Oh hi Phil. Yeah that's an odd spam. That's the one obvious problem with this kind of guestbook. Obviously I've never tested it (i'm too innocent), but with the ability to type in any name, couldn't I just call myself, for example, Ullysses A.I.? Luckily spam seems to be very rare on this site.

Around about 2008, there was a huge onslaught of spam, and I made changes to the guestbook to try and filter it out. In the main, it's been fine since (my apologies to all the 'false positives' that had to wait before their messages appeared), but this one seems to have got through. Anyway, get well soon, Susan Smith Smith, and if anyone religous out there would mention her in their prayers, it can't hurt, can it?

Ibrahim
Wed Dec 5 23:20:42 2012
Soul Tracker

@Gaetano I love westerns, please could you send it to the site so Andy might adapt it for online play if time allows once its published? I only know of this site to have the online playability, I dont want to manually play these games as the temptation to cheat is overwhelming *smile*. I wasn't actually thinking of Mark and Angela, that story is great as it is, perhaps some kind of similar theme though, not elementals or supernaturals though, perhaps a revenge senario set in an apocoliptic future in which the protagonist's nearest and dearest is murdered and so a tip off leads him heading under cover to infultrate a motorcycle gang to seek out and elliminate those responsible.

C-Star
Thu Dec 6 16:48:43 2012
Soul Tracker

Wow, you're really obsessed with that motorcycle part! I admit, it was awesome, but basing most of a gamebook on it? I'm not so sure. But action scenes such as that would be very welcome in future works!

Haoie
Fri Dec 7 21:44:54 2012
Devil's Flight

Nice new entry, Devil's Flight. Sort of like Alien with a trace of Sky Lord haha. I got to admit though, I'm stuck on the chokepoint.

C-Star
Sat Dec 8 08:40:57 2012
Devil's Flight

Where is that? Maybe I can help.

The Duke of Wellington
Sat Dec 8 12:11:32 2012
The Black Lobster

Greetings, good Ladies and Gentlemen!

As there is a pause in the Peninsula Campaign, I'm exploring this excellent gamebook 'website'. What marvellous inventions abound in the twenty-first century! I'm completely intrigued by all the amazing innovations in technology - although I'm staggered at how it all works.

Also, a bizarre black box is making this conduit through space/time possible. Most surreal! Perhaps this particular piece of technology is from far in the future...?

I've just been reading The Black Lobster - most entertaining! Keep up the good work!

Deepest Respects,
W.

C-Star
Sun Dec 9 10:52:18 2012
The Black Lobster

Role playing on the guestbook? Oh weirdness, my loyal companion...

Yurio
Sun Dec 9 17:48:43 2012
Midnight Deep

Hey i need help on midnight deep how do i get past the 2nd dream with the doors

duffmeister
Sun Dec 9 20:07:45 2012
The Black Lobster

I'm not sure what this new-fangled 'role playing' C-Star refers to is but it is certainly a pleasure to see this website praised by such an eminent personality Duke W. I wish you the best of luck against that Corsican fellow.

Yurio
Sun Dec 9 21:01:25 2012
Waiting For The Light

Damn waiting for the light is so creepy did u ever beat the game and can you tell me how?

Robert Douglas
Mon Dec 10 03:06:05 2012
The Black Lobster

@ All,

Apologies :)

Just my own parody of the spam topic. Andy would have known it was me.

But it's well documented that a man from the 1300's did manage to communicate through a 1980's computer - before the internet was instituted, so the whole thing couldn't have been a hoax. Unless a certain tech genius had nothing better to do...

Aiken
Mon Dec 10 11:56:58 2012
Devil's Flight

Just completed Devil's Flight. I really enjoyed it, and congratulations are due to Gaetano.

The setting was interesting: essentially House of Hell (or indeed House of Horror) in space. You can even find some brandy if you're lucky!

A few minor criticisms. First, much as with the HOHs, there is one very narrow path to victory (as far as I can tell), so a large amount of interesting content and problem solving is actually just a disguised prelude to later failure. Secondly, it seemed to me that the Fear stat is too high, making this mechanic largely irrelevant. And finally, the very end of the book seemed a little rushed.

But those are just churlish quibbles. Taut writing and a relentless barrage of creepy twists, sly references and shocking reverses made this a deliciously suspenseful journey!

pi4t
Mon Dec 10 13:06:01 2012
Windhammer Competition

Just played through Ookle of the Broken Finger over quite a while, and have been pleasantly surprised by how good it's been. It has a very...unique style (first person, for a start) which seems odd to begin with but quickly seems normal. It really helps to get into the mindset of Ookle, and helps to characterise him in a way which, for instance, Creature of Havoc never managed (for me at least).

I also really enjoyed the humour, and was physically laughing several times during the adventure, especially those parts involving Graham, and/or the Wall Tossing.

Ultimately, though, I think what makes this my favourite adventure so far is the way that there's so much nonlinearity, but in a way which keeps a sense of direction and avoids the adventure getting boring (as has a tendency to happen in some others, such as The Enchanted Windmill).

I spotted one small typo, which I think was genuine, in section 81:

'Jimmy thinks that were looking for an Iri... Iri... gation?'

We're is the correct spelling, and as the other 'mistakes' seem to be showing Ookle's pronounciation and choice of words rather than grammatical errors in writing, I think it's a mistake. A quite minor one, though.

