STAND-ALONE BOOKS - 1985-1999

                                                        RANKINGS 

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Hard-Boiled - 1985 - Score = 5.2    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 3 (one per case)

And now for something a little different. Ok so I get to my first stand-alone gamebook (ie. not part of a series) and this one was unique for a gamebook I can give it that. 

If you have ever played the board game Sherlock Holmes:Consulting Detective then you will know what to expect here, just on a much smaller scale. Like that game, you move from location to location on a map uncovering clues and more of the story along each stop. You often have several locations to choose from and as you explore, more places you can visit are opened up to you. I appreciated the freedom you have in being able to explore many of the locations in any order you saw fit (with some restrictions) and the system by which you can revisit a location already visited and have something different happen was quite well implemented. However, all this means that eventually (barring death but this seems like it would be rare) you WILL visit every location and uncover every clue. When you have no more locations left open to you to explore, then you have to attempt to solve the mystery based on all the clues you have uncovered. This is done by the game asking you a list of questions, such as "Who murdered Mr X and why?". These questions are not all known when you start the game and you must uncover them all as you go along. The book asks you to answer all the questions as fully as possible when you are ready to solve the case which did make me feel like I was back in school taking an exam at times. Not really the feeling you want from a gamebook but maybe this was just me. 

"Three tough cases for the private eye with smarts" is the tag line for this gamebook. Not only did I find the cases not particularly tough (I managed to solve them all without much difficulty) but the worst part is they aren't particularly memorable either. I just finished the last case before writing this, having played the first case 3 days ago and I can barely remember anything about that first case. There was a murder, that's all I could tell you right now. I remember thinking it was "ok" while playing it, but the 3 cases all seemed somewhat similar. As you go from place to place, you will be dealing with hired goons and beautiful dames seemingly at every stop before moving on to the next location and they all start to blend together after awhile. 

Goons. Hired Goons.

You begin each case in your office where you are visited by someone who wishes to avail themselves of your services by asking you to investigate something. Typically their requests are pretty mundane to start but as you go through each case invariably someone gets murdered and you have to solve that as well. The prose is delivered in a Sam Spade, 1940's gumshoe style with passages such as "You feel real good and real strong, like you could take on Jack Dempsey, your ex-wife, and Hitler- with both sets of knuckles tied behind your back". I actually found this quite entertaining for the first 20 minutes or so but after that it really starts to get old fast. It wasn't really my thing but full credit to author Robert DiChiara though as he obviously knows his stuff when it comes to this genre. 

The game system does incorporate some stats. You are provided a number of points at the start of each case and can allocate them as you see fit to your Muscle (fighting), Moxie (cleverness), and Magnetism (skill with the ladies). At each location you are asked how you wish to overcome a problem. If you choose to punch out that goon guarding a door for example then that will cost you Muscle points. If instead you choose to go around the back and jimmy the lock on a backdoor then that will cost you Moxie points. Or perhaps you want to sweet talk that hot tamale of a secretary to provide you with some info? That will cost you Magnetism points.You WILL get by the obstacle in question (the game needs you to uncover the clues at the location after all), it's just a matter of which category you want to sacrifice points in. That being said, you will never actually run out of these points. They just keep decreasing possibly even into the negatives. Near the end of each case you will likely be confronted with a do or die situation whereby one of your stats is tested. If that stat is in the negatives then you risk death and must make a saving roll. Even if required to make this saving roll however, the odds are still pretty stacked in your favor (roll a 5 or higher with two dice and you survive). I faced this roll a total of twice among all three cases and passed both. The problem with all this is that there is really no difference from being -1 or -100 in an attribute as either one would force you to make the saving roll. There are some rare places to recover points as each time you travel from one location to another you need to make a random roll and the results of this roll determines what happens while you travel. This can be anything from your car breaking down, running into your ex-wife, or enjoying a drink at a bar. This can get a bit immersion breaking however if you keep running into your ex-wife again and again like it was some kind of Groundhog Day. 

 Ned Ryerson??? Not you again!

