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Windhammer 2014 Review – Castle of Spirits

Castle of Spirits by Tammy Badowski

Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

Castle of Spirits by Tammy Badowski is a Windhammer 2014 competition entry. The village is cursed and people are turning into zombies! It’s a grass roots gamebook in which the player explores a haunted castle looking for the lord of the land. For a stern chat, I imagine.

Don’t try to bother saving us, for we are all doomed. A friend of mine went mad after coming out of that castle; he stabbed out his left eye with a dagger.

Castle of Spirits is incredibly old school. It has an 80’s Fighting Fantasy feel, and the obvious comparison is House of Hell. The major difference being is that that was all about escaping the house and this gamebook is about breaking into the house. This change in motivation makes everything a bit strange. You really wouldn’t want to stay here unless your character was some sort of deranged sociopath, and the books narrative kind of suggests this. After wading through a garden of body parts I think nothing strange of an old man raking the ground and a little boy playing with a toy. A little boy with black slits for eyes and the entire universe in his mouth, who gives a loud screech and then vanishes in a cloud of dust. The gamebook merely states “This experience has slightly startled you.” I then go and talk to the man raking the leaves.

These casual observations are a bit weird and detract from any horror there might actually be. There’s no slow build up to anything that might actually scare you. Once you get inside the castle you find a series of disparate rooms, each of which seems to be a self-contained universe housing a terrible creature. There’s a zombie room, a Jinn, a ghost, a golum, a minotaur, a snake..thing. I found myself wondering about the logistics of the whole thing and the practicalities. How do all these delightful entities actually live together? What is Christmas like? I bet the shower queue in the morning is horrendous.

There are plenty of sudden death rooms and there are no hints about where you should go, but this is how gamebooks used to be. If you are looking for a traditional gamebook experience then this is a lot of fun. But the gamebook genre has moved on and people are pushing boundaries – there’s lots of strong examples this year. This may only appeal to those with nostalgia.

Windhammer 2014 Review – The Empire’s Edge

The Empire’s Edge by Chan Sing Goh

Download The Empire’s Edge

Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

Chan Sing Goh entered the Windhammer competition last year, with his historical trading simulation, Merchants of the Spice Islands. It was complex and lacked a little bit of life but overall it was quite fun. He is back this year with a semi-sequel of sorts – we have a similar time period and setting – but The Empire’s Edge has more of a traditional gamebook narrative. It’s a detective story set on the edge of the British Empire and tackles the difficult subject of racism head on.

Merchants of the Spice Islands suffered from overly complex rules, so this year it’s nice to see a simple system. You roll one dice and add it to your skill score to see if you have passed or failed a test. Combat is also pretty easy – you roll a dice, add your skill and the opponent does the same. If you hit, you do your weapon damage value to its health. The only issue with the system is if you are unarmed you do 1/3rd of damage instead. The rules may be work better if it did away with fractions and instead unarmed combat does one damage and everything else (damage done, hitpoints) is upscaled by a factor of 3. Other than that though, the rules are snappy and work well.

Character creation is really interesting, in which you get to choose your race, the languages spoken by your character and even his/her motivation. There’s a lot of scope here for role play and this all adds to immersion into the game world. I gave birth to Musang DanDanDanDan, the soldier from Malay. He left his army because he had a burning desire to learn about the world; most of all he wanted to know why he had a silly name.

Callum realises he does not speak Tamil. “I… am…. looking…. for….. Indian…. man….” Callum asks slowly using his hand to act out each of the words.

Where the gamebook shines is in its flavour. The setting and time is incredibly researched, with even inline translations of some of the language used of the day. The story is intriguing and makes a nice change from a having to save the world affair. Some of the language and bigotry would not be appropriate today, but I like how the author presents it. His characters know no other way and that is simply how you are going to have to accept them. Pretty complex material for a gamebook.

The route through the gamebook is mostly logical – I feel some of the clues aren’t that obvious or aren’t there, and you have to occasionally make a random, uninformed choice, which is a slight shame. On a second playthrough you can probably get through to the end. The nicest thing about this gamebook is the rich history it is dipped in – it is nicely written, very well researched and will hopefully do well.

Windhammer 2014 Review – Why don’t they leave the house?

Why don’t they leave the house? by Nicholas Stillman

Download Why don’t they leave the house?

Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

Last year Nicholas Stillman brought us the zany Gunlaw, and had a reception a bit like Marmite. Its tongue-in-cheek cartoon violence made for arguably the most memorable entry in the Windhammer competition last year, but it was so extreme it polarised the gamebook community. A shame because I absolutely loved it.

