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Fighting Fantasy #25
Beneath Nightmare Castle
Creatures from your worst nightmares lie beneath Neuberg Keep!
In this book, you find yourself in Neuburg, once a pleasant town in Khul, but now home to the vile monsters begotten of warped sorcery. An age-old horror has been re-awoken deep beneath the Keep, and it is up to you to face it and free the town and your friend, Baron Tholdur, from evil enchantment. But beware! Deep underground lie hideous traps and terrors, waiting to ensnare you! Will you succeed? Only if you are the resourceful hero you claim to be ...
Two dice, a pencil and an eraser are all you need for this adventure. YOU decide which routes to follow, which dangers to risk and which monsters to fight
In this book, you find yourself in Neuburg, once a pleasant town in Khul, but now home to the vile monsters begotten of warped sorcery. An age-old horror has been re-awoken deep beneath the Keep, and it is up to you to face it and free the town and your friend, Baron Tholdur, from evil enchantment. But beware! Deep underground lie hideous traps and terrors, waiting to ensnare you! Will you succeed? Only if you are the resourceful hero you claim to be ...
Two dice, a pencil and an eraser are all you need for this adventure. YOU decide which routes to follow, which dangers to risk and which monsters to fight
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
1 person is currently reading
129 people want to read
About the author
Peter Darvill-Evans
15 books6 followersPeter Darvill-Evans is an English writer and editor.
He was born and lived in Buckinghamshire until he went to university, graduating in 1975 from University College, London with a degree in History.
In 1976 Darvill-Evans joined the staff of Games Centre, a specialist games shop in London. He became the manager of a branch of the shop, then manager of wholesale sales, selling board games and eventually role-playing games.
In 1979 he became employed by Games Workshop, becoming first its Trade Sales Manager, then General Manager, responsible for purchases, sales, distribution and magazine publishing. When Games Workshop relocated to Nottingham, Darvill-Evans left the company, preferring to stay in London. He then wrote his first of three Fighting Fantasy gamebooks for Puffin Books.
In 1989, he became the a junior editor at W. H. Allen Ltd, initially overseeing the Target Books imprint. He also oversaw the Nexus imprint of erotic fiction for men, redesigning its logo and cover style as well as changing its editorial direction.
Target's main output was novelisations of the popular science-fiction television series Doctor Who, and when Darvill-Evans arrived he immediately realised that there were very few Doctor Who stories left to novelise. This problem was exacerbated by the cancellation of the television series at the end of 1989. When WH Allen sold the Nexus and Doctor Who lines to Virgin Publishing, Darvill-Evans went with them. Deciding to go freelance, he was made redundant at his own request, and entered negotiations with the BBC to licence Virgin to produce full-length, original novels carrying on the story of the series from the point where the television programme had left off.
Launched in 1991, this hugely successful line of novels were known as the New Adventures. Darvill-Evans set down guidelines for the writers, and even wrote one novel himself, Deceit. Other output from the Virgin fiction department during his time there included another series of Doctor Who novels (the Missing Adventures, featuring previous Doctors and companions); a series of novels following the character of Bernice Summerfield; the Virgin Worlds imprint of new mainstream science-fiction and fantasy novels. Non-science fiction lines included Black Lace, the first mainstream erotic fiction imprint targeted at women; the Crime and Passion imprint; Idol, a homoerotic fiction imprint for men; and Sapphire, a lesbian erotica line.
Other successes included media-tie in books such as the Red Dwarf Programme Guide, which served as the template for guides about other cult television series, and a series of novelisations based on the Jimmy McGovern-scripted series Cracker starring Robbie Coltrane.
By 1997, however, Virgin Publishing decided to emphasise more non-fiction books by and about celebrities. Their license renewal negotiations fell in 1996, a year in which the BBC was seeking to bring all the Doctor Who licenses back in house. Consequently Virgin's Doctor Who license was not renewed and instead the BBC opted to launch their own series of Doctor Who novels. In 1998, Darvill-Evans managed the editing and production of Virgin’s Guide to British Universities, and personally supervised the copy-editing and proofreading of Richard Branson's autobiography Losing My Virginity.
