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Post by hynreck on Nov 6, 2013 14:06:17 GMT
Here's another one of my old reviews, as salvaged by the always reliable Mighty Mudworm. As with the other salvages, I'm going to read this now and rewrite as I see fit. Shouldn't be much, in any case.
Another new one for me, though this one I remember eyeing on many occasions when I was young, being quite enthralled by the amazing cover. It's still amazing today. Les Edwards did one hell of a job. I quite like his somewhat realistic approach to the work, even by Puffin standard of back then.
Inside illos do the job most of the time, but Bob Harvey isn't my favourite artist. I don't know, something about his pen stroke, his little scribbles, the way it looks and feels the same from book to book. Some of his art is pretty good in this, suitably moody, while other are more hit or miss... would it have been hard to look at a picture of a shark and a dolphin and try to copy? That's all subjective, I guess - the artist's vision and such - but such things make me cringe all the same.
I also got a laugh at Steve Jackson's idea of a "Gothic" cathedral in the middle of Atlantis... Oh well. Otherwise, I thought the story worked most of the time. It's engaging enough. It's full of clichés related to the sea but that's to be expected (whenever a book is the first of it's bunch to tread new waters, etc. bad pun intended) and that's kind of what I wanted anyway. I expected sea dragons and mermaids and deep ones and Kraken (though the mythology is quite mixed here) and the author delivers without holding back. All the sea-related encounters you can think of are probably in there, one way or another. So that was quite satisfying.
I also enjoyed that book way more than the author's previous and first entry: Scorpion Swamp. It's much more readable, with one fleshed-out story, instead of this crucial element being thinned in three as in Swamp. Here it is spread and split into multiple endings, with a satisfying grading of achievements. For once (but not the last time) you can reach the end - and live - with different results, giving you a certain sense of achievements while giving you the choice to start over one day if you ever want to try to reach the ultimate ending; the most successful one. The Rings of Kether did something similar, but on a smaller scale with two endings if I'm not mistaken.
In conclusion, not being too fond of Scorpion Swamp, I kind of expected this book to be of a similar tedious drag, but ended up having fun. I guess that's all that matters.
And there it is. I'm still surprised at how short my early reviews were in comparison with the latter ones. I guess for the most of you that would be a good thing; less of me going on mad rant. I mean, there's only so much absurd you can swallow in one day, right?
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Post by a moderator on Nov 6, 2013 14:50:27 GMT
I mean, there's only so much absurd you can swallow in one day, right? You're not even close to the limit. Consider, for example, Per Jorner's review of Sky Lord. Or my review of Ruth Pracy's post- Warlock adventure In Search of the Lost Land. |
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Post by hynreck on Nov 6, 2013 16:57:42 GMT
ahah, good examples. Of course, that was just me trying to put myself down, again, just for the sport of it (what sport?). I've written my fair share of absurdities... I recall, for instance, doing my walkthrough of Creature of Havoc with a DOOM-style approach. Not sure anybody found it funny (or comprehensible) but me but it was, what's the word?, cathartic? Or maybe something less dramatic.