Nicholas threatens to do exactly the same again this year, with his horrific Why don’t they leave the house? He opens with the delightfully intriguing line of “Just one rule…you only play once.” – so just to make sure, if you haven’t played it yet, and you want to, and you should, you’d better go and play it now.

Write down clues, the spoils of your hunts.
Just one rule…you only play once.

There aren’t any further rules and no dice rolls to make and the immersion is excellent throughout. I couldn’t put it down. Here, you are told to play as yourself – no characters, you are you, and you have to approach the gamebook with brutal honesty. As a result this makes the decisions deeply personal and draws you into the book. As a gamebook mechanic for the horror genre it is a stroke of genius and pulls you in deep. A gamebook is a uniquely interactive experience and by doing this the author is pushing into both the horror and gamebook genres in incredibly effective ways I have never seen before. By playing yourself the book will also ask serious and demanding questions of your morals in stressful situations as everything unravels around you.

There’s no denying it, this is a deeply disturbing piece of work. Like all good horrors, it paces well. Events become evermore strange, grisly and horrific as your companions (and yourself) descend into madness. The writing is fantastic and I’ve never read a gamebook like this – but the reader advisory note on the front page hasn’t been placed there as a perfunctory afterthought. We’re really pushing the boundaries of horrible here.

Wheras Gunlaw was fun and ultra violent, this one is horrendous and ultra violent. It’s not fun but then neither is Saw. I would love to recommend this – as a gamebook it’s as clever as anything out there and really well written. But it is not for everyone – do not forget you are reading a horror – a truly disturbing horror that deals with uncomfortable themes and will stay with you for a while.

Windhammer 2014 Review – The Tomb of Aziris

The Tomb of Aziris by Sam Beaven

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Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

The Tomb of Aziris is a tough, old school adventure involving a dangerous desert trek and lots of luck on the dice. It’s Sam Beaven’s first gamebook. Welcome to Windhammer, Sam!

The rules are very similar to the traditional Fighting Fantasy rule set, with the only difference being skill renamed as dex. There’s also no luck stat – we have a rarely used wit stat instead. I decided that this adventure would chronicle the rise of the distinctly average Harold BaconBacon, who woke up face first in the gutter and would reach utter fame and glory, die of dry mouth in the desert or be munched to death by a vicious antlion (SPOILER ALERT: Not the first).

You will probably have to punch someone at some point in your adventure. You may even have
to stab them.

The gamebook suffers by being a little railroaded – I could tell I wasn’t on the author’s preferred path through the desert because no choices were to be made for ages and nothing much was happening other than removing water and testing for sandstorms. Although, nothing much happening is pretty accurate desert walking simulation so I perhaps should not be too harsh. The gamebook also suffers from being insanely difficult.

My first battle was with the antlion, a brutal affair with a creature much tougher than me. This was also my final battle. With Harold bit cleanly in half and a bit dead, I spirited onward and noticed a lot of the further battles were also incredibly tough. Combined with take damage rolls and a lack of heal points, I’m not convinced rocking the most direct route through the desert is a winnable path in this gamebook.

The writing is nice, and the starting town is well populated with a bit of an Ankh-Morpork vibe. Once you head out into the desert the writing becomes a little less interesting, and the book a bit barren and void – but you are heading out into a desert after all! You will also need to bring a lot of luck, as you’ll find the combat brutal even with a maxed out character. All in all a steady entry but a promising start to Sam’s gamebook authoring career.

The City of Thieves is a beautiful place

Some people are saying gamebooks are dead. Some people are saying real physical books are dead.

Luckily, there are people like Daielyn Bertelli (@nitchan) who don’t say this at all. Instead, she has created an illustrated, interactive and absolutely beautiful version of the Fighting Fantasy classic, City of Thieves.

CIty of Thieves, illustrated edition — Every page is nice like this

Port Blacksand has never looked so good! Check out more images at www.behance.net. Here is a labour of love and it looks brilliant.

Windhammer 2014 Review – The Archipelago of Omens

The Archipelago of Omens by Richard Penwarden

Download The Archipelago of Omens

Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

The Archipelago of Omens is a highly ambitious Windhammer 2014 entry. It’s a complex, system heavy gamebook with a well developed universe. You play one of three characters in one of three time periods, bouncing between misty dangerous islands abandoned by the gods.

I admit I approached Richard Penwarden’s entry with trepidation and dread. There are pages and pages of rules here, and they are heavy and weird. The fundamental system is unique and deserves special mention – all you need to play is a method of generating a 50/50 choice: cards, dice, coins, cat farts. This was quite nice. I used an online coin flipper that apparently uses the entropy of the universe to generate a random number. The author also offers a quick mode variant where you don’t generate numbers but use averages instead. I wouldn’t recommend this method because statistics don’t really work like this and the system is actually quite fun once you get into it.

