|
|
Post by petch on Jan 5, 2022 16:49:22 GMT
Why was that floor puzzle added anyway? Was the book too short without it? Seems very strange messing with someone else's book to that degree. wasn't originally written as a Fighting Fantasy book. Andrew Chapman came across a copy of Warlock of Firetop Mountain unaware it was part of a series and decided to write his own gamebook using his own rules and sent it to Puffin. Puffin's editors then altered it to fit with the other FF books - changing the rules and adding content to get it to 400 sections. The floor puzzle was presumably part of the additions. Blimey. Never knew that. That 'kitchen sink' feel of Space Assassin makes more sense now...lots of interesting ideas but not really working together in a coherent way. |
|
kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,472
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
|
Post by kieran on Jan 5, 2022 17:17:14 GMT
I didn't mind Phantoms Of Fear's Trial of Ghosts - it was short, the difficulty and description were about right (I even liked the picture), and it wasn't even on the true path. Not so much the Space Assassin's floor puzzle, but then that was quite off the beaten track, and more unmemorable than something I'd hate. Was that the one where you sat in a chair, and it turned out to be a to-the-death Star Trek-esque combat versus the machine? What was it? No, that sequence is actually kinda fun. The floor puzzle is an illustration of a tiled floor with numbers on each of the tiles. You have to get from one side of the floor to the other, totalling the numbers of the tiles you cross and then turning to that section. If the entry you turn to makes sense, you live. If not, you die. The Trial of Ghosts is the same idea, but with more variation in routes and six different starting places - one of which it is impossible to solve from. I agree with you the illustration is great though. |
|
|
|
Post by bloodbeasthandler on Jan 5, 2022 19:05:56 GMT
It probably is a stretch, but then again I did have a similar thought linking the two (as mentioned in the Immersion Breakers thread) albeit in reverse. If two of us made the link, maybe it's reasonable to assume the black pearls – eyes – skeletons connection was deliberate. My two pennorth on the pearls for eyes thing is that it comes from Shakespeare or T S Eliot. I don't know if it has been pointed out before but there's a connection here between a drowned man and pearls for eyes. Steve J makes them black pearls to signify malevolence perhaps? Ariel's song from The Tempest. Full fathom five thy father lies.
Of his bones are coral made.
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell[To which Ferdinand says: The ditty does remember my drowned father.] And connected to this... from T S Eliot's the Waste Land Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, 45
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) |
|
|
|
Post by vastariner on Jan 5, 2022 20:46:31 GMT
I had assumed the tile puzzle was based on this...
|
|
|
|
Post by stevendoig on Jan 6, 2022 6:15:09 GMT
Doogy rev
|
|
|
|
Post by petch on Jan 6, 2022 22:45:49 GMT
Nice to see all of SJ2's books getting some love with a respectable amount of votes being received by each, but it is Demons of the Deep that will join Deathtrap Dungeon and Creature of Havoc in the final vote-off.
|
|
|
|
Post by sleepyscholar on Jan 7, 2022 9:37:28 GMT
Why was that floor puzzle added anyway? Was the book too short without it? Seems very strange messing with someone else's book to that degree. wasn't originally written as a Fighting Fantasy book. Andrew Chapman came across a copy of Warlock of Firetop Mountain unaware it was part of a series and decided to write his own gamebook using his own rules and sent it to Puffin. Puffin's editors then altered it to fit with the other FF books - changing the rules and adding content to get it to 400 sections. The floor puzzle was presumably part of the additions. That makes sense. While my original comment was wrong, I'd still be very surprised at stray continuity references being inserted by editors into books by authors with any awareness of the series. |
|
