Stephen Thraves Compact

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1. Haunted Island - Score = 💀💀 - Two Skulls

Sections: 176
Attempts to Beat: 4

Always exciting when I get to start a new series, doubly so when it comes from an author I have never experienced before. In this case, Stephen Thraves and his 8-book "Compact" series of miniature gamebooks. I have come across Mr. Thraves' name quite a few times while searching for various series to play, however his books have proven to be a real bear to get a hold of, at least in a playable form. Much of his gamebook output appears to be adventures that originally came with special cards, dice, or other supplemental materials, which are almost always missing from available second hand copies, thus rendering them unplayable (and perhaps someone with the original materials could make some extra cash selling copies of them online). Not a problem with this series though, because as far as I can tell, everything you need is within the book itself. That being the case, time to crack on! 

This opening entry sees us playing as a student (I'm assuming high school age), who finds employment over their summer vacation at a museum overseen by its curator, the unfortunately named Mr Drabb. Upon arriving at the museum to begin working for him, Mr Drabb notifies us that he has hired us, not to work in the museum, but to accompany him to a nearby island just off the coast. It would seem that Drabb has deciphered a parchment in the museum that tells the tale of Isabella, who was the daughter of the Lord of the island hundreds of years ago. This Lord, Sir Henry Fothering, set Isabella up for an arranged marriage, however she was already in love with a local minstrel. Determined not to go through with the arranged marriage, Isabella hid her dowry of 5 golden goblets somewhere on the island, hoping that this would scupper the marriage. Upon hearing of this, Sir Henry chased Isabella up to the battlements of the castle on the island, during a terrible storm no less, where Isabella slipped and fell to her death. With Isabella now dead, and he at least partly responsible, Sir Henry then spent the rest of his days in sorrow, mourning the loss of his daughter. Drabb fully believes that the 5 golden goblets still remain hidden on the now deserted island, and together along with his faithful hound, Cheerful, the three of you set out for the island to find them.  

The game system here is fairly simple, as there is no dice rolling or even Life points to speak of. Riffing on a popular arcade game, this book should have been called "Ghosts & Goblets". Your "adventure sheet", called a Score Card here, consists of 3 columns: Goblets, Ghosts, and Accessories. The first two are straightforward, as every time you find one of the 5 Goblets you mark one off, and you will need to find all 5 by the time you get to the end of the adventure, or you need to start over and try again. Similarly, every time you encounter a Ghost (this is a Haunted Island after all), you mark one off on the Ghost column, and should you encounter 4 Ghosts, you are overcome with terror and run away screaming, automatically ending the game in a loss. The Accessories are a bit more involved, as there are 3 of them that can be found within the adventure, and include: a Map, a Scroll, and a Book of Crests. Each of these has its own fold-out section on either the front or back cover of the book, and once found during the adventure, you are then allowed to use the fold-outs at various times to get hints about what to do next if you happen to get asked if you have a particular Accessory. No cheat proofing is done here, as there is nothing stopping a player from just looking at the Accessories at any time should they have found them or not, but I respected that the author didn't just assume that all players were cheats, and thus needed to be thwarted from such heinous actions. Some gamebook authors seem to take such actions as a personal affront! Some of us do prefer playing by the rules, and cheaters are going to find a way to do so anyway, not that anyone should care what someone else does with a gamebook that they purchased with their own money in any case.       

With the game system out of the way, we move on to the adventure itself, which begins with you, Drabb, and Cheerful being dropped off at a cove on the island by a local fisherman. In order to have the adventure take place at night (to increase the spookiness factor of course), an excuse is given that boats can only approach the island at high tide lest they get dashed on the surrounding rocks, and with high tide on this particular day occurring at dusk, we come ashore on the island just as the sun is going down, and of course with a thunderstorm approaching. I was actually moderately impressed at this point, for such a small-sized gamebook, there appeared to be a lot to look forward to here in terms of uncovering the Goblets, avoiding the Ghosts, and the inclusion of the cool-looking fold-out Accessories to aid in uncovering the mysteries of the island. Unfortunately, it goes downhill from here, as the gameplay mostly involves you being asked to pick from among several options at random, and if you choose wrong at any point, there is a good chance you just locked yourself out from finding one of the Goblets. The Accessories can help here at certain points, because if you have one when asked, you can use it to get the answer on what to do next, however they are not fun to use at all, because rather than adding an aspect to the adventure where you needed to use them to solve puzzles, they just flat out tell you exactly what to do. And even should you not have one of the Accessories when asked, you are still given the option to just guess what to do instead. So, with usually 2-4 options to choose from, you basically just need to use trial and error to uncover the locations of the Goblets as you make your way through the book.