And you really do have to get into it. The book demands a lot from you. There’s a whole load of flipping back and forth between the rules, the appendices, your character sheet, the text and your character starting paragraph. It’s massively overwhelming and if this were a bad or even an average gamebook it wouldn’t have been worth it.

Add +1 Spirit & +1 Available Time for your victory. You do not realise it but your actions have helped spark a revolution.

Luckily, it is actually pretty good. The universe is very well realised and organically develops with the reader. The action is nicely written and pacey – it reminds me of a good LoneWolf adventure – and there are some really good mechanics in play. The combat/skill check system actually becomes fun (which is good, for there are a lot of combat and skill checks to be made). The choice of character is great, especially as the characters are massively different from one another and it really makes a difference to the story. Character choice even affects the age of the world you find yourself in – absolutely brilliant. I liked the wealth system. The spirit stat does seem to somehow represent karma because you can use it to modify actual coin flips. There is a world packed with mythology, lizard and eel men. A crocodile and porcupine have somehow managed an illicit encounter to produce a Quilligator (sadly not a Porcodile). There are a dozen islands to explore and the whole thing feels massive, way beyond its 100 section limit. These are all good things.

If you can wade through the thick mass of rules there is enjoyment to be had! It was like no gamebook I have played before. It’s incredibly gamey but developed well enough to be seen through. There are some lovely touches but it’s not without flaws. It’s a bit easy – I managed to finish it first try by listening carefully to old crazy men (although I may have been playing incorrectly due to the magnitude of rules.) Armour is too confusing, and character skills (I had crafting) seem a bit pointless. It’s massively inaccessible, you cannot read it on the bus, but! If you have a bit of time then have a go with it. It’s fun.

Windhammer 2014 Review – Problem? (A Troll Adventure)

Problem? (A Troll Adventure) by Andy Moonowl

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Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

Andy Moonowl returns to the Windhammer competition this year with a brave entry – Problem? (A Troll Adventure), a satirical fantasy with an emphasis on trolling the reader. So will this be trollolol or will things get out of controll? Let’s see.

You’re summoned before the queen, and your quest is to get back her treasures from a robbing troll. The real problem is there is no easy way to get to the isle of trolls, so we’re going to have to scramble around randomly a bit first until we stumble across the deus ex machina.

The rules are straightforward. Combat is really simple, if unbalanced. You just stand toe to toe with your opponent and take hacks at one another until bits drop off and death occurs – the character with the highest combat value not only does more damage but also takes less damage, so it’s good to get this score as high as you can. I usually like simple rules but I think the author has missed a trick here – for a trolling gamebook I’m surprised you don’t have to roll 18 dice for each limb you want to bring into a combat round.

You should really act all respectful, what with how Queen Mary Sue has more hit points than anyone in the realm…

It’s a pretty busy gamebook. Andy has managed to cram a lot of scenes into 100 sections. There is a quite a bit to see and do. The world is tongue-in-cheek fantasy with more than a few nods to the modern world – Ian the Living Stone was a joy to meet, and there is also a human centipede which is pretty disgusting. The town of Start is brilliantly named. The writing is good throughout and rather verbose. When the writing started to nudge into pretentious territory even this worked – because it’s a gamebook that trolls the reader.

And that’s probably the biggest issue with this gamebook. The urban dictionary defines trolling as “The art of deliberately, cleverly, and secretly pissing people off…” – strange subject matter for a competition in which you want people to like your entry. The humour tips wildly between really funny and really terrible. It’s also an incredibly difficult gamebook and absolutely unforgiving.
But I did really enjoy the riddles and puzzles, and there are a few! I hope you remember your simultaneous equations. Unfortunately one riddle I did not get is apparently a link to modern popular culture, so there was no way I was ever going to finish this gamebook legally.

It’s a good entry built on the foundations of traditional gamebooking and succeeds by being exactly what it wanted to be. This constant trolling may be its downfall – because of this I suspect most readers are going to find it annoying.

Windhammer 2014 Review – The Puttbuster Initiative: Spacetime Golfcrush

The Puttbuster Initiative: Spacetime Golfcrush by Philip Armstrong

Download The Puttbuster Initiative: Spacetime Golfcrush

Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

As everybody knows, golf is an incredibly dull and tedious game. The only way it can be saved is to add humour, violence and interdimensional space travel. As it happens, this is exactly what we have here! The Puttbuster Initiative: Spacetime Golfcrush is an extreme golfing gamebook from last year’s Windhammer prize winner, the delightful Philip Armstrong. And it’s every bit as bonkers, creative and original as you’d expect a game of extreme golf to be.

