHING to be found within the maze! It is a series of boring empty corridors, with no encounters, penalties, or rewards, so you just stumble around until you eventually find the exit, where you are then just given the last piece of the key, which lies at the foot of the exit door. Gamebook authors badly need to start populating these mazes with something, anything, otherwise it just leads to pointless wandering and time wasting, when you know you will eventually just randomly come across the exit.
Trial 3 - You and an enemy attempt to draw first blood - A very fun trial, with one big problem which I will get to in a moment. Here you make your way through a dungeon, hunting out a specific enemy while they in turn hunt you. There are some more puzzles to be solved here, although gratefully no super-high Dexterity opponents, until the trial finally culminates on a massive chess board, where a game of "Battle Chess" is being played out. And for those who don't remember the old PC game, this involved the actual chess pieces fighting over the squares. Here you take the board as the White Pawn, and find the enemy you have been seeking, who has taken on the role of the Black Queen. And my word! When it comes to the Black Queen, I think we have a new champion in the realm of "sexy illustrations"!
She can occupy my "knights" anytime!
As great as that artwork from Mark Dunn is, the "fight" against the Black Queen herself is terribly designed. It is not a fight to the death, merely a fight to see who can draw first blood. Therefore, you only fight until one of you takes a hit, which is most times only one round, and if you are the one to take the hit, the adventure is over. I lost this combat many times, including a few in which I had a Dexterity advantage, which can be very frustrating to only get the one crack at it.
Once you have successfully completed all the trials in one go, you are congratulated and welcomed into the Promethean Guild, ready to begin your life of intrigue and danger. The writing in the adventure was quite strong as usual for a Caldwell entry, although still not on the level of Treasures of the Cursed Pyramid. The artwork was strong throughout as well, contributing greatly to the atmosphere of the adventure, and even featuring in a couple of the puzzles. And on the subject of those puzzles, I was greatly impressed by them here. The adventure is full of brain teasers, and in the vast majority of them I found myself requiring to take some time in coming up with the answer, while at the same time never finding myself completely stumped by any of them. There is a "Sudoku" style puzzle in particular where I initially attempted to solve it as I normally would such a puzzle, before coming up with a different approach that allowed me to arrive at the correct answer. I'm sure others out there probably came up with this solution faster than I did, but it still provided for a nice "eureka!" moment for me.
Ranking: The hardest Proteus adventure yet (you will likely need an 11 or 12 Dexterity to have a chance at winning), but also one of the better ones. In fact, I have this as the second best entry in the series so far, trailing only the already-mentioned Treasures of the Cursed Pyramid. I had a lot of fun alternating between the different trials and working out what to do for each one, and allowing you to do them in any order is a highlight. The puzzles and the illustrations are also strengths, and I was prepared to give this a full 4 Skulls had it not been for the terrible Black Queen fight, which had me deducting half a Skull. Caldwell is back to providing winning adventures though, which is obviously great news for the series.
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12. The Weaver of Nightmares - Score = 💀💀💀 - Three Skulls
Attempts to Beat: 17
Is it just me, or did these Proteus adventures start getting harder with this back half of the series? Not that I'm complaining mind you, as I appreciate more of a challenge, but these last two adventures have now taken me the most attempts of any in the series so far. This particular quest from series stalwart David Brunskill begins with the typical "western movie" opening, as we play a nameless character who stumbles into a downtrodden town one day to find that the people living there are under the thumb of an oppressive and evil local lord. In this case, the town is called Glengantha, and it borders a desert which is slowly encroaching on the area, destroying any arable land in the process and denying the townsfolk any way to grow food. The townspeople would like to make a deal with a landowner (the titular Weaver, who also happens to be a sorcerer) who lives in a more fertile area a short trip across the sea, but being the evildoer that he is, the Weaver not only turns them down, but has also kidnapped all the various envoys that Glengantha has sent to treat with him, who he now holds prisoner for his own twisted amusement. Sympathizing with the plight of the villagers, we offer to travel across the sea and attempt to rescue said prisoners (alone, like a big dope). We are immediately warned by the Weaver's apprentice, a creature who looks like an orc and goes by the name of Dreadthread (through a spectral message that he sends to us), that the Weaver has become bored with his daily routine, and welcomes our attempt to free his prisoners as it will provide him with some amusement. The Weaver has even set up a game for us, and there have now been hidden 7 tokens around his house, and should we be able to find all these tokens, we will be allowed to leave with the prisoners. Although we wisely do not trust this, we decide to play his game anyway, and set off to travel to his house in order to do so.
The game system here is very simple, giving us only the two attributes of Dexterity and Strength to track along with a supply of 5 rations. Before we leave Glengantha, we are told that we may want to seek the assistance of Frowellyn, a witch who lives in the woods south of the city. Should you be able to find her, Frowellyn will offer to sell you (and you start with 22 gold pieces) various potions that will allow you to do such things as use telekinesis on objects, or increase your combat stats before a battle, but only if you are given the option to do so at a particular point in the adventure. So you then buy from her whichever potions you want and can afford. I initially thought that going to see the witch was optional, as you are given the choice of just proceeding on towards the Weaver's domain without doing so, and thought this might be a good way for a powerfully rolled up character to avoid trudging through the boring woods (as this area turns out to be), as they may be able to win the adventure on their own. You will find out later though that Frowellyn holds an item that is essential to victory, and therefore you must go and see her first, so that pretty much shot down that initial impression. Bring on the woods!
After travelling through the unexciting woods (although there is at least the odd thing going on here and there, which is more than I can say for some of the mazes in the series), and afterwards enduring a stretch of turn-to references that contain an annoying "it was all just a dream" section as you travel towards the docks and then across the sea toward the land of the Weaver, I was thoroughly unimpressed with the adventure. Fortunately though, once we arrive at the Weaver's "house" (and more on this term later), the adventure gets much better. From here on out, it is essentially an item-hunt dungeon crawl, but one that I for the most part enjoyed, mainly because it was a satisfying feeling whenever I found one of the well-hidden tokens. It's not just finding the tokens that provides a challenge however, as the particular order in which you do things is important as well, and I always like slowly piecing such things together. There is a bit of a twist on the creature encounters in the adventure as well, as anything you come across may actually be an illusion, and you must decide whether to assume it is real and fight, or ignore it and hope you are correct in that it isn't real, otherwise suffer a damage penalty. For my first several attempts, I found that my character's Dexterity level for that playthrough had me strategizing on whether to fight or ignore. With a high powered character I thought it better just to hack first and ask questions later, while a lower Dexterity character would have me trying to avoid combat wherever possible, thus wimping out in most of these situations. This only really lasts until you have worked out which encounters are real and which are illusions through repeated playthroughs, but that is to be expected, and until that happened it had me putting some thought into my actions. Incidentally though, the whole "illusions can harm you if you believe they are real" bit is becoming a bit of a trope in itself (and I never fully bought how that worked anyway, but so be it).
The encounters within the Weaver's lair are varied....and weird. A few of the denizens here feel really out of place, including a martial arts warrior by the name of "Chunk" (the reason for his name? Because that is the sound made when he destroys a table with a karate chop!) along with a silent guardian known as the Thin Man. What really stood out for me though was the Frog King, who poses a headache inducing puzzle to you after you are captured by his subjects. Hang on a sec, there is a whole Frog Kingdom down here? I don't recall coming across any water areas except for maybe the instant-death sewers you can fall into. He and his followers also appear to only take up one room, and the whole encounter is just very strange, even for a fantasy gamebook. There are some highlights too though, particularly in the form of "Glop", a prisoner of the Weaver who has been cursed with hideous features for having done something to anger the sorcerer in the past. You can really feel the sadness when you meet this guy, and the artwork accompanying this character contains an excellent amount of suitable pathos.
So overall, an enjoyable enough quest with a nice challenge level. Not without some issues though, in addition to the somewhat boring opening act, that I will outline below:
Is this a house? - Something similar is done here that occurred in an earlier Brunskill adventure, The Tower of Terror, in that we are told that we will be entering a certain type of structure, only to find that to be in name only, and what we in fact get is laid out just like your typical underground complex. To be honest, I am not actually sure if you are underground all the time or not, but it sure comes across that way. (Once again, no windows?) Yes, the term "house" could have been used here in a generic sense to describe the Weaver's home, but then we actually see the house as we approach, and are led to believe it is a mansion of some sort, only to find out this does not appear to be the case. Disappointing that, as I believe the feeling of going through a large house would have been more atmospheric.
Section 99 - This one section had me visibly frustrated. So here, we confront a Hobgoblin who is standing in front of two doors. One of the doors contains one of the tokens, and the other leads to an instant death. The Hobgoblin, who is begging for his life at the time as he expects you to kill him, will tell you which door is safe to go through in an attempt to save himself, and you are then given two options. Either you can believe him and go through the door he tells you, or you can use one of the specific potions to find out if he is telling the truth. So what happens if through either your own intuition, or more likely, having played through the situation already, you know which is the correct door but you do not have the specific potion asked for? Too bad for you! It's game over as you are not given any other choice but to believe him, and then willfully go to your doom. Just terrible design, and one of those hurl-the-book-across-the-room moments (if this was a book). Thankfully you should only get caught out by this once, as you will now know to always bring that potion (or just kill the Hobgoblin outright), but once was more than enough.
Truth or Lie riddles - Well that didn't take long! This adventure contains not just one, but TWO of these riddles of the "some statements are true and some are lies" variety. And if I didn't already know while playing that this was a Brunskill penned adventure, this would have given it away in a heartbeat, as he clearly has a fetish for these riddles. By my count, this now makes it 6 for 12 in Proteus entries that contain at least one of these, and almost all of them from Brunskill.
50/50 roll - Yep, another one of these babies. In this case, we are required to fight off a zombie grabbing us by the throat, and we are told to roll two dice. Should we roll a 2-4 it means instant death, with 5-9 requiring a reroll (which is also annoying), and a 10-12 meaning victory, so your odds of surviving are even-steven. This is an essential roll too because the zombie holds an item that will prove to be required for victory. You know, if they are going to include these rolls, could they at least make them for a bonus or stat boost or something and not on the required path? C'mon!
Rushed final act - First off....Dreadthread. What happened to this guy? He acts as the Weaver's right hand man, and appears at a couple of points in the adventure to taunt you, but then is forgotten about halfway through, and to my knowledge there is never any resolution with his character. I was fully expecting some sort of confrontation with him that never materialized. Similarly, the potion mechanic seems like it was completely forgotten about over the final third of the adventure as well, with several moments where they could have come in handy but no options given to use them (although to be fair, carrying around useful items then not being given a chance to use them is a common complaint for many gamebooks). Still, wouldn't the KIL potion, which increases your combat stats, have been the ideal potion to use in the final fight against the Weaver himself? I saved it just for that purpose, but then found I couldn't even use it!
Ranking: While the challenge level here was higher, I found myself feeling much the same about this adventure as I did about a previous entry of which I also gave 3 Skulls, Lord of Chaos, in that it was a rather enjoyable item hunt and mapping experience, but with something of a crummy plot. The highs of this adventure are higher than the entry from that prior issue, and I had a good time in uncovering the locations of the hidden tokens along with working out the exact order in which I needed to do everything. But the lows here are also lower, with yet another aggravating dice roll to be made along with elements of the adventure that appear to have been dropped partway through. Overall, a positive experience though, and I would give this adventure the slight edge over Lord of Chaos, slotting just ahead of that one and just behind Caverns of the Enchantress. This puts it around the middle of the series rankings for me so far (currently ranking 5 out of 12), and at least continues the good start for the back half of the series.