All of this also means that this is very much a "one and done" kind of book. Once you write down the answers to the questions from the case, you turn to the solution page to see how right or wrong you are. Obviously, even if you are wrong you now know the solution to the case, therefore there is absolutely no replayability here. This in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, just so you know that you will have 3 playthroughs of enjoyment from the book and then that's it. This is probably unavoidable in a murder mystery gamebook although I did find myself wondering as I played if someone has or could come up with a mystery book that provided a list of suspects that randomized the murderer from playthrough to playthrough. Perhaps some combination of the game systems found in "Appointment with F.E.A.R." and "Master of Ravenloft". Kind of a gamebook version of the board game Clue. I guess though, you could just play a digital version of Clue so maybe there is no need for this after all! Still, I thought it could be an interesting project. 

Ranking: It's certainly not bad and does enough to make it into the OK tier. Overall, the cases were not great but they were enjoyable enough for a bit of an evening diversion. Each one took me about 1 to 1.5 hours while taking my time and making notes. While it IS possible to die in the cases, and there is some dice rolling and randomness involved, the game elements are very light and Im almost hesitant to call it a game at all. It's more of an "interactive detective experience". If you enjoy film noir detective fiction and solving mysteries you might want to give it a look but its probably got a pretty narrow audience.  

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The Last Battledroid - 1987 - Score = 6.1    Tier = OK

Sections: 322

Attempts to beat: 4

I have here my second "stand-alone" gamebook, a sci-fi offering from author Jason Hook which to my knowledge is the only gamebook he has ever written, so let's see how he does. Beginning with the prologue to this adventure, which is, well, ludicrous. It begins by regaling us with a history lesson of how over 300 years ago, an evil Fentusian known as Maldraggon attempted to enslave our galaxy of Caluphex. He was eventually thwarted, and instead of being put to death because the rulers of the day wanted to make a statement about the power of good over evil, they instead decided to sentence him to be frozen (think Han Solo in carbonite) and jettisoned off into the galaxy, where he will presumably slingshot around all the various planets for all eternity. Oh, and he is actually conscious all this time. This seems like a fate much worse than death, and for a group that prides itself on being so peaceful and progressive to then enact this punishment just makes them come across as sadistic hypocrites. Or maybe they are just idiots, because once they finally defeated Maldraggon and brought peace to the galaxy, they decided to destroy all their weapons as a testament to their peaceful nature! Talk about your bonehead moves, and one that I believe was the basis for a Twilight Zone episode (and also a Simpsons Halloween episode too if I'm not mistaken). But in a move that everyone in the galaxy should have eventually known would come, Maldraggon has recently been freed by his Fentusian acolytes and has vowed revenge by finishing what he started by taking over the galaxy. Maldraggon now resides on one of the most advanced planets in the universe, Mirestar, and has already begun his plan by sending out his droids to subjugate everyone in our Caluphex galaxy. With no weapons to defend themselves, every planet in the galaxy is now in a state of panic as Maldraggon's droids close in. This is where our character comes in to the picture. As a museum curator on the planet Anthracitex-9, we decide to fire up "the last Battledroid", an outdated combat robot (pictured on the cover) which for the last several hundred years as served as an antique display piece in the museum gallery. Are we insane? Taking a lone, long obsolete Battledroid (which we have never piloted before by the way), out to confront an army of the most advanced droids in existence would be akin to trying to take the beaches of Normandy with a single guy in a suit of medieval armour. But what the hell, gotta die of something! 

The combat system here is more involved than most gamebooks, with the droid combatants having Attack and Defense stats along with Reserves (basically its "stamina"). You and your opponent take turns firing at one another by having the attacker rolling two dice and adding their Attack stat to arrive at their Attack score. You then roll two dice for the defender and add their Defense stat to arrive at their Defense score. If the Attack score is higher than the Defense score, then the attacker has hit. It is however the difference between the two numbers that determines how much damage is taken off the defender's Reserves. As such, because many of the enemies I faced in the adventure had low Defense stats, I found myself doing large amounts of damage on even just one single hit, which makes the combats here very short, usually only lasting two or three rounds at most. There are a few other stats here as well, as you also have a Computer stat (which can provide an Attack or Defense bonus should you be able to increase it high enough), along with a Pilot stat (which can help you to pull off tricky maneuvers or avoid a crash landing). These really aren't used that much though, and I only came across a few times where they were tested. More to that point, you also have a Life stat (a measure of your personal health), and this one never came up for me at all.   