Me fail English? That's unpossible.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Mar 28, 2014 14:47:54 GMT
From TUFFF (I think this was all Oakdweller's)... ***SPOILERS BENEATH THE SURFACE***. This is surely one of the easiest books in the range. There are about ten different references that the reader can end on and survive, each with different grades of success. Although Steve Jackson's previous effort, Scorpion Swamp, had given some grey endings which were neither deaths nor triumphs, Demons of the Deep makes a much bolder plunge into this practice. (I even spent time as a youngster copying that illustration into my sketchpad). The cathedral is impressive, but - out of place in Atlantis or not - I'm not sure that it's really Gothic (ie. medieval western Europe). Byzantine perhaps? My knowledge of architectural history is patchy. The infamous underwater fire that heats the sea hag's cauldron (307) has never bothered me though - it must be magical fire. |
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Mar 28, 2014 14:49:29 GMT
From TUFFF... The infamous underwater fire that heats the sea hag's cauldron (307) I don't think I've ever picked up on that! |
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Mar 28, 2014 14:50:31 GMT
From TUFFF... That part of Geekland I usually try to avoid.  Speak in extremes, it will save you time |
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Mar 28, 2014 14:51:11 GMT
From TUFFF... Someone wrote into Warlock magazine to complain about it. Not quite as ludicrous as the reader who composed a lengthy poem objecting to the inaccurate depiction of a Banshee's nose on the cover of Out of the Pit, but even so. |
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Mar 28, 2014 14:51:53 GMT
From TUFFF... The best for that was another Warlock correspondent who complained that "The Giver Of Sleep" was wrongly shaped - the head should be 90 degrees to the feathers so that it could slip between a humanoid's ribs. |
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Mar 28, 2014 14:55:32 GMT
From TUFFF... I love the "coolness", the "refresh" feeling that this book grant us. It´s original for being underwater and we can feel that what is awesome. It's definitely better than Robot Commando's Steve Jackson book, however it's not so good as the majority of ian livingstone's books. Razaak's Apprentice (I don't know whether any of the other FF authors had their biography done by Robot Commando.) |
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Post by hynreck on Mar 28, 2014 16:28:13 GMT
You're all backward: Robot Commando is the author, here, obviously. Every gamebookers out there with a modicum of self-respect has played the awesome Steve Jackson gamebook!
...you know? The one where you play Steve Jackson!! Or am I confused and thinking of Flash Gordon? Hmm.
It's interesting that a book situated under water is refreshing and cool. That too would seem obvious to me! It's also asphyxiating, but there's a magic trick against that!
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Mar 28, 2014 17:46:17 GMT
I do love Demons of the Deep. My copy is thumbed to bits and I don't care that it's a bit easy - much better that, imo, than those books you can lose against dozens or even hundreds of times without doing anything daft. Without submitting a proper review for the moment, it is the richness of the environment as mentioned above which make it enjoyable - especially all the characters you encounter: Not just the (inevitably) beautiful and charming mermaid (oh for an evil mermaid) and the enthusiastic dolphin, but also the dumbass Sea Ogre, the treacherous Sea Dragon, the fiery (?) Water Elemental, the mischievous gentlefish Cyrano, sunny Water Sprite, avuncular Greylock ...oh and the statue which gets so angry it throws its head at you.  Obviously I love the cover too. The inside illustrations are mostly good apart from the shark/dolphin pic. Sea snakes, statue, mermen and skeletons all look convincing enough. Even the Elemental which left Oakdweller unimpressed looks OK to me. The Sea Dragon would look more threatening if it didn't have duck's feet though. Incidentally, DotD is one of the few books where your character doesn't need to be all that heroic. In many of them the aim is to save people (a girl, a city, the world) from a terrible threat such as the undead; in this our aim is simply revenge, most likely by learning a spot of necromancy and releasing the undead on living people. Oh and making some cash whilst we're at it. I like being heroic, but this makes a nice change. One bit of trivia: Tammy wondered on the old forum why all the women of FF have to be beautiful ("Where are all the ugly chicks?"). This is one of the few books in which the 'ugly chicks' from a human perspective (Princess Deep One, Muck Demon and the Sea Hag) outnumber the lookers (that mermaid). |
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Mar 28, 2014 17:51:30 GMT
You're all backward: Robot Commando is the author, here, obviously. Every gamebookers out there with a modicum of self-respect has played the awesome Steve Jackson gamebook! ...you know? The one where you play Steve Jackson!! Or am I confused and thinking of Flash Gordon? Hmm. It's interesting that a book situated under water is refreshing and cool. That too would seem obvious to me! It's also asphyxiating, but there's a magic trick against that! It’s really taking the cameo thing too far to be honest. I’d probably buy it though if the author was offering it from within a 20 feet tall metal robot. Otherwise I’m holding out for the Snow Witch’s Ian Livingstone book. Yes, not really the ‘deepest’ analysis was it.  I’m glad he didn’t think it was ‘a bit wet’. It’s true that it must be one of the most unpromising openings of any of the books. There must be just a moment when some readers wonder if Para 1 is an Instadeath followed by 399 orphan paragraphs. |
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Post by hynreck on Mar 28, 2014 18:05:26 GMT
The ultimate anti-cheater device! Actually, isn't there one instant death paragraph just like, 2 sections from the beginning?
