Space Assassin: Final Thoughts

Reading some quotes from Andrew Chapman, I was struck by the revelation that he wrote Space Assassin after reading The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, having read no other books in the series. A lot of things about the book clicked into place after that, because in many ways it's just Warlock in space.

Oh, there are other influences for sure. I'd be shocked if Chapman had never played Metamorphosis Alpha, or its successor Gamma World. But the premise of Space Assassin and Warlock are near-identical - navigate a series of dangerous tunnels and rooms to defeat the evil wizard/scientist - and they both feel similarly disjointed in their encounter design.

They also share a similar difficulty level. Even with low stats, you're likely to win through to the end in both books, with little trouble. If anything, Space Assassin is even more open-ended than Warlock: without the need to collect keys, you're free to explore anywhere in the Vandervecken, and you can still beat the book.

One of the places where Warlock wins out though, is the writing. Space Assassin can be shockingly terse, and nowhere is this more apparent than its execrable final section: "You drag the unconscious Cyrus from the Waldo. Your mission is a complete success. Congratulations." Not even an exclamation point! There are just too many places where Space Assassin gives the bare minimum of description. This is a shame, because there are moments of genuine character and humour in the book, hints of weirdness and absurdity. I'd like to have seen Chapman lean into that tone a little more. As it is though, it's too terse too often, and it hurts it as a reading experience.

As a game, however, there's a lot to like. It's quite a well-designed adaptation of the Fighting Fantasy rules, and completing it should be possible with minimum scores. It might be a touch too easy if you roll a really high Skill, but that's probably better than the standard FF design philosophy. Ten-year-old me hated books where the enemies were too easy to defeat, but 40-year-old me ain't complaining.

Also like Warlock, this book sometimes can give the sense that it's nothing but a series of passages, junctions and side doors. I mentioned it in an earlier post, but this made it really hard for me to remember where I'd explored while trying to write up the adventure. That's not to say there aren't interesting encounters: there are quite a number that tickled me, especially the philosophical robot pilot. There are a lot of interchangeable passageways though, and too many encounters with hostile, boring guard robots.

I'm in two minds with Space Assassin. While I often find it to be shallow and disjointed, there are other moments where it shows wit and inventiveness, and a gleefully pulpy tone. Based on my play-throughs I would have scored it quite low, but a thorough exploration of every path revealed a number of encounters I'd missed that were a lot of fun. It's never going to be one of my favourites, but I'm leaving Space Assassin with somewhat fond feelings. Perhaps it's just charmingly bad?

COOL STUFF I MISSED

With most of the other books I've finished on this blog, I feel like I covered most of the cool stuff during play. Going over Space Assassin, I discovered a lot of things that I was sorry I missed. The most obvious of these is a tank battle mini-game, complete with map and score-sheet at the back of the book. It's fun, and in all the times I've played through this book over the decades I've never found it. There are a bunch of encounters on that odd donut-world that I missed, particularly an alien village. Finding that village allows the player to assemble the Pan-Dimensional Homing Device, a weird and wonderfully absurd object that gave me a few chuckles.

MISTAKES AND RED HERRINGS

I caught no major mistakes, and the vast majority of the items that can be found come in handy somewhere. The only thing I pocketed that I never found a use for was a cassette, which now that I think of it seems rather apt.

BEST DEATH

Space Assassin has 18 instant death paragraphs, but as with much of the writing in the book they tend to be a little terse. In the end there was a clear winner:

Look, if you make me laugh you're going to win, and causing an alien tribal chief to spray himself in the face with nerve gas is never not going to be funny. You know, as long as it's fictional. I'm not a monster or anything.

S.T.A.M.I.N.A. RATING

Story & Setting: The giant spacecraft Vandervecken, full of labs and weird mutations, is a potentially great setting, but the writing fails to make it come alive. With an incredibly basic plot, and perhaps the worst victory passage in the entire series, I have to mark this low. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Toughness: Statistically this book is well-designed, and should be beatable by characters with minimum scores. It's also very open-ended; there are no items or special passwords or anything needed to get to the end, so you can beat it on pretty much every path. For my tastes, though, it's a little too easy, so I have to ding it a little. Rating: 4 out of 7.

Aesthetics: The cover by Chris Achilleos is a belter, and if we were just talking about that the marks would be high. Geoff Senior is one of my favourite under-rated comic artists, but this is early work from him, and I probably wouldn't recognise it if his name wasn't in the credits. It's good, but it's a little lacking in personality. The writing is what really lets it down, failing to create much of an atmosphere or a sense of place. Rating: 3 out of 7.

Mechanics: Aside from the standard solid FF ruleset, Chapman adds rules for firearms, grenades, and high-tech armour that are all pretty simple and workable. Add to that a very playable tank battle mini-game, and this book is pretty strong mechanically speaking. Rating: 5 out of 7.

Innovation: This isn't the first sci-fi book, nor is it the first dungeon-crawl, but it is the first FF to combine the two. Add in the new rules for gun battles, and we have a book that's just mildly innovative. Rating: 2 out of 7.

NPCs & Monsters: I'll just say it right out: this book has too many robots. Not many of the others monsters and characters you meet get fleshed out either, and as such they're not that memorable. Even Cyrus, the main villain of the book, remains a cipher. The sole exception is the robotic pilot of the Vandervecken, who I really wish was in the book a bit more. What can I say, I'm a sucker for a philosophical robot. He's not enough to knock the score up much, though. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Amusement: There's fun to be had in this book, but I just happened to miss most of it on the paths I took. Still, it does have too many passages and junctions, and too many meaningless robot fights. Rating: 3 out of 7.

No bonus point for Space Assassin. The scores above total 21, which doubled gives a Final Rating of 42. That puts it at 13th place out of 16 books, above Starship Traveller and below Island of the Lizard King. It's perhaps a little harsh for Starship Traveller, but ultimately I think Space Assassin has a bit more charm about it.

NEXT: Pray for me, as I tackle The Crown of Kings, the finale to the Sorcery! epic. I might be on this one for a good long while, because I made the dumb decision to play the series as one long adventure. So chances are I'll have a quick death in Book 4 and get sent all the way back to Book 1. I really am stupid sometimes.