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13. The Shadow of Shargan - Score = Zero Skulls - BROKEN!
Attempts to Admit Defeat: 60
I have spent some time in recent reviews lamenting the presence of 50/50 do-or-die rolls along the required path for some of these adventures. Oh how naive I was, as after playing this issue I now long for such favorable odds. The dice rolls required to beat The Shadow of Shargan are truly ridiculous, but first, the story. After playing this adventure 60 times before calling it quits, I actually had to go back and re-read the introduction to the quest, as I had long since forgotten what the plot was. I knew I was trying to stop a bad guy called Shargan, but what his aim was and who sent me had been lost amidst an endless barrage of losing dice rolls. This adventure is in fact a sequel to issue #11 (oh yeah!) Challenge of the Promethean Guild, that takes place on a world where science and fantasy co-exist, and with our character fresh off his successful joining of that shadowy Guild which specializes in theft and assassination. The story opens with us being hired by The Kingdom of Aarlach, which is a small island kingdom far to the east. The kingdom has recently fallen under threat of destruction by the evil sorcerer Shargan, who has built himself an underground fortress within a volcano located near the centre of the island. The kingdom believes that Shargan is harnessing the power of the volcano in order to create some sort of doomsday weapon, and have offered to pay you 50,000 gold pieces if you can eliminate him. We accept of course, and head off via sailing ship towards the island.
We have the usual stats of Dexterity, Strength and Skill again along with a supply of 6 rations, and upon landing on the island we take a quick overland trip before arriving at the volcano and entering it. I knew going in that this was a difficult adventure, but halfway through I didn't think it was that bad at all, and was enjoying exploring the interior of the volcano. You make your way through tunnels and caverns towards the heart of the volcano, encountering various creatures and solving puzzles along the way, until you arrive at a chokepoint section near the halfway point of the quest where you need to have a certain item (a belt that protects you from the heat) in order to be able to progress through to the interior of the volcano where the temperature is much hotter. I had a good deal of fun mapping out the various corridors and rooms in search of this belt, and found it to be fairly well hidden. Once you finally locate this item however, the adventure loses its mind. There are four main hurdles in particular that stand out over the second half of the quest that must be overcome, and these involve in order:
1 - After locating the heat-resistant belt, you need to escape the room where the belt is found, and to do this there is a random roll of one die as you attempt to escape a lava flow, on which you need to get a 5 or a 6. Anything lower and it's game over. This is obviously a killer, as even once I had worked out the optimal route through the adventure, only 1 in 3 attempts on average were going to make it through this. Horrible design, and to be honest, the way it's written seems like it might have been put here by mistake. I sure hope it was anyway, for at least that would be something of an explanation for it.
2 - Crossing the fire lake. So in a Luke-Sharp-esque random mini-game, you are required to cross a lake of lava by using stepping stones numbered 1 through 20. You roll one die and proceed that many stones across, and depending on which numbered stone you land on, various things could happen. You could step on a safe stone where nothing happens, you could land on a stone requiring you to lose some Strength points, you could be required to pass a do-or-die Dexterity check, or in the worst case, you could be required to fight essentially a Dexterity=12 and Strength=12 Fire Lake Monster. (The Monster has Dexterity=9, but you are required to take 3 points off your own Dexterity due to your precarious fighting position). Oh, and if the Fire Lake Monster happens to roll a 12 on its attack, it means instant death for you. Wonderful! Now, you could get fortunate and avoid this confrontation by not stepping on the wrong stones, but if you are not so lucky, any moderate Dexterity character or lower is likely done for.
3 - A fight against a Robot Guard with Dexterity=12 and Strength=14. Ugh. Unlike the Fire Lake Monster, this fight is unavoidable, and also means that unless you start with a Dexterity of 11 or 12 yourself, you probably ain't making it past this guy. That's another two-thirds of attempts that are pretty much doomed from the start, and this is independent from the two-thirds that are doomed from the first hurdle above. This is far from the first time you are required to defeat a max Skill enemy in a gamebook in order to win, but if I may offer some advice to gamebook authors, could you at least dial back their Strength/Stamina numbers to 6 or 8 at max, so at least an average skilled character would have more of a chance? The rule carried over from Challenge of the Promethean Guild that sees you score 6 points of damage instead of the usual 2 points if you win the first combat round does help to a degree, but not quite enough, and I died here many times also.
4 - The final indignity. Once you figure out how to defeat Shargan (and more on this later), you still need to escape the exploding volcano. In order to do this, you are told to roll one die 10 times, and add up the total. (Why not roll two dice 5 times though?) For you to successfully escape, the total needs to be 30 or less, and if it's higher than 30, you die. As simple math will tell us, the odds are against you doing this. In my 60 attempts at the adventure, I made it to this stage on 5 separate occasions, failing every time. On 3 of these attempts I actually got a total higher than 40, with the closest I got being a 34. The last couple of times I made it here, I found myself just staring at the dice, not wanting to roll them, knowing that I was likely to fail and because I knew how tough it was just to make it this far, and dreaded starting over yet again.
I should also point out that there are two Skill checks and one Dexterity check in addition to the above that must also be passed in order to win, but I had less of an issue with these, as your scores for these attributes should average 9-10 on most attempts, which gives you the advantage in passing them. And when it comes to the Dexterity stat in particular, as stated earlier, you probably aren't going to win without a very high value in this stat anyway. That said, I did still fail more than a few times on these checks due to rolling high on the dice at these inopportune moments.
Despite all the frustrations due to the above, I was initially impressed that when you finally make it through all this to the end of the quest and stand just outside Shargan's quarters, there actually appears to be two different ways to beat him, as you can either take him on in combat yourself, or release a Fire Elemental that Shargan has trapped that will do the dirty work for you (although which option you take depends on which one of two unmarked doors you go through, so the first time you get here, the choice is random). In order to defeat Shargan in combat yourself however, you will need to find something called the Fire Sword, which is the only weapon that can hurt him. If you don't have this weapon when you walk into his chambers, you are insta-killed. This Fire Sword is located way back in the first half of the adventure, the problem is (and this is a doozy), should you take the path to collect this weapon, as far as I can tell at least, you then cannot collect the fire-proof belt that is essential for passing through the chokepoint and on to the second half of the quest! This certainly seems like a massive "oops" from author Elizabeth Caldwell. But maybe it isn't, because after finishing with the adventure, I decided to see what would happen if you were somehow able to defeat Shargan using the Fire Sword, and it turns out that after beating him (and he has Dexterity=11, Strength=16, and does 3 points of damage per hit compared to your 2 points, so this is far from easy), you perish in the explosion of the volcano anyway! There doesn't appear to be a way to get to this fight in any case (so what was the point of including it?), but this whole situation takes away something that could have been an extremely nice bit of design in giving you two different ways to defeat the bad guy, and replaces it with a kick in the teeth from the author.
If I have any positives to say about the adventure, I did enjoy exploring the first half of the volcano, and enjoyed most of the mathematical puzzles presented here as usual. The story, involving infiltrating an evil sorcerer's underground lair and assassinating him, isn't the most original of plots to say the least, but Caldwell does do a very nice job of differentiating it somewhat by having a volcanic "fire and lava" theme present all throughout. She creates a nice atmosphere here too, with constant rumblings coming from the depths of the volcano, and what I thought was some really great imagery as you scale the outside of the volcano at the beginning, with the eyes of Shargan peering down on you from behind the clouds in a moment that reminded me of a scene from Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" movie from 1992. Unfortunately though, all of this is nowhere near enough to cover the adventure's faults. Finally I have to add that there is once again an illustration of a woman in skimpy clothing here (Shargan's personal bodyguard as far as I can tell) that while setting a new standard for least amount worn in the series, might actually be more disturbing than anything else.
Ranking: I should reiterate that just because I put an adventure in my "Broken" tier does not mean that I think it is necessarily impossible to beat (although that would certainly also qualify), just that the number of attempts it would have taken me personally to beat is far beyond what should be expected from a gamebook player. And this is especially true for one of these magazine adventures. In truth, this is the "Broken" gamebook that I came the closest to beating, as a couple more 1s and 2s instead of 5s and 6s on some of my attempts to escape the volcano at the end would have resulted in victory. Even had I won however, I don't think I could rate this adventure very highly, most likely 1 and a half, or maybe 2 Skulls at most, as the design has some serious issues, and much like The Triad of Evil from issue #10, feels like it was rushed by Caldwell. One way or another, I am glad this one is now behind me. Not just due to the frustration involved, but also for the fact that having a magazine adventure take almost 2 weeks of my time throws a big wrench into my playing schedule! I certainly hope the next one doesn't take as long as this.
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14. In Search of the Lost Land - Score = 💀 1/2 - One and a Half Skulls
Attempts to Beat: 14
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15. The Havarine Madness - Score = 💀 1/2 - One and a Half Skulls
Attempts to Beat: 18
I suppose I will need to wait at least one more issue for that desired course correction, because this one doesn't get the job done. What we do have here though is a brand new author for the series in the form of M.W. Bolton, and unless that is a pseudonym, this would appear to be the only gamebook adventure they have ever written. The introduction to the quest here is actually....pretty good. We play as a famous, yet nameless, adventurer who has been summoned by the small kingdom of Garrangar to aid them in a time of need. As the introduction begins, we find ourselves sitting inside an inn within the small village of Dalgolath as we wait for our contact to arrive. When they are finally do, we are given a rundown of the situation Garranger now finds itself in. It would seem that the kingdom is slowly being invaded by the Havarines, a crazed people who are beset by some form of madness. This madness is also contagious, and the people within the kingdom are slowly succumbing to it as well. We are additionally informed that the King of Garranger is one of the victims now suffering from the disease, which has turned him into a tyrant. At this point, our contact reveals themselves to be the Queen of Garranger (in disguise), and advises us to seek out a wise man, Zermahaar, who has his castle somewhere in the mountains of the wild-lands. Not only will Zermahaar have a cure for the madness, but he also is in possession of a relic known as the Sword of Ruin, which could be used to successfully repel the Havarines. Zermahaar will not simply hand over these items however, and we are told that he will be expecting a precious gift in exchange for them, so we should keep our eyes out for anything that might prove a suitable gift along the way. I was enjoying this introduction up until the very end, when the Queen finally tells us that should we be successful in our quest, she will reward us by giving us half of the kingdom! Whoa! Seems a bit overkill there doesn't it? Are the people living in the half of the kingdom we are to receive as a reward aware of this deal? She also provides us with rations and 12 gold pieces before we set off northwards in search of Zermahaar's castle. (And she can give us half the kingdom but can only spare a measly 12 gold?)