I didn't mean to make this into a review, but as I seem to have done so, I'll give it a rating of 5/5, best so far :)

Gaetano
Mon Dec 10 18:43:45 2012
Devil's Flight

Hello Aiken,

Thanks for your feedback! I'd have to agree with your comment on the Fear Stat- it's pretty difficult to actually get scared to death in the story. I should have done a more thorough playtest.

Your comment on the ending is also very perceptive. I had orginally planned for this to be a 400 section adventure, but had to set it aside for a while to work on another project (another Gamebook Adventures title,) and somewhere along the way I misplaced my notes for Devil's Flight (add 1 fear point and 3 frustration points!!) Ultimately, I didn't want many hours of work to go to waste, so I compromised and completed it as best I could.

As far as the narrow path to the ending, this is totally by design. One of the things that I admired about Steve Jackson's House of Horror was that, even though it had a narrow path to victory, there was a lot to be learned about the house, it's inhabitants, and its history along the false hope paths, even though, as you put it, all of it was a prelude to failure. In other words, there was real information to be gleaned along these paths, instead of just filler, and this made the experience of reading it much richer, since the player would have to read it multiple times anyway to find the true path. This was what I attempted to duplicate in Devil's Flight and House of Horror.

Regarding FEAR, I would have to echo Aiken's comments : in testing, I never once got anywhere near being scared to death. Maybe I should reduce the initial FEAR score to make it more of a challenge.

Gaetano
Mon Dec 10 18:47:39 2012
Devil's Flight

Oops, of course I meant Steve Jackson's House of Hell.

Brewin'
Tue Dec 11 07:38:14 2012
Windhammer Competition

Hi everyone, it's probably about time I dropped in here to say hello :)

For those that don't know me, I've published two novels, another gamebook (Infinite Universe) through Tin Man Games, edited/re-worked another four Gamebook Adventures, and am working on a number more (including Gaetano's forthcoming sequel to Slaves of Rema: which I also worked on, another by Ashton Saylor, and J.H.Brennan's Sagas of the Demonspawn series - all through Tin Man Games), plus a number more that haven't been announced yet and somehow keeping a day job...

I also did a (highly subjective) review of this year's Windhammer entries (including my own Trial of the Battle God) and I certainly agree with pi4t above as I voted for Paul Gresty's entry. (He also has a kickstarter campaign for a '30s gamebook where you play an investigative team in New York that is in its last days and needs more pledges to go ahead, so I'd urge you to support it: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1615043334/arcana-agency-the-thief-of-memories-a-full-color-g )

Anyhow, I'm glad my Windhammer reviews were deemed (relatively) "fair" and "constructive" - it's hard to be both honest and inoffensive when critiquing someone else's blood, sweat and tears. It helps me to remember that it doesn't matter how good something is, when you put it "out there" you'll always get people that love it and others hate it (and even more so if you push boundaries and try different things as I'm inclined to do). I think we all have great things to offer if we put our mind to it (and Robert Douglas I know you're still waiting for me to get back to you: sorry!) and I certainly don't wish to see anyone discouraged or considering "giving up" :(

Last thing I'll add for the benefit of those here, is that I've put together a "gamebook simulator" which you can use to simulate and evaluate combats in the Fighting Fantasy and Gamebook Adventures systems: http://www.thebrewin.com/blog/entry/brewin-s-gamebook-combat-simulator

(and of course there's lots of other stuff over on my site too, but enough shameless self-promotion haha)

Cheers and happy gamebooking,
Andrew Drage (aka Brewin')

Aiken
Tue Dec 11 16:42:38 2012
Devil's Flight

Hi Gaetano,

Thank you for your response- it's one of the things I love about this site that you can discuss works directly with their authors!

It's also very interesting to hear your narrow path philosophy and how it applies to, and was inspired by, HoH. It certainly makes sense. I suppose it just comes down to taste. On the one hand you can have a fiendishly difficult book where a highly concealed true path can only be found through extreme persistence- but where each fatal path is a rich world-building experience (the other classic of this sub-genre is Creature of Havoc). On the other hand books like Sorcery! (or Ulysses AI's superb The Diamond Key) have many ways to victory but are still very difficult- there are fewer completely blind allies, but each successful route is still tough indeed.

I guess the difference between Creature of Havoc and House of Hell (which is why I prefer the former, although they are both all-time greats IMHO). Is that there is (at least sometimes, although definitely not always) a logic to CoH which makes several of the deaths a clue as to how to proceed next time, whereas in House of Hell you really must map exhaustively to stand any chance of survival at all - you often have no way whatsoever of knowing whether the route you just took was completely doomed or partially correct, and often apparently positive developments turn out to be completely, ineffably fatal (upon finally realising this, any HoH reader will, naturally, add 3 Fear points to his own increasingly disturbed psyche- perhaps that's part of the fun!).

Finally (and forgive my rambling) sorry to hear about your lost notes, and thank you for completing D'sF anyway.
Because it was a (military grade) blast!

Gaetano
Wed Dec 12 00:04:15 2012
Devil's Flight

@ Andy- I'm fine with altering the starting Fear score. I think cutting it in half would be o.k., especially since the player has a supply of Neuroxin to recover from bad frights.

Pat
Wed Dec 12 07:19:51 2012
Windhammer Competition

@ Brewin': Thanks for the Gamebook-Combat-Simulator, it a real handy tool!

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