Surprisingly, using trial and error to solve the adventure didn't bother me nearly as much as I would have thought. It might have bothered me in a full-size gamebook, but for a mini-book like this, I'm much more willing to let it slide, and truth be told I did find a level of satisfaction in working out where all the Goblets are hidden, even if it's mostly guesswork. What I did have a problem with was the near complete lack of anything interesting going on. You, Drabb, and Cheerful make your way up the cliffs from the cove to the ruined castle, investigate the dungeons, then move into the castle itself which has 3 floors that you explore one level at a time, before descending the cliffs again to the cove where you started, and where the fisherman picks you up and the game ends. Unfortunately, the whole trip is rather boring, and it really didn't have to be that way. One of the biggest misses comes with Cheerful. I mean c'mon, you give me a dog companion (one of the best things you can do), but then give that dog no personality at all except constantly telling me about his sad-sack facial expression. Could you at least let me pet the dog even? Another big miss comes in the form of the Ghosts, who pop up occasionally should you make a wrong choice. Every encounter with them is supposed to be adding to your terror about being on the island, but with the exception of the Ghost of Isabella herself, there is nothing memorable or even remotely scary about them. Seriously, they look like cartoon kiddie-style ghosts. Who are they supposed to be? It makes sense for Isabella, and even Sir Henry, to exist in ghostly form on the island, but what are all these others doing there? Something really cool could have been done here by providing them all with various backstories, but I guess that was too much to hope for. And whatever happened to Isabella's minstrel boyfriend anyway? The only character that gets remotely fleshed out is Drabb, who is portrayed as a portly man who is very enthusiastic about archaeology, but who is also afraid of his own shadow.    

Look! A g-g-g-ghost! Scary eh?    

The adventure isn't all that difficult, as there are usually 3 options to pick from, and even should you pick incorrectly, you still get to keep on moving through the linear track of the book. There are no "instant deaths" (I don't think anyway), unless you count spotting your fourth Ghost. You can therefore just keep picking a different option each time you are asked until you eventually uncover the locations of the Goblets, which shouldn't take more than a handful of attempts at most. Even the Ghosts don't appear all THAT much, as of my 3 failed attempts at the book, none of them occurred because I saw 4 Ghosts and fled, but rather I got to the end without all the Goblets. That ending section itself is a pretty big letdown, as there is no "reward" section for winning. The last section just asks if you found all 5 Goblets, and if you did you win, and if you didn't? Well, just try again. While I somewhat enjoyed my first couple of plays, by about the third attempt I was picking options not because I thought they were good choices, but just because they were the ones I hadn't tried yet.  

Several of the choices here also involve you needing to decide which member of your party, Drabb, Cheerful, or yourself, that you wish to have perform some action. This usually involves you getting to decide who takes the lead when investigating a new area. I think you are meant to try to use logic to determine which of the 3 of you would be best suited for each task, but these choices felt just as random as anything else, with the reason for who you SHOULD have picked often being given after you've made your choice, and I found myself coming up with reasons why someone else would have been just as good a selection, except that just didn't happen to match up with the author's own way of thinking. I also admit to having a problem in picking Cheerful as the one to take the lead into a possible dangerous area. After all, unlike you and Drabb, the dog didn't choose to be there, and placing the dog in harm's way thus felt wrong (I know, I know, it's only a gamebook). There is a ridiculous moment here though when you all draw straws to see who "goes first".......and even the dog draws a straw!   

Ranking: Not really a strong opening to the series, but I suppose it could have been worse. I'll be more okay with the randomness moving forward if the stories get some more "oomph" put into them. That really seems like a necessity with a design such as this. The pieces were in place for this to be a bit better than it was if the Ghosts had been fleshed out (so to speak) and you had more involvement with the dog character. I would also like to see the Accessories put to better use other than having them just giving you the answer on what to do next. So, there is definite room for improvement here, but the elements are present to at least do something fun in the future.

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2. Assignment Loch Ness - Score = 💀💀 - Two Skulls

Sections: 163
Attempts to Beat: 6

On to book 2 and right off the top, I have to say that the premise for this adventure is brilliant. Unlike the bog standard "haunted house" style of the first adventure, this entry puts forth something truly unique in that it's a quest to photograph the legendary and elusive Loch Ness Monster! Can't say I've experienced anything like that before in a gamebook. The prologue explains how we are playing a young photojournalist, who is only two days into his new job at a struggling newspaper (with the city this newspaper is located in oddly left unmentioned). Word has just come in to the newspaper's editor that there has recently been 8 separate sightings of the Loch Ness Monster along the northern end of the famous loch, and all from seemingly reliable local witnesses. With all the other photographers already out on other assignments, you are chosen to fly up to Inverness, take a taxi to Loch Ness from there, and do whatever you can to get the Loch Ness Monster caught on film, which would go a long way in rescuing your floundering paper. So off to the airport you go!

You are not the only photojournalist on the prowl for these pictures though, as the first thing that happens when you arrive in Inverness is that a pair of rival photographers who go by the names of Kate Dupe and Dave Conn (good grief), trick you and steal your bag that contained all your heavy-duty camera equipment, leaving you with only the polaroid camera you have around your neck. This polaroid only has 6 shots left in it, and you are going to need to make them count, as the rules of the book state that you need to take 6 pictures of the Monster in order to win the game. And right here I have to ask, why 6? You're telling me 3, 4 or 5 clear pictures of the Monster would be no good? Will your editor say "You took 5 clear pictures of the Monster son? What a pity. If only you had managed to take 6 it would have proven its existence!". Anyhow, there is a clear substitution of the Goblets and Ghosts from the first book, as here they are replaced by Monster Photographs, and Camera Shots remaining. You track both of these on your Score Card, needing to find all the 6 hidden locations in the book where clear pictures of the Monster can be taken, and if you run out of Camera Shots before you find all 6, you have lost the game. Unlike the first book, this means you can KNOW that you have lost the game right near the beginning of the book should you waste one of your camera shots. Heck, if you waste even one shot at any point, you know you have just lost, as you don't have even one to spare. 