So far so good, and at this point in the series I was looking forward to another overland quest. But I gotta say, the layout of the outdoor area you need to travel through is quite boring and more than a little patience-testing. You travel along paths and trails, through grasslands with the odd forest thrown in, as you attempt to make your way towards the mountains in the north, all the while looking for a suitable treasure to give to Zermahaar. However, these trails are a constant barrage of "do you want to go North, East or West?", and if I never get asked that question again it will be too soon. There is very little of interest that happens as you plod along, with just the occasional creature jumping out of the bushes that you must fight. Now, this doesn't totally provide an explanation for the lower score I have given the adventure, and for that I will list the problems I had with this issue below.
The layout of the map - Obviously mapping this adventure as I played, I slowly began to uncover some areas of it that were incredibly annoying, if not downright infuriating. I mentioned in my review of the previous adventure, In Search of the Lost Land, that it went over the top with the random instant deaths, and the same complaint can be levelled here. For instance, I soon learned that I needed to avoid the middle area of the map, because it's covered in a mist that leads to an instant-death. Not just one instant-death mind you, but several that can come from just turning the wrong way. It's actually even worse than that, as there are at least two sections where you are asked which direction you want to head, and no matter which you pick, you will find yourself walking into this deadly mist which kills you. So why bother asking me? None of these deaths are written in a unique or interesting manner either, they all basically consist of "you trip and fall into a yawning chasm, game over". (And this brought back memories of a similarly lame death to be found within the Fighting Fantasy book Masks of Mayhem). There is a likewise pointless area where you can climb a plateau and find a strange sword among a group of rock figures. You are then asked if you want to take or leave the sword, but it doesn't matter, as you are killed either way. Argh!
The correct route through the adventure - Upon slowly uncovering the route you need to take in order to gather what you need and get where you need to go, I was more than a little surprised at how hopelessly your character needs to wander, and in the strange and circuitous path you ultimately need to travel. In order to win, you will eventually learn that you need to obtain a key located at the far side of the map. Just what does this key open? Why, a box that contains an essential item, with this box being located mere steps away from where you started the quest! At least you don't have to backtrack through the exact same areas like you did in some of "The Legends of Skyfall" books, but why on Earth would our character head back to where they started in the first place? At this point, you have no idea that the key or even the box is essential, or even important, in the quest, so why are you heading back to where you first set off? Were we giving up? More to that, you buy this box at an old woman's shop, and she has several items for sale. But why am I only allowed to buy one item when I have enough gold to buy two or more? And if you buy one of the particular items, a potion, the old woman tells you that it is a healing potion, but in an awkward exchange you realize she may or may not be telling the truth. So did I just buy a healing potion or not? Beats me!
The Havarines and the madness - So where are these dangerous Haverines exactly? I can't recall coming across a single one, and they were supposed to have been infesting the kingdom. And as far as individuals being infected with the madness goes, they are in short supply as well, as I only came across a couple of people who appeared to be suffering from it. This hardly seems like the deadly infectious disease it was laid out to be, and it's a wonder anyone thought anything was wrong at all. Did I end up conning the Queen out of half the kingdom? This was a real wasted opportunity after the good opening premise.
The final puzzle - Oh boy! When you eventually arrive at Zermahaar's castle, you will need to solve several puzzles in rather quick succession. The first one of these is odd, because unless you obtained the essential item mentioned earlier, you are not even given the chance to solve it even though it's etched right into a wall your character happens to be looking at. Even so, this first puzzle, and especially the one that follows, were well done and I enjoyed solving them. So far so good on this front. But then we get to the final puzzle required to beat the adventure. And wow is this ever a pain in the ass! It is one of those puzzles that you need to decipher in order to arrive at the next section number to go to, and it reads as below:
Fingers of a score of men,
Legs of a crab multiplied by ten,
Less the ears of a baker's dozen of dogs,
Plus the bulging eyes of a couple of frogs.
At first glance this seemed pretty straightforward. Only that when I made the calculations, I found that my answer was greater than the total number of sections in the adventure. Hmmm. Ok, so maybe Bolton didn't count thumbs as fingers? Nope, that would still give me an answer greater than the number of sections. Ok, so maybe there was an editing error and there was supposed to be a "less" inserted before the crab leg number and that was meant to be subtracted? After all, there is a "plus" in the frog line, so why nothing for this line? Nope, this gave me an actual section number this time, but not one that contextually made sense (although it did inadvertently give away what gift I needed to choose in the final decision). Now I started to get a bit worried, as I was running out of combinations to try. After giving it a lot of thought, and trying a couple of other solutions that made no sense and were basically Hail Mary's on my part, I decided to take advantage of a similar loophole discussed in the comments section earlier. The adventure never does say you only get one guess at it, only that "if you can't solve the riddle, shame on you!" before sending you to an insta-death section for giving up. So, correctly predicting that it was likely to be a higher number, I just began guessing section numbers, eventually stumbling across the correct one. Now that I had the answer, I could at least attempt to work backwards to see if I could figure out how Bolton arrived at this answer. And man, you will need to make some pretty big assumptions to get this right. The 3 assumptions you need to make are (and spoilers obviously if you want to try and solve this yourself one day, although I think that goes without saying for my reviews):
1) That thumbs are indeed not fingers. This was the only one I correctly assumed in some of my guesses, despite believing on the surface of it that this was incorrect. (I always thought "all thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs" was a well known saying). A quick internet search, which I admit is proof of absolutely nothing, has me now wondering if Bolton may actually be right here, as there seems to be some dispute on whether thumbs are indeed fingers. And I can't believe I have to try and discern such a thing in attempting to beat a gamebook!
2) That the crab referred to in the second line is a King Crab. Um yeah, I have no idea why anyone would assume this, as the common crab has 10 legs. I have a feeling Bolton looked up a picture of a crab and just happened to spot a King. This assumption by itself still isn't enough however, as you would also need to assume that....
3) The King Crab's pincers are not counted as legs. So this species of crab has 8 legs, which would still make the answer incorrect. So we are expected to know NOT to count the pincers (or front legs) in the calculation. Good grief! At least the last two lines of the puzzle appear to be legit, but gimme a break with all this.
I feel like I am trying to defend Bolton here (for some reason that I cannot fathom) by contorting myself into a pretzel in trying to have this puzzle make sense. And for all I know, none of the above assumptions were what he had in mind anyway, and he may have just goofed on the math, or perhaps even used a totally different set of assumptions! In any case, I did not feel bad in my process of finding the correct section, because if you just absolutely cannot get the puzzle correct, what the hell else are you supposed to do? If there had been anything in the wording saying that any section turned to that did not contextually make sense meant game over, than I would likely have declared the adventure broken, at least for me. As it was, trying to solve this one made me want to give the author a certain finger (and not the thumb!)
Once that bit of tomfoolery was past, you still have to choose the correct gift to give Zermahaar. You are given a list of 7 possible items that you may have collected, with only one of them being the correct choice and all the others leading to game over. As mentioned earlier, I had already discovered which gift to give him during my attempts at getting the final puzzle correct, but even so, only a couple of the options seemed like they could have been correct, though I suppose you could say this increases replayability. Once you give the necessary gift, Zermahaar gives you the cure to the madness and also the Sword of Ruin, which you then return to the Queen and win the game. (Claiming half of the kingdom in the process. I just can't get over that reward!).
Turning to what I liked about the adventure, I did like the initial premise, and I was impressed with how much gameplay (such as it is) is packed into this 202 section entry. The correct path through the adventure, while not making a lot of sense at times, is surprisingly long. There are more than a couple of double-digit Dexterity enemies to fight, and while the creatures themselves are not all that interesting, I enjoyed the challenge level of running through them all in one go. (And perhaps there was a missed opportunity in not having the Giant Crab that you fight have 6 legs, and calling attention to that fact). Be warned however that much like with Challenge of the Promethean Guild, you will likely need to wait until you roll up a Dexterity 11 or 12 character in order to give yourself a chance to win, although a Dexterity 10 player might have an outside shot.
Ranking: I don't think it's the absolute worst in the series, but it is certainly near the bottom. I also don't want to completely dump on Bolton, as I thought there were at least glimmers of promise here and there. I did prefer it to Shinderg's Tomb, and I have it neck-and-neck with In Search of the Lost Land, and I went back and forth on which one of those two I preferred more (or disliked less if you will), because they really are that close for me. Had it not been for the final puzzle, I think I would have given The Havarine Madness the tiebreak, but ultimately I have to go with In Search of the Lost Land over it, although that is really just splitting hairs at this point. The rut I felt the series fell into has deepened. It can only go up from here....right?
Bonus Adventure - In Search of Christmas
This issue surprisingly contains a holiday-themed bonus adventure from series stalwart Elizabeth Caldwell, albeit one at only 75 sections in length. The introduction describes how our player-character wakes up one Christmas morning to discover that all the gifts Santa has left for us are utter crap. While we are pondering this, we hear crying coming from up inside our chimney, so dressed only in our nightgown, we shimmy up the chimney and onto the roof. Here we discover a distraught Santa Claus, who tells us that his sleigh has been stolen by a group of Evil Elves under the leadership of their King, Xodar. The Elves have made off with all the reindeer too, save for Rudolph who was not captured and remains with Santa. We agree to help Santa get his sleigh back, and mount the flying Rudolph to see if we can catch up with the Elves, with Santa also giving us his magical hat to aid us.
The adventure itself is fairly basic, but at only 75 shortly worded sections, it is about as good as you could reasonably hope it to be. You travel along with Rudolph, first through the air, then through a forest, and ultimately through the Ice Palace of the Evil Elves, and at several points are asked to make a choice in direction. Each direction will see you having to overcome a different creature before joining up again with the main path a few sections down the road. The distinguishing mechanic of the adventure comes in the form of Santa's magical hat. Whenever you encounter a creature, you roll one die, giving you one of 6 possible random results. These range from such results as freezing the creature on the spot which allows you to pass, or raining candy down on them (which is useless, and thus requires you to fight them). This all probably ends up contributing to making the adventure too easy, as I was finding the hat allowed me to bypass almost all the fights and I won on my first attempt, but a Christmas-themed adventure was probably wise to not be about fighting in any case.
I will say on that last point though, that I wish the adventure had more of a "Christmassy" feel to it. As other than the introduction, and that your travelling companion is Rudolph, I didn't get much of a festive feel from it. The encounters are with creatures such as elves, wolves, and an Abominable Snowman (ie. Yeti), all of which can be found in a standard fantasy quest. (I did chuckle at the Christmas "punch" though). Too bad too, because if it had more of a full on Christmas feel to it, I could have seen myself pulling this one out every so often on Christmas Eve. It is still worth a try at least once though.
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16. Escape from Scarpathia - Score = 💀💀💀💀 - Four Skulls
Attempts to Beat: 17
Now that's more like it! The series returns to the form and potential it showed several issues ago with this entry from David Brunskill. I absolutely loved the way this quest opens, with our adventurer player character hacking his way through a steaming hot jungle, only to discover a marble temple deep within it. The people residing inside this temple are peaceful, and provide you with a room to stay in for the night along with a supply of 5 rations. Before sending you on your way, their leader advises you to steer clear of the land of Scarpathia, which lies to the east, as it is ruled over by the evil baron Margas, whose people are warlike and cruel. Despite this piece of incredibly helpful information, no sooner have we left the temple then we decide to head directly for Scarpathia and Margas' castle, because we "could never resist a challenge". This makes our character seem like a cocky git, but is done in a way that had a certain charm to it that made it endearing.