The game mechanics don't end there, as once again we have a Time stat that we need to keep track of, as we are told how many days have passed depending upon which route towards our goal we take. There is however actually a decent payoff with this for a change, as how long it takes us to arrive at our destination determines if we need to fight an enemy, solve a puzzle, or receive a bonus. This is well balanced too as if you make all the right decisions you will just arrive in time to receive the bonus, so it was refreshing to see at least some planning was involved in this mechanic for once. The same can't be said about the final stat though, that being the Move indicator. With this, we are told that the Battledroid has 4 different means of travel (space, hover, track, and stride) and we get to decide which one we wish to use at any given time, with the exception of space, of which we must and can only use if we are......travelling through space. Makes sense. We are to keep record of which one we are using at all times, and supposedly different things could happen depending upon which mode you are currently travelling by. This is almost never used though, and I only counted twice where I was asked if I was using hover (and if so, I needed to deduct from my Reserves due to this mode requiring the most energy). I was never asked about any of the other modes of travel, and the whole mechanic seems to have been abandoned partway through the book. So while there are many attributes to keep track of in the adventure, several of them are barely employed. 

Before we set out on our quest to save the galaxy, we first need to outfit our Battledroid. We are given 3 different categories (Weapons, Armour, and Special Items), and each of these categories has a list of half a dozen or so items that we can select from. Our choice of Weapons varies from missiles, flamethrowers, and even a giant fist, and will determine how and when we can attack (an enemy needs to be right up close if we wish to use the fist for example, but farther back if we wish to use the heat-seeking missiles). Our choice of Armour determines what area of the Battledroid is protected from damage. Each time we are hit in combat, we must roll two dice and consult a diagram to determine what area of the Battledroid was hit (arms, legs, torso, etc.), and if we have armour for that area, then the damage is reduced. There are two areas though, the head and groin, that if hit could cause extra damage, such as a decrease to one of our stats or a loss of one of our weapons. Interestingly, armour can be selected to protect the head, but no armour for the groin area is available, so I guess Battledroid jockstraps aren't a thing in this galaxy. The final category is Special Items (called "Work Facilities"), and here we can select things such as long range probes, radar scanners, and even a small one-man shuttle. At various times in the adventure you may be asked if you have one of these Specials, and if you do you can choose to use it to possibly gather some information or find an item. As such, this actually proves to be far and away the most important category in the adventure. You can't just take everything though, as each item in all the categories has a certain weight amount attached to it, and the Battledroid can only carry 60 tonnes in total, so you initially will be picking out what you think the most valuable items will be. Once you have made your selections and your Battledroid is kitted out, you are ready to rumble forth from the museum display case and have at it.    

As it turns out, we actually have something of a plan, as we intend to head for a lava planet known as Oric, where legend has it an ancient hermit called the Droid Master resides. This Droid Master was once a part of the group responsible for the design of most of the advanced technology in the universe, so we hope he will have some idea on how to defeat Maldraggon's forces. But first, we need to get off our own planet, which is in lockdown due to the pending invasion, and only those with special "travel crystals" may leave. This whole opening act of the book that sees you first obtaining a travel crystal, and then heading to the spaceport to find someone who can help to transport your Battledroid to Oric is one of the more basic gamebook layouts I can recall playing. A couple of times you are given choices as to which direction to take, and if you pick the "wrong" one, you then have to fight something, and are then turned around to automatically take the other "correct" route. There is also an extremely important meeting to be had here with your old mentor known as the Craft Master, but he can only be reached if you chose one of the specific special items for your Battledroid during the loadout. Still, this first act does end with one of the better sections of the book, where upon arriving at the spaceport you have the option of choosing between 3 different "Space Truckers" to transport you to Oric. You are given a detailed description of each of them, along with their spaceships, and make your determination based upon that. Which one you decide to take will influence what happens when you get close to Oric, and you might find yourself having to fight your way out of an ambush should you choose poorly. It can then be fun trying to determine who you can trust based upon clues in the descriptions. 

