That said, the design of House of Hell means that it would have been almost impossible to do it the way Ian did it for Caverns. It just doesn't break up into neat sections the way that Caverns does, and there are no convenient choke-points where you could leave it with a "to be continued". House of Hell is a complex design, and a rewrite seems to me to be the only viable way of providing a cut down version.
Given that it's half as long, it's inevitable that the preview version is far less of a complex design than the book. It's been streamlined into a much more linear experience. Even so, Jackson has found room to add some all-new material. If you pull the bell-rope at the beginning, you'll play through a whole new section that's not in the book, but gives a quick glimpse of some areas and characters that are important there. It does what a preview should: shows you most of the things you'll experience in the complete version, while not revealing all of its secrets.
I should probably stop comparing this adventure to its full-length counterpart, and focus on its actual content, but it's a little hard to do that when I'm so familiar with the original. I also want to leave myself with something to say when I get to the book version. What I'll say is this: if you're a fan of House of Hell, the magazine preview is worth tracking down. It has the same atmosphere and nightmarish qualities as the book, but is different enough to provide some genuine surprises. As for the rest, I'll save it for the full-length review (although much of what I would have said ended up in the S.T.A.M.I.N.A. Rating below).
COOL STUFF I MISSED
I covered most of the areas in this adventure. About the only thing I wasn't able to do was defeat the vampire, and that just leads right to the cult sacrifice and the end-game.
MISTAKES AND RED HERRINGS
This is a tight adventure, and I only found two items that serve no purpose: some belladonna, and a valuable book of medieval artwork.
As for mistakes, there's one big one in paragraph 12. You are trying to sneak past the cultists and escape, and must Test Your Luck, but the results have been mixed up, and being Lucky results in the cultists catching you.
BEST DEATH
This has seven instant deaths, which is a fair number for a short adventure. All of them are pretty good, but for sheer antagonism I have to go with the following:
I love it when the gamebook narrator gets insulting, and "You deserved to die!" is one of the all-time greats.
S.T.A.M.I.N.A. RATING
Story and Setting: On paper, it's a haunted house adventure with a big bad to kill at the end, and a host of ghost story cliches. In execution it's pure horror, presented about as graphically as can be done in a book for kids. There are cliches aplenty, but the relish with which Jackson and artist Tim Sell depict them elevates the adventure far beyond most others of its type. The story is presented piecemeal, and the background of the house is never quite laid out in full, but that just adds to its air of mystery. It also leaves a lot of room for speculation, which I'm a fan off. Rating: 5 out of 7.
Toughness: This is a challenging adventure, and it's almost certain that multiple play-throughs will be required. As usual with Jackson's adventures, the challenge comes from a well-hidden path to victory rather than a reliance on difficult battles. The only part of the challenge that I feel has been a little misjudged is the Fear score; a low roll can result in a very short adventure. That said, you can beat it with minimum stats, and that's always a bonus. Rating: 5 out of 7.
Aesthetics: It's a haunted house with goat-headed Satan worshippers, what more can you want? Jackson's prose is atmospheric, if a little excitable at times. As for Tim Sell, I waver back and forth. His style almost verges on goofy at times, and I find myself thinking that it's a poor fit. But then I see his depictions of those aforementioned cultists, and I remember just how much they freaked me out when I was ten. It's a weird blend of cartoonish and terrifying, and I can't quite put my finger on why it works, but it does so in a way that I'm not sure a more traditional horror artist would. This loses points for the format, though: a magazine is never ideal for gamebooks, and this one also has a whopping great boardgame breaking it up in the middle. Rating: 5 out of 7.
Mechanics: The Fighting Fantasy rules are always good for a solid rating, and House of Hell uses them well. The Fear score is the major new element, and it's one that I have some problems with. Exploration is kind of the meat of the gamebook experience, and the Fear mechanic actively discourages it. It also results in some absurd deaths, which is good for a laugh but not so much fun when it brings your adventure to an abrupt halt. Rating: 5 out of 7.
Innovation and Influence: This is the first horror-themed Fighting Fantasy, and the first to be set in the modern day. It also introduces the Fear mechanic. Rating: 5 out of 7.
NPCs and Monsters: On the monster side of things, we have a lot of old horror stand-bys: ghosts, zombies, a vampire, and evil cultists. While they're perhaps a bit over-familiar, they're presented here as sources of sheer terror, rather than simple monsters, and that goes a long way to making them feel fresh. Given the subject matter you'd think that there would be more complex characters here than in the usual FF, but that's not really true. Franklins the butler, the Earl of Drumer, the hunchback, the prisoner in grey, and various ghosts provide plenty of variety, but they're not that deep given that this is a half-length adventure. It feels like there's more to them, and you can piece some of the backstory together, but it never quite coheres. Rating: 5 out of 7.
Amusement: I love House of Hell, and the Satanic horror themes that it depicts. It's grim, it's bloody, it's unnerving, and it revels in every second of it. This shortened version is perhaps a little too brief and linear, but it's still very enjoyable. Rating: 6 out of 7.
With some reluctance, I'm not going to give this one the bonus point. It's an enjoyable alternative to House of Hell, but in the future I'll still be far more likely to bust out the original. The above scores total 36, which doubled gives a S.T.A.M.I.N.A. Rating of 72 (just under City of Thieves). It feels a little high for such a short adventure, but what do you expect when its source material is one of the best gamebooks of all time? (Also, I feel like I might have have-arsed things by giving almost every category a score of 5, but that's just how it came out. What can I say, it's an adventure that excels in all areas, but I had to leave some room for the full-length version.)
NEXT: For my next post I'm taking a detour into Port of Peril, Ian Livingstone's most recent joint. After that, it's back to radical goat-headed Satanists with House of Hell, the book.
A couple of elements of the adventure which make more sense in the preview than in the book make me wonder if the preview was written first and then reshaped into the full-length version.
ReplyDeleteFirstly there's the option of going to bed in the Fortesque room, or its equivalent in the book (which I won't name here, just in case you don't remember what it gets renamed). In the preview, it makes sense, as this is the bedroom made available for you if you avoid all the mealtime drugs. In the book, you'll have been exploring the house for a while by the time you reach the room, and will already have grounds to suspect that there's something dodgy going on, so why would you suddenly decide to turn in for the night when discovering the bed in this room?
Secondly, there's the option of checking for traps before you ring the bell in the dining room. In the preview, the booby-trapped bell-pull by the main entrance may have given you good reason to be suspicious of the dining room bell-pull. In the book, there's no trap at the front door in the book, and the means by which you might end up falling through a trapdoor operates by a completely different mechanism, so there's less of a reason to suspect that the bell-pull might trigger something nasty.
A great overview of something I have heard of, but have never read/played myself.
ReplyDeleteI like House of Hell, it's probably my favourite of the non-Titan set adventures, though Appointment with F.E.A.R runs it a close second. That said Titan remains my one true love and I'm eager to hear how Port of Peril holds up!