Virgin closed its fiction department in 1999, with Darvill-Evans departing the company and moving to Southampton. He continued to freelance, writing several Doctor Who novels for BBC Books, amongst various other editing and writing work.
In 2001 he began working for the Inland Revenue, and is currently an Inspector of Taxe
He was born and lived in Buckinghamshire until he went to university, graduating in 1975 from University College, London with a degree in History.
In 1976 Darvill-Evans joined the staff of Games Centre, a specialist games shop in London. He became the manager of a branch of the shop, then manager of wholesale sales, selling board games and eventually role-playing games.
In 1979 he became employed by Games Workshop, becoming first its Trade Sales Manager, then General Manager, responsible for purchases, sales, distribution and magazine publishing. When Games Workshop relocated to Nottingham, Darvill-Evans left the company, preferring to stay in London. He then wrote his first of three Fighting Fantasy gamebooks for Puffin Books.
In 1989, he became the a junior editor at W. H. Allen Ltd, initially overseeing the Target Books imprint. He also oversaw the Nexus imprint of erotic fiction for men, redesigning its logo and cover style as well as changing its editorial direction.
Target's main output was novelisations of the popular science-fiction television series Doctor Who, and when Darvill-Evans arrived he immediately realised that there were very few Doctor Who stories left to novelise. This problem was exacerbated by the cancellation of the television series at the end of 1989. When WH Allen sold the Nexus and Doctor Who lines to Virgin Publishing, Darvill-Evans went with them. Deciding to go freelance, he was made redundant at his own request, and entered negotiations with the BBC to licence Virgin to produce full-length, original novels carrying on the story of the series from the point where the television programme had left off.
Launched in 1991, this hugely successful line of novels were known as the New Adventures. Darvill-Evans set down guidelines for the writers, and even wrote one novel himself, Deceit. Other output from the Virgin fiction department during his time there included another series of Doctor Who novels (the Missing Adventures, featuring previous Doctors and companions); a series of novels following the character of Bernice Summerfield; the Virgin Worlds imprint of new mainstream science-fiction and fantasy novels. Non-science fiction lines included Black Lace, the first mainstream erotic fiction imprint targeted at women; the Crime and Passion imprint; Idol, a homoerotic fiction imprint for men; and Sapphire, a lesbian erotica line.
Other successes included media-tie in books such as the Red Dwarf Programme Guide, which served as the template for guides about other cult television series, and a series of novelisations based on the Jimmy McGovern-scripted series Cracker starring Robbie Coltrane.
By 1997, however, Virgin Publishing decided to emphasise more non-fiction books by and about celebrities. Their license renewal negotiations fell in 1996, a year in which the BBC was seeking to bring all the Doctor Who licenses back in house. Consequently Virgin's Doctor Who license was not renewed and instead the BBC opted to launch their own series of Doctor Who novels. In 1998, Darvill-Evans managed the editing and production of Virgin’s Guide to British Universities, and personally supervised the copy-editing and proofreading of Richard Branson's autobiography Losing My Virginity.
Virgin closed its fiction department in 1999, with Darvill-Evans departing the company and moving to Southampton. He continued to freelance, writing several Doctor Who novels for BBC Books, amongst various other editing and writing work.
In 2001 he began working for the Inland Revenue, and is currently an Inspector of Taxe
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 18, 2019
Okay so I'm going to be completely honest with you here.
I can't be 100% objective about this book. I really can't. This was one of my childhood gateway books, one of the books that got me interested in horror, weird fiction and role playing games. It's like the Ark of the Covenant to me.
So a little history time. Back when I was a wee geek, I was incredibly squeamish. Hated the sight of blood, even a splash of it. But for some reason this book, of all the Fighting Fantasy books that came before it in my young reading life, this one caught my eye. I blame this book for turning me into a gorehound. I regret nothing.