The adventure proper then begins with a short overland trek as you make your way towards Castle Scarpathia, which you can spot towering above the trees off in the distance. You are given a choice of two different routes to get there, and while I believe you need to pick one of the two in particular or you will miss an item required to win, you will likely need to play the adventure enough times that it won't take you long to figure out which way you should go. I liked the shifting perspectives here too, as one of the routes is the "high road" and the other the "low road". Taking the lower route and spotting a swaying rope bridge high above you that you would have crossed on the other route is a nice touch, and I wish there were more such occurrences. One of the routes is also quite a bit longer than the other, and this should eventually be another clue as to which route you should be taking. There are a couple of powerful spirits that you can come across that will aid you in the adventure, one of them in particular providing you with 3 magic spells that will prove to be essential for completing the quest. I did find it a bit odd though that this spirit shows you 4 possible one-use spells (Quench Fire, Breathe, Vanish, and Freeze) that you can take with you, but only allows you to pick 3 of them. (You just couldn't let me take all 4 dude?). Once again though, you will need to play the adventure enough times that I quickly learned which of the 4 spells were the essential ones to select. It is immediately following this encounter that you are unavoidably caught by Margas' men and thrown in the dungeons of Castle Scarpathia, which is a fitting turn of events considering the over-confidence of our character, and this is now when the real meat of the adventure begins.
Leading to the title of the adventure, our goal here is now a simple one, escape from Castle Scarpathia with our lives. We use one of the just-learned spells to escape our jail cell (and strangely, the adventure tells us that if we have no magic, the game is over. However I don't think you can make it here without acquiring the spells?), and then proceed to enter the gloomy twisting corridors of the castle in search of a way out. And boy, is this aspect of the adventure, really, really good. You are given 3 possible directions you can go at the first junction, and you will need to slowly uncover the layout of the castle and what each room contains. This adventure then becomes one intricate puzzle, as there are a handful of essential items you will need to collect in order to escape, and a certain order in which you will need to collect them. The spells factor into the puzzle too, as there are a few places you can use each one, but because they are one-use only, you need to think very carefully about where to employ them. Use a spell in the wrong place, and you are ultimately doomed. I just love the design style of these types of adventures, and this one gave it to me in spades.
As it turns out, it is actually incredibly easy to make it to the end game of the quest, and it is possible to arrive at a necessary encounter with Margas in just a handful of sections after escaping your cell. If you do that however, you are dead meat, as you will have missed out on all the vital items and information you need to not only get past him, but also to escape through the final gate just beyond his room. In order to make it through this gate to freedom, you will need to find 3 specific keys scattered around the castle with different numbers inscribed on them. Much like in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, once you make it to the final gate with the 3 keys, you then add up the numbers to arrive at the next section to turn to. Also as in Firetop however, there are some incorrect "dummy" keys spread around the castle as well, and if you include those in your calculation, it will be game over. There was one particular key I found that was not numbered, but for the longest time I thought was essential to winning, so that I kept attempting to pick it up, bypassing some healing items that I could have availed myself of had I gone in the other direction, and I found this ultimate "red" herring to be so devious that I was quite impressed.
I was also impressed by how the adventure is all about escaping the castle, and not trying to kill Margas. In addition to the correct combination of numbered keys, you will also need to gather information and documentation that will allow you to bluff your way past both Margas, and the guards outside, before you can escape into the woods. I can't recall playing an adventure before where the game ended successfully by bluffing your way out of trouble, but this one does it wonderfully. And while you will need to fight several combats in order to win the adventure, this quest is definitely not about the combats. There are not any overly dangerous creatures that must be defeated in order to win, with possibly the most dangerous one (a Giant Scorpion who gets two attacks on its turn) coming after your possible acquisition of a magical sword that increases your Fighting Power, thus giving you the advantage (unless you started out with a particularly low Dexterity character, but defeat in such cases probably goes without saying in most gamebooks). In fact, the last required fight occurs well before the adventure successfully concludes, and I thought in this case the quest was the better for it.
When you look back at his previous output in the series, you can really see Brunskill's growth as a gamebook author here. This quest contains more of the thought provoking puzzles that the series likes to include, and the ones included here are very good to boot. And what do you know, this is a Brunskill adventure and there is no "truth or lie" riddle to be found! Yes! Both his design skills and storytelling have grown by leaps and bounds since the start of the series, and after this adventure I have to believe that his star is definitely on the rise. The adventure also appears to point at a sequel, as we never did stop Margas or even earn ourselves any glory for our troubles, and we additionally learned as we made our way through the castle that Margas intends to subjugate all nearby lands, including the kind people in the temple who aided us at the beginning. With how much I enjoyed this entry, a sequel would be most welcome.
If I had any complaints about the adventure it would probably be in the inclusion of the "fake keys", which only appear to exist in order to add some forced replayibility to the quest. You can know exactly where every single key in the adventure can be found, and also know how to make it to the end of the game, only to have to do it several times until you pick the right choice of keys. Still, I can't criticize this too much, as I didn't exactly have much of a problem with it in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, although that was likely due to that gamebook being the very first one I played, so therefore didn't have anything to compare it to. Another minor complaint would be in the editing of the adventure, because there are at least 2 section reference errors and both are doozies. When I came across each of these I was able to figure out where I was actually supposed to go next, but such mistakes often leave behind a "messy" negative impression. Brunskill also repeats something here that I have called out a couple of times before, in that we are supposed to be exploring a tall castle (which ominously towers over the surrounding lands as we approach it), only to then have us travel the usual seemingly underground lair with barely any stairs or windows. There probably should have been a lot more verticality here, but this is a minor quibble in this case considering the quality of the adventure.
Ranking: I put this adventure as the second best one to date, trailing only Treasures of the Cursed Pyramid for the top spot. It didn't have the same "wow" factor as Treasures, but this is still a great adventure in its own right. The opening of the quest reminded me of The Temple of Flame from the "Golden Dragon" series, and the castle sections with its "find the correct combination of numbered keys", along with gathering items that will allow you to bypass the bad guys at the end as opposed to fighting them, draws obvious parallels to The Warlock of Firetop Mountain from "Fighting Fantasy". In my opinion, not a bad couple of books to draw from to say the least, seeing as how I have them both in my Hall of Fame. This adventure just proved to me that you can trod familiar dungeon-crawl ground and still come up with a great quest, which Brunskill does here by providing an intricate puzzle to solve that ensures we thoroughly explore everything on offer, and then has us carefully planning out a successful route through to victory. A great entry and highly recommended.
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17. Black Crag Castle - Score = 💀💀💀 - Three Skulls
Attempts to Beat: 36
Wow, once again, what has happened to the difficulty level on these adventures in the back half of the series? Not necessarily a bad thing, but there has been a notable difference in the number of attempts these adventures have been taking me to complete in this stretch of issues. The adventure in this issue gives us another brand new author in the form of Ken Bulmer, and as far as debuts go, there is a lot of promise shown here. This promise begins right in the prologue, where we learn that our player character, having just returned to his home village of Millhaven only to find it burned to the ground with his family dead and the sacred talisman of the village stolen, determines to find those responsible and make them pay. So a personal revenge mission? I love it! Before he breathed his last, your father managed to tell you who was responsible for the attack, that being a pirate known as "One Ear", so off you head toward the port of Alfanzar in an attempt to find him and his crew so that you may exact your revenge and recover the talisman.
Unfortunately, the initial promise from that intro does not carry into the opening act of the adventure, which I thought was awful. Playing through the sequence that sees you exploring the port looking for One Ear had me wondering if Ken Bulmer might be a pseudonym for Jon Sutherland, because the adventure here feels incredibly like one from the "Real Life" series, in that meaningless choices happen fast and furious. Asked if you want to go East or West and pick West? Nah, you really didn't want to do that, and are just sent East anyway. Asked if you want to talk to or attack a local barkeep and you choose talk? (And what lunatic would just attack this guy for no reason?) You are immediately met with "You do, do you?" at which point he just attacks you! This whole encounter seems to be played for laughs, as after defeating this barkeep you actually start bopping him on the nose to get info, and felt tonally out of touch with the adventure. You do learn in this opening sequence that One Ear makes his base of operations on an island out in the sea (on which the titular Black Crag Castle is located), and are then unavoidably captured by a pirate crew who make you a slave on their galley, and you then must find a way to escape and make your way to the island in question.
Even the escaping of the galley, as with the rest of this opening act, felt very railroady, but thankfully once you manage this and arrive at Black Crag Castle itself, the adventure picks up considerably and begins redeeming itself. We slowly learn as we make our way through the Castle (which once again is more akin to an underground complex), that there was once some sort of evil entity present here, and that One Ear may have gotten more than he bargained for when he chose this place in which to set up shop. As such, there is a strong horror atmosphere at play, where even the pirates who use the Castle as their base attempt to avoid the various terrors that dwell within. You then need to make your way through the labyrinthine layout of the Castle's many corridors, battling mummies, zombies, vampire bats and the like, and gathering information as you go that will prove vital if you wish to get all the way to One Ear and the endgame of the quest.
As well laid out as I felt the Castle was, there were some big problems that rise up in the gameplay. One of these is that some of the information you are asked for should you wish to proceed past certain points of the quest comes out of the blue. Now, in the introduction to the adventure, you are in fact warned that you will need to note down any information you learn about One Ear, as it may prove vital later. So, I dutifully noted down any and all information about him as I came across it, some of which did indeed prove essential. I particularly liked a moment near the end where you are asked which one of four animal cages you wish to open in order to unleash its occupant on One Ear, the answer to which is hinted at by something said near the beginning of the quest, and it was this kind of thing in which I was expecting. However, you are also asked questions about things that have nothing to do with One Ear at all, with failure to provide this information leading to game over. So was I supposed to be taking notes on absolutely everything and everyone that I came across? That sounds incredibly tedious! Granted, once you know what information you need, gathering it on subsequent attempts by itself would not be a problem, however just getting to the point where you can find out what you need to know is a pain in the ass, because......
This leads to probably my biggest problem with the adventure, which is an unavoidable do-or-die Fate test that occurs about three quarters of the way through the game. Yep, the Fate attribute is back here, which works very much like the Luck stat in "Fighting Fantasy", except that you do not lose a point every time it is tested. As if a do-or-die roll isn't bad enough, Bulmer was really pissing me off because there are several unavoidable Fate point penalties along the required route, meaning oftentimes this roll is going to give you less than a 50% chance of succeeding. I easily died here more than at any other point in the adventure, but even should you pass this test, what follows is certainly no cakewalk either, with several double-digit Dexterity enemies that must be defeated should you wish to be victorious. So not only is this yet another adventure that likely requires a starting Dexterity of 11 or 12 to give yourself a shot, you likely also need a beginning Fate score in the double digits as well. This contributes to making this adventure the most difficult one so far that I was still able to complete (with The Shadow of Shargan taking me more attempts, but with no victory forthcoming there). The Fate point gains and losses encountered as you travel along also appear to come up completely at random. The biggest example occurs when you locate a +1 sword, which is probably the best item you can find in the whole quest, but comes with no associated Fate point bonus. Why the heck not?! And while on the subject of swords, did the Blessed Sword you get from the galley captain actually do anything? It is hinted that you may need it to fight the undead, but no stat bonuses are indicated.
