Stephen Hand (2)

A curious one this. In general this is a good fighting fantasy book. I enjoyed the city exploration, it all felt very fresh whilst still being traditional. There was plenty of humour in there without being a comedy adventure, or wacky. It was hard without being impossible. It featured a cypher that I found completely incomprehensible (anyone who wants to explain it to me feel free). It existed nicely within existing geographical / historical Titan but still felt new. All in all, not a bad show more one at all. But the route I took never revealed what a Moonrunner was until the very last stage, and then there wasn't really any exposition about why it was such a bad thing! Actually I think the whole thing felt heavily edited, it could have done with some more background about the evil wizard you're tracking down and all their naughty ways. Still, I enjoyed it a lot and stayed up far too late playing it!

replay 2026: This one seems pretty good, but the editing required to get it down to size has chopped out so much of the flavour that it feels like you're skipping to the fights or puzzles. It could easily be adapted to a tabletop. I don't know how far I got through it, but "You leap into the pool of Ashvaal* and are sucked down to a stagnant doom." show less

I've had a brief go at this one before, both as an adult and a child, but haven't had any luck, so it was a joy to complete it last night. This book is better than I remembered and the horror aspects work well. Lots of grisly demonic stuff. I picked my special skills well, (Heal / Meditation / Detect Demon) and they all seemed to come in useful. There don't seem to be any skills without which you will lose, which is good. The Evil Points mechanism didn't make any difference to me, I only show more clocked up 2 in the whole game, but perhaps I am naturally a 'good' alignment person :D This is a well plotted and planned book, and whilst i think there has been some sharp editing for length (i.e. some of the references could have done with longer explanations or exposition to ensure they didn't feel rushed) it felt complete and satisfying. There were some good set pieces, geographical horror straight out of 80s weird horror. There were no impossible battles, even the final battle with the demon price Myurr and its SKILL of 14 was mitigated by the Demon Slayer Sword which I had just found. Without it you will struggle unless you know where its Crystal of Whatever is hidden and destroy it quickly. If anything this one might be too easy for those players who seek complexity and want a gamebook that requires replaying time and time again. IMO few of those gamebooks are well written enough to make you want to do that! This is definitely one of the upper tier of Fighting Fantasy so worth checking out. show less

This book is based on August 20th 1973, police were dispatched to a remote farmhouse in Travis County, Texas. Within the confines of a cryptic residence discovered the butchered remains of 33 victims. Brandishing a chainsaw and wearing the grotesque flesh masks of his victims, the killer became forever known as 'Leatherface'. Now for the first time, the only known survivor of the killing spree has broken the silence and come forward to tell the real story of what happened in that macabre show more farmhouse. she just barely managed to escape from with her life. The woman claims that this is the macabre craftsmanship of Leatherface, a chainsaw-wielding psycho who wears the skin of his victims to hide his severely deformed face. She recounts her insane tale of the nightmare she experienced in that place.

There are multiple villains in this story, every single one of them is terrifying. Leatherface on his own is pretty damn scary, but the way all of the other villains work alongside him to psychologically destroy and manipulate their victims dials the horror factor up quite a few notches. Once the main cast of characters end up stranded in the domain of this cult-like family of sadistic psychos, it becomes a nonstop thrill-ride with lots of shocking twists, gruesome imagery and constant psychological tension. I also found the backstory of Leatherface to be surprisingly sad. I wasn't expecting to empathize with such a perversely gross and violent dude, but I did feel a little bad for him at some points. show less