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Windhammer 2013 Review – The Lindenbaum Memory Palace

The Lindenbaum Memory Palace by Stuart Lloyd

Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

The Lindenbaum Memory Palace is an educational, psychological, memory-building gamebook by Stuart Lloyd. It is an entry in the 2013 Windhammer Prize. Stuart won this prize three years ago.

Wait, it’s a what gamebook? Educational, psychological and memory building?? “Warning! This is no normal book!” the author states as the opening paragraph, before playfully going on to “Warning! This is no normal gamebook!” It’s the first entry so far this year, or indeed any gamebook I’ve ever seen, that has an appendix full of links to wikipedia. If we want to win this gamebook, we’re going to have to learn. Some real, proper, stuff. Oh noes!

It’s actually a pretty good idea. When I was younger I would only ever read gamebooks. As as result I learned: how to add two dice together really well; advanced reasoning; battle tactics; strange liquids in bottles should almost always be drunk; inventory management; lots of things not to say on a first date. Anything to do with photosynthesis or mind exercises promoting self-improvement wouldn’t have gotten a chance. As I’ve gotten older though, my reading has varied a bit more, and I have actually read about memory palaces recently (from Derren Brown’s Tricks of the Mind). The memory palace is a building you know room-by-room, and you populate a room each time you learn an additional piece of knowledge about a particular subject (ie, titles of Shakespeare plays, or how plants get their food). In each room is a vivid and weird encounter that relates to a particular item you want to remember. Later, when you want to recall all of your knowledge, you mentally wander through your palace and poke your head into each of your little rooms. So it’s exactly like Warlock of Firetop mountain, except it’s filled with stuff you want to remember instead of keys and annoying zombies. Derren Brown recommends you make each of your rooms as vivid and disgusting and personal as possible, as this is the best way to remember them. Stuart is inviting us into his very own memory palace, which is very brave of him. Who knows what we might find? (Any would be psychologists, here is a great case-study).

So we begin with the rules. After the last few days of gamebooking the body count has been getting rather high, so it is nice to find we have no combat rules to learn or dice to throw. There will, however, be an exam at the end. We also finally meet our first dwarf in the competition this year. He is called Steve.

And with a Cheshire cat grin, the examiner presses his big round red nose which starts the huge
clock at the front of the hall ticking. You swear that the minute hand is moving as fast as a second
hand, but you have no time to think about that. As the rest of the students start scribbling their
answers down at what seems like light speed, you frantically search your pockets for some kind of
pen. However, you pull out nothing but handfuls of fluff, buttons, pennies and sticky chewing gum.

With my last biology class taken around 14 years ago and my own photosynthesis memory palace long since bulldozed over and crowned with a StarBucks, I actually quite enjoyed this educational trip. You enter a room, meet a colourful character, and then you are given a question. You are then given the answer and an explanation. This gamebook would actually work a lot better interactively, with images and animations and the links to the internet not so far away. In other words, it would work great as an app (which is this year’s first prize, incidentally).

It is certainly a wonderful idea and a good combination of genres. However, it stands as a novel curiosity rather than a fantastic gamebook. There is barely a plot and the rooms don’t really hang together in any meaningful way (apart from for the author perhaps). Its brilliance lies in a wedding of ideas that do deserve to be explored further. You should try it, and you might even learn something interesting about plants.

GBAT 1.5 is released!

Adventurers! We’d like to take a short break from our regular programme to announce the release of The GameBook Authoring Tool 1.5! Here are the new things you can expect to find:

HTML support

Some of you have been asking for HTML support, so now here it is. You can export your book directly to HTML:

The code behind is all linked to css classes, so you can customise the look and feel of it, if that is your thing.

Better unicode support

There were some problems exporting certain characters to rtf, for example ä,ö,ü, not to mention こんにちは.
These are now fixed. Thank you if you reported this.