The second act of the adventure is easily the weakest, as once we reach Oric we are treated to many seemingly random decisions as to what direction we want to take as we pilot our Battledroid toward Oric's main city (of which the Droid Master is said to live beneath). We first travel over open lava plains, and then through various underground "tubeways", all of which wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so sterile and uninteresting. If you took too long getting to Oric, you will have to fight at least one (and maybe two) droids, but you shouldn't have too much trouble destroying them, and there is a complete recharge to your Battledroid shortly afterwards anyway, bringing your Reserves and Missiles back up to maximum. There is a key set of 3 crystals (diamond, gold, and silver) you will need to acquire here, and unless you play as a maniac who attacks everything on sight, you should have no problem getting these, as they are basically handed to you. We do get an update to the story in this act though, as we pick up a distress call on our communicator telling us that the Emperor of the galaxy, Vizo Rath, has just been kidnapped by Maldraggon (how the hell did that happen?), and as it turns out, Maldraggon also happens to be on Oric! I can't say his appearance on the planet came as a surprise as there was only so much of the book left, but it does make sense that he would be seeking out the Droid Master also, if for no other reason than to silence him. It seems rather foolish of him though to take on the mission personally, especially considering all the forces he has at his disposal, but at least it's not just the good guys that make dumb decisions in this universe. 

The final act of the book is fairly short, but is also mostly interesting and well told. We first need to gain access to the Droid Master's lair by solving a couple of puzzles involving the crystals we obtained earlier, and I thought these were quite clever, with one of them even having a subtle hint contained earlier in the adventure that was well placed and didn't give too much away. Once we solve these, we finally meet the Droid Master, who now seeing the peril the universe is in, decides to power up our Battledroid so that we will be a match for Maldraggon. It is then that Maldraggon literally bursts into the room in his Spider Droid, and the boss battle is on. We first need to defeat the Spider Droid, which like so many other enemies in the adventure has quite low stats, but once that is done, another droid bursts forth from its belly, this being the Black Widow droid. Maldraggon attempts to make a run for it, and has the Emperor on board with him, so we need to find a way to transport the Emperor onto our Battledroid before destroying this Black Widow droid. You can defeat Maldraggon but still lose the adventure should you be unable to rescue the Emperor, which I thought was a bit unfair. I mean, you saved the galaxy didn't you? The death of the Emperor seemed a small price to pay, but apparently the people of the galaxy would be "lost" without his leadership. Phooey. The thing is, the loss of the Emperor, should it happen, is probably what will catch you out here, as thanks to the powerups the Droid Master gave you earlier, along with several stat boosting items that you have gathered along the way, you shouldn't have too much trouble blasting the Black Widow droid to smithereens. Even though it has far higher stats than anything you would have encountered so far, both times I fought this battle I won in two rounds because I was dealing out so much damage. And of course, with Maldraggon now dead, all his followers surrender despite them still maintaining a huge advantage over the rest of the galaxy. Ain't that always the way? 

Overall I found this book to be very similar in structure to most of the "Car Wars" series adventures. You have your vehicle with Attack and Defense attributes (with the Pilot stat being essentially the Driving stat), different weapons that you can select from that do varying amounts of damage, very few combats along the required route, and most of the adventure involves gathering stat boosting items to use in the final battle. This last point highlights something about the adventure that I couldn't help but notice, but there are a few items that you will likely need should you wish to have a fair chance of defeating the final boss, but none of them seemed particularly well hidden. The challenge in the adventure then comes in avoiding any instant deaths within the book, of which there are enough sprinkled throughout to keep you on your toes. The writing itself I did find tended to fluctuate quite wildly. There are some very well written sections in here, with one instant failure in particular that gave me a good laugh, and that sees the Emperor jettisoned from Maldraggon's ship as it flies through the sky, with his body spinning around like a rag doll as it lands in a lava pool while you look on and smack your forehead (with me picturing your character letting out a "D'oh!"). The sequence with the space truckers too was very good, and appeared to have a lot of care put into it. But then many of the sections that see you travelling through Oric were very bland and uninteresting, and these could have used some colourful encounters or writing. It occurred to me while playing that one possible reason why sci-fi gamebooks face such an uphill battle compared to their fantasy or horror themed brethren is because of how difficult it is to create atmosphere in a science fiction setting. Locations often come across as highly advanced, and thus also pristine and sterile (plus many times described as completely white), and the lack of possible environments such as thunder-storming skies, smoky taverns, or haunted castles puts the authors behind the eight ball right off the hop.  

Probably the best part of the book is the loadout at the beginning, where you get to select your Weapons, Armour, and Special Items, but even this ended up being something of a tease. I found that with the Weapons and Armour, I quickly ended up viewing it as a number crunching exercise more than anything else. So instead of envisioning whether I wanted to have either an awesome giant fist or a badass flamethrower equipped on my robot, I was instead looking at the number values associated with each and basing my decision purely on that. The Special Items fared much better though, and only with certain ones could you open up some secrets of the adventure. Even so, you are able to carry quite a bit, and I think you can easily get away with only taking a couple of weapons and probably no armour at all (as you destroy your enemies so quickly), which would allow you to take most, if not all, of the Special Items available. But to be fair it would take you at least a few plays to realize this, and perhaps it was the intention of the author for you to stock up on these specials so you wouldn't miss anything fun or interesting within the adventure.