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Mar 29, 2014 23:21:50 GMT
The ultimate anti-cheater device! Actually, isn't there one instant death paragraph just like, 2 sections from the beginning? You can turn straight to death from the first paragraph by surfacing, yes, although that requires a bit of a brainfart. Apart from anything else, the clue is in the title: The book's not called Shades of the Shallows or Floating with Fear.
It is a quick one. I wonder if anyone's worked out the shortest to longest minimum time by book to achieve either an instant or delayed certain death. |
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Post by hynreck on Mar 31, 2014 18:37:36 GMT
Not to put him on the spot, but I'm sure Greenspine's got some idea.
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Post by a moderator on Mar 31, 2014 20:03:04 GMT
Not for every book, but I have given some thought to the matter, yes. Might start a thread about it, actually. When I've finished with the March challenge.
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Post by vastariner on Apr 19, 2014 9:36:00 GMT
There is a major bug in the book, in that you can miss out on the explanation as to why you are there. And what to do. The first time I played it I was swimming around for ages with no purpose, other than it was obvious black pearls were important. And then had to surface apropos of nothing.
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Post by a moderator on May 24, 2014 11:27:49 GMT
My TUFFF playthrough rises from the depths:
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Post by cyranotheswordfish on Mar 30, 2015 18:16:34 GMT
Well, I get the impression that my opinion on Demons of the Deep very much reflects the majority view of the community - it's not top-notch FF, though it's certainly not bad by any means and, more importantly, it's roaring good fun. The fact that, of all the locations on on the sea floor you could have been dragged down to, you manage to find the few square metres which grant you the ability to breathe underwater is certainly convenient, but not egregiously so. I also thought that the reasoning for you, despite being cast down into the sea to drown by pirates, still possessing a sword and provisions (i.e. the pirates' twisted sense of humour in giving you the means to survive, before chucking you into the water with your hands tied) was well-handled. The structure of the book is largely a mish-mash of random underwater encounters, and it works well. There are plenty of fun and exotic monsters to meet (including my namesake  and the excellently drawn cover monster makes for, to me, a strangely epic encounter (strange in that I found it epic despite the thing having no backstory whatsoever). I was also particularly struck by the idea of the toolfish you can purchase. Overall, this is a fairly easy book. There are many endings, achievable in a well thought-out variety of ways (the final encounter in this book is one of the best designed in the series, in my opinion), though there is one definite 'best' ending, which can be reached without any particularly tough combats (there are difficult battles to be had if you want, though). There are also plenty of opportunities to raise your initial stats (mostly, strangely, your skill - I think you can potentially get it up to 15) - I'd say a few too many for this book, but never mind - or, if you'd prefer, an interesting means to just re-roll them. That said, it still took me 4 tries to complete, the same as Slaves of the Abyss did the other day - clearly my ability to remember the true path let me down here. Anyway, here are the outcomes: 1. Killed by barracudas (yeah, I know) 2. Stranded in the sea with no means to reach the pirates 3. Killed by the Sea Dragon 4. Victory (the best one) Overall, a book worth reading. The RNG has now assigned me 11 - Talisman of Death - I'm getting pretty lucky, so far |
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Post by oakdweller on Mar 30, 2015 22:38:12 GMT
Many of the children in my class are playing FF books at the moment. One of the girls who played Demons of the Deep was so enthralled by the idea of the tool fish that she drew some of her own, including kitchen implements when she couldn't think of any more woodwork tools. She never did get to ride a seahorse though... |
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Apr 3, 2015 23:04:17 GMT
Many of the children in my class are playing FF books at the moment. One of the girls who played Demons of the Deep was so enthralled by the idea of the tool fish that she drew some of her own, including kitchen implements when she couldn't think of any more woodwork tools. She never did get to ride a seahorse though... That's wonderful.  What more can you want from a fantasy book than that it fires up the imagination like that? (Although thinking about it, sawfish, luminescent fish, cookiecutter sharks and (extinct) circular saw sharks are all real things!) The fact that, of all the locations on on the sea floor you could have been dragged down to, you manage to find the few square metres which grant you the ability to breathe underwater is certainly convenient, but not egregiously so. On first reading I found the extreme, trillions-to-one improbability of that outcome jarring - something to be forgotten as quickly as possible so that you can enjoy the rest of the book. But I think we're probably supposed to infer that fate or a god has been involved. Maybe Hydana or someone has tweaked the currents to open up a chance for the honourable sailor to deliver justice to the evil pirates. The mermaid says quite clearly that 'no one comes to Atlantis by accident' after all. |
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sylas
Baron
"Don't just adventure for treasure; treasure the adventure!"
