House of Hell (Standalone)

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House of Hell is another video game adaptation of the popular Fighting Fantasy book series, and one that I used to play when I was younger. I actually remember this particular one for two reasons. Instead of a more traditional fantasy/medieval setting, it’s a horror story where you’re trying to escape from a haunted mansion. And it’s hard. It doesn’t have a lot of combat, since it’s more focused on exploring the mansion, but there are a lot of traps, and a Fear stat that can’t get too high. You can’t deviate too much from the correct path if you want to succeed. Being a video game, it tracks your stats and items, and it rolls the dice for you. A map of the mansion would’ve been nice, but it’s absent. It’s not as fun as playing with the physical book, but it gets the job done. There’s also artwork and achievements to unlock that require you to explore the mansion, even if it means failing. I think this is one of the better Fighting Fantasy titles available, so I can recommend it on sale.

House of Hell was the only gamebook in the original series which didn't have a fancy hero as main character: no dashing swashbuckler, hardboiled detective or daring astronaut, but rather a non-descript Average Joe driving his car during a storm in the british countryside. After an accident he finds himself lost, soaked and looking for shelter at a nearby mansion, owned by Lord Kelnor, Earl of Drumer (who coincidentally has more than a passing resemblance with Christopher Lee). Unebknown to him, the noble man is the leader of a satanic sect, too. That's where things get ugly for our hapless traveler. This book uses the same mechanics of the other FF, with the addition of a Fear score (1d6+6): every scary event grants the player an amount o Fear point and when they exceed the original value, he dies of fright. That's probably the weakest part of the book, because it follows a "true path", where the player inevitably has to gather a few points along the way; long story short, the book cannot be finished with a starting score of 7 or 8 (which means that roughly 33% of they playthroughs are doomed since the beginning). Apart from this flaw, the book is a masterpiece of atmosphere…

[b]House of Hell is unique experience even among FF gamebooks, but however unique it is, it doesn't cancel the wacky realisation. [/b] FF series is known for their random fighting system, where you have to re-roll to gain considerable stats and for creator's love for incalculable death sentences('Oh man, you died by boulder dropping out of nowhere on your head, so unlucky!'), however even so series has some gems(ironically, they are almost never to be written by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone themselves). Which is, clearly, not related to this book, because authors decided to go full Lovecraft and added Fear mechanic. And this is the worst decision they could make. Usually in gamebooks one wrong choice can screw you and you will learn from it. It doesn't work with Fear because Fear is accumulative stat you cannot skip. Funny thing, your MC sh*ts their pants almost all the time so game mechanically punishes your desire to explore and find new ways to complete it, which makes this gamebook not just 'linear', but straight up unbearable. Permadeath parametre is not fun. It is the sign of bad design, preventing player from making different decisions. And I don't want to say this gam…

There is a bug here that is almost game-breaking, and it's not in UK-Steve Jackson's gamebook but in the unbelievably sloppy implementation: Depending on what font size and window size you use (I used the minimum font size and one above it, same problem), the hit spots of the choices don't match up. So what happens frequently is that you end up with exactly the choice you didn't pick, with no way back. The only workaround is to carefully approach the awfully designed button of your choice from the side that is furthest from the invisibly overlapping other buttons and press and hold the mouse instead of clicking, so you can move away and release in case the wrong one is highlighted. Astounding really, that when the whole gameplay consists of a single, simple mouse click, someone can f that up. Diabolic, really.

A little bit different than the usual stories, but not that much when it comes to the "gameplay". Great art as always, although this time coloring them took away some of the charm of gritty b&w art style. Lack of the map is annoying for completionist reruns, even some random scribbles on a crumpled page or piece of cloth would be fine