Ranking: A solid if unspectacular effort. Nothing really impresses here, and this is especially the case if you have played the "Car Wars" books, of which The Last Battledroid would have been right at home in design-wise, with the large exception that fights are over in this book extremely quickly while in "Car Wars" they would drag on forever. The combat system was well done and at least added some strategy as to what weapons to select, but was also somewhat underused, and you can find yourself making it all the way to the final fight without having to engage anybody. Experimenting with the Special Items is the strength of the book, but even then it doesn't take very long to try everything out. However, if you are the seemingly rare bird who enjoys the sci-fi gamebooks, then this is at least worth checking out.

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Dragonquest - 1987 - Score = 3.6    Tier = Bad

Sections: 233

Attempts to beat: 2

Ugh. This gamebook should come with some aspirin included. Initially this seems like a great idea, a gamebook built around puzzles? I'm all for a good puzzle in a gamebook so sign me up! Unfortunately, that's just about all it is. It's one logic or math puzzle immediately after another, over and over and over, with the flimsiest of stories joining it all together. Said story sees you playing as a nameless "Assistant Dragon Keeper', who is left to their chores one day while their master is out taking one of the dragons for a test spin. (And yes, this is clearly intended to be a humourous gamebook). It also happens to be your birthday, although this is causing you to be depressed, as everyone you know seems to have forgotten about it. Right in the first section you are asked if you want to do the chores your master left for you, or just slack off and try to enjoy your birthday. So what happens if you pick the slack off option? You are told that you think better of it and decide to do your chores. Crimey! There are authors other than Sutherland and Farrell who pull this crap? Is the author of this book, David Hill, a pseudonym for one of those guys? Sigh. So with that, you begin with a puzzle involving constructing a pen for 3 dragons, and the onslaught of non-stop puzzles begins. If this is your thing, I think you would be better off just buying a book of these puzzles and doing them at your leisure. When you buy a book full of crossword puzzles you don't do them all in one evening (although maybe some crazy people do) because after a few, it would probably start to feel like a chore, which is exactly what starts happening here not even halfway through. Hell, even your character starts to comment about getting sick and tired of everyone he meets presenting him with some kind of problem to solve well before the end of the adventure, which perfectly reflected my feelings as well, so good job on making me feel the plight of my character I guess. 

After completing that opening puzzle, your character decides to take a snooze, but discovers an old piece of parchment hidden in the wall of the shed he was intending to sack out in. The parchment needs to be decoded (of course), and you then learn that it gives instructions on how to reach the fabled treasure of a legendary Dragon Master. Deciding it's high time you attempted to make a name for yourself and also become fabulously wealthy, you immediately set off in search of the treasure. Before you go, you are given the option of taking one of 3 starting items with you. Do you want to take: a sack of potatoes; some cream buns; or a pouch of coins? But guess what......it doesn't matter! Should you choose either the potatoes or the cream buns, you are told that you think better of it and must pick again, so you ultimately have no choice but to take the coins. I swear, someone is playing a prank on me now with these types of decisions. Two of these in the opening few sections! 

There are no character stats to track here, and you only need to keep note of two things, Dragon Crowns (basically gold coins), and any items you may come across. So you set off following the vague parchment directions, and travel through woods, fields, villages and the like, encountering people every step of the way that present you with a problem or riddle to solve. Should you be successful in solving a problem, you are rewarded with either a Dragon Crown or two, or perhaps an item such as a coloured stone or piece of glass. If you are having trouble solving a problem, you usually have an option to "buy a hint", which at the cost of one of your Dragon Crowns will give you some help, although there are some hints that don't even cost anything. However, I found this more akin to "buy an answer", as the hints usually just spelled out the answer to the problem outright, and sometimes just had you bypassing the problem altogether as if you had solved it. This actually does make sense though, and had to be included to prevent players from becoming stuck on a puzzle and having that mean game over. On that front, there is no "dying" here, however there are many puzzles that when answered correctly give you a number, which you then need to perform some math on in order to arrive at the next section to go to. And unfortunately, a few of these have no option to buy help. I got stuck on a couple of the puzzles, but thankfully not any with the no help option, because I suppose if you couldn't solve one of those then that would be it for you! Although there is nothing in the rules saying you only get one guess, so I suppose you could just guess every section number in the book until you found the right one and it wouldn't technically be cheating, but for me that would go against the spirit of the game. 