Lovelier Graphs

We’re rounded off the edges of the graphs and it’s much more space efficient and they pack more tightly. We also think it looks a lot nicer.

First the old way:

And the new way:

The graph of a gamebook created in GBAT 1.5 — 1.5

What do you think?

Make sure you download the GameBook Authoring Tool 1.5 today. It’s free for gamebooks that are 100 sections or less, and pro users can write gamebooks with hundreds of thousands of sections!

Feedback

We love to hear from you! If you have any feature requests for the Gamebook Authoring Tool leave a comment below or email us at web-feedback@crumblyheadgames.co.uk.

Windhammer 2013 Review – The Independence Job

The Independence Job by Marty Runyon

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Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

Today’s 2013 Windhammer Prize entry is The Independence Job, a crime caper gamebook in which we attempt to pull off a bank heist. Marty was awarded a merit prize for his entry last year.

Before we begin, we need to create a character. I am going to play Mickey Muffin, an Irishman with a slight limp. Mickey has bulbous eyes (+ observation) caused by a huge brain in his head (+ reasoning). On the downside, this massive head of his means he struggles to get in and out of cars (- driving skill). Skill rolls are quite interesting. The game encourages you to take risks and have little bets with yourself. You are given a minimum ante which is a number you have to roll greater than using one die. But, if you’re feeling brave, lucky or silly you can make this harder for yourself. The higher the ante the more you win back in fortune points. Fortune is used to determine how good the ending is, and can be thought of as a kind of scoring system.
The two strengths and one weakness we picked affect the number of dice we roll. A strength means you get to roll two dice instead of one, picking the highest score, while a weakness means the same except you have to pick the lowest one. Got it, straight forward enough and it seems like a nice system.
Mickey also has mysterious red, green and blue stats which aren’t explained until later. When their meaning is finally revealed it is really quite brilliant, so I won’t ruin it here. Let’s turn to section 1.

Mickey has had a spell in prison and is a little down and out when he is approached by Edward.

“I’ve got a job coming up. A fat one. I’ve got a crew picked out,
but we need a fourth.” You hand him a glass, then take a drink yourself. “I’ve asked around. Everyone
says you were good. Maybe even the best. That’s why I’m here. To see if you’re up for it.”
A job. You look down at the melting cubes in your tumbler. Is this the one?

You can actually decline at this point, which would make this a very short gamebook (but I do appreciate the option). Instead we press for more details and we’re told it’s a big bank job. We can then take our first ante and try to negotiate a bigger cut for ourselves, which I do and pass. I did play safe with most of these dice rolls, only voluntarily increasing the ante when I was using a strength skill and when it didn’t seem that important. For the most part my luck held out, and I passed most of the rolls. We shouldn’t mention Mickey’s disastrous seduction attempt with Dorothy but we will – ante 3, Mickey rolls a 1. I imagine that’s the equivalent of sneezing/vomiting/accidentally licking all over the girl you fancy. Don’t worry Mickey, we’ve all done it.

I really like how this gamebook builds up. You meet and form your crew, you step through the plans (I think Marty has been watching the Italian Job), you stakeout the bank and then onto the job itself. It’s possibly slightly linear, but it is a lot of fun. There are a few errors in the text, but nothing an editor or a fresh pair of eyes couldn’t sort out. Overall, it’s well paced and has a nice system and you should try it.

With a final fortune of 35, Mickey retires back to the apartment where the story began. It’s not the best ending and there’s only enough loot hauled to buy some new furniture. All of that hard work, and all he managed to get out of it was a trip to IKEA.

Windhammer 2013 Review – The Experiment

The Experiment by Kieran Coghlan

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Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

The Experiment is a minimalistic Windhammer Prize 2013 entry. It’s written by Kieran Coghlan who is a regular writer for the competition.

It’s a very short and strange entry that lives up to its title. It is a gamebook that contains neither game nor book. It is unique in that there is no plot and no fourth wall. It would probably work better as a blog post or a philosophical debate. As a gamebook it’s slightly tedious but mercifully short.

