The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (A Fighting Fantasy Adventure)

by Worldweaver

Product Description

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is an interactive game book by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, from the popular Fighting Fantasy series.

Deep in the caverns beneath Firetop Mountain lies an untold wealth of treasure, guarded by a powerful Warlock - or so the rumor goes. Many adventurers have set off in search of the Warlock's hoard. None has ever returned. Do you dare follow them?

You are the hero! As you read the story you will need to make decisions as to which way to go, what to say to other characters and what to do with any items you pick up. As a result you may be drawn into a battle, fought by rolling dice and comparing your abilities with your foe. Should you win, there may be valuable items to collect, but should you lose... the skeletons on the floor have to come from somewhere! A convenient in-game map tracks places you have visited and monsters or items encountered.

Enjoy many hours of action packed game play and find out if YOU can defeat the Warlock of Firetop Mountain...

Product Details

• Version: 1.2 (What's new in version 1.2)
• Release Date: November 6, 2012
• File Size: 3.7 MB
• Language: English
• Publisher: Worldweaver
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• ASIN: B004JWHW92
• Publisher License: Read
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,013 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #36 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor & Entertainment > Puzzles & Games > Role Playing & Fantasy

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 50 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly engaging and entertaining! February 23, 2011

By S33K3R

Amazon Verified Purchase

I purchased Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain with the expectation that is was merely a choose-your-own-adventure with maybe a few new tricks. I was very surprised by how fun and engaging the game actually turned out to be. This is a lot more involved than making a decision and flipping to page 132 to learn your fate.

There are real elements of an actual dungeon crawl in Fighting Fantasy. Not only do you have combat with single and multiple opponents, but there is the risk of encountering wandering monsters especially if you're shuffling about looking for hidden doors and traps. You can choose to accept your randomly rolled character, or assign points to different attributes. I've gone back and started from the beginning with a new character, and have adjusted the attributes to match my playing style. It's a nice touch and character generation, as short and simple as it is, actually does matter in how you play the game.

My initial strategy was to try and make it to the end as quick as possible. I found out that the quickest path is definitely not the best path because you end up missing items (you'll have to discover those yourself) that you'll need as you go deeper into the caverns. Nor does it necessarily pay to tarry - there be monsters here.

Because of the random elements involved, you're never sure how things are going to turn out. Combat with monsters can go either way - nothing is a sure thing. Luck rolls can influence the outcome but, fortunately, won't make or break you. The rolls for random encounters and sleeping creatures make you want to tiptoe through the dungeons, but sometimes you simply can't.

Sometimes it appears that the path forward is an impossible one. Fighting Fantasy actually forces you to think things out and to plan. Charging into fights without thought, much like reality, is a sure way of shortening your life.

The one piece of advice that I'll pass on is that not every encounter necessarily leads to violence. If you insist on whipping out the sword at every encounter you'll soon be just another set of bones strewn about the cavern floors. Stay alert and keep your sword handy, but there are other travelers and denizens of the caverns that, like you, are just trying to get by and may end up actually helping you on your quest. If it looks like a monster and smells like a monster, then it probably is one. Any other encounter - you may want to stay that sword arm.

The way through the caverns is treacherous. Our hero, though skilled with the sword and favored with a certain amount of luck, must often depend on his/her wits (in other words, YOUR wits) to survive. Unfortunately, bad decisions are sometimes made and our hero dies a gruesome death. If you are careful about how you save your waypoints, you don't have to start at the beginning of the game when your hero is slain, but will be able to pick up the game at one of the three available saved waypoints. This is a great feature, as crawling through the caverns is very involved and starting over after a death would drastically shorten the playability of the game.

One other tidbit that may or may not matter depending on your personal preference:
The game has a mapping tool as part of the program to help you keep track of where you are, and it's a very good capability. But I found it useful to make my own map and annotations as I went along as well as to keep track of my stats and the items that I was carrying. I know it's not necessary at all as it's all part of the game and the information is readily available, but keeping track of my character myself was something that enhanced the enjoyment of the game. I didn't want to keep having to refer to the Kindle map, as it takes a few seconds for it to load and display. Again, purely a personal preference thing.

In short, Fighting Fantasy is a fun and engaging game. It's well worth the few bucks that it costs, and I think it has a much higher replay value than the normal choose-your-own-adventure. If you enjoy dungeon crawls, you'll have fun with this game.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant conversion of a classic game book February 12, 2011

By Jeremy Reaban

Amazon Verified Purchase

I haven't been interested in Kindle games because I bought the Kindle for books (after all, I have a computer and various gaming devices for games). But this really is a book at its heart, so it's perfect for the Kindle.

Ages ago when I was a kid, both Choose Your Own Adventure books and role-playing games were popular. So someone (Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone) decided to combine the two into "Fighting Fantasy". This was the first title in the series and the conversion done is just excellent.

There have been electronic versions before. But this is notable because it essentially just reproduces the book. The text, the illustrations are all the same. Just instead of going to page X, it does it for you, along with everything else - combat, inventory, your stats.

The map in particular is very nice well done. Combat is just like the original, only it rolls the dice for you. I suspect a lot of people would cheat while playing the original book, sadly that is not an option here. They do give you a different way of rolling dice, instead of just having it roll 2 dice, it will roll 6, showing you the results. You can then pick re-roll, which will roll half of them at random. Then it picks 2 of the 6 dice at random. Basically it's a very convoluted way of giving you a little bit (though not much) control over the dice.

The story itself is pretty much just simple dungeon crawl. You must explore the dungeon of the Warlock of the title and steal his treasure. The stories actually got better in later books, but this is about as basic a dungeon crawl as it gets. Fun, though, really captures the childhood memories well. You can rarely go back, but this is one of those cases where you almost can.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars a fun choose your own adventure/RPG February 11, 2011

By Levi Prinzing

Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a choose your own adventure style book with light role playing elements. At certain points you need to roll dice to fight monsters or use luck to get out of situations. It is set in your basic Tolkien setting with goblins and other such creatures. I loved these book as a kid. Having them in a digital format without the need for dice and paper is quite awesome. I hope they release more books in the Fighting Fantasy series. I will probably be drawn in to buying them all.