Alone Against the Boredom

Like many great things from the 80s and 90s, gamebooks never really died they just went underground as we all grew up and in theory became adults with disposable income. I have a few of the newer published ones sitting to get started on but I figured that it might be best to go back and remind myself what they used to be like first.

Down Among the Dead Men was one of a series of books released in the 1990s under the brand Virtual Reality. Four of the games have been revised and re-released in the early 2010s under the name Critical IF Books. Available through Amazon in physical or digital format, I went with epub for my Kindle. If I’m honest, I was pretty sceptical going in that it would be a good way to play but more on that later.

Each of the books is a standalone adventure so I picked the pirate themed one because who doesn’t want to pretend to be a pirate on a snowy Scottish afternoon at the turn of the year? Character creation is simple enough with a handful of pre-set characters but also suggestions for how to make your own. Given that there are only 4 skills, 8 inventory slots, everyone starts with 10HP and 10 doubloons, I just went with a pregen. Enter to the fray Swarthy Betty Marsden.

The main story has two quests, one passing on information and one tracking down the villain. The first half of the book is a grind as you escape and try to survive. The second half is the lead up to the climactic boss battle. The gamebook uses codewords to “track” some of the passages you’ve been to as they change situations but other than that it works the same as you remember gamebooks working. Read the paragraph, pick the option you like best and go to that number. No dice rolling here, just reading.

By the time Lady Counterblast came to be, an optimal path had made itself known and whilst there were still routes I didn’t take, I couldn’t be bothered with another arbitrary instant death so she took a couple of minor side steps but went into the ending as prepared as she needed to be.

That’s not to say that it felt like a slog! I thoroughly enjoyed each of the characters and their stories. The pirate tropes were all there with a few interesting side stories that I might go back and revisit in the future (there’s a particular old man on a raft that I’d like to know more about). The main story was fine, nothing special but made better by the surrounding set dressing.

I was a bit surprised that having touted the book as “revised” no effort had been made to alter the horrible “island savages” story beats to make them less 1920’s pulp. It wouldn’t have taken much and I can’t imagine many people would have been deeply offended that you’d altered the original text.

Now to the Kindle question. As a kid when I played through gamebooks, I loved sticking my fingers between various points, cheating and reading ahead a bit to see which path was more fun. Playing on Kindle you can go back a forth between the various hyperlinked sections but honestly it felt more natural to just pick a path and go where it lead. I didn’t really feel hampered by the ebook format and other than one wrongly linked paragraph had no issues. Given how much cheaper the books are on Kindle (justifying picking up more like any shiny syndrome gamer!), I’d happily play more like this in the future.

There are three others in this series that have been released and I’ll keep them in mind but as it is, I have several others (including some by the same author) to go through first. Next up for gamebooks I’ll start on a running series that I have the first two of but didn’t actually start. Honestly, my bookcases of shame puts my plastic heap of shame firmly in it’s place. Maybe I should start a journey to clear my unread books… madness!