The doctor puts his hands into his jacket pockets and pulls out two packets of potato crisps.
‘Now these two packets of crisps,’ he begins, ‘are identical as to how many crisps they contain and
their nutritional value. The only difference is the flavour. The one in my left hand is prawn cocktail
while the one in my right is cheese and onion. Now, we are going to have a packet each. You choose
which one you want and I shall have the other. Which will you choose?’

I would describe this as basically the Matrix with all the cool bits removed. Read another gamebook or Sophie’s World instead.

Windhammer 2013 Review – Redundant!

Redundant! by Alessandro Viola

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Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

Redundant! is a dark sci-fi set on an industrial planet. You are a worker living a menial existence consisting of unrewarding work and sleeping. It’s an entry for the 2013 Windhammer Prize.

Face covered in blood, eyes wide open and full of rage, mouth bent on a side (did he dislocate his
jaw already?), bloody foam in his mouth (bitten tongue?), punching the ceiling over his head (did he
break his knuckles?), he kicks aimlessly in the small space. You hear his bones crack, his joints pop, his
swearing blur into a primal scream, bubbling through the foam in his throat, eyes upturned.
In few seconds, he’s on the floor, muscles flexing randomly like ropes under the skin.
Another one “snapped”.

Good morning! Yes, this is your wake-up call and so the book introduces you to the rules. You manage two stats, Rage and Frustration. If your rage score ever becomes twice that of your frustration score, “snapped” (see above) happens to you. On the other hand, if your frustration equals or exceeds your rage you “leave”. This is when your brain burns out and you lose control of your body and flop to the floor. Thus the game encourages you to keep your frustration and rage low, or, strangely, presents an alternative to managing your existence by steadily raising both your frustration and rage stats.

And this is where one of the book’s problems lie. It’s almost impossible to keep your stats low. Pretty much everything annoys your character – being spoken to, touching one of your Lettered-Numbered colleagues, being late for meetings, existing. He’s just an angry man. The game offers no clues to the best path at all. At the beginning you are given an agenda for the day listing the meetings you are supposed to attend. Well, if you follow this agenda you will quickly lose the game, even if you hit all the meetings on time. Perhaps this is intentional by the author. By taking away the reward mechanic there is no fun to be had here. It fits in well with the theme.

Because the theme is the fatal problem with the book. This is a dark and unhappy book. You play a nameless worker drone, frustrated with his job and life and dreaming of light and freedom. I know the author is trying to draw parallels with reality, but I think we read for escapism. The material here is not absurd enough to work as parody, and does not go deep enough to work as an effective satire. We’re left with a big ball of depressing mess.

I was in a meeting with my manager and being yelled at for something or other. My frustration rose, and luckily my brain burnt out and that was the end of the adventure.

There are more entertaining entries this year.

Windhammer 2013 Review – Out of Time

Out of Time by Paul Struth

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Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

Today we’re playing Out of Time, Paul Struth’s time bending mystery adventure. The first big plus is that this is set in beautiful and gloriously old cities in the Czech Republic, which gives it immediate cool points. There is something magical about the place and it feels perfectly natural for a time travelling story to spring up here.

It took me a little while to get the book, with Emily not endearing herself to me in any way, but then without knowing it I was completely drawn in. The author has created a very compelling detective story here, and it’s written in a very clever way. You meet people who initially know a lot more about you than you do yourself and it is confusing and complex. Then you begin to realise that you’re constantly being given tiny subtle clues. As you re-live the experience again and again, not only does your character build up and retain memories (which open up new choices for you in the adventure) but you, the reader, are able to piece together the story and figure out what you have to do next from your own memories. Meta!

This isn’t a criticism but there’s not much game to this gamebook. There is no character customisation and very few rules. There is no combat, certainly no dice, and all you have is a determination stat that rises and falls throughout the adventure. But in truth, it probably even does not need that (it’s used very rarely, and if anything it’s a distraction to turn away to mark a point on or off).

