The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is an excellent adaptation. Like Sorcery, it never really transcends the cheesy sword-and-board adventure-fantasy of the original adventure gamebook it sources from, but that’s not really the point is it? Hell, the archetypal characters and straightforward questing are part of the charm. Tin Man’s lovingly reshaped Steve Jackson’s work into a relaxing and lightweight RPG, perfect to run once or twice in a night and hope this time you avoid all Zagor’s traps and make it to the end.
I normally put notes in the shortcut title of the game in question, this is the first time those notes adequately cover it.
[ios worthy, no options to backtrack,poorly done combat,bad character interface, shoddy ui.]
Those are just my first impressions, I have read Firetop mountain and it was a decent adventure book, most of the Fighting Fantasy series is excellent.
The game play consists of story driven text, each time you will given a set of choices( as per the book)
there are adventuring options as well as combat, you can accrue items and do combat; in all this is a very good concept.
The format of figurine turn based movement in a board like 3d environment is the best I have seen in any of the books video game counterparts, the preview itself made me want to play this.
I give it points for style, substance and being an awesome idea, and have to subtract a few for the god awful combat
I recommend you buy it if only to keep the format alive, and to promote future development of the other books(city of thieves)
[By the way, why rate a game without saying why, I hate this and I know this is off track, but I haven't had this a day and there is a rating without review...even its a developer, include a description and a why}
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain does enough with modern technology to update the experience and make it both fresh and familiar, which is not an easy task. However, by adhering so closely to the source material and old school conventions, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain will inevitably rub some people the wrong way due to uneven difficulty and some unfair demises that seem harsh when compared to something like the Souls titles, which are renowned for their challenges but also for their fairness in teaching you how to play the game better.
There is a lot here for those of us prone to nostalgia and the core mechanic is well set for future adaptations. If you loved the book series then you will no doubt be charmed by this game… There are lots of different characters to play through with… but you will find the first few rooms a bit repetitive after a while.
It really does have the best of intentions though, and if you’re a mega-fan rather than just someone with fond but not entirely specific memories, I suspect you’ll tap right into the rich vein of Fighting Fantasy love here. Me, I need a little more.
Turning a choose-your-own-adventure book into a video game could have been interesting as a CRPG adaptation with RNG mix-ups of encounters & items, adding replayability. Instead, they just made a text adventure w/ graphics almost verbatim to the book, and added prerolled characters with mini quests/goals and awkward table-top combat. What you get is a tedious grind of replay forcing you to rote memorize choices, so you can eventually know what to do, where to go, and how to win. The reason is a) the book was written by a sadistic duo that decided to arbitrarily reward or punish choices, b) choices often provide no hint or context of outcome. So, you have the illusion of choice/agency, but have no clue how most things play out unless you choose them. "You can go left or right. You went left. You die. You went right, you get treasure." or "There's a guy. You're nice to him, he punished you. You're mean to him. He rewards you." That's it. You're a rat in a maze. You push a button. Sometimes you get a treat, other times a shock. Hardly any indication which until you press. And I'm not joking. I chose to check a niche after killing 2 spiders. Game auto-killed me for it. I decided to be nice to a guy. He hated that, and -5 Luck to me. If it was RNG-based, I could at least blame random chance. But, these are things baked into the book. So, it's 2 sadistic authors that decided to be nice or mean to you on a whim. Characters have traits, like Dexterous (sneak, avoid falls), Keen Eye (spot hidden stuff), Ferocious (intimidation), etc. Choices that would leverage these don't even provide a Fallout-like tag to let you know a choice would leverage a good trait you have. I played the monster hunter that had Ferocious. I came across two drunk goblins with choice to intimidate. Surely this is good. Game goes "you used your Ferociousness to intimidate.. and they don't care, start combat." So, even when I have an advantage, the game spits in your face. From that, I learned not to use that trait going forward, b/c it wasn't reliable. I learned a spell to auto-kill the dragon. Came across him. My dude decided to ignore the spell and try to take the dragon alive, since I hadn't found the spider he was hunting yet. (And NO CHOICE to backtrack to do so!) Ok, I beat him and the warlock. Ending of the game has him go "oh well" and kill the dragon anyways! THE GAME LITERALLY IGNORES YOUR ADVANTAGES in F U fashion, because "reasons". On your next play through you avoid the bad and take advantage of the good, which means using YOUR knowledge your new character SHOULDN'T have in order to cheese the game to try to win. So, you don't feel like an adventurer; you feel like an AI running a blackbox experiment and taking notes of each simulation and using that growing out-of-character knowledge base each time until you get a simulation to win. And, again, that's not b/c it was a book translated into a video game. It's because it was an AWFUL book translated into a video game. The book itself is pre-baked with all this "make a choice and randomly find out how we punish / reward / ignore you!" non-sense. All the game devs did was go "you know what's that's cool!" and translated it faithfully (unfortunately) to a video game version. I guess I should talk about the combat, since that's unique to the experience. The combat is ok. But, here we have TOO MUCH RNG/CHANCE. Enemies can move or attack, yours and enemy actions happen at the same time. Enemies seem to attack on the expectation you WILL move. So, I found if you just hold your ground they'll miss swinging at a square near you while you also swing at an empty square, because YOU CAN'T PASS ON YOUR TURN. Nope, you have to either move or attack. So, you attack an empty square to keep from moving. *rolls eyes* Enemies slide around randomly, gang-up randomly, get to have long range or charging attacks while you're stuck with your paltry moves. Once I went on the offensive by standing my ground and attacking where they might move or clashing with them if they attacked me, I was often victorious. But, then you need to heal. You can't just rest when you want. You have to find benches to rest. Why? Also, why can't I backtrack? I was trying to hunt a spider. Spider caves were near an Ogre. I used a potion of invis to steal from the Ogre, then it forced me to leave the cave without any way to go back and look for the spider cave entrance near him. It all makes no sense. You're railroaded into choices, railroaded along the game. In a real game you'd be able to backtrack, heal on-the-fly.. have more agency to feel in control. But, not here. You're, again, at the mercy and whims of two sadistic authors, and the dev company that decided to make a semi-faithful recreation of their work. Only play this if you're nostalgiac for the book, or are an extreme masochist that likes being randomly punished for no reason.
SummaryThe Warlock of Firetop Mountain is a tabletop adventure come to life! This fantasy solo RPG combines unique, simultaneous turn-based combat with a journey that changes based on each figurine you take into Firetop Mountain! Which hero will you take into Zagor's lair THIS time?