There’s an absolute cracking introduction to this gamebook. The background and rules are brought about by a bit of banter between the two commentators of this year’s SpaceTime Golfcrush. This is a fine addition to the gamebook; one of the things I truly enjoyed is how their interjections pop up throughout, commenting on how you are performing. If anything, this wonderful mechanic is underused. I would have liked to have heard them natter on all gamebook – for some holes they become a little mute, which is a shame.

While we’re on wonderful mechanics, I might as well say this gamebook is full of them. It’s a really good game – you cram your golfer full of performance enhancing drugs to improve his drive/accuracy/attack (dangerous stuff this golf), which determines how far you can hit the ball, if the ball will veer off course, if you will die horribly on the putting green. All this by selecting a square on the map of the hole and rolling dice. You then look up where your ball has actually landed and turn to that section (and probably die horribly). All in all it is a really clever game. But does it make a good book?

You’re lining up your next shot when you feel a tickle on your leg.
You look down to see that a segment of the grass and loam has raised up and emerging from a black
hole is a stick-thin claw. It’s a trap spider, easily the size of a pitbull. You feel the claw tug at your pants
as the spider begins pulling you toward its burrow.

It’s wonderfully illustrated, it is clever and it is funny. But it doesn’t feel like a gamebook. What it would work incredibly well as is an app – nudge Tin Man Games – it could hide away all the mechanics and keep score for you, and most of all bring in animations and touch screen capabilities, and pop up the little sections as you land on squares. It’s also massively expandable – in the age of DLC we live in there’s no end to the extra holes you can grow the base game with. As a pure game, it’s great.

But as a gamebook, I found it a bit limited. Other than where to hit your ball next, there aren’t that many choices to make. It’s slightly too random, and the battles can be unforgiving. It’s a little too episodic and gets a bit repetitive. Some of the holes are wonderfully creative, but even the golfing novelty wears a bit thin by the 9th time we have to to repeat it.
But don’t get me wrong. There’s good writing and good game here – it’s a very strong entry from Philip Armstrong and he’ll be up among the prizes again this year.

Windhammer 2014 Review – Tales of a Captain: To Recruit a Demon

Tales of a Captain: To Recruit a Demon by Stefano Rochi

Download Tales of a Captain: To Recruit a Demon

Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

Tales of a Captain: To Recruit a Demon is an ultra sci-fi demon battler that spans space and the multiverse…I think. You play Captain Arden Terraward, a galactic adventurer with amazing powers. And it is time to recruit a demon! Unfortunately HR is never that easy…

The book opens straight into the plot, with our [ship/computer/book] chatting merrily along to us and feeding us the mission. This is usually a nice touch, except this gamebook is so bizarre and full of strange language it takes a bit to sink in. I don’t know if this is an extension of another piece of work or a demo for something more to come, but I did find myself a bit lost with it. The gamebook has a simple plot, but it is ultimately bogged down by a complicated and unfamiliar universe. Most of the time I didn’t have a clue what was going on.

#Woooey Captain, you have been a busy boy! This should keep me amused for a…..well that was fun! So,
what’s the agenda?#

The gamebook has a few interesting mechanics I have not seen before. Each of your super powers has a number attached to them. When you want to use this power, you add that number to your current paragraph and read from there. The new paragraph will then give you further instructions depending on where you came from! It’s interesting but it’s a bit tricky to bookkeep on paper – it feels like it is more suited for an interactive app so all of this can happen behind the scenes.

The powers themselves are slightly overwhelming and a bit of a mess – it is really difficult to realise the intricacies of your powers (you’re just give a short description by “the book” in the opening section). This is ultimately the downfall of the gamebook – this adventure revolves around these powers and you do not understand the powers you have because you do not understand the universe you are in. Stefano Ronchi writes energetically but lacks clarity. I am sure he had a great time writing this but he sometimes leaves his readers behind. This lack of understanding of your character’s powers is really fatal, because choosing the wrong one at the wrong time leads to instant death. Again, I feel like this work would better as part of a bigger piece – perhaps the powers could be introduced one at a time so we could become familiar with them before we’re forced to pick one to save our skin (I still don’t know if my character has skin or not.)

I struggled to enjoy this one really. There are some nice touches – the interesting mechanics, the checkpoint feature, the sheer uniqueness of it all – but for me it doesn’t really work in this bite-sized format.

Windhammer Prize 2014 Begins

It’s an exciting time of year for Gamebook fans! Over at the remarkable www.arborell.com we have this year’s entries for the Windhammer prize. This time we have 10 entries, and it looks like a good mix of old and new faces and again it seems we’ve hit a staggering array of genres.

Congratulations to everyone who made an entry this year. I look forward to reading them all, and, like last year there will be reviews and playthroughs.

Do your best to show your support for these authors. Read as many entries as you can and vote!