But nothing is fine, never has been since that day, aged eleven, when time first stood still. The
attacks are coming more frequently now, the slightest hint of stress or danger enough to trigger an
episode. What is wrong with you?

I am massively impressed with Out of Time, and this is probably one of the most sophisticated gamebooks I’ve come across. It won’t be for everyone – if you’re here looking for imps and a dungeon crawl hack n’slash this is not it. If you want to really think and unlock a clever story yourself then this is recommended. I don’t even want to give any details of my playthrough, because this is a journey you need to completely unravel and experience for yourself. I failed the quest, but even in failure I was given an insight and an odd character was finally explained! And even though I failed, I am going to come back to this book later because I want to see how it turns out. That, I think, is an indication of how good this entry is.

Windhammer 2013 Review – ‘Normal Club

‘Normal Club by Philip Armstrong

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Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

I’m reviewing all of this year’s Windhammer Prize entries alphabetically, and I’m feeling a bit bad reviewing ‘Normal Club. I’ve put it in the category of N, rather than ‘ (and it’s clear that ‘ is alphabetically superior to any other character). So I am hoping to get away with this belated review. The gamebook is a highschool paranormal mystery adventure, and it’s a good one.

The mission is that our rival school has a big scoop this year, a discovery that will put our skeleton with fangs glued on to shame. We need to find out what they are up to and present this discovery as our own. On the way we are dealt clues and missteps and other adventures. The game goes as follows: we visit various locations to find out where the rival school is heading, then we can head them off at the pass and claim the discovery ourselves! It’s a nice idea, and playing a game where failing a dice roll doesn’t mean instant death but a potentially bad clue is refreshing.

To start off we need to select a team of investigators. To be fair, presenting a chupacabra called Jim Morrison as an optional playable character isn’t really a choice (despite being told that choosing him is the same as choosing “hard mode”). I don’t consider myself a strong gamebook player but Jim came anyway. “Jim! Get in the van! You’re leading this mission! Also driving.” As we’re playing hard mode, we’ll have to use the tried and tested system of breaking rpgs by ruthlessly specialising. I choose Xander and Anna, because they sound cool and they stack their bonuses with artfulness. There’s also a point in intimidation and steuthiness. Apparently this is not a real word, but this is more of a failing in the english language.

Jim, Xander and Anna then head off around various location of their town. The skill system seems fine, you are given a difficulty and add on your combined scores for that particular attribute. You then have to roll under or equal to that number. It works well, and despite rolling some really terrible dice I survived. This was also nice. You get clues at each location. Depending on how difficult it was to get the clue, and how well you rolled, should give you a hint on how to interpret the veracity of that clue. Overall, it’s a really nice detective game with some mini-games along the way. There’s a suduko type game (I don’t know the proper name for it, I can only find pic-a-pix which is neither as cool or absolute as the word sudoko) where you have to shade in various boxes to build up a picture. I recommend firing up ms-paint for this task.

The “Just Say Nope!” skatepark was built by the city to provide a safe, temptation-free place for
teens to come to after school and, like, hang out or whatever. The presence of cigarette butts and
empty beer cans littering the grounds is a testament to how well that plan worked.

The writing is exceedingly good throughout. Even the rules are packed with humour and a whimsical nature. As for the game itself, failing a dice roll doesn’t mean sudden death and choices seem logical. I love how you pick up clues to find that final location. I also like how you can pick your three starting characters. If I have one criticism it is a consequence of this. Throughout the text, you are given little icons and if your character corresponds to that icon, you have additional text to read. This is a brilliant idea, but perhaps does not work in static text form. It is far too tempting to read the bit of text even if you do not have the character because it is printed inline with the paragraph. This is where the book would work much better in a digital, dynamic format. As a side-note, the winner of this year’s competition has their game converted to a mobile game. This has a massive chance of claiming that prize. It could also help where the book awkwardly refers to a generic “the team” or “the team member”.

