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).    

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.