Once you do finally gather everything you need to know (and I have to say, some of the information you need regarding One Ear's chess set and playing cards in order to bluff your way past a couple of pirates near the end of the quest are found in locations that make so little sense it would have made Ian Livingstone proud), you eventually make your way to the final confrontation with One Ear, where you at last get to give him his comeuppance. It is here where I gotta say, Bulmer absolutely sticks the landing on this ending. There is a great twist regarding your adversary that I never saw coming, but looking back on it maybe I should have considering what was going on within the Castle, and the final fight against him becomes a multi-stage battle. Mechanically speaking there is nothing unusual or especially unique about the fight, as it is a strict dice-rolling affair, but it is both beautifully and horrifically laid out, taking up multiple sections as you uncover the real truth of Black Crag Castle. Once One Ear is finally vanquished, there is also a wonderful ending scene, where I thought it was slightly hinted at that you may have just replaced One Ear, and now intend to take up his mantle of a pirate leader yourself. This may just be me projecting and was not intended at all by the author, but I would have liked to have seen this aspect leaned into even more here, as it would have a provided a nicely dark conclusion to the adventure that we almost never get to see. Either way, this whole final sequence is one of the real strengths of the adventure.
Ranking: Phew! Another magazine adventure that took me almost 2 weeks! This is one of those quests that for me careered wildly between things I thought were terrible and things I thought were great. Thankfully, the positives did eventually outweigh the negatives, but oh those negatives! I felt the opening act was awful, the middle act much improved, and the final act great, with only the required Fate roll and the off-the-wall information requests almost bringing it crashing down. As bad of a taste as the opening sequence left in my mouth though, the ending was fantastic, and left a decidedly positive final impression. This will not crack my top 5 in the Proteus rankings, but with it currently sitting at #7 for me and with only 3 issues remaining, it is guaranteed to at least finish in the top 10. If he can just iron out some of the kinks, author Ken Bulmer could be one to watch, and I look forward to his next adventure. Three more issues to go!
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18. Into the Dragon's Domain - Score = Zero Skulls - BROKEN!
Attempts before I couldn't bring myself to go on: 40
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19. Boneshaker's Mountains of Forever - Score = 💀💀💀💀 - Four Skulls
Attempts to Beat: 19
Back on track with another winner! And speaking of winners, how about the title of this issue? Boneshaker's Mountains of Forever just might be the most over-the-top badass named title I have played of any gamebook so far. The adventure itself, from returning author Ken Bulmer, backs it up too, with a unique and immersive opening that lent a lot of promise for what was to come. The prologue opens with our character, apparently some sort of adventurous ship captain, leading his men in a canoe up a jungle river in search of a former partner and crewmember who betrayed us by stealing a valuable piece of our treasure and making off into the jungle with it. This all had me wondering if this was meant to be a sequel to Bulmer's previous entry, Black Crag Castle, because that quest ends with us having a ship and a group of newfound friends ready to head off in search of adventure, which seems to be the continuation here. I don't believe this is ever confirmed though, so this is probably just a coincidence. Anyway, as we make our way through the jungle, we are soon captured by a native tribe of the area, and brought before their king. Here we learn that our former partner, who goes by Corelli the Butcher, has not only been stealing from us, but has also apparently stolen 3 children of the tribe and made off towards the mountains with them. These mountains, known as the Mountains of Forever, are forbidden to the tribe, who dare not set foot within them, even to save their own children. So, in exchange for your life and that of your crew, you volunteer to proceed alone to the mountains and rescue the children. To keep you from just running off, the tribe will continue to hold your crew captive, and should you not return within a week, they will be put to death. This was a nice introduction, as it contained a strong atmosphere and gave a plausible reason for once in how only one person is being sent on a quest when you would think a larger group would stand a better chance. The adventure itself even acknowledges this gamebook trope by saying "One person...might penetrate the mountains, where a whole army would fail." So off we head for the mountains, alone but with 6 rations (although strangely the adventure fails to mention how many Strength points the rations restore. I am guessing the usual 5?), to hopefully rescue the children and have our revenge on Corelli.
Despite that strong introduction, I have to admit to being disappointed with the opening sections of the adventure itself. First of all, right in section 1, we suffer an unavoidable loss of 2 Fate points. C'mon! This again? This kind of thing was one of my biggest sticking points with Bulmer's previous adventure, Black Crag Castle, where these impossible-to-avoid penalties would have you hamstrung for a later do-or-die Fate test. The good news here is that while these unavoidable point losses are present once again, at least there are no essential Fate tests that must be passed (only ones that cause you to lose some Strength points should you fail them), so that at least helped to greatly mitigate the frustration. Another disappointment which occurred for me in these opening sections is that the focus of one of your goals, taking revenge on Corelli, immediately shifts to it being another "hunt down and kill the evil necromancer in the underground complex" mission. You see, the Mountains of Forever have recently been overtaken by Stirkness Boneshaker, the above mentioned necromancer, who has already dispatched of Corelli before you even arrive, and has taken the kidnapped children as prisoners of his own. So from a story perspective, this became a pivot to much more familiar ground.
Thankfully however, once I really got going with the adventure and started to map everything out, those initial disappointments were quickly forgotten. This issue is a map-makers dream, with a multitude of intricate connecting corridors, rooms, and caverns, upon which to explore and make notes. Many of the rooms you enter have at least 3 exits, and while you are not always given the option of choosing every single doorway, the sheer amount of directional choices to be made here is very impressive. This is also one of those prime examples of "maximizing section count", as you could have fooled me that this adventure only contains 225 sections, because it easily feels like many more. My final map here ended up being huge (for a magazine adventure at least), and comparing it side-by-side with my map from last issue, Into the Dragon's Domain, it even appears to be at least 3 times as large as that entry, despite that adventure only containing 25 less sections. Bulmer must have had a great time plotting this all out, at least I hope he did, because I had a great time exploring and mapping it. There were even a couple of times, while searching for the various items I needed, that I may have found the plethora of options and places in which to search to be overwhelming, but in a good way if that makes sense. Mapping the layout of the complex here was definitely the highlight of this adventure for me.
You are going to need that map too, because there are a heck of a lot of essential things you will need to find in order to beat this quest, with several of them being quite well hidden. In your early attempts, you will likely discover a room containing an Elementalist who is hiding from Boneshaker's forces. He will tell you that in order to keep the necromancer from obtaining his abilities, he has scattered the powers he draws from the 4 elements (water, fire, air and earth) around the complex. And you guessed it, in order to defeat Boneshaker you are going to need to find them all. That's only the half of it though, because in addition to the power of the elements, and in a somewhat humourous revelation, you will also need to call upon Boneshaker's ex-wife, Narn, who parted company with Boneshaker "due to her untimely death", (and this gave me a chuckle). Boneshaker attempted to raise Narn from the dead, being a necromancer and all, but he botched it, and now allies that you meet within the mountains believe that Narn will aid you against him should you be able to successfully summon her. Just how you do this I will break out separately in the following paragraph, as it was another highlight of the issue.
So yes, special mention needs to be made of this Narn puzzle that you will need to solve in order to beat the adventure. In addition to the 4 elements that you will need to acquire, also scattered throughout the underground mountain complex are pieces of vellum that contain part of a message written on them. Each piece of vellum has 4 letters on it, and when placed in the proper order they spell out a phrase that contains the section number you will need to turn to in order to receive the help of Narn in the final battle against Boneshaker, and without which you cannot win. The real dastardly thing here, and one I admit might cause some frustration, is that you do not know how many pieces of vellum there actually are to find, you are just asked to put together any you have found and find the number hidden in the phrase. A few times this left me wondering if I was missing any of the vellum pieces, or if I had them all but could just not figure out the message. There is even a clue given by someone elsewhere in the mountain that will point you in the right direction in terms of assembling this message (although this clue is probably a bit too "sign-posted" in my opinion, but that was probably the point for those that might be struggling in determining the correct order of the vellum pieces). Even when I did manage to ascertain that I had finally found all the pieces, the manner in which the secret section number is hidden within the message itself is very clever. Extremely well done here!
The drawbacks for me with this adventure are relatively minor, but they are why I have it a notch below Treasures of the Cursed Pyramid in the scoring, and they mainly have to do with the story itself. While not bad by any stretch, it didn't really feel like anything we haven't seen many times over already, which is a shame because there were some opportunities to do some interesting things here. For example, I wish Bulmer had leaned more into the aspect involving the previous inhabitants of the mountains fighting back against Boneshaker's recent takeover. It is suggested that there are acolytes resisting here and there, but something really cool could have been done had there been running battles going on throughout the complex, perhaps taking a page out of Flight From the Dark from the "Lone Wolf" series for instance. Instead, you are once again travelling along mostly empty corridors. I also wish that Corelli had been kept alive much longer, perhaps requiring you to find him hiding somewhere in the mountains so that you can have your revenge on him, or maybe even have him allying with Boneshaker himself. Instead, we are robbed of our vengeance. Corelli does in fact try to redeem himself before he dies (which itself could have been something interesting had it been kept to the end and been more substantial), but he doesn't tell you anything you would not have learned yourself in short order anyway. And although I'm not sure I would call it a drawback, Bulmer does like to play dirty tricks at times, such as making you think you are going the correct way, by perhaps awarding you a Fate point bonus for example, only in actuality should you be going that way you have just consigned yourself to failure, which of course you would not immediately know, and which it might take you quite a while to find out. Also, while much of the difficulty of the adventure comes from locating all the well-hidden items and information that you require, even after learning all that, you are still likely to need an 11 or 12 Dexterity score in order to win, as the final fight against Boneshaker comes down to a swordfight, which didn't really feel right considering everything that immediately precedes it, as up until then it was a fun and well described multi-stage battle as you use each of the 4 elements against him. Once you finally defeat Boneshaker, you succeed in rescuing the kidnapped children in a satisfyingly written finale. I also would be derelict in my duty at this point if I didn't mention that this adventure returns to the series feature of providing us with an illustration of a sexy female, this time an elf-like woman we come across, presumably to once again bring in a few extra male readers!
Ranking: One of those adventures where it went up in my estimation the more I played it (they tend to work the other way around), as I slowly uncovered the intricate layout of the map, and how assembling the final puzzle all fit together. This one is top 3 for me so far in the series, and with only one issue left to go, is currently in the bronze medal position. I went back and forth for awhile on which I preferred more, this one or Escape From Scarpathia, but ultimately decided to give that previous entry the tiebreaker, as I felt the story and atmosphere there were slightly stronger, and it had a couple less minor frustrations. That being said, if you asked me which of the two I prefer down the road, I could easily see myself flipping them in the rankings, that is how close I have them. In any event, this is a great issue, and with only one more to go, it will be interesting to see if the last one can top it.