The setup is typical for the FF series. You are nameless, faceless adventurer number 5,876, come home to your town of Neuberg to meet your old friend, the Baron of the region. Except something's gone wrong and not just because you're captured, imprisoned and left to die. Strange alien things are prowling the streets at night, people are disappearing and something is wrong with the Baron. There's an evil force behind this and it is up to YOU to find out what.
What sets Beneath Nightmare Castle apart from the others of its ilk is its writer Peter Darvill-Evans, whose other books in the series include the subtly strange Portal of Evil and the WTF-levels of strange Spectral Stalkers. This isn't your bog standard high fantasy trek that so many of the other FF books would follow. This is cosmic horror with its foot firmly in the squishy, nasty realm of Lovecraft. While there's a couple of familiar enemies to fight - orcs, skeletons, gnomes etc - the majority of the monsters are strange, nightmarish entities that defy description. This for example, is a blood-lurcher:
Other enemies in the book include:
- A crate of sentient limbs
- Chrabats, undead creatures that look like rotting bipedal frogs
- A woman with thousands of tongues in her mouth
- A snuff hound, a dog-like thing with an all too-human face
- And murderous children.....yeah in a book, FOR KIDS!!!
The level of creativity on display here is also helped by the writing which is crisp, quick, easy to read but also very visceral for what at the time was a CHILDREN'S book. There are many nasty ways to die in the FF series and Beneath Nightmare Castle I think, has some of the nastiest, most horrifying ways including dissolving in acid, being digested feet-first by a monster, graphically turning into a tree, being the chosen victim in a game of Stone Drop and going insane.
Speaking of which, another way in which this book shows its distinctiveness and Cosmic Horror pedigree is by use of a WILLPOWER mechanic, basically a sanity meter for the modern audience. At the start of the adventure, you roll a dice to mark how mentally resilient you are and throughout the adventure you'll encounter things that will test that WILLPOWER. If there is ever a key moment where you fail your WILLPOWER check, you go insane. The book even has several key endings where going insane is the only result. And its unsettling: you scream, you mentally shut down, your brain takes a permanent holiday as guards take away your soon-to-be corpse or spiders bite you to death. This book revels in all the ways it can make you die.
What also helps is the beautifully horrifying artwork by Dave Carson. The stark black and whites create some really neat images while other times, the use of shadows and hatching make for some really unsettling images. For comparison, here's a shot of the Vitriol Essence, a physical embodiment of acid:
And here's an image that was actually cut from the final print for being - I kid you not - too graphic. The aforementioned woman with a thousand tongues:
From a gameplay standpoint however, the book falls down a little. Structurally, the book is a sprawling open world where readers are given a lot of freedom in what they choose to do. Unlike some FF books where there is one UND ONLY VAN road to victory, Beneath Nightmare Castle has several ways of defeating the final boss, with varying degrees of success. But the difficulty of the book itself if a little wonky. A number of the enemies are very weak and feel more like roadblocks while some of the others - and also some of the trials and challenges - can completely cripple the player to the point where they may as well jump back to the start. The WILLPOWER mechanic is a particularly rough one. Getting a low roll at the start when creating your character can mean you ultimately fuck yourself over and there are a few key moments where succeeding or failing a check can mean moving forward or dropping down and dribbling while staring at the wallpaper.
But overall, Beneath Nightmare Castle was a cracking good read and a breath of fresh air in a stale genre of high fantasy copycats. It was the book that got me started on horror and dark fantasy and Lovecraft, even if I didn't know who that was at the time. You can't find this book for cheap nowadays except used copies online, but if you can track it down and dig your brain into that moment when your childhood innocence screamed and died, you'll get a solid kick to the arse from reading this.
Just don't come crying to me if you go insane from seeing what the Baron's hiding in his wine cellars.....
I can't be 100% objective about this book. I really can't. This was one of my childhood gateway books, one of the books that got me interested in horror, weird fiction and role playing games. It's like the Ark of the Covenant to me.