So you begin the game on the shore of the northeast corner of Loch Ness, and make your way around the map clockwise, moving southwards down the shore on the eastern side before stopping at a village where you find someone to row you across to the western shore. From there, you head northwards around the western edge of the loch, until making it to the northern end and eventually back to near where you started. While you are making this circular journey, you need to uncover the location of all the 6 places where you can successfully take a picture of the Monster. In addition, there are once again 3 fold-out Accessories on the front and back covers of the book scattered around as well that must be found before they can be used, and this time these include:

1. The Map - Functionally this works the exact same way as the first book, with the fold-out on the front cover showing a grid-style map of the area you are traversing. At various moments in the adventure you will be asked which grid space a particular landmark happens to be shown in on the Map, and if you have found it, you can then use it to answer. (And again even if you don't have it, you can still guess from among the 3 given choices). Unlike the first book though, I found the Map much more appealing here, with a nice illustration of the north end of Loch Ness, depicting some villages, castle ruins, and a hotel, which is in stark contrast to the map from Haunted Island which depicted a near barren hunk of rock. I did find it odd during the adventure though that those castle ruins are described as being Loch Ness' most famous landmark, and I can only assume this is meant to be Urquhart Castle. I wonder then why its name is not given in the book. Is the name copyrighted or something?  

2 . The Newspaper - So in my review of the previous book, I lamented how the Accessories basically gave you the answer rather than providing any kind of puzzle to solve. Well, I got my wish (at least a little bit), as the Newspaper adds at least some puzzle solving to the proceedings. Locating this Accessory allows you to use the fold-out on the back cover of the book, which depicts the front page of a local newspaper that happens to show headshot illustrations of the 8 Loch Ness Monster witnesses. At various times during the quest, you will be approached by people claiming to be one of these witnesses, and should you have found the Newspaper, you can use it to check the description of the person approaching you and compare it to their picture in the Newspaper to see if they actually are who they claim to be, or if they are instead either Kate Dupe or Dave Conn in disguise trying to steal your camera. It's not rocket science or anything and I was able to figure these out pretty quickly once I found the Newspaper, but hey, it's certainly a step in the right direction. 

3. The Guidebook - Well, this is basically the same as the Book of Crests from the first book. Once you locate this Accessory, you can use the fold-out (also at the back of the book) at various times when you are walking along trails to tell you which way you should go. Like the Book of Crests, it pretty much spells out exactly what you need to do, so this didn't add all that much to the adventure outside of keeping you from needing to make a random guess should you not have it. 
  

However, the Accessories mostly only help with preventing the wasting of Camera Shots, and I'm sorry to say that when it comes to locating the 6 places to take the Monster Photographs, it mostly once again comes down to just random guessing. For example, there are a couple of instances where you are looking out over the loch, and are asked if you want to aim your camera to the right, to the left, or straight ahead. The only way you are going to know which one holds the correct photograph shot is by trying them all out. Even when I thought logic might play into it (we were told the Monster was spotted in the northern end of the loch, so we should look in that direction right?), that didn't work either. I say "mostly" because the very final Photograph location actually did involve putting some thought into it as we are asked to choose between 3 locations to take our last photo, and also that daylight is fast running out, and it makes sense if you use that last bit of info to make your decision. Unfortunately you might have already been conditioned by this point to think that this is yet another totally random choice!  

This book did a better job with its encounters, as at least there are some people to meet here. You can encounter other people on the road and in villages, including a local farmer, a village minister, and a fisherman who likes his whiskey and is willing to row you across the loch. This is in addition to several of the witnesses that you can bump into, as there are some that are not Kate Dupe and Dave Conn in disguise. But special mention needs to be made of those two rival photographers. Leaving aside the cringe-worthy names, the lengths these two are wiling to go to in order to thwart your attempt to photograph the Monster become ridiculous. I see now that after two books, this series definitely has a silly side to it, but even this was over the top and took me out of the adventure at times. The setting here is a really great one, with you travelling around the eerie and misty loch, and had me clamoring for another Lovecraftian-style gamebook (and gamebook author Jonathan Green has more recently published a couple of Arkham books which sound incredibly intriguing in this regard). Except that great atmosphere would be broken whenever Kate and Dave would show up in their fake wigs and false beards trying to yoink your camera away from you. Are they secret agents or something with all these disguises? Aren't they supposed to be trying to get photos of the Monster themselves rather than spending every waking moment trying to trick you? This adventure also contains the same disappointing final section as last book, maybe even more so. The "victory" section when you get back to your newspaper office once again just says that if you got all 6 photos then you win, and if you didn't then you need to try again. Gimme a break. If I just proved the existence of the Loch Ness Monster and became world famous, I don't even get a rewarding triumphant section detailing all the accolades given me? Lame! 