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20. The Orchid of Life - Score = 💀💀 - Two Skulls
Attempts to Beat: 4
And so my Proteus journey comes to an end, with this somewhat of a damp squib issue. If I was impressed with the over-the-top awesomeness of the title to the previous issue, this entry had the exact opposite effect. The Orchid of Life. Zzzzzzzzz. Don't know if I will ever see a bigger downgrade in adventure names between two series entries than this, but hey, don't judge a book by its cover right? Well, as it turns out, the titles of these two adventures actually DID reflect on their quality, as this adventure itself is only slightly less boring than its name. We play here as a "seasoned adventurer", and while grabbing a bite to eat at an inn within the village of Fourways one evening, we are joined at our table by an elf who introduces himself as Tamlane, and goes on to say that he was a friend of Aalandrin, who was your travelling companion in The Sceptre of the Elvenking, which is the adventure from way back in issue #7. Neat! So while the previous issue, Boneshaker's Mountains of Forever, had me wondering if it was meant to be a sequel to Black Crag Castle, this issue fully confirms itself to be a sequel to a previous issue. The thing is though, as I played through this, they really need not have bothered, because the angle that you are the same character from that quest never comes up again, and has no bearing on events here. What a waste.
Anyhow, because you helped out the elves before, Tamlane asks for your aid in recovering the Orchid of Life, a plant which only flowers once every hundred years, and is highly valued for its power of life-force. The Orchid was recently stolen (these elves really suck at guarding their treasures don't they?), by an evil necromancer named Liknud, who has taken the flower back to his lair located within the forest of Ardristan a short way to the north. As the flower blooms, Liknud will be able to draw from its power until he becomes unstoppable and takes over the forest along with the surrounding countryside. The elves have already sent their best sorceress, Eildon, to defeat Liknud and retrieve the Orchid, but she has not returned and is believed to have failed. You agree to help of course, and Tamlane goes on to tell you that there are 3 things you will need to find in order to defeat Liknud, these being: the root of a Hellbane plant, a clutch of grape-like nuts known as elf-fruit, and the enchanted dagger of Telledus. (Did you just pull these out of your ass dude?) Sure. Whatever man. Tamlane is travelling to Liknud's lair to confront him also, but tells you he will meet you there, as presumably the two of you will be more likely to gather the items you need should you split up. Ok, well at least THAT makes some sense. (Although I can already guess at how many of these items Tamlane will find himself. Zero anybody?).
I'm glad I had some things to talk about in those opening paragraphs, because once you start the actual adventure, there really isn't all that much to say, as this is about as basic a quest as you will find. The map is broken up into two areas, with the first half containing the forest and the second half encompassing Liknud's underground lair, with both of them feeling quite short. Much as in with the titles, this quest is in stark contrast to Boneshaker's Mountains of Forever when it comes to maximizing section count. You can find yourself futzing about in a couple of huts near the beginning of the forest looking for helpful items that eats up some of the sections, but still, this issue had me wondering just where all of its 200 sections went to. In order to find the items you need to defeat Liknud, you will need to thoroughly explore the forest and his lair using trial-and-error in determining where they are located. The thing is, there really isn't all that many places to look, and after 3 or 4 attempts at the quest, you will probably have seen just about all it has to offer and know where everything can be found. The combats within the adventure are all on the easy side too, with even the final battle against Liknud seeing you get a +3 boost to your Fighting Power should you have found the Hellbane root. Even the encounters themselves are very bland throughout, with only possibly Zarko the Illusionist standing out, and even him only because he felt so oddly placed. (What the heck happened to this guy anyway? He bolts out a door with you in hot pursuit and is never seen again). Once Liknud is defeated, with the aid of Eildon the sorceress who you free while travelling through the underground lair, Eildon safely retrieves the Orchid as the forest begins to return to life, and you then head back to the inn where the adventure started in order to celebrate your victory.
The writing here I found to be better than it had any right to be considering the adventure itself didn't provide much to work with, and although while I have to say that this issue did appear a bit sloppy in its editing, I did find that some of the errors manifested themselves in humourous ways. Some of the gems I encountered included being told that having the Orchid would allow Liknud to embark on a "reign of error", or that when moving through the forest the shadows would "shit and change with unaccustomed suddenness". Mind you, I was playing a scanned copy of this issue, so I am not sure if that had anything to do with it. It also must be said that your character here must move with the speed of a turtle, because not once but twice in the adventure you will follow another person through a door just ahead of you, only to find no sign of them once you go through the door yourself. I did learn earlier that despite having his name on the adventure as the author, apparently David Brunskill did not write this issue (can they legally just do that?), which was a big surprise to me for one massive reason. That being, this adventure contains another truth-lie riddle variation! (An absolute Brunskill staple). This then makes the final count for issues with these types of riddles as 7 out of 20, which is a lot less than it looked like it was going to be earlier in the series, but still probably more than was needed. I wonder if the true origin story behind this issue will ever be revealed. Regardless of who the actual author is, the adventure does at least contain a couple of decent enough mathematical puzzles, which are always appreciated and were one of the better aspects of the quest. The flip side of this though is that the adventure also contains one of the more maddeningly annoying random insta-deaths I can recall seeing in awhile, likely made so as it occurs at a junction right before the final confrontation. I don't know how anyone could suffer that particular game-over section without experiencing some serious vexation.
Ranking: I might have been slightly more positive about this adventure had it been the first issue in the series, but by issue #20 this just feels like a step back in so many ways. It only contains the two basic stats of Dexterity and Strength (not even a Fate stat this time), and no magic system to speak of either. This felt like it may have been a rejected offering from the start of the series that they brought back here to make it an even 20 issues, although businesses probably care a hell of a lot less about having a round number of issues than collectors might. There is nothing overtly bad about this adventure (with the possible exception of the random insta-death near the end), and you could argue that there is something to be said about returning to a basic "feels like a quest written in 1983" experience once in awhile. Overall though, it doesn't hold up remotely well to the better adventures in the series, and I have it buried in the back half of the rankings, just behind The Triad of Evil and just ahead of The Tower of Terror. I do feel saddened though that the Proteus series is now over, as it provided me with far more positive experiences than negative, and seems like another series that would be ripe for a resurrection at some point.
This is actually the only issue of Proteus I won but I've never got round to trying it - sounds like I've been missing out.
ReplyDeleteBy 'won', I of course mean 'own'!
DeleteIf you get around to playing it I would love to know what you think. Ever think of getting the others also?
DeleteMaybe some of the better ones - in no rush to track down Shinderg's Tomb!
DeleteI seem to remember that you could actually order a sweatshirt featuring Mark Dunn's Black Queen image, advertised by two stiffly-posed, blank-eyed 80s kids on the back pages of later issues. I wonder how many they sold, and whether any of them still exist?
ReplyDeleteThere were three sweatshirt designs sold by Proteus, the others depicting the Brimgeth from The Mines of Malagus and the Lizard Man from Caverns of the Enchantress. The latter two were available in children's and adults' sizes, but the Black Queen was adults only (modelled by a woman who towered above the children you remember from the ads).
DeleteMedium and Large adult Brimgeth and Black Queen shirts appear to have been the best sellers, as they were out of stock by the time the last issue came out. The last couple of issues were offering the shirts at a little over half price, suggesting that they didn't sell spectacularly, but they can't have done too badly if they ran out of a few variants.
A very interesting question about any of the sweatshirts still existing. (And those kids really do look incredibly nonplussed in those photos don't they?) They might make something of a collectible these days assuming they all haven't been eaten by moths by now. I took a quick look on ebay and couldn't find even one for sale though which doesn't bode well.
DeleteI don't have many of the later magazines, so the clues about sales comes as interesting news to me - thanks, Ed! The popularity of the adult sizes is a bit of a surprise, but I suppose it tallies with the occasional letter in the 'Messages from Beyond' from a grown-up pondering if their taste for a role-playing magazine is unusual.
DeleteI can't think of anything to add to or disagree with in your review. Guild is one of my top five Proteus adventures, and its enjoyability clearly outweighs its flaws.
ReplyDeleteIMO, the second half of Proteus' run contains the majority of its best adventures, but it does also include one that does its best to oust Shinderg's Tomb as the series' nadir. Still, you have a few issues to go before you hit that one...
Thinking that there is one just as bad, or worse, than Shinderg's Tomb just sent a shiver down my back. I haven't come across a "broken" one yet, so hopefully it doesn't get to that level.
DeleteIf solving a puzzle is essential for success, and part of that puzzle relies on an unstated false premise (e.g. the author expects "The legs of a trio of horses" to produce the number 9), would you consider that broken?
DeleteThe deliberately harsh final fight in another issue is liable to also push that one into the 'broken' category for you. Over the course of dozens of attempts, I managed to win it just once, and only then by exploiting a loophole found on the letters page.
Still, you also have three of my top five yet to come, so there is (at least IMO) more good than bad up ahead.
Excellent question. On the surface of it I would have to say yes, but I suppose it might depend on the exact wording of the puzzle and if there were any loopholes to be found as you say. If the authors are going to include ridiculous situations such as those (dozens of attempts at the final fight? Oh no!), then lawyering up and stretching the rules to the absolute limit seems like it should be fair game, even if that's not ideally how I want to play.
DeleteIt's not just you - they definitely get harder! I think you can blame the readers for that, judging from the requests for greater masochistic difficulty on the letters pages. I suppose 80s kids equated multiple plays with good value for money - but then again, what else was there for gamebooks to compete with? Four TV channels, and ZX games that took 30 mins to load (and usually 5 to play). No wonder we wanted our magazines to hold our attentions for as long as possible.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to be common among gamebook series for them to get harder as they go along doesn't it? Probably why NES games were usually so hard. So you felt like you were getting your money's worth. I never had a ZX but my first system was the Atari 2600 where most games were usually just one screen. lol.
DeleteIt still amazes me that the late antique technology of the book so was much better suited to complex gaming than the supposedly cutting-edge consoles and PCs of the 80s. At least, I note that you're not blogging about 40-year-old Atari games!
DeleteOne problem with the endgame of Weaver is that it overlooks one possible outcome.
ReplyDeleteGiven the way the encounter with the Weaver is structured, you have to turn to the section with the number indicated by the tokens you have, and there is no way of making it that far without getting the token you obtain by solving Dreadthread's puzzle.
This is one of the three essential tokens - the only one of them that you cannot miss - and when decoded, it produces a number. Only part of the hidden section number required, but still a number in its own right (just as 'two' is contained within 'forty-two'). So if you take a couple of wrong turnings and fail to acquire the other vital tokens, decoding the ones you have will nevertheless produce a number, albeit a wrong one.
There are Instant Death sections to take care of anyone who picked up a false token from the 'Truth or Lie riddle', but do you know what happens if you turn to the wrong number produced by having missed that puzzle (and the other encounter that provides an essential token)? You wind up back in the woods right at the start of the game. And though a player could infer that winding up somewhere that makes no sense in context is indicative of failure, there is nothing in the adventure as written to say 'Nope, that's game over'.
It would have been easy to free up that section to make it another Instant Death by condensing part of a decision-free chain. Or just to have failure to get all the tokens prove fatal (though, given the random roll required to get one of the non-essential ones, that would be problematic in its own way). But as things stand, it's just messy.
Oh, and as regards increasing difficulty... Good luck with the next issue. You'll need it.
DeleteUntil reading your post I hadn't realized quite how messy it is. The way it is written too just says "when you have discovered the number....turn to the section", which might imply that if you turn to an out of context section, you can just keep going back and trying again. As you say, it wouldn't have taken much adjustment, they could have even increased the number of viable possibilities for the secret number and then included something along the lines of "if you choose a section that doesn't begin with the word Congratulations, then the Weaver kills you on the spot and your adventure is over".