So a little history time. Back when I was a wee geek, I was incredibly squeamish. Hated the sight of blood, even a splash of it. But for some reason this book, of all the Fighting Fantasy books that came before it in my young reading life, this one caught my eye. I blame this book for turning me into a gorehound. I regret nothing.
The setup is typical for the FF series. You are nameless, faceless adventurer number 5,876, come home to your town of Neuberg to meet your old friend, the Baron of the region. Except something's gone wrong and not just because you're captured, imprisoned and left to die. Strange alien things are prowling the streets at night, people are disappearing and something is wrong with the Baron. There's an evil force behind this and it is up to YOU to find out what.
What sets Beneath Nightmare Castle apart from the others of its ilk is its writer Peter Darvill-Evans, whose other books in the series include the subtly strange Portal of Evil and the WTF-levels of strange Spectral Stalkers. This isn't your bog standard high fantasy trek that so many of the other FF books would follow. This is cosmic horror with its foot firmly in the squishy, nasty realm of Lovecraft. While there's a couple of familiar enemies to fight - orcs, skeletons, gnomes etc - the majority of the monsters are strange, nightmarish entities that defy description. This for example, is a blood-lurcher:
Other enemies in the book include:
- A crate of sentient limbs
- Chrabats, undead creatures that look like rotting bipedal frogs
- A woman with thousands of tongues in her mouth
- A snuff hound, a dog-like thing with an all too-human face
- And murderous children.....yeah in a book, FOR KIDS!!!
The level of creativity on display here is also helped by the writing which is crisp, quick, easy to read but also very visceral for what at the time was a CHILDREN'S book. There are many nasty ways to die in the FF series and Beneath Nightmare Castle I think, has some of the nastiest, most horrifying ways including dissolving in acid, being digested feet-first by a monster, graphically turning into a tree, being the chosen victim in a game of Stone Drop and going insane.
Speaking of which, another way in which this book shows its distinctiveness and Cosmic Horror pedigree is by use of a WILLPOWER mechanic, basically a sanity meter for the modern audience. At the start of the adventure, you roll a dice to mark how mentally resilient you are and throughout the adventure you'll encounter things that will test that WILLPOWER. If there is ever a key moment where you fail your WILLPOWER check, you go insane. The book even has several key endings where going insane is the only result. And its unsettling: you scream, you mentally shut down, your brain takes a permanent holiday as guards take away your soon-to-be corpse or spiders bite you to death. This book revels in all the ways it can make you die.
What also helps is the beautifully horrifying artwork by Dave Carson. The stark black and whites create some really neat images while other times, the use of shadows and hatching make for some really unsettling images. For comparison, here's a shot of the Vitriol Essence, a physical embodiment of acid:
And here's an image that was actually cut from the final print for being - I kid you not - too graphic. The aforementioned woman with a thousand tongues:
From a gameplay standpoint however, the book falls down a little. Structurally, the book is a sprawling open world where readers are given a lot of freedom in what they choose to do. Unlike some FF books where there is one UND ONLY VAN road to victory, Beneath Nightmare Castle has several ways of defeating the final boss, with varying degrees of success. But the difficulty of the book itself if a little wonky. A number of the enemies are very weak and feel more like roadblocks while some of the others - and also some of the trials and challenges - can completely cripple the player to the point where they may as well jump back to the start. The WILLPOWER mechanic is a particularly rough one. Getting a low roll at the start when creating your character can mean you ultimately fuck yourself over and there are a few key moments where succeeding or failing a check can mean moving forward or dropping down and dribbling while staring at the wallpaper.
But overall, Beneath Nightmare Castle was a cracking good read and a breath of fresh air in a stale genre of high fantasy copycats. It was the book that got me started on horror and dark fantasy and Lovecraft, even if I didn't know who that was at the time. You can't find this book for cheap nowadays except used copies online, but if you can track it down and dig your brain into that moment when your childhood innocence screamed and died, you'll get a solid kick to the arse from reading this.
Just don't come crying to me if you go insane from seeing what the Baron's hiding in his wine cellars.....