"Uh...yes....I was one of the people who witnessed the Monster. Say, that's a nice camera you have there. Mind if I hold it?"

Finally, I found this adventure to be more difficult than Haunted Island, because there seemed to me to be more ways to waste your Camera Shots than there was to encounter Ghosts in that first book. There are quite a few times when you are asked if you want to risk taking a Camera Shot at something you spot through the mist out on the loch, and you just have to blindly guess if it's the right thing to do or not. In addition, with Kate and Dave constantly trying to steal your last remaining camera, even should you guess wrong in the encounters with them, they never do manage to steal your camera, but they will somehow cause you to waste a Camera Shot, effectively making it that you now can't win. (eg. Dave will reach for your camera to take it and miss, but his finger will catch the button, wasting a Camera Shot). Once you locate the Newspaper Accessory, Kate and Dave are not really a problem, but boy did I find that particular Accessory to be counter-intuitively hidden. (You find yourself on a muddy road in a downpour, and are asked if you want to either walk, jog, or sprint along the slippery road to the next clearing in order to find shelter. Guess which one of the three you are supposed to pick to find the Newspaper?). Much like with the Ghosts from the first book, the rules state that once you have used your 6 Camera Shots, you cannot continue and you must stop right there. On my first two attempts at this adventure, I didn't even make it to the halfway point of the book, because I was taking photos of everything when asked, knowing that the only way I was going to uncover the correct photo locations was by trying them all out. As I result, I used up my 6 Camera Shots very quickly. This was in sharp contrast to Haunted Island, when I actually made it to the end every single time. 

Famous faked photograph of the Loch Ness Monster. Even as a kid this looked fake to me. The ripples in the water just don't seem to be the proper scale at all. Right?

Ranking: When I began playing Assignment Loch Ness, I BADLY wanted this to be much better than the first book due to its highly original premise, which is the like of something I haven't seen in a gamebook yet. Unfortunately that feeling only lasted a few minutes, when I soon realized that the gameplay here might even be more random than that of Haunted Island. Even though this book has less sections than that previous entry, it seemed to me there were even more times where you just needed to make a blind guess and hope for the best. Overall I still wouldn't say it's bad, it's just yet more of the same "figure out the correct path through process of elimination" gameplay. And while I am giving this second book the same score as the first, I will give Assignment Loch Ness the tiebreaker and slot it ahead in the rankings, because even though the randomness may have increased, everything else about this was a bit better, including the more original story and at least one of the Accessories being put to at least a modicum of thoughtful use. Still, two books in and I'm thinking this series badly needs to introduce some new mechanics to have a hope of scoring higher.

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3. Shadows of Doom - Score = 💀 - One Skull

Sections: 160
Attempts to Beat: 3

And so after the great premise of book 2, in book 3 we get......the standard fantasy quest. Sigh. The prologue does actually start us out with a bit of a wrinkle, as we play here as a barbarian warrior, summoned by our late father's best friend to rescue his son, who has been kidnapped by bandits. The wrinkle comes in that we are not asked to rescue the son, because his father feels it would be safer to pay the ransom. The father however cannot currently afford to pay the asked for amount, so he asks us to venture into the caverns located underneath the Doom Volcano (which I suppose makes it Mount Doom? Although the adventure wisely refrains from calling it this.), and to then locate a number of precious jewels, 6 to be exact, that are known to form beneath the volcano. These 6 jewels would then be sufficient to pay the ransom to the bandits. We agree of course, being the honorable fellow that we are, and set off towards the volcano which lies only a day's ride from the father's castle. 

The stats to track for this book include those jewels, of which we once again need to find all 6 in order to win the adventure, and also our Strength points. We begin the game with 5 of these Strength points, and at various times during the adventure we might be told to subtract a Strength point should we choose an incorrect option and take a hit of damage. (I almost said we lose a Strength point "should we make a mistake", but because the choices are mostly completely random again, I'm not sure how you can call it a "mistake" in most cases). Anyway, should you take 5 hits during the course of the adventure, your Strength points would then be lowered to 0, and you then must immediately stop playing, having lost the game. There is however another way you can lose a Strength point, and that comes in the form of the book's Combat system, which I will get to later. 

So you start the adventure at the underground entrance to the volcano, and make your way through completely bland and boring tunnels that connect the various caverns. When you enter a cavern, you will have the opportunity to choose from among 3 different creatures to fight, each of them guarding a jewel. How it works is, you are shown a picture of the first creature, and can either fight them or pass. Should you fight and win you get a jewel and immediately leave the cavern, continuing on through the volcano. Should you fight and lose you take 1 Strength Point of damage and must continue on without that jewel. Should you pass, you move on to take a look at the second creature, who you can also either fight or pass. If you move on to the third creature however, you better fight, because if you pass again you have to leave the cavern without the jewel. This is a huge problem, because once again there is no room for error here, as you need all 6 jewels to win the game, and only have 6 places to get them. So, if at any point you lose a fight, you now cannot win the game, even if you still have Strength points left. And just how exactly do you fight these creatures? I'm glad you asked!  