DeleteI shall bring forth my rabbit's foot for the next issue. Unless loaded dice would be the better choice!
To quote from my review of issue 13 at gamebooks.org: "After successfully completing [it] on my 46th attempt (not counting however many goes I had before this year), I have come to the conclusion that it's the Proteus equivalent of Spellbreaker. Insane difficulty spoils what could have been a very enjoyable adventure. [...] There's one unavoidable fight with a Dexterity 12 opponent, and a good chance of having to fight one that's effectively just as bad. [...] The correct path is distinctly narrow, albeit not Livingstone narrow. However, good stats and knowing the right direction when it matters still won't be enough a lot of the time. The thing is, immediately after acquiring a certain essential item you'll be killed if you roll under 5 on a d6. [...] It's not the only random fatality on the correct route, either, though no other is quite so bad. [...] I'd still rate it above several other issues, though."
DeleteYou sure weren't exaggerating! Issue 13 was incredibly disheartening.
DeleteAs far as I know, you're right about the impossibility of acquiring both the belt and the Fire Sword, and the consequent unreachability of the 'doomed anyway' fight against Shargan.
DeleteDid you ever reach section 151 in the course of your 60 attempts? Given that it's found on a pointless and easily avoided detour, I suppose it counts as one of the adventure's lesser annoyances, but still... Fight half a dozen Dexterity 12 Strength 4 opponents in sequence, automatically dying if you lose more than four rounds over the span of all these combats, for zero reward? What made Ms. Caldwell think that was an idea worthy of inclusion?
The illustration you mention is as extreme as Proteus got in its pandering to the interests of teenage lads unable to get hold of top shelf material. I got my copy of issue 13 on the way to school, and I remember dreading what would happen if anyone else saw that page. And what is going on with the two characters' fingers?
It's not essential, but you might want to refresh your memory of Ruth Pracy's mini-adventures from issues 8 and 11 of Warlock magazine, as the next Proteus is a sequel to them.
Yes I actually found myself at the section 151 combat on my very first attempt at the adventure, then never again for obvious reasons. In terms of being a pointless inclusion, this made it a lot like the whole business with the cursed ring, in that as you mention in your playthrough, you are only likely ever going to put it on once despite the dozens of tries this adventure will likely take you. But then despite never putting it on again, you get to be constantly annoyed by being asked "are you wearing the ring?" at several times during the quest. Stop asking me about the stupid ring!
DeleteRegarding the illustration, were you more concerned about your classmates or your teachers? That one might have gotten me sent to the principal's office back in those days. I think it's the helmet that makes it disturbing for me. Kind of like if "The Mouth of Sauron" was wearing nothing but pasties and a thong.
Thanks for the heads up on the next issue. I will reacquaint myself with the stories from those Warlock adventures before beginning.
Given the talent some of my peers had for drawing things to the teacher's attention without overtly 'grassing', classmates would most likely have led to teachers as well.
DeleteThe helmet is a bit incongruous, but the fused fingers and the 'so emaciated you can see her rib cage' aspect are what I found most perturbing.
Ah yes the Danny DeVito "Penguin" fingers. Strange artistic choice there indeed. Must make it tough for her to wield that axe.
DeleteThe puzzle quest seems very similar to the one in TASKS OF TANTALON. Now THAT was hard !
ReplyDeleteI just recently picked this one up too. Looking forward to playing it! The gauntlet has been thrown down with some of these.
DeleteOof, that Fire Sword thing is unforgivable and the rest of the second half doesn't seem much better!
ReplyDeleteKind of gives it the feel that it was written over a weekend. Although I think it might have inadvertently worked out for the best, because I would have been incensed if I had beaten Shargan in a tough battle only to be insta-deathed immediately afterwards. Not sure which problem is worse!
DeleteAlmost more annoying that the adventure actually shows promise in a few places, but has been utterly trashed by bad design.
ReplyDeleteCaldwell has certainly shown she can write great adventures, which makes the design here even more infuriating.
DeleteNever one to turn down a quest
ReplyDeleteThis amused me. To 'win' The Land of Changes you had to "swear to undertake this quest, or else die in the attempt", and the intro to In Search of the Lost Land includes a reminder of this, and yet you don't make any effort to even get started on the quest until Gether notices how bored you are with managing all the power and wealth you've been accumulating and suggests that you might want to go on an adventure.
I'd be interested to know what you make of my review of this adventure, which was designed as a pastiche of Ms. Pracy's authorial style.
I feel we have hit a bit of a rut here with the last couple, so I hope a course correction is on the way soon.
Depends how you define 'soon'. IMO, issue 16 is David Brunskill's best work, but before you can start on that, you'll have to play issue 15's The Havarine Madness, which I rank alongside or slightly lower than Shinderg's Tomb.
Yes I read your review last night after posting. Brilliant! I wish I was that creative.
DeleteI take it from your concluding entry that you believe Pracy intended to write one more adventure? If the original plan was to write one for each season (having done Winter and Autumn already), then she is obviously one short. Although truth be told I'm not sure if In Search of the Lost Land even followed that same idea, as I never felt as if I was crossing a land of Summer or Spring. In any case, I do feel gypped that we never got to discover the secret of the universe. Did you have a preference for any of her adventures?
Also wanted to mention that I read your playthrough as well and was glad to see that you also took advantage of the rules and ate some rations while climbing the stupid chimney!
DeleteI take it from your concluding entry that you believe Pracy intended to write one more adventure?
DeleteThe last line of the final section does appear to be setting things up for a further sequel.
Did you have a preference for any of her adventures?
They're all definitely flawed, but I think I got most enjoyment out of The Floating City, if only because it was drawing on mythologies with which I was not familiar, and thus seemed that bit more original.
That's a shame about Shargan - I have quite fond memories of it, although I'm not sure I ever managed to beat it without flagrantly cheating. Lost Land was always pretty weak, however, and just seems to be diluted run-off from Warlock. Speaking of which, now that you've reached the point where Proteus has outlived its pricier rival, how would you compare the two magazines? Any thoughts on how it managed to outlast its official FF counterpart?
ReplyDeleteUp to this point I would say overall Warlock is better, and I didn't even play the issues with adventures for Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Caverns of the Snow Witch, or House of Hell, which is a personal favorite. Although I still have 6 issues of Proteus to go so you never know, it could make a comeback. Which of the two do you prefer?
DeleteAs for how Proteus managed to last longer, that is a good question. Perhaps it was cheaper to produce or they were willing to take less profit to continue in a dwindling market? Although I have been told that Warlock lasted for many more years in Japan. I wonder if those Japanese issues contained mini-adventures as well.
A tough question. For me, they both have their own charms, but also problems. Warlock's adventures maintained a surprisingly high standard for reader submissions, but the magazine's focus was all over the place, and increasingly seemed to treat gamebooks merely as a gateway into RPGs. Proteus certainly kept its sights trained on adventures, but seemed utterly terrified of even the tiniest innovations. What gives Warlock the edge for you, by the way?
DeleteAlso, from the limited information I can find, it looks like the Japanese Warlock (or Uōrokku) beats them both hands down for longevity. It apparently ran until 1992, and racked up an impressive 63 issues! I can't tell whether every issue contained an adventure, especially as it appears to have pivoted from books to table-top gaming around 1988, but a lot obviously did: especially tantalising is a series of ghost-story FFs by Yugi Shio later collected under the title Okuribina Haruriirono (The Spirit-fires are Blue), or the wonderful-sounding Ankoku no mittsu no kao (Three Faces of Darkness). No English translations as far as I can tell, alas...
I don't know whether anyone cares, but I've had a closer look at the contents pages of Uōrokku thanks to a defunct fan-site. It looks as though it included about fourteen original adventures (or 'orijinaru adobenchāgēmu' as they are called) scattered fairly haphazardly across the 63 issues. The first 11 issues are pretty dependent on the English Warlock, and include most of its mini-adventures (including the two-part version of Firetop Mountain, but excluding the abridged versions of House of Hell and Caverns); however, this reliance is not total, since as early as issue 3 new adventures start to appear, with Hiroshi Yamamoto's ambitious three-part Monsutā no gyakushū (Monster of Retribution). The bulk of them occur between issues 12 and 50, between Warlock's demise at the end of 1987 and a change in editorial direction in 1990: about a third of these issues include an original adventure (along with two translated from White Dwarf), many of which are stretched over two or three issues. That said, they grow increasingly sporadic towards the end, and by the time the last one - Taiyō-shin no hōgyoku (Jewel of the Sun-God) by Hitoshi Yasuda and Keiko Shimomura - the gaps between them get wider and wider. So, what do think about learning Japanese, John, and having a go at Saraba Seiryū (Goodbye Blue-Dragon) or Burasutākerī (Blaster Kelly)?
DeleteI have Warlock ahead because I feel the quality of the adventures overall has been a bit better. Mind you that could be some recency bias talking, because the last two I have played for Proteus (issues 14 and 15) are some of the lowest ranked ones yet.
DeleteThank you for the great research on the Japanese Warlock edition by the way. I would love to play some of those adventures, however learning Japanese might be a bridge too far in terms of the lengths I am willing to go to. lol. Those titles sure are intriguing though. Too bad there isn't one called "Mr Sparkle!".
I'm always a bit bummed knowing there are adventures out there I likely will never get to play. Perhaps someone, somewhere, would be willing to do English translations of these if they do not exist already? A long shot, but you never know your luck! Maybe I could run them through Google translate and see what pops out the other side.
I know what you mean. I'd kill to get my hands on these adobenchāgēmu, not only because they sound fantastic, but because I've always loved the Japanese-inspired gamebooks. If the fake minkan denshō of Way of the Tiger or Sword of Samurai is so great, then the real thing must be just as good, surely?
DeleteYes I have found myself enjoying the Japanese themed ones greatly also, with Sword of the Samurai being one of my faves, and overall The Way of the Tiger being very good. Except for that travesty that was book 6 of course!
Deletethe last two I have played for Proteus (issues 14 and 15) are some of the lowest ranked ones yet.
ReplyDeleteGiven that you weren't exactly impressed with The Shadow of Shargan, did you mean to say '13 and 14', or have you already experienced enough of the Havarine badness to give it the low ranking it deserves?
I was including Havarine in that because I had just finished it and am working on the review right now, in addition to playing the bonus adventure. Although I could have included issue 13 in that group as well now that you mention it. I will say though that I thought Havarine was slightly better than Shinderg's Tomb, but that obviously isn't saying much.
DeleteHow about you Ed? Overall do you prefer Warlock or Proteus?
Looking just at the adventures, while Proteus' lows are worse than Warlock's, it also had several issues that I really enjoyed, which gives it the edge over Warlock for me.
Delete"if you can't solve the riddle, shame on you!"
ReplyDeleteNo, shame on you, M.W. Bolton and any playtesters who allowed this monument to inaccuracy to see print.
IMO, nothing that follows The Havarine Madness in Proteus' run is anywhere near as poor (though I can see a certain authorial choice in issue 18 leading to its being pronounced 'Broken').
One small warning regarding issue 16: the transition from section 147 to 93 can potentially cause some confusion. It is, in essence, a textual jump cut - quite a neat trick once you get what's going on, but the abrupt change of location and circumstances can initially create the impression that a typo has led you to the wrong section.