May 27, 2019
What has happened to your friend, the Margrave?
(His castle filled up with things that shouldn’t be.)
What has happened to the Priests of Oiden?
(Forced to turn revolutionary.)
What has happened to the town of Neuburg?
(Full of warped shapes, and flubbery limbs.)
And what has happened to you, brave warrior?
(Imprisoned in the shadows dim...)
(His castle filled up with things that shouldn’t be.)
What has happened to the Priests of Oiden?
(Forced to turn revolutionary.)
What has happened to the town of Neuburg?
(Full of warped shapes, and flubbery limbs.)
And what has happened to you, brave warrior?
(Imprisoned in the shadows dim...)
February 11, 2023
Beneath Nightmare Castle has no plot to speak of and the setting is another dungeon crawl, but I like it anyway because it may be the only RPG product in existence where dying is more fun than completing the quest. Fighting Fantasy books are billed as "the interactive adventure where YOU become the hero", but this is more like an interactive snuff film where YOU become the victim as you stumble into one grisly death after another. Appropriately enough, Nightmare introduces a fourth attribute, Willpower, that acts as a countdown until you lose the will to live. But that's only one horrible fate that awaits you here. During your quest, you can be killed by:
* Cultists strapping you to a sacrificial altar and chopping you up
* Giant spiders sucking out your innards
* Disintegrating in a nuclear blast
* Being dragged into a harmless-looking crate by animated, rotting human limbs
* Sinking into the watery lair of an acid monster
* A malicious alien intelligence hijacking your brain
* Descending into madness after you drink preserving fluid from a barrel of shrunken heads
* Getting devoured by a land kraken
* Ghouls eviscerating your paralyzed carcass after you break your neck by falling into a bottomless pit
* Contracting a hideous wasting disease that leaves you prowling the underworld as a wild-eyed hunchback
* Sadistic palace guards tying you to the stake and dropping rocks on you from a tower
* A gigantic demon-wizard throwing you around like a handball
Assuming you can stop laughing long enough to finish the book, Nightmare becomes easy once you identify the trick at the midway point, and from there the critical items and clues are handed to you and the battles become more theatrical than difficult. Nevertheless, final boss Xakhaz is one of the few Fighting Fantasy bad guys who lives up to his billing. It's a welcome upgrade from the usual scowling evil wizard.
Highly recommended, particularly if you like horror-comedy or you're just a sicko.
* Cultists strapping you to a sacrificial altar and chopping you up
* Giant spiders sucking out your innards
* Disintegrating in a nuclear blast
* Being dragged into a harmless-looking crate by animated, rotting human limbs
* Sinking into the watery lair of an acid monster
* A malicious alien intelligence hijacking your brain
* Descending into madness after you drink preserving fluid from a barrel of shrunken heads
* Getting devoured by a land kraken
* Ghouls eviscerating your paralyzed carcass after you break your neck by falling into a bottomless pit
* Contracting a hideous wasting disease that leaves you prowling the underworld as a wild-eyed hunchback
* Sadistic palace guards tying you to the stake and dropping rocks on you from a tower
* A gigantic demon-wizard throwing you around like a handball
Assuming you can stop laughing long enough to finish the book, Nightmare becomes easy once you identify the trick at the midway point, and from there the critical items and clues are handed to you and the battles become more theatrical than difficult. Nevertheless, final boss Xakhaz is one of the few Fighting Fantasy bad guys who lives up to his billing. It's a welcome upgrade from the usual scowling evil wizard.
Highly recommended, particularly if you like horror-comedy or you're just a sicko.
January 1, 2018
Can be tricky, but still an enjoyable book
1 September 2012
This book has returned to the more standard fantasy genre however there have been a few twists thrown into this one as well. First of all you have an extra stat called willpower, which is similar to horror that was used in The [Book: House of Hell]. Like The House of Hell this book takes on a bit of the horror genre though not to the same extent. In this one you are exploring a haunted castle, though the setting is still the same fantasy realm that most of the other books are set in, which differs from The House of Hell, which is a modern setting. The other little difference is that you begin the adventure with even less items that most of the books. You have a very limited amount of gold (which makes the beginning of the adventure difficult as you explore the town) and you also begin with no food, though you require food throughout the adventure.