You know, when I make a wish list for things I would like to see the series include moving forward, I really need to do a better job of clarifying what I mean. In the very last review I mentioned that this series badly needed to introduce some new mechanics, which to my utter shock it actually does here. What I should have said however, is that it badly needs to include some GOOD mechanics, because this Combat system is downright terrible. How it works is, whenever you fight a creature inside the volcano, you are given a list of grid numbers from among 50 possibilities (A1, A2.......all the way up to J5). You then pick one at random from the group listed, then turn to the Combat Chart on the inside cover of the book to see the result of the fight. Each of the grid numbers leads to one of 3 different outcomes. Either: (a) you win and get to take the jewel the creature is guarding, (b) you lose and take one Strength point of damage, and then provided you still have any Strength points left, must also continue on without that jewel, or (c) that round is a draw, and you pick again from another group of numbers. This is tedious as hell on several levels. First, half of the results on the Combat Chart are "draws", so you will be going back to pick again quite often. What fun! Second, the results of the Combat Chart are obviously the same every time, so once you know one of the grid numbers is a loss, you will know to avoid that particular number in future. Similarly, once you know a particular grid number is a win for you, now all you have to do is wait for that number to come up as one of the options, then pick it for the easy win. I'm sure you are probably not intended to memorize which grid numbers lead to what results, but the "wins" are incredibly important so they stick out in your mind (I still remember that F1 was a "win" number, so I was always searching for that one for example). Even if one of the win numbers isn't an option, just pick one you know to be a draw until you are given an option that you know is. Thus, a HUGE part of beating this book was just in determining which of the grid spaces on the Combat Chart led to wins, which is completely down to random guessing and trial-and-error. You need to win all 6 fights to beat the book, so mapping out the results of the Combat Chart is essential to beating the game. And if the intention really was to make every combat completely 50/50 random guessing? To hell with that! Memorize away, or better yet take notes I say! 

The 3 Accessories also return here in the form of: The Map, The Book of Ciphers, and the Cryptics Scroll. And they are all a waste of time. The Map is laughably bad, showing a bland picture of the various caverns underneath the volcano and the tunnels that connect them. The Book and the Scroll work almost identically, each one telling you what to do should you come across various symbols carved into the rock passages of the volcano should you have located that particular Accessory in the adventure. This is all pretty much a return to book 1, where the Accessories basically just tell you what to do should you have them. Really not much to see here.

Even when you win, yet again you get no explanation as to what happened with the son. You are asked if you got all 6 jewels or not, and that's it. No victory section or even a single sentence on whether the ransom was actually paid and the son safely returned. To be honest, I had stopped caring by that point anyway. The whole thing is just incredibly boring. The tunnels and caverns themselves have very little of interest happening in any of them, the creatures seem like a random mish-mash of various animal body parts, and the reason for the presence of these creatures in the volcano in the first place is hand-waved away in the prologue. The only small thing of interest that happens is that you encounter three ghosts of a previous group of adventurers that died while exploring the volcano. Heck, even their deaths don't make a lot of sense, as we are told they died from fright from their experiences in the caverns, except they all fell dead within a few steps of exiting the volcano. Each of these dead adventurers can provide you with one of the Accessories, but in order to get each of them you will need to make a totally random guess from among 3 options. The ghosts themselves were a nice touch, I have to give the book that much, and one of them even hides a dark secret, which made this aspect feel very "Skyrim-ish". That said, it was still far too little to save this book.     

Ranking: Ouch. Move down tunnel, enter cavern, fight creature. Rinse and repeat. To say this adventure is repetitive would be an understatement. To say this adventure is repetitive would be an understatement. The random gameplay really comes home to roost when you don't have at least some kind of interesting setting to help counter-balance it. I don't know how Thraves is doing it, but the level of randomness feels like it is actually increasing with each entry. This adventure all seemed to come down to figuring out the results of the Combat Chart through random guessing. Using that trial-and-error approach while exploring a Haunted Island or the shores of Loch Ness to figure out what you need to do is one thing, but using it to uncover the spaces on a grid to figure out what they all result in like you are playing the world's worst game of Battleship? You just lost your one saving grace. Even the prose, which was at least serviceable in the previous two books, is a large drop in quality here after an admittedly decent if brief prologue, although that could very well be a function of the setting itself here being dull as dishwater. Well, I can say it's not broken, and the three ghosts were at least something, but that is about the only good things I can say about Shadows of Doom. This is easily the worst of the first 3 books.  

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4. Secret Agent A.C.E. - Score = 💀1/2 - One and a Half Skulls