There are 10 items you will need to collect in order to be able to open the treasure chest at the end of the adventure. Some of these are found by solving certain of the puzzles, and some can be bought from individuals you meet. If you miss even one of the necessary items, you can't open the treasure chest at the end, and are told to go back to the beginning and start again in a Forest of Doom style resetting of everything going back to the state it was in when you first started, and this makes just as little sense here as it did in that "Fighting Fantasy" book. Upon reaching the end on my first attempt and not having all the necessary items, I just decided to chalk that up as a failure and start fresh again the next evening. Normally, making it to the end of a gamebook and finding out you missed some essential items is a good thing, as it allows you to go back and explore and experiment with other avenues the book has to offer. Here though it's almost completely pointless. Why? Because you now know the answer to every puzzle in the book, thanks to the answer being given away even if you decided to spend a Dragon Crown to get past it. So the replayability here is zilch.  

As far as the puzzles themselves, there are very few that stand out, and the ones that do are for the wrong reasons. You have some standard riddles such as "How far can you walk into a forest? Answer: Halfway. Because after that you are walking out." Along with some mind-numbingly boring exercises such as showing you an illustration of a group of sticks, and then having you move the sticks around in the fewest moves possible to make a certain number of squares. There was one puzzle involving moving coins around to make a certain number or rows that required some out-of-the-box thinking, and I enjoyed that one, but the ones I had fun with like that were few and far between. Another good one was determining the fewest number of times you would need to weigh nine coins on a scale to determine which of the coins was the fake one. Quite a few math problems here too, such as determining how many cats a woman has if she gave two thirds to her sister, who lost one, then gave half of the cats back etc etc. You get the idea. Those types of puzzles are decent enough, the problem here is the constant barrage of them with no letup. There are a few picture puzzles too, that give an illustration of a room and require you to find a certain number of hidden items in it. (For example, how many weapons are hidden in this picture of a knight's room?). Still, I have saved what I thought were the more egregious puzzles for special mention below:

The Boat Puzzle- In this one, you approach two men each with their own pet dragon, standing on one side of a river with a boat in front of them. You are then asked: "The boat will only take two at a time and on no account must a dragon be left on a bank without his owner. The dragons can't row either. How many trips will it take to get all of them across?" I admit, this one had me stumped and I was wondering if there was some out-of-the-box thinking required here too, or if there was going to be a stupid answer such as "one of them swims". Thankfully I had the option to take a hint, and on so doing discovered that the answer was: "One owner takes his dragon across. He will then row back and pick up the other owner. The first owner will then stay with his dragon while the other owner will row back, pick up his dragon and row back with it to join the first owner and his dragon". This blatantly ignores the puzzle's own rule that you can't leave a dragon on a bank without his owner. Of course if one of the owners could just ferry everyone across one at a time then what the heck is the problem? Bah. 

The Bird Puzzle - This one REALLY pissed me off! Chiefly because I spent so long on it and also because it was one of the main contributors to my headache from playing this book. Here you are given a parchment with a paragraph written on it discussing dragons, and you are also given a list with the names of 11 different types of birds (Pigeon, Dove, Eagle, etc). You are told that 4 of these types of bird names are hidden in the paragraph, and you need to find the 4 bird names and perform some math on the answer, which will give you the next section to go to. I found 3 of the bird names fairly quickly (Thrush, Snipe, and Wren), but for the life of me could not find the last one. I even used process of elimination, trying each of the remaining birds one at a time and slowly going through the whole paragraph, but still no luck. Fortunately this puzzle also had an option to buy a hint, and upon buying this hint, I was told that two of the bird names had 4 letters. Well ok, I only had one so far with 4 letters, so the one I was missing must also have 4 letters. That was all I needed to know, as in order to get the correct section number, you needed to add up the total letters in the 4 bird names. So getting the right number and moving on, the answer was laid out in the next section, and apparently the bird name I had been missing was Swan. But hold on a f&#ing minute...Swan wasn't one of the names on the initial list! Note to self.....having an editing error in a gamebook puzzle that causes it to be unsolvable by the desired method is terrible form. This book is for the birds!   