In this book you are once again an experienced adventurer, but you have grown tired of the life of the wanderer so you decide to return to civilisation and catch up with an old friend, the Baron of Neuberg, with whom you fought alongside in a previous war. However, you are captured before you arrive at Neuberg and begin the adventure trapped in a cell, though an escape is given to you right away (and I suspect that if you wait you are either killed, or you skip a major part of the adventure).
It appears that the adventure is divided into three parts, the first set in the town of Neuberg where you have to learn what is going on, and also to try to find at least one relic and also some information on the keep. The second part involves you getting into the keep, and the third part is set inside the keep where you have to find some more relics and then defeat the power that is behind the throne.
This one was okay, and it was not as hard as the previous two books.
1 September 2012
This book has returned to the more standard fantasy genre however there have been a few twists thrown into this one as well. First of all you have an extra stat called willpower, which is similar to horror that was used in The [Book: House of Hell]. Like The House of Hell this book takes on a bit of the horror genre though not to the same extent. In this one you are exploring a haunted castle, though the setting is still the same fantasy realm that most of the other books are set in, which differs from The House of Hell, which is a modern setting. The other little difference is that you begin the adventure with even less items that most of the books. You have a very limited amount of gold (which makes the beginning of the adventure difficult as you explore the town) and you also begin with no food, though you require food throughout the adventure.
In this book you are once again an experienced adventurer, but you have grown tired of the life of the wanderer so you decide to return to civilisation and catch up with an old friend, the Baron of Neuberg, with whom you fought alongside in a previous war. However, you are captured before you arrive at Neuberg and begin the adventure trapped in a cell, though an escape is given to you right away (and I suspect that if you wait you are either killed, or you skip a major part of the adventure).
It appears that the adventure is divided into three parts, the first set in the town of Neuberg where you have to learn what is going on, and also to try to find at least one relic and also some information on the keep. The second part involves you getting into the keep, and the third part is set inside the keep where you have to find some more relics and then defeat the power that is behind the throne.
This one was okay, and it was not as hard as the previous two books.
August 8, 2020
Beneath Nightmare Castle (1987) is #25 in the original Puffin series Of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.
It’s the most horror-oriented one I’ve come across yet (though I’ve still to try House of Hell). Myriad nasty surprises and deaths await you beneath and around Nightmare Castle, including a box full of rotting, sentient human limbs, an acid monster and a gang of homicidal children. You also get to make some very immoral choices: steal a pie at the market, and then kill the stall owner when he catches you (the townspeople don’t take too kindly to this); or slaughter a bunch of starving children (‘urchins’), and then rob the gold from their corpses. Nice.
It’s also very hard. I’ve made four attempts and haven’t succeeded. Mapping it is hard, too, maybe impossible. This isn’t because the layout of the book is faulty, however, like in the dungeon section of Battleblade Warrior (for instance), but because you move between different locations and go up and down to different floors a lot. If you did manage to map it, the map would be a collection of small, disjointed parts.
This is a top-quality gamebook. The writing is first-class: literate; atmospheric; and expert at evoking horror. There’s a good story, too, and it’s a nice touch that you discover your mission in the course of your adventure. The author is Peter Davrill-Evans, who, after penning three FF gamebooks and lots of Dr Who novelisations, eventually seems to have settled down as a tax inspector!
The world in this book seems very open, with plenty to explore. I get the feeling that there are certain points you have to hit, and certain objects you have to pick up, but other than that, there are probably multiple routes to success.
Great artwork, too, by Dave Carson, who I think illustrated only this one FF book.
It’s the most horror-oriented one I’ve come across yet (though I’ve still to try House of Hell). Myriad nasty surprises and deaths await you beneath and around Nightmare Castle, including a box full of rotting, sentient human limbs, an acid monster and a gang of homicidal children. You also get to make some very immoral choices: steal a pie at the market, and then kill the stall owner when he catches you (the townspeople don’t take too kindly to this); or slaughter a bunch of starving children (‘urchins’), and then rob the gold from their corpses. Nice.
