#house of hell

Fighting Fantasy was a series of 80-90s British game books, similar to Choose Your Own Adventure ones but with a D&D-style adventure focus (and occasional sci-fi and horror ones) and a stripped-down version of the D&D system to go with them (which you can find in the back). I love them (despite being younger than the original run) and, if you want to play Dungeons and Dragons but don't have a group you can play it with, they'll be a good substitute, Hence, I'm making this list of links to Internet Archive copies so you can enjoy them.

Appointment with F. E. A. R.

Armies of Death

Beneath Nightmare Castle

Bloodbones

Blood of the Zombies

The Citadel of Chaos

City of Thieves

Creature of Havoc

Crypt of the Sorcerer

Deathtrap Dungeon

Eye of the Dragon

Fangs of Fury

The Forest of Doom

House of Hell

Howl of the Werewolf (playing through this is one of my Halloween traditions)

Island of the Lizard King

Legend of Zagor

Magehunter

Night of the Necromancer

Portal of Evil

The Port of Peril

Rebel Planet

The Rings of Kether

Seas of Blood

Space Assassin

Starship Traveller

Star Strider

Stormslayer

Sword of the Samurai

Talisman of Death

Temple of Terror

Trial of Champions

New year, new week of gamebooks, mostly! Let us begin with Steve Jackson’s House of Hell (1984) AKA Fighting Fantasy Gamebook 10. Many consider this one of the best in the series and I tend to agree, even though I kind of forget about it when FF faves come up in conversation. Which is crazy, because look at that cover by Ian Miller! How do I forget that exists? What a stupid brain this is sometimes.

My intellectual failings aside, House of Hell is kind of an FF outlier. For one, it’s set in the modern era (and possibly the only FF that does this). For two, there is a Fear mechanic, in which you accumulate points as you encounter scary things and if you hit a certain threshold, you drop dead — this is unique among all the books in the series. For three, you talk quite a lot and fight not very much (and when you do, you’re bad at it because you’re a normie and probably unarmed). Talking to characters who are clearly villains who’d like you dead is actually necessary for your survival and success. And there isn’t really an optimal path through the book. Rather, multiple deaths and playthroughs will inform you of aspects of a greater mystery to solve as you seek to escape the house. And it is extremely hard. Puzzle elements, including many secret passages (I kind of love and hate these, as they make the book very difficult), complicate navigation. I only wound up getting somewhere close to the ideal ending when I started to get very, very frustrated with the construction of the book, and because of that I am still not entirely sure I solved it. That was a couple years back, and I still don’t have the energy to give it another crack.

And that, too, speaks to its enduring appeal. I still think about it, and will probably play it again some day to see what, if anything I’ve missed. Precious few gamebooks keep calling me back like that.

House of Hell by Steve Jackson. Fighting Fantasy Gamebook No. 10 from 1984. Cover by Ian Miller, interior illustrations by Tim Sell. A short version of this adventure was first published in Warlock magazine.

For the tenth book in the series, Steve Jackson created the only Fighting Fantasy book set on present day Earth. The result – in which the reader must survive a night in an evil house full of devil worshippers, ghosts, and assorted demonic activity – is one of the scariest and most challenging (and puzzling!) of all the gamebooks.