The Skeleton Puzzle - This isn't really a puzzle, just an incredibly annoying bit of yet more "Sutherland and Farrell" tomfoolery. This one occurs right near the end, and you encounter a skeleton who asks you a question regarding how many different ways skeletons can be seated around a table, and then provides you 3 completely random answers you need to choose from. Get the answer wrong? It doesn't matter. You are just told to go back and pick again until you get the right one. (The anti City of Thieves right here). I take it this is supposed to be played for laughs, and I can certainly appreciate humorous moments in gamebooks (there were even a few moments elsewhere in this very book that gave me a chuckle), but doing it in this manner does nothing for me, and makes me feel like the author is wasting my time. 

In conclusion, as if the above wasn't enough, this gamebook might have the worst ending to an adventure I have yet played, with the possible exception of Inferno! from the "Way of the Tiger" series. First off, if you make it to the end without all the needed items, you are admonished for likely selling some of the essential items for Dragon Crowns (which you have the option to do at several points along the way) and are scolded for being greedy. Being greedy? Did they forget what the whole point of the quest was? However, if you are successful and win the adventure, it gets even worse. You know those "it was all just a dream" endings that piss people off so much in books and movies? Yeah. Nuff said.  

Ranking: Headache inducing. What started off as something new and good fun became a total chore not even halfway through, and I was just praying each new puzzle would be the last one (only to have more and more just keep on coming). The odd error in the puzzles also certainly doesn't do it any favours, and only adds to the frustration. A shame because there is a great idea hidden away here that even feels ahead of its time. I only wish the author had either spread the puzzles out more, or cut back on them altogether and included a more compelling story instead. Can a gamebook succeed if it's based solely on puzzles? I don't know, but I do know this sure isn't it. 

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Earth Brain - 1987 - Score = 3.8    Tier = Bad

Sections: 230

Attempts to beat: 2

This is the second Stand-Alone gamebook in a row I have played that is purely puzzle based. At the end of my review of the previous one, Dragonquest, I wondered if it was possible for a gamebook to succeed if it was solely based on puzzles, because Dragonquest was certainly not it. Now, thankfully in the interim between playing these two books, I have experienced the "Fantasy Questbook" series, which contained at least a few entries that proved to me that it could be done. And a good thing too, because Earth Brain kind of stinks, and certainly wouldn't have shown to me that purely puzzle based gamebooks could be successful either. Before the adventure begins, you are asked to choose 10 items from a list of about 20, with this list containing everyday things such as string, a magnet, chocolate, chewing gum, marbles, etc. Once you have selected your 10 items, you then start into the story. The adventure opens with a case of mistaken identity, as an alien spaceship arrives in orbit and attempts to use a transporter beam to abduct the smartest person on planet Earth (who the aliens refer to as "Earthbrain"). The transporter beam goes awry however, and ends up abducting YOU instead, a schoolboy who had been sitting in his living room doing his homework. This alien race, known as the Gargoids, have come seeking data on your planet, but this quickly morphs into a mission where you must help them in preventing an invasion of their home planet of Gargul by an army of androids led by a cyborg called RU12. Strangely there is only one alien, named Psili, onboard the ship that abducts you, and having little say in the matter, and with Psili not realizing that you are not the earthling he was trying to capture, you head off with him towards Gargul to see if you can help anyway.

Right now I should probably say that this is going to be a shorter review, as there really isn't a hell of a lot to say. It was hard to believe that this gamebook contains 230 sections, as it felt far shorter than that. When the adventure first started, it felt more to me like a multiple-choice book as opposed to one revolving around puzzles, as in the first few questions you are merely asked to make a choice between 3 possible answers. This had me extremely worried, but thankfully there were some genuine puzzles that begin to pop up as you and Psili fly through space towards Gargul. As you do so, you are asked to perform such tasks as studying a picture of a group of 3 incoming missiles to determine which one is different from the others so that Psili knows which one of them to destroy and which two are the decoys and can be ignored, which is not unlike puzzles I remember solving in the comics section of the Sunday papers oh so many years ago. There is also one of the most ridiculously easy puzzles I have ever seen here, whereby you are shown an apparent jumble of letters and must solve the message it contains. How do you solve this? By just reading the letters across horizontally from left to right of course. So in other words, it's just a paragraph. Jeesh. 