Sections: 168
Attempts to Beat: 4

With book 4 we get a spy-themed adventure, and despite my experiences with the previous books, I found myself looking forward to playing this one because I enjoy the idea of an espionage gamebook so much, and there is always the possibility that the entries in this series might improve (as forlorn as that hope might be). Here we play as the titular agent codenamed "A.C.E", and the prologue opens with us entering the secret command post of our spy agency, where we are presented with our next mission. It would seem the mad scientist known as Dr. Diamond has been poisoning world leaders with a gas that makes them act like children, embarrassing them on the world stage. Intelligence has learned where Diamond's lair is located, a remote snowy mountain, and that he still possesses 6 Flasks of the formula he uses to make the dangerous gas, which are kept inside 6 different concrete huts that are scattered around his mountain. Each of these Flasks thus needs to be obtained and then destroyed to prevent him from perpetrating any more shenanigans. Just locating them isn't enough though, as each Flask can only be obtained by entering a specific codeword on a display screen within the hut. If the wrong codeword is entered, steel bars will come down over the Flask, thus making it impossible to get. I have a couple of questions about all this. First, Diamond's plan seems incredibly weak. Ok, so he has world leaders acting like children, riding skateboards and such. So what? Couldn't the reason for this just be released to the public? I guess author Stephen Thraves didn't want his villain committing murder for some reason, perhaps to keep the tone lighter? My second question comes regarding the steel bars that drop down to lock off the Flask. Why wouldn't these obviously valuable Flasks already not be under these bars? Surely Diamond knows the codewords and can get them anytime he wants, so why take the risk? I found all of this a rather bizarre setup, even for this series. Oh well. We agree to the mission of course, and are flown to the base of the mountain, where we make our approach to the outer fence of the complex on foot and start the quest.  

You start the game with 4 "Survival Points" and need to get the 6 Flasks before you either run out of these points or reach the end of the book. Unfortunately, the adventure follows the repetitive structure found in the previous book. Instead of travelling down a tunnel, you make your way over the snowy mountain from one hut to the next, and have the option of taking a different mode of transportation each time (skis, snow-bike, mini-copter, bobsleigh(!), etc.). Each time you use one of these modes, you have the option of choosing from among 3 of them that have been left there by the guards (3 sets of skis resting against a shack for example), with 1 of the 3 being booby-trapped. If you have the proper Accessory, it will tell you which one is booby-trapped, and you can pick one of the other two and continue on your way. Even should you pick the wrong one, you merely lose a Survival Point before still getting to continue on your way, no instant-deaths here. You then arrive at the hut where the next Flask is stored, where you conveniently happen to remember overhearing the guards give a hint as to what the passcode is, and you then make your guess from among 4 provided choices as to the correct word. Get it right and you destroy that Flask, marking it off on your Score Card and then moving on. Get it wrong and steel bars drop down, preventing you from destroying the Flask, but you still get to move on even though you can no longer win the game, as has become standard for the series. You will still want to keep playing though, as the only way you are going to uncover all the correct passcodes is by trying them all until you happen to hit upon the right one. I wasn't even halfway through my first attempt at the book when I made the prediction that this adventure would take me exactly 4 attempts to complete, as it felt extremely likely that at least one of the Flasks was going to take all 4 guesses before getting it right. (And in fact, a full THREE of the Flasks took me until that final 4th attempt to get, as I kept guessing wrong, even when I had them down to a 50/50 chance). 

Yes, you can actually fly one of these in the book. It's very hard to make Sean Connery look ridiculous, but this scene somehow managed it. 

In the very first concrete hut I came to on my first attempt at the book, I happened to overhear some guards discussing how the code word was that of a Nordic country. A-ha! At last we might get some puzzle elements thrown in here as opposed to just needing to make random guesses. I was fully expecting to be confronted with a list of countries, with me needing to identify the Nordic one in order to retrieve the Flask. Perhaps something along the lines of: Choose one of the following: (a) Austria, (b) Germany, (c) Sweden, (d) Switzerland. Some light puzzle solving maybe, but hey at least it's something right? Wrong! Oh, I was given a list of countries to choose from all right, and they were: (a) Norway, (b) Sweden, (c) Denmark, (d) Finland. Hang on a sec, those are ALL Nordic countries! Why? Why do this? Thraves could have actually required a bit of thought to be put into these choices for a change, but instead he just once again had to make it totally random. If he was going to do this, why even bother with the codeword? Just ask me to pick a number between 1 and 4 and be done with it for crying out loud. Jeesh.    

So after having my hopes raised and dashed in that manner, they were raised again when I got to the third hut, where I was asked to choose from among one of the following Alpine mountains: (a) Eiger (b) Matterhorn (c) Mont Blanc (d) Monte Rosa. At this point, I badly wanted there to be some connecting reason as to why the correct codewords were what they were, and I happened to notice that one of these options was also the setting of a 1975 espionage movie starring Clint Eastwood (which was based on a novel). Well, that was a spy-movie and this is a spy-book, so maybe there is a connection there? I thus chose that one......and found it to be correct! A-ha! So maybe all the correct answers are somehow related to spy-fiction? As I moved through the various huts however, this began to more and more appear as just a coincidence, as I could not seem to draw any connections to the spy-genre to any of the other codewords, at least not without making large leaps in reasoning. If there had been a connection, (and maybe there is and I'm just not seeing it), this adventure would have scored higher just for including some outside trivia knowledge that could help you beat the book, and make you feel at least somewhat smart for doing so. (Which is the same feeling I had during the whole Nordic country debacle).  Who knows, maybe there is a connection between all the correct answers, and if that were the case I would be rather impressed, but based upon how the first 3 books in the series have played out, I have serious doubts on that being true.