Posts: 1,678 
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy, Way of the Tiger
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Post by sylas on Apr 4, 2015 16:23:20 GMT
I always believed that you were 'dropped' there on purpose. The pirates thought it would be funny to leave your fate in the watery hands of the deep abyssal denizens. Which is why they let you go free but equipped and supplied. It's kind of like marooning someone: you don't kill them but leave them to suffer a death from their environment; a fate that can sometimes be avoided depending on the person's resourcefulness.
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Post by cyranotheswordfish on Apr 5, 2015 20:58:43 GMT
Sylas, that's certainly an interesting thought - not something I'd considered. I always wonder how much more deeply we sometimes read into these things than the author ever did  Oakdweller, that's really, really lovely - and it's great that some children are still reading FF
And, finally, thealmightymudworm - thanks for introducing me to those wonderful fish species |
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Post by vastariner on Apr 22, 2015 7:12:15 GMT
First time I read this, I missed a fairly crucial encounter at the beginning. So spent most of the time swimming round with no idea what I was doing. Bit of a design flaw...
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vagsancho
Knight
Posts: 809
Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Jul 23, 2015 14:33:18 GMT
Fantastic Book. Great Atmosphere. Realistic. One of the best of Steve Jackson. Not so good as House of Hell However.
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Post by hynreck on Jul 23, 2015 14:48:28 GMT
Again, not the same Steve Jackson.
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Post by johnbrawn1972 on May 28, 2017 16:00:12 GMT
This is the second book in line which I am going through a series.
Really great fun. The insta-death from the first paragraph says to me the author has a sense of humour. I love the many gradations of achievement being quasi-GSCE like(years applicable 1986 to 2016? I did them 1986-1988)
I have done a solution which is the inverse of Stormslayer ie my solution is an iron turtle system so I am inverting my response to Champskees. I am not certain my solution is any better because Champskees is so minimalist whereas mine gently aggregates but it does require a few more encounters.
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Post by vastariner on Dec 19, 2021 14:31:10 GMT
OK, I've gone through the opening of this book again...if your second choice is to go to paragraph 16, the rest of the book makes no sense at all.
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Post by CharlesX on Dec 19, 2021 15:07:21 GMT
OK, I've gone through the opening of this book again...if your second choice is to go to paragraph 16, the rest of the book makes no sense at all. Is it too cheeky to ask you to explain the ways in which the rest of the book makes no sense at all, just for those of us who have read the book, but don't have it anymore? |
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Post by The Count on Dec 19, 2021 16:23:09 GMT
OK, I've gone through the opening of this book again...if your second choice is to go to paragraph 16, the rest of the book makes no sense at all. Is it too cheeky to ask you to explain the ways in which the rest of the book makes no sense at all, just for those of us who have read the book, but don't have it anymore? You miss out on a full explanation on why you can survive, and some information on how to get one of the endings. Neither is actually vital to winning or understanding the book though as the first paragraph has you realising you are protected by magic and you can learn the same information later, though when it might not be as useful. |
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I’m glad he didn’t think it was ‘a bit wet’.
and the excellently drawn cover monster makes for, to me, a strangely epic encounter (strange in that I found it epic despite the thing having no backstory whatsoever). I was also particularly struck by the idea of the toolfish you can purchase. 