Once you and Psili arrive on Gargul, you go before the ruling Grand Council to determine how best to defend the planet against the imminent android invasion. It is then that you come up with a brilliant plan. As the androids are basically computers, all you need to do is ask them a question that can't be solved, and they should overload. The question you decide to ask them is "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?", and now you just need a way to be able to broadcast the question loud enough so that when they arrive, all the androids will be able to hear it. The way in which you do this is very odd, as the last several puzzles of the book have you putting together a large speaker system, which would have been right at home in the 1980's when the book was written, but seems very out of place for such an advanced civilization as the Gargoids. Anyway, several of the puzzles in the back half of the book involve you having to look at a picture of a mass of wires or circuits and determine which initial wire ends up plugging into the correct slot on the other side of the picture, making them much like a "find your way through the maze" type of puzzle. My biggest gripe with this was that some of the pictures were on the small side, and I had to pull the book right up to my nose to try and solve them. In fact, my only failure at the adventure came in one of these puzzles, where I was asked to identify which one of two wires connected to the correct speaker, and I had to try and follow them through a jumbled mass of wires in order to do so (much like no matter how neatly you put away the Christmas lights each year, they somehow come out in a jumbled ball the next year when you take them out again). Even using the tried and true method I have always used in solving these "maze" type of puzzles, that is by starting at the end and working backwards (and I assume many others used this method as well), I apparently still identified the wrong wire, and my incorrect choice led to a game over. Going back afterwards to look at some of the other answers that I did not choose in the other puzzles, an incorrect choice does not always necessarily mean game over, and sometimes you are given another puzzle to solve to see if you can redeem yourself and continue on. I was not so lucky with that speaker wire puzzle however. 

Untangle this to save a planet. 

Once the speaker is properly assembled, you transmit your message and the android army is defeated as predicted (although with their leader RU12 escaping and promising revenge, I presume to set up a sequel that never came). At this point, you are given a reward of a "transmuter", which is a device that can alter organic matter to any form you choose. Quite the gift! You are then transported back to your living room, where you use the transmuter to finish your homework. So I guess it can "transmute" your blank pages to pages filled in with your math homework solutions? It doesn't quite end there though (and everything described both above and below here is from the ending I got to at least, as I have been made aware that there are others), as the book concluded for me by turning in the math homework the next day. However, your math teacher picks up on your ploy, and knows you must have cheated on your homework somehow. So what do you do then? You, for all intents and purposes, MURDER him, and in a grisly manner no less, by transmuting him into a frog for an upcoming dissection class. Nice! 

As far as the writing goes this is a very lighthearted adventure, save for that bit of homicide at the end, about a schoolboy helping an alien civilization against an android invasion. And while most of it is played for laughs, I don't recall finding anything that happened particularly funny. (The alien spaceship that picks you up has a "cleaning creature" aboard it called "Hoover" for example). Most of the puzzles involved are barely worth mentioning either, and I blame my one failure at the book on a combination of my eyesight not being what it once was combined with the smallish picture. One thing I feel like I do need to call bullshit on this book though is in the cover, as it states along the bottom "Solve Over 50 Puzzles to Save the Galaxy". First off, we are not saving "the galaxy", but more importantly.....50 puzzles my ass! Are there even 50 puzzles total in the book? I suppose it might be possible if you failed every one that involved a follow-up puzzle for doing so, but even that seems dubious (and I was in no mood to go through and count them all), as on my winning playthrough I solved less than 20. So in any case you are not required to solve anywhere close to 50 puzzles to "save the galaxy". Tough not to feel ripped off there! Oh, and what the heck was the point of selecting those 10 everyday items at the very start of the book? I guess there could be a puzzle in here somewhere that involved them, but I never saw it. And finally, there is a "section tracker" at the very back of the book, where you are meant to mark off all the section numbers you visit as you play through the adventure. Again, what the heck for?  

Ranking: Yeah, this was not very much fun. It didn't annoy me as much as Dragonquest, which is why I have it slightly higher in the rankings, but the puzzles were not much to speak of either. And where did all the sections of the book go to? I can only guess they went towards those follow-up puzzles, because my map/flowchart for this book is pathetically short indeed. I can't say that I'm surprised that this appears to be the only gamebook ever written by author Keith Faulkner, as it doesn't seem his heart was really in it. Ah well, another gamebook crossed off the list at least.