Fighting Fantasy

[Treguard]

Cavern of the Snow Witch is out now from Tin Man games in android and App Store. Not one of my favourites- success dies require some rather arbitrary turning right instead of left and picking unnecessary fights at one point. Also playing on hardcore mode limits your skill to a maximum of 10, which makes fights against the LUDICROUSLY overpowered bird man (skill 12? You can fight a Dragon earlier in the adventure and even he's not that tough!) tricky. It's also really short if you know what you're doing. So overall, a bit meh.

Awesome, I love Caverns of the Snow Witch it's one of my favourites. The illustrations are spectacular I can just flick through the pictures. hmm I'm gonna have to make room on my tab now.

It's got new artwork, nowhere near as evocative as the Gary Ward and Edward Crosby originals. I was disappointed.

[Scratch_Porkings]

Awesome, I love Caverns of the Snow Witch it's one of my favourites. The illustrations are spectacular I can just flick through the pictures. hmm I'm gonna have to make room on my tab now.

It's got new artwork, nowhere near as evocative as the Gary Ward and Edward Crosby originals. I was disappointed. [/quote]

Oh that's gutting, the art is one of the important parts of any game book for drawing you in. It helps spark the imagination, you shouldn't mess with it.

[kaiserpc]

Oh that's gutting, the art is one of the important parts of any game book for drawing you in. It helps spark the imagination, you shouldn't mess with it.

Yep, the new artwork isn't the best - but you can opt for the original in the options. Tbh after playing Inkle's apps, the fighting fantasy ones seem a little below par - although they are adding new material for Warlock

[psj3809]

Yeah i prefer the setting for the original artwork

The Inkle ones are better BUT they obviously take far longer to do, quite happy with a 'standard' fighting fantasy book from Tin Man. Again i just wish they did the earlier books

Its great all these years later these books are still very popular though

[Scratch_Porkings]

I'm sitting next to my bookshelf writing this, I can literally reach out and grab Warlock Of Firetop Mountain... And I'm searching for it on play store. Weird.

[Scratch_Porkings]

I'm sitting next to my bookshelf writing this, I can literally reach out and grab Warlock Of Firetop Mountain... And I'm searching for it on play store. Weird.

Aaannd thats why I couldn't find it on play store, Caverns of the Snow Witch for gods sake. Well that's good because that one's in the loft.

[Treguard]

Yeah i prefer the setting for the original artwork

The Inkle ones are better BUT they obviously take far longer to do, quite happy with a 'standard' fighting fantasy book from Tin Man. Again i just wish they did the earlier books

Its great all these years later these books are still very popular though

I didn't realise 'Retro look' would give you the original artwork, I would have chosen it sooner...

Just noticed in the Extras on the IOS version theres a potted history of Fighting Fantasy which is clearly taken from Jonathon Greens 'You are the Hero'. It's surprisingly long for an extra, theres some good stuff in there.

I like everything about the Inkle books except the combat. There's no real rhyme or reason to it, but I win more than I lose. I kinda miss just using the dice though. Although I don't have to deal with any sodding Skill 12 Birdmen...

Tin Man Games own Gamebook Adventures are very good in the main, but vary wildly in difficulty. Curse of the Assassin in particular is an absolute sod, especially as it lets you get RIGHT TO THE SODDING END before casually telling you 'oh, do you not have this item? then you fail!' You don't die, you don't even not succeed in your quest, it just gives you a very crappy ending. Grr. But yeah, if you like Gamebooks, they're available in bundles on the app store fairly cheaply.

Bloodbones is out now. for a long time it was the mythical 'number 60' that never got released and then it was put out by Wizard when they were reprinting the FF books. It also suffers from 'get to the end without the mcguffin = death' syndrome, but it's a fun read otherwise.

[Treguard]

For those that care (which is possibly just me!) Fabled Lands publishing have started reissuing Jamie Thomson and Mark Smith's Falcon Gamebook series. This was one of my favourites at the time, where you play Agent Falcon of the Temporal Executive (all agents are named after animals) a psychic powered timecop, in a detailed and interesting future world. Only got to book 6 before being cancelled, like Way of the Tiger but had so many nice touches- theres a bit in book 3 which is a total rip off of The Thing but is one of my favourite gamebook sequences ever. The final books in the series go for silly money on ebay, so hopefully they'll get enough interest to print these again and maybe we'll get a conclusion to the story with a book 6, like Redeemer promises to do with Way of the Tiger.

[Hiro]

For those that care (which is possibly just me!) Fabled Lands publishing have started reissuing Jamie Thomson and Mark Smith's Falcon Gamebook series. This was one of my favourites at the time, where you play Agent Falcon of the Temporal Executive (all agents are named after animals) a psychic powered timecop, in a detailed and interesting future world. Only got to book 6 before being cancelled, like Way of the Tiger but had so many nice touches- theres a bit in book 3 which is a total rip off of The Thing but is one of my favourite gamebook sequences ever. The final books in the series go for silly money on ebay, so hopefully they'll get enough interest to print these again and maybe we'll get a conclusion to the story with a book 6, like Redeemer promises to do with Way of the Tiger.

Love that series! I managed to get all of the 6 books, I'm still at the second (Mechanon)... they're hard, but excellent. Unluckily the Italian edition has some mistakes (wrong paragraph numbers etc) which don't help, but they're definitely my favourite gamebook series after the Joe Dever's ones. It'd be great if they get reprinted!

[Scratch_Porkings]

I've got loads of Falcon books in a shoebox in the loft. I don't remremember buying them at all!? Wierd

[tachi]

I also ending up with 3 complete sets when I kept mistaking which ones I had and which I didn't.
Have to find my box of spares sometime.
Rack of Baal is one of my all time favourite gamebooks though for when you visit Dustbowl and it is basically The Thing for real

[Scratch_Porkings]

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8_3FNH ... cslist_api

Look who just added me to Facebook. I take back everything I ever said about that site...

[Treguard]

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8_3FNH ... cslist_api

Look who just added me to Facebook. I take back everything I ever said about that site...

I demand you ask him if he's ever going to agree a deal to get books 29-32 printed!

[Treguard]

For those who are interested, The Seven Serpents, book 3 of Inkles Sorcery! reinterpritation is out this month, was supposed to be this week but has been pushed abck to the 23rd. Looking forward to this, even if it was classic Jackson 'follow-the-one-true-path-or-you-get-to-point-X-and-instant-death!' (I'm look at you, Serpent of Time), but the way they put them together and the cloud saves allowing you to carry your character forward from book to book are really cool.

[Treguard]

For those who are interested, The Seven Serpents, book 3 of Inkles Sorcery! reinterpritation is out this month, was supposed to be this week but has been pushed abck to the 23rd. Looking forward to this, even if it was classic Jackson 'follow-the-one-true-path-or-you-get-to-point-X-and-instant-death!' (I'm look at you, Serpent of Time), but the way they put them together and the cloud saves allowing you to carry your character forward from book to book are really cool.

Got this last week and I'm currently playing through it. the Inkle design is really nice. You can backtrack! No missing vital items because you're not given the option in the text! Still haven't worked out how to get sand before you fight the Serpent of Fire though. Even though he did just try to steal my bag, so I cast a spell on him and he sodded off. Good job, as he's got horrendous stamina and skill and the combat is still as much guesswork as judgement. That's my only complaint.