Enjoyed your review of Havarine on gamebooks.org as always. Consulting a marine biologist over the crab leg issue is what I call going the extra mile! And here I thought a thorough internet search was doing my homework.
DeleteThough not nearly as bad as that riddle, not being able to solve the message on the rock wall unless you had the cypher bugged me as well. Not only because I would have liked the chance to figure it out myself, but then even when you do get the correct number, your character doesn't even use the message to gain entry anyway.
no sooner have we left the temple then we decide to head directly for Scarpathia and Margas' castle, because we "could never resist a challenge". This makes our character seem like a cocky git, but is done in a way that had a certain charm to it that made it endearing.
ReplyDeleteIt also allows for actual character development (a rare thing in gamebooks), as victory is not about acquiring the Mystical McGuffin of Contrivance in order to slay the villain, but in recognising that you're out of your depth and getting away in order to warn his intended victims of the renewed threat he poses.
A follow-up could have been good, but at least with this one David Brunskill goes out at the peak of his game.
Oh that's a shame. I try to avoid looking ahead so didn't realize this was Brunskill's last adventure and I was greatly looking forward to his next one. Too bad he never got to write a full length gamebook. Feels like he earned his way up to it.
DeleteHa! Part of me feels let down that you don't get to fight the big bad guy at the end, but it does make more sense as written - especially if the people he rules are generally cruel and warlike anyway.
ReplyDeleteI reckon Margas is actually called Marcus , but changed a couple of letters to make it sound more sinister.
Well, you can attempt to attack Margas when you meet him, but it goes about as well as you would expect it might! Makes you wonder if we will ever get a bad guy called "Trueheart" or something similarly deceiving.
DeleteKen Bulmer will be back, though not in the next issue. As I recall, his other adventure has no unavoidable do-or-die Fate tests (but you may run into one if you deviate from the safest path).
ReplyDeleteJust as a matter of curiosity, what was the name you called out in section 88? There's potential for a misunderstanding to result in your giving a wrong answer that takes you to the correct section anyway.
Quick reminder: make sure to read the letters page in the next issue, as the editorial response to one letter opens up a potential loophole that might shift the adventure out of the 'broken' category for you.
I called out the name "Griselda". I wasn't totally sure if it was correct at the time but seemed to be the correct answer. Was that actually the wrong answer?
DeleteThanks again for the heads up, I will check out the letters page if needed. Hopefully the issue isn't too bad! I could use a break from these two week marathons.
That was the wrong answer. I think Griselda is the woman who gives you the potion to stop your Strength draining just before you encounter Panash.
DeleteThe correct answer is given in section 192.
As for issue 18, it's not too tough until the endgame, at which point it gets a bit ridiculous. Even using the loophole, I've only won once, and I must have played it dozens of times.
Oh, and one correction to the text of issue 18: section 4 should say to turn to 113 if you make the roll, and to 30 if you fail it.
Ha! Well that was an odd bit of design then wasn't it. I had not made special note of the info contained in section 192, and when making it to section 88 for the first time, the only name I could think of was Griselda because I had only recently encountered it a couple of rooms before and had nothing else to try. It didn't really sound right, but as it sent me to the correct section I never bothered to look for a different name after that, which I of course would have had I been sent to any other section. For this adventure I will take whatever advantage I can get!
DeleteOdds are, it never occurred to Ken Bulmer that players might try using that particular wrong name. Based on my experience writing a mini-adventure for Fighting Fanazine, I know how easy it can be to forget that players don't know all the little details that you're familiar with as the author. But I had a playtester who highlighted where I was unwittingly relying on data that might not be apparent to the readers, so I took steps to fix the issue, whereas it looks as if nobody at Proteus brought the name issue to Mr Bulmer's attention, so it never got sorted.
DeleteRegarding the loophole from the letters page I believe you were referring to (adding 8 to your Dexterity roll instead of 6), I am not sure what to make of it. It doesn't reference issue 18 specifically as being too difficult and thus requiring it, and the comment has a bit of a "play however is best for you" feel. That said, I certainly couldn't fault anyone for using it in this issue, because the author made a rather large mistake (in my opinion anyway) with that final combat!
DeleteYes, the 'if you prefer adding 8 and 15 instead of 6 and 12 then please feel free to carry on' is the loophole I meant. The issues you have with it are why I call it a loophole, and why I've only ever used it on a conceptual basis. But if I had played by those rules, I would have won once.
DeleteBased on some number-crunching I've seen at one FF forum, a character with 14 Dexterity and the magic sword is liable to lose 18 Strength fighting Dagmor (not including the fire-breathing damage that precedes the combat), which makes the fight brutal but not utterly hopeless. A lower Dex gives effectively zero chance of winning.
I think the 16 Dexterity is what the author intended, to make the final fight challenging, but he didn't properly think through its implications or playtest it. Mind you, the unfairness of the end battle is pretty much the only noteworthy aspect of the adventure.
I may have said this before but anyway - your comments about the awful opening section are very similar to how I felt about SECRETS OF SALAMONIS. After a very shaky start, it does improve somewhat.
ReplyDeleteI guess it had nowhere to go but up from there. If it had gotten even worse, then that would have made for a rant of a review.
DeleteI have been especially looking forward to your review of Dragon's Domain, having read Ed Jolley's play through some time ago. I wonder what the actual odds are of beating the dragon if you have 12 dexterity against his 16? I think Ed mentioned that he had beaten it once using the optional rule of d6+8 dexterity, but would have never won using the standard rule.
ReplyDeleteYeah I'm not sure what the author was thinking there. Reinforces my belief that they should have to be able to beat their own gamebook first before publishing!
DeleteVery much in agreement with you about Boneshaker. One thing which slightly bothered me, that you didn't mention, was that the revelation about the Toad-gator in section 28 is redundant, because by the time you hear it, you're already past the point at which the creature can be encountered. There seems little point to a warning that comes too late for you to act on it.
ReplyDeleteStill, that is just a minor issue, and overall Boneshaker is a great adventure.
As for issue 20, while not up to the standard of Boneshaker or Scarpathia, it's not bad or broken. Just a bit generic and cheap-looking. Sees the series go out "not with a bang but a whimper', but that's still preferable to the unpleasant squelch of a Shinderg or the 'out of order' grind of a Dragon's Domain.
It's funny you say that about issue 20 because it looks, eh, well, "cheaper", to piggy-back on your term. The cover logo looks quite different, and even the interior font appears to be a more basic one. Not necessarily the indicator of a low-quality adventure of course, but the fact they also included a reprint of the best adventure in the series so far probably isn't a good sign. I wonder if they were almost out of funds at this point.
DeleteBoneshaker's Mountain of Forever sounds like the ultimate metal album
ReplyDeleteAgreed. And then you get The Orchid of Life. Which is like going from Black Sabbath to Kenny G.
DeleteThank you for covering this series, which I wasn't even aware of until a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you for reading! Hopefully you will get a chance to play some of them yourself one day and let me know how you like the series.
DeleteThe typos you mention are not present in the magazine itself. There were some errors in the published text, but nothing very interesting: Zarko's name is given as Aarko at one point, and that tiresome insta-death throws a random comma in where none is needed.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I wonder if the main reason issue 20 came out was because people kept trying to order copies of issue 8 after it had sold out, and the publishers figured that demand was high enough that a reprint bordered on commercially viable. Throw in a new adventure to grab readers who already had copies of Pyramid, and maybe a little more profit could be wrung from the fans before Proteus went out of business altogether.
Regardless, an unimpressive ending for the series, but not down there among the absolute worst it had to offer.
I find myself wondering how hard the magazine was to acquire back in the 80's. Do you happen to recall if they were readily available at newsstands or could only be found at specialty shops?
DeleteI would also love to know what your top 5 adventures are from the series Ed. Sounds like we probably have at least a few in common.
I got all but the first issue of Proteus in newsstands (I came across issue 1 in a second-hand bookshop not that long after publication, so the magazine was on my radar by the time issue 2 turned up on the shelves of the newsagent’s across the road from my school).
DeleteMy standard walk to school passed another newsagent’s, so I bought most of my collection from either that shop or the one near school grounds. A few times (perhaps on days when I was slower getting started, and didn’t have time to check the shops on the way to school), I didn’t get the new issue until I was heading home via the town centre, so the newsagent’s at the end of the pedestrian precinct was where I found that the new issue was out.
My top 5? Pyramid, Promethean Guild, Scarpathia and Boneshaker are definitely in there (listed in chronological order, because fine-tuning actual rankings would take me a while). I’m not sure whether Weaver or Black Crag Castle would fill the final slot, but they’re the only real contenders.
Thanks Ed! On your blog I always enjoy hearing about how you first obtained the adventures. I had a bit of a walk to get to school myself so can relate to those stories. Hopefully you never had any close calls with any vehicles while reading and walking!
DeleteAs usual, I'm a latecomer to this conversation, but I seem to remember the magazine getting tougher and tougher to find (at least for me) from 16 forwards; the last issue I managed to find in the wild was 17. Ebay prices seem to suggest that 20 is especially scarce. Whether that reflects shortened circulation or growing indifference from stockists I have no idea. Probably a little from column A, a little from column B.
DeleteThat is very odd about Brunskill being falsely credited as the author. Would love to know the story there (probably be more interesting than the actual gamebook by the sounds of it!)
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know whether the Warlock and Proteus authors got paid for their work or were the magazines more vehicles for fans of the genre to share their work with other fans?
Those broken adventures really hurt Proteus' average score, dropping the magazine from being level with Warlock to wallowing between Sagard and Skyfall.
First prize in the Warlock mini-adventure-writing contest was £100 (plus getting published).
DeleteProteus approached reader contributions on a more professional basis: an ad in issue 1 says that payment for an adventure "would be in the region of £500".
Interesting - thanks
DeleteI too would enjoy hearing about the goings-on behind the scenes at the magazine over its run. I guess I am a nerd like that. Maybe Brunskill has talked about it online somewhere.
DeleteIncidentally, £500 in 1986 would be worth a whopping £1,423.71 in today's money, according to the Bank of England's historical inflation calculator. I hope Proteus didn't really pay that much for Shitberg's Tomb or the Havarine Badness; I doubt even the FF contributors were advanced sums like that. According to his blog, Graeme Davies only received £600 from OUP for the entire Quest Book series.
DeleteShitberg's Tomb. Ok, that one made me laugh. lol.
DeleteReading your reviews has made me want to play the Proteus adventures myself so I will have to print off some from the pdf files - the good ones that is !
ReplyDeleteIf you do let me know what you think of them. And just because I didn't like an issue doesn't mean you would feel the same way, so by all means give "Shinderg's Tomb" a go! (Heh heh!)
DeleteJust read about the passing of J H Brennan on Twitter.
ReplyDeleteAlthough prolific, he also had the dubious honor of being the lowest ranked author on this blog, namely with the Saga of the Demonspawn.
Sad news indeed regardless of how I might feel about some of his books. I have for the most part been enjoying his Grailquest series so far, and it certainly appears to have a lot of fans in the gamebook world. Thank you Mr Brennan and rest in peace.
DeleteJust realized there were 8 books in the Grailquest series. Any plans to review the second batch ?
ReplyDeleteYessir! I took a break at the half-way point. Almost finished book 5 as we speak.
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