It’s also very hard. I’ve made four attempts and haven’t succeeded. Mapping it is hard, too, maybe impossible. This isn’t because the layout of the book is faulty, however, like in the dungeon section of Battleblade Warrior (for instance), but because you move between different locations and go up and down to different floors a lot. If you did manage to map it, the map would be a collection of small, disjointed parts.
This is a top-quality gamebook. The writing is first-class: literate; atmospheric; and expert at evoking horror. There’s a good story, too, and it’s a nice touch that you discover your mission in the course of your adventure. The author is Peter Davrill-Evans, who, after penning three FF gamebooks and lots of Dr Who novelisations, eventually seems to have settled down as a tax inspector!
The world in this book seems very open, with plenty to explore. I get the feeling that there are certain points you have to hit, and certain objects you have to pick up, but other than that, there are probably multiple routes to success.
Great artwork, too, by Dave Carson, who I think illustrated only this one FF book.
January 23, 2021
A surprisingly horrifying Fighting Fantasy (while I love *love* the horror genre, one does not normally expect nightmarish abominations in a book primarily geared towards children), which seems to have been inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's works. Meet women with hundreds of horrifying tentacle-tongues, monstrous abominations of flesh, get turned into a tree and watch the world around you for a still, horrifying eternity, and fight an ancient sorcerer, who has transformed himself into a mix of limbs, faces and claws in a grotesque final battle.
It has a few harder sections, but overall is a pretty fair Fighting Fantasy. There's the whole 'Willpower' thing which, if it drops too low, you go insane (fun times), but isn't *too* intrusive or punishing, at least not when I played it.
It has a few harder sections, but overall is a pretty fair Fighting Fantasy. There's the whole 'Willpower' thing which, if it drops too low, you go insane (fun times), but isn't *too* intrusive or punishing, at least not when I played it.
August 19, 2012
Sabe sempre bem pegar num livro desta grande série que é a Aventuras Fantásticas.
Este Castelo dos Pesadelos deu luta! Tive de dar umas quantas voltas até conseguir salvar o dia ha ha
O mundo já se encontra a salvo do temível feiticeiro Xakhaz. Até à próxima aventura!
Este Castelo dos Pesadelos deu luta! Tive de dar umas quantas voltas até conseguir salvar o dia ha ha
O mundo já se encontra a salvo do temível feiticeiro Xakhaz. Até à próxima aventura!
January 19, 2021
In this gamebook, you play as an outsider coming to the town of Nueberg, Khul, to pay a visit to an old comrade in arms. You're seized just outside of town, and it's the first sign that things have gone very, very bad in the town. An immortal sorcerer is returning, and he's bringing his brand of monstrosities with him.
In general, the twenties is a good run of books for the Fighting Fantasy series, and 25 in particular is a good book within that run. I've gone back and forth on it, over the years; it didn't leave much impression the last time I read it, but I read it a few years later and it really stayed with me. Now, I fall somewhere between the two, though more towards the side it's really good.
First, it's one of the best books in the series for nailing a mood. There's a heavy emphasis on horror throughout the book, and while horror is a reasonably common subgenre for Fighting Fantasy, it's rarely done better. The enemies you face are genuinely upsetting, and the various foul endings you can come to are often extremely charged as well. Some of Darvill-Evans' descriptions are very good at striking a mood. Here's one of the bad endings: "Gold Pieces change hands at a furious rate as wagers are laid on which man will drop his boulder nearer to your head, and on how many days it will be before one of the drops is accurate enough to crush your skulls. Eventually, one of them is, and does." The pattern of sentences there are very evocative, and follow an excellent rhythm.
