Customer Reviews

Deathtrap Dungeon

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Deathtrap Dungeon, written in 1984 by Ian Livingstone, was the sixth edition to the growing Fighting Fantasy series. This adventure is set, like most of the earlier FF books, in the medieval fantasy land of Allansia. There is a successful town in north Allansia called Fang. It's ruler, a certain Baron Sukumvit, decided to make Fang the centre of a great contest, to be held once each year, called the 'Trail of Champions'. Now, this Trail of Champions involved the Baron tunneling a deadly labyrinth into the hills behind the town. The labyrinth, named Deathtrap Dungeon (if you didn't already know), was then riddled with fiendish traps and vicious monsters to trick and test any contestants trying their luck. Just before the grand opening, Sukumvit selected ten of his finest troops to enter the dungeon, as a test of it's lethality. Much to the Baron's delight; none of the troops were ever seen again! The call then went out to adventurers all over Allansia. Many adventurers were eager to test their skills in Deathtrap Dungeon, for the honour of being the first to survive the labyrinth and collect their own weight in gold as a reward. As yet, none have survived to claim the prize...Until now, that is!! You start as an adventurer, signed up for the Trail of Champions, the eve before the contest starts. The next day, you line up outside Deathtrap Dungeon, ready to start your adventure. Five other contestants enter the dungeon with you. These are: an armoured Knight, a robed Ninja, a female Elf Warrior and two 'Arnold Schwarzenegger look-a-like' Barbarians. So, the race is on! To succeed in your goal you have to beat the other contestants (by fair or foul means), avoid becoming a victim of the many cunningly lethal traps, find and collect various items, vital if you are to escape alive, find your way through quite a complex maze and hack-'n'-slash your way through loads of Deathtrap Dungeon's inhuman inhabitants (this is my favourite part!!) For 'true' diehard FF fans; this book is a real roller-coaster ride. The book is original, well written, engaging and (fairly) complex. The book has some nice parts to it: Stumbling onto the remains of past contestants, impaled on spikes, ending up as stew for the Boodbeast, meeting the 'Trial Masters', Poison Ivy and those playful Trogoldytes (no, I won't tell you! You'll have to find out about them for yourself!!) There are some really nice 'adult' traps and ways to die as well; the 'Vice' trap and drinking the acid, which burns a hole in your stomach, are real corkers. As for bad parts......Well, I couldn't really think of any. This book is a very good edition to the FF series. Not being linear (like a lot of later books) the dungeon can be explored many times differently. The ending is especially challenging and exciting. Iain McCaig's illustrations are of the usual excellent quality; they really bring Deathtrap Dungeon alive, adding immeasurably to the atmosphere of the book. In fact, without his contribution, the book probably wouldn't of been so well received So, in my ending summary of number six; Deathtrap Dungeon. I would say that it is an absolute classic; this book is about as good as FF gets!

I had this book when I was little. I loved it so much that I bought it for my nephew when he turned 11. All you need is paper, pencil and 1 die. It's a strategic game that you play by yourself combined with a choose your own adventure book. I loved it. The challenges can be different each time depending on your dice rolls. It's something that travels well and will keep your kid busy and interested forever!

Hey, it was a good idea: instant one-player RPG campaign, just add dice! But man, is the execution terrible. Instead of giving you multiple ways to beat the silly thing, they created one "true path" and stuck a bunch of cruel dead ends on it. And even if you hit upon the correct route early on, random die rolls (the combat system has absolutely no strategy to it) stand a good chance of killing you off. Seriously, if you play this thing honestly, starting over when you get killed like they say to, subtracting the proper amounting of HP when you get smacked, it will take you about 25 tries to get through.

A damnably lazy execution of a good idea with nice illustrations.

This isn't a strategy guide at all. It is the original Fighting Fantasy Gamebook. Silly man. Check what you're reviewing before you post.

Riding on the back of the fantasy role playing game craze came these interesting books, and plenty more popped up along with them on other topics, from other publishers.

They were designed so that all you would need was a pencil and a simple randomiser and be able to carry the whole thing around with you, and introduce the game and chance into it.

A Dungeon bash, of course.

The Strategy guide offers everything it promises and more, with one exception. This is the strategy guide for the playstation version, NOT the PC. If you want the PC version, DON'T puchase this book, for the first board is entirely different and I'm not sure what else is changed in the playstation verson until I get my Map Book version. In short, Don't get suckered like I did!!!!!!!