As for this little scooby gang, well we failed quite a lot of roles, but the clues we did manage to gather were pretty great. From these, we lucked out on selecting the correct location. Another series of adventures ensued, but we finally lucked out once again, unable to “channel our mojo”. It was a shame to end like this, but an enjoyable experience was had throughout. Recommended.

Windhammer 2013 Review – Moreau

Moreau by Zachary Carango

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Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

Moreau is a mystery adventure set on a dangerous island. It is an entry in the Windhammer Prize 2013. Last year’s prize was won by the author Zachary.

“Anything over the radio?” You turn to Kolma.
“Just the same track on repeat. Everything’s down.” She pulls out her earpiece. Her brown eyes look
concerned. “If anyone’s left they aren’t talking.”
“Could they really all be dead?” Xander picks his nails and scrutinizes the lush shoreline.
“Don’t know. But we’ll find out soon enough.”

This sets the scene quite nicely. I’m already expecting zombies by now but I’m hopefully disappointed later on. We’re then launched into a detective story of sorts, where we are to find out what happened to the people on this mysterious island. I love the premise. But I don’t love how the journey goes.

To begin, I am immediately bamboozled by the rules. It turns out we can throw the dice in the bin, great. No randomness here, we’re relying on wit and pure judgement. I don’t expect this adventure to last long. Then we’re given a bit of money and a list of weapons, and then I get a bit confused. You can buy weapons for yourself: machetes, assault rifles, that kind of thing, and you can also buy weapons for your ship, like a rocket strike or (drastically) a napalm inferno. But it is not explained if these effects are cumulative (can my character and the ship both have weapons?), nor does it say if I have to pay the cost each time I use the attack (is it per fight, per round, a one off cost…?) So the rules don’t really help very much. But we DO find out that a napalm strike is only 6 times more powerful than a machete hit, which is interesting and useful news. What’s all this fuss about nuclear war?

I don’t really know for sure, so I ignore the ship’s weapons and buy myself an assault rifle and the taxidermy skill, which is a bit like buying a money tree. Our mission is to find life on this island, so the first significant choice I make is to head to the resort. This seems like the most likely place to contain survivors, so I head off there with my companions, Kolma and Xander. We immediately hear signs of life in the restaurant area. “Wow!” I thought. “What an easy gamebook!”

In the restaurant is a lobster man. Inexplicably, I kill him. I can only imagine the undocumented dialogue went as follows:
“Hey, we’ve found a survivor!” calls out Kolma to Xander, “A real miracle of modern science! Mission complete! Now we can finally go home!”
I empty the contents of my assault rifle into the face of lobster man.
“What was that?” asks Xander, “I couldn’t hear you over all of that gun fire.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t really matter,” Kolma replies.

No, this gamebook won’t be so easy. A little later I’m cracking open a safe and we’re faced with a word puzzle. I couldn’t figure this out…maybe it’s a ceaser cypher. Maybe I missed a clue. I don’t know. I give up, and the safe explodes in my eardrum. I die.

It’s a tough gamebook, and its interesting storyline is let down by complicated and illogical rules. When can I use napalm strike? All the time? Even indoors? Is it wise and safe to carpet bomb a small location with nuclear paint when I’m supposed to be looking for survivors?

I loved the detective element but not the execution. Disappointing.

Windhammer 2013 Review – Merchants of the Spice Islands

Merchants of the Spice Islands by Chan Sing Goh

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Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

Merchants of the Spice Islands is an historical trading adventure entered for the Windhammer Prize 2013. We play a merchant on our maiden voyage sailing from Australia, through the Spice Islands and then onto home. You can bet yer wooden leg and lucky parrot we’ll be meeting pirates along the way.