So yeah, rinse and repeat the above 6 times until you have visited all 6 of the huts on the mountain and destroyed all the Flasks. There is something of an interlude at the halfway point of the adventure, and this might have ended up being one of the most frustrating parts of the whole book. Here, you are unavoidably captured by the guards, who take you onboard their helicopter and fly you off to Dr. Diamond's headquarters on the mountain, where you are told that "he can't wait to meet you". Alright! A confrontation with the dastardly Bond-villain of the piece. This should actually be something interesting! Except it isn't, because you unavoidably escape from the clutches of the inept guards no matter what you do as soon as the helicopter lands, where you continue your exploration of the mountain for the remaining huts just like before. Wait a minute.....I'm playing a spy-themed gamebook and I never even get to meet the villain? What the hell is this? It's as if Thraves is actively trying NOT to do something cool. 

It's not just never getting to meet Dr. Diamond either, as for a spy-themed adventure this is severely lacking in other areas as well. Cool gadgets? Only the Accessories you happen to pick up off the ground which have been dropped by possibly some of the worst guards in history. Between their constant blabbing about the codewords and their butterfingers regarding the Accessories (every single Accessory is collected because a guard has dropped it), Dr. Diamond would have been far better off to have no guards on the mountain at all! Even the Accessories themselves are par for the course, as two of them (the Micro-Memo and the Info-Watch) work the same as several from the earlier books, and just give you the answers on what to do should you have them. The Map fares slightly better as you might need to examine it closely to figure out exactly where you are on the mountain, but it's nothing to write home about either. There was a moment near the end of the book where I acquired a flare gun, and the adventure fully acts like this might come in handy later (even though it never asks you to note it down. I should have been suspicious right there). However, the flare gun is never mentioned again, even when a situation pops up where it would clearly have been useful. This occurs inside the final hut and is laughably bad, as your character manages to scare off the final guard by putting his finger in his pocket, pretending it to be a gun! And this works!  Well, how about any "Bond Girl" femme fatales that are usually present in spy fiction? None to speak of. This contributes to another problem the book has, as much like Shadows of Doom, it's dull as hell. You travel across this snowy mountain, with almost no atmosphere or description given as to the icy conditions, and only ever encounter the same bland blue-jumpsuit clad guards and the same damn helicopters that routinely patrol the mountain and that you must avoid. Oh, and a final victory section? Once again... nope. I probably knew that going in, but it bears mention every time it happens because it feels so anti-climactic.   

Ranking: This was just as bland as Shadows of Doom, but I give it a slight edge due to not including the dumb Combat system from that book, and also for the spy genre being more rare in gamebooks than fantasy. Despite that, the execution of the setting here I found to be completely uninteresting, the guessing of the codewords made the whole thing feel more like a procedural effort to solve than anything else, and not even having an encounter with the villain is particularly egregious. I'm getting rather annoyed in how these books continually could be rather good for what they are (small, quick-hit adventures), if only they had some element of thought put into their design, and the stories were spiced up even just a bit. As it is, in a way this gamebook might actually be ahead of its time, because if you were to tell me that AI had generated an adventure, this is very close to what I would have expected its initial effort to be. I'm halfway through the series, and am now just hoping I can find one of these that's not just an exercise in random guessing. 

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5. Footsteps in the Fog - Score = 💀💀💀 - Three Skulls

Sections: 156
Attempts to Beat: 3

We get another genre-switch for book 5, as here we have the Victorian-era London adventure. Set in 1895, we play as a young person who answers an ad in the paper for someone looking for a detective's assistant, and as the ad also states to apply at 221 Baker Street, we come to the conclusion that it is the famous detective Sherlock Holmes who is requiring the assistant, and we jump at the chance to work with him. Unfortunately, if we had paid closer attention we would have realized that Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street, and we thus find ourselves in the employ of Holmes' downstairs neighbor, the far less talented Mr. Meek, who is trying to become a famous detective in his own right, but is so far having no success on that front. So right away, this is a great premise, probably second only to Assignment Loch Ness for me in terms of openings in this series. Mr. Meek obviously has far less clients than his famous upstairs neighbor, but he does manage to get one, a man who believes he knows the identity of the infamous Twenty-Seventh Killer, called such because all of his murders have occurred on the 27th day of a month, and who has been terrorizing London for several months now by assassinating various political figures. When I began reading this book, I was fully expecting it to be a mystery adventure, but it really isn't. This is because we already know the identity of the killer right from the first section as our client identifies him as Lord Flaxby, and our job here is to gather enough evidence so that we can have him arrested and convicted. How do we do this? By following Flaxby all over London and picking up various pieces of evidence that he conveniently "drops" as he makes his way through the foggy streets. 

As today is the 27th of the month, our client already knows that Flaxby will be coming in on the next train to Liverpool Street Station, so we hurry off there to pick up his trail, with Mr. Meek accompanying us. The stats to track here are Evidence Collected, of which we need all 6 pieces that can be found in the book in order to win the game (incidentally, what is it with collecting 6 of everything so much in this series?), and Number of Darts fired at us. This second one needs a bit of explanation, as at various times during the adventure (usually if you make a "wrong" choice), Flaxby will realize that you are following him, and fire a Poison Dart at you from a secret mechanism he has hidden inside his walking cane. You are able to evade the first 3 attempts he makes, but he won't miss on the 4th try, and as soon as 4 darts are fired at you, he then hits you and you immediately lose the game. I thought this was an interesting change-up to the Strength or Survival Points we have seen lately in the series, and found this a bit more clever inclusion. I was wondering at first why Flaxby would carry on with his assassination attempt once he knows that someone is on to him, but as you learn that the murder is politically motivated and he has been paid a large sum of money from a foreign nation to carry out the killing, it makes sense that he has no choice but to continue on and see it through. 

