Deathtrap Dungeon Trilogy Reviews

[h1]Old '80s gamebooks coming to life[/h1] This game is based on three old Gamebooks from the '80s, part of the Fighting Fantasy collection: -[b]Deathtrap Dungeon[/b] -[b]The Trial of Champions[/b] -[b]The Armies of Death[/b] They were all written by Ian Livingstone, co-creator of the series. This game is not at all like reading those old books but instead, it creates a world (or dungeons mostly for the first two parts) where you walk and encounter various monsters, traps and treasures, some random, some based on the books. You still make choices like going left/right/pick up/look at/etc and you have to fight any monsters you come across using the classic SKILL/STAMINA stats, rolling dices like always. If you are hoping for the true experience, then there are other versions available. This is a roguelite game separated in 3 parts. Unlike the previous game ([b]Fighting Fantasy Legends[/b]), each story is completely separated and you will always start from scratch when starting a new book/adventure. You select a character and your stats (SKILL for fights & damaging enemies/some events, STAMINA for health, LUCK for some events) then off you go! The difficulty is also changed and this time, the enemies are always dealing the same damage. Instead, the harder difficulty gives you less lives. Because each time you die, whether by events or with low STAMINA, you restart from the beginning of the book, keeping your experience, items and with Stamina replenished.If you have no lives, then you lose everything and restart the book from scratch. it's actually a bit easier than the previous game. This means that with an easy difficulty, you can still continue building your character to overcome the tough challenges that these books throw at you and with a higher difficulty, you have less room for errors, maybe even bypassing some known fights which would only reduce your STAMINA. The 3 stories are separated but they are presented as YOU the hero being always the same person. It's actually quite well done and the flow is good. The graphics to represent the dungeons are pretty nice and you can see that the description from the original book is there even if the art from the books is not present. Anyway, to have a quick overview of what you have (so that you don't think you get just 3 times the same thing): -[b]Deathtrap Dungeon[/b], the critically acclaimed beautifully crafted deadly dungeon, with traps, rivals, monsters and trials awaiting you. The whole story is inside the Dungeon but there's plenty to discover, plunder and destroy. -[b]The Trial of Champions[/b], the sort of sequel as a gamebook is here a direct sequel. A new sequence that isn't present in the book is created to bridge the stories (even if your character starts again with 0xp/no inventory). The difficulty is much higher than the previous one, more devious traps, stronger AND relentless opponents will test your survival skills. -[b]The Armies of Death[/b], often considered inferior to its elder brothers, this is a complete different adventure, no dungeons but it contains travelling overland, visiting cities and exploring a forest and caves. The Skirmish aka army battle has been overly simplified and is just a normal combat which is a bit of a let down and the story is back to one similar to the Fighting Fantasy Legends' one: get items, go kill the baddie. In conclusion, if you like Fighting Fantasy, you will probably like it as it's based on the gamebooks but it's not at all a 1:1 transcript and the gameplay is quite different, having lots of randomness as well as being able to keep getting stronger. It's easier than the previous game, the three stories being linked is kind of nice and each story can take around 2/3 hours to beat. If you are looking for a simple, no frills, not too expensive roguelite with some good atmosphere, then it's a good choice for you!

Worth the low price. I am old enough that I bought these books when they were released on paper. On release. So old. However, at less than a block of A4 printer paper today these are great value no matter the price of nostalgia. However, however ... the novelty factor started to diminish with each 'book'. Deathtrap Dungeon is great fun. Well done top down CRPG with just enough challenges and cute artwork that I laughed, cried and snorted my way through with a smile on my face. That smile slowly fell away with Trial of Champions which had events so brutal I questioned the madness of the developers. Then I remembered the damned book was the same ... so I apologise to the developers for my cursing of their pointy little wizard beards. Having sneaked through THAT horror show, with one life remaining, I started the last 'book' Forest of Armies of Rock Monsters and Darkness ... or something. I never finished this one as compared to Deathtrap it was a bathroom bottle of meh. Anyway, I got 5 hours of fun for less than a heavily discounted £5, relived the fun horror of that pissant wizard in Trials and will never look at a rope in quite the same way. (I think it was under £2 on sale, that's like $1.50 in Freedom Money) That's great value for an enjoyable few hours. Totally recommend.