Before we can set sail we have quite a few pages of rules to wade through. There’s a lot here to take in- rules on gun combat, hand-to-hand combat (which seems unnecessarily confusing) and ship combat. Add to this all the different types of specialists we can hire and their skills and it’s already getting a bit too much. It would have been nice if the book introduced these rules slowly to the reader one at a time as needed, instead of all at once before we’ve even left dry land.

But, as I am sure there will be pirates, getting through the rules will be worth it. I select my nationality: being in Britain I go for British (I’m not much of a creative role player). This gives us extra cargo space and a linguist. I will have to bring back lots of tea.

We’re guided by the first mate throughout our voyage, and he offers advice every now and again. It’s nice that the choices you make aren’t completely random. He does inform you which areas may be more dangerous or profitable than others, so it’s handy to have him along. Unfortunately, for a key character, he doesn’t even have a name, let alone a personality. And this is the biggest problem I have with this gamebook. It lacks charm and none of the characters are really introduced or developed in any significant way. It’s a shame because I am sure the book is historically interesting, yet we’re captain of a nameless ship with faceless crew and it’s difficult to care about.

“You there! Pansy man! Hows bout a arm wrestling ta prove your manliness behind ye fancy ole capt’n coat?” he barks at you

It’s definitely more gamey than wordy and may work better as a computer game. You have to do some pretty taxing mental arithmetic at times and the single combat I had was incredibly complex. I’m not sure I resolved it correctly.

Playing as a trader is a novel and intriguing idea, and I wanted to like this gamebook. I did finish the game with a score of 17,300 silver. This is a good touch – rather than an absolute win or loss you have a scoreboard of sorts. The only sad thing is I did not really find the book exciting enough to have another try.

Windhammer 2013 Review – Gunlaw

Gunlaw by Nicholas Stillman

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Warning! Review may contain spoilers!

Gunlaw is Nicholas Stillman’s well-written entry for the 2013 Windhammer Prize. It’s a modern day cowboy film, in which you play larger-than-life character Canfield, a ranger who raids the futuristic city of Maslow to rescue children. Or, as the author delightfully puts it: a pre-apocalyptic Western!

It’s refreshing to put away the dice and pick up our wits, as there is no randomness in this gamebook. We start by picking Canfield’s three primary skills. I go for bullseye, for I would be no respected gun slinger if I couldn’t hit a barn door, and ambush, as it seems to naturally complement bullseye. Due to my sneaky ambushing and sniping tactics, I reason I would have retained my rugged good looks, so I pick this trait also. Cowboys are then directed to section 1.

Gunlaw immediately draws us in with excellent narrative and I feel the cactus growing on my tongue. The writing and the choices are all good and make sense. Throughout the book we experience a series of crazy adventures, including a thrilling car chase, a gore-fest in a shopping mall and the delivery of a baby. I really enjoyed it, even as the scenarios became more and more bizarre. The author has a very cynical version of the future, where everyone seems fat and greedy and disgusting. He also writes gloriously well:

“Canfield enters a bar called The Hellhole. Nothing ever happens there except liver damage. Apart from the aging slobs embalming themselves, the place looks pleasant with its decor of houseplants. Lisa canes and cacti sit in a bath of techno music, wanting to die.”

Canfield is a brilliant character, who clings to his outdated values and quickly turns in a cult figure. Part-way through the book it becomes apparent that you cannot really die. Canfield is just a badass and will get you through any situation, no matter how dire. I felt like I was playing a hero in a tv series, and this was great.

My criticism is that the ending seemed to come too soon, peter out and then whimper away. I failed in my task, by being unable to locate the new born baby, because I did not find the One True Route through the book. Because of this it felt like a strange ending (when does a Western end with the hero not saving the day?!) It feels like this should have been an auto-win book. I’d also like to see more. More episodes.

Overall, it’s an enjoyable, outrageous romp through a futuristic city (as a cowboy!). Recommended.