You and Mr. Meek together then follow Flaxby all over London, visiting several different places such as a pawn shop, a library, a cathedral, and even Big Ben. At each stop along the way, you will need to make a random guess as to what to do in order to either gather one of the Pieces of Evidence, or to avoid having Flaxby fire one of his Poison Darts at you. As usual, the Accessories can sometimes help you to make the right decision should you have uncovered them during the adventure, although there are still several choices where you are once again just going to have to take a wild guess. Overall, the Accessories this time around were the best group of them in the series to date. Here we have:

1) The Map- This Accessory is standard fare by now, but I still thought this was one of the better maps in the series so far. It depicts an admittedly basic map of the city of London, with various landmarks such as Trafalgar Square and the Tower of London along with the Thames. Unlike the previous books though where you would be asked on what map coordinate a particular landmark happened to be located in, here you are asked in which compass direction you need to travel to get from one given landmark to the next. Yeah, it's still easy, but I'm not expecting calculus level puzzles at this point. I would probably give the Map from Assignment Loch Ness the edge if I was comparing all the Maps in the series, but if the Map in this adventure had just included the streets of London themselves on it (the landmarks are the only things shown on the Map), this likely would have been my new favorite, as I liked the atmosphere it added to the book. 

2) The Sketchbook - Another good one, as this Accessory, once obtained in the adventure, allows you to look at drawings of all of Flaxby's various contacts that he will be meeting up with as he travels all around London. When prompted, you will be shown a picture of 3 different people at one of the secret meeting locations, and you can then use the Sketchbook to figure out which of the 3 is the correct contact that Flaxby is meeting, so that you can make sure to stick close to them to hopefully obtain some of the needed evidence. 

3) The Notepad - Well what do you know, 3 for 3 in the Accessory department. Very early on in the book, Mr. Meek will jot down some quick observations he has made about Flaxby based upon your first sighting of him (he always carries his cane in his right hand, he always takes off his left glove first, etc.). Similar to the Sketchbook, at various times you will be shown a drawing of someone in shadow who COULD be Flaxby while you are attempting to tail him, and it is up to you to use the observations that Mr. Meek has made to determine if the person in the drawing matches the characteristics of Flaxby, or if it is merely some random stranger on the street (and you want to make sure you follow the right person). Again, none of these Accessories are brain surgery by any means, but they at least allow you to do SOMETHING other than just looking up the answer on a chart. They all fit the theme of the adventure very well, and I thought the Notepad did the best job of this, as it lets you use some basic observation skills to make you at least feel somewhat like a detective.

The adventure has a moderately exciting finale for a change, as if you are able to make it to the end without being hit by the Poison Dart, you foil Flaxby in mid-assassination attempt regardless of how many Pieces of Evidence you have. Should you want to have him arrested and win the game however, you will need to have gathered all the 6 Evidence Pieces, otherwise you are told to try again. And yes, sadly once again there is no reward section should you do this, which has really become rather annoying. I mean, Thraves couldn't include ONE more section detailing your victory? This would have taken two minutes to add in for crying out loud! It smacks of laziness. One thing that I did feel elevated this entry over some of the others was the inclusion of a travelling companion all throughout the book, that being your employer and budding detective Mr. Meek. In the introduction he is made out to be rather hopeless, but over the course of the adventure he proves himself rather valuable, coming up with different ideas and plans that help you to remain on the trail of your quarry. Having a back-and-forth with an ally throughout the game helps to give the book more personality, and while some of the other entries have felt rather empty in this regard (looking at you in particular Secret Agent A.C.E.), in this adventure we encounter many different individuals in shops, taverns, and on the streets of foggy Victorian-era London. I wish London itself had played an even bigger role in the book (having never been there myself), but as things go it was a step up in terms of setting.   

By the way, am I the only one who thinks the title of this book sounds like an 80's musical group? 

"Introducing London's hottest New Wave band.......FOOTSTEPS IN THE FOG!" 

Ranking: The best book in the series so far, although I admit that isn't necessarily saying much. The initial premise is second only to Assignment Loch Ness in the series, but the story itself as told was actually THE best so far. The Accessories are also overall the best in the series to date, and while the gameplay is much the same as in the previous books, this entry did a better job in allowing me to overlook the randomness thanks to the spooky London setting, and most importantly, the interaction with other characters, which has been sadly lacking since book 1. Yes, you are still going to need to do a fair amount of guessing to beat the adventure, but I didn't mind it quite as much here. The score here might get a slight comparative boost just because of how poor the previous two books were, but this entry is definitely still a few "footsteps" in the right direction. Now let's see if Thraves can keep the momentum going and improve even more moving forward.