The design is towards the hard end, without being quite as unforgiving as some of the Livingstone books, or later books in the series. I can't imagine beating the Big Bad without two key items, but in general, most of the Best Path direction is laid out for the reader. In that sense, its structure is better than some of the books I could name, while not being perfect. The number of combats are about average, without being overly onerous, and the luck and skill tests are kept pretty low. The "unusual" statistic here is Will Power. It works in a standard way to most of the horror books, that it represents your resilience to mentally taxing pressures (with the mental health problems that approach involves), with the added complication that for many tests, if you fail and are under 6, you die pretty immediately. There's item hunting, but only about four must-get artifacts, which reduces to two if you get sufficiently lucky.
The encounters are wonderfully creepy, from the unsettling homicidal urchins in town to the unspeakable monstrosities below the city. If there's a gamebook that hits the mood of Dark Souls, it's this one. To sum up, it's a book in the series I remember fondly. It has its flaws, but stands up as a particularly good entry.
In general, the twenties is a good run of books for the Fighting Fantasy series, and 25 in particular is a good book within that run. I've gone back and forth on it, over the years; it didn't leave much impression the last time I read it, but I read it a few years later and it really stayed with me. Now, I fall somewhere between the two, though more towards the side it's really good.
First, it's one of the best books in the series for nailing a mood. There's a heavy emphasis on horror throughout the book, and while horror is a reasonably common subgenre for Fighting Fantasy, it's rarely done better. The enemies you face are genuinely upsetting, and the various foul endings you can come to are often extremely charged as well. Some of Darvill-Evans' descriptions are very good at striking a mood. Here's one of the bad endings: "Gold Pieces change hands at a furious rate as wagers are laid on which man will drop his boulder nearer to your head, and on how many days it will be before one of the drops is accurate enough to crush your skulls. Eventually, one of them is, and does." The pattern of sentences there are very evocative, and follow an excellent rhythm.
The design is towards the hard end, without being quite as unforgiving as some of the Livingstone books, or later books in the series. I can't imagine beating the Big Bad without two key items, but in general, most of the Best Path direction is laid out for the reader. In that sense, its structure is better than some of the books I could name, while not being perfect. The number of combats are about average, without being overly onerous, and the luck and skill tests are kept pretty low. The "unusual" statistic here is Will Power. It works in a standard way to most of the horror books, that it represents your resilience to mentally taxing pressures (with the mental health problems that approach involves), with the added complication that for many tests, if you fail and are under 6, you die pretty immediately. There's item hunting, but only about four must-get artifacts, which reduces to two if you get sufficiently lucky.
The encounters are wonderfully creepy, from the unsettling homicidal urchins in town to the unspeakable monstrosities below the city. If there's a gamebook that hits the mood of Dark Souls, it's this one. To sum up, it's a book in the series I remember fondly. It has its flaws, but stands up as a particularly good entry.
September 4, 2021
First attempt, 4th Sept 2021, played on the overground to Hackney Central, and also the overground back to Imperial Wharf.Interesting story. Different from others. My very first attempt I died a few paragraphs in, so just kept the same stats and tried again. It seemed odd not collecting a lot of equipment throughout my adventure, I ended up with just a few gold pieces and a spear. The story was okay, but I had no idea what I was meant to be doing, so I just explored as I usually would. At one point I had to kill 6 urchin kids *shrug*. I don't think this adventure gives enough background on what's meant to be going on, but otherwise it was a fair play. I haven't won though. I'll try again another day.
October 5, 2023
I like the premise and the Lovecraftian vibe, but there are far too many convenient occurrences in this gamebook. None of the guards take your weapon or magic items when captured? The "good guys" are pretty obvious and you can follow their advice to get through most of the book. On the plus side, I did get to blow the end boss into his constituent parts with an arcane bomb. So that was cool.
January 8, 2023
Aside from using the "devious, decadent (quasi-)Arabs" trope a little often (par for the course for the era but still annoying), an excellent gamebook. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...
February 23, 2019
Review in progress...
April 2, 2020
Not the best in the Fighting Fantasy series, but certainly not the worst, but seemed very similar to 1 I have previously completed!!
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