Scorpion Swamp: Fighting Fantasy Gamebook 8 (Puffin Adventure Gamebooks)

I'd say good for a 10 or 11 year-old. Enjoyed reading this again. It's interesting in the questions it poses- do you help someone who might kill you? Who do you serve and to what extent do you obey them? One of two I have rebought for my own son, and my computer-age kid has been enjoying them immensely. This book has a particular mood to it that stuck in my memory. I find that some of the books have more of a flavour than others, which is one of the attractions of them. My primary school classroom was a silent gaming den as almost every boy in the class did their after-school reading using one or other of the books in the series, constantly swapping them amongst ourselves. Consequently, you learn to do them without using dice, and just win every battle. It's still good fun- but you see the series differently, with the focus on story and choices rather than gameplay. This is a good one for mapping, as others have said. I really like the moral part of the story- not necessarily something you expect from these books- with different consequences for doing a quest for the different patrons and contrasting fortunes for how you behave when meeting the various characters- amongst your spell gem options- divided, like the leaders and characters between good, bad and neutral, you have unlikely ones such as "bless" and "friendship" as well as "ice" and "fire", etc. The use of these is interesting- so, friendship or fear will only work on something with the capacity for that feeling, so you have to work that out, some of the gems backfire, making quite a series of options on each encounter: when you meet someone or something you'll normally get a choice of fighting, casting a spell or perhaps talking or running away. If you go for the spell, you'll get a handful of possibilities. Overall, you get rewarded for being kind, but there are also occasions when a character is plain nasty and will simply take advantage of you. I have just tried playing this properly with dice, etc. Good fun, too. Those who say it is terribly easy probably didn't roll the lowest possible scores and manage to roll high scores for every enemy :) It is quite possible to die to something inocuous, believe me!

Okay, I know this usually reviewed as the poor relation in the Fighting Fantasy series, but I am going to stand by my rating above. This may not be a classic like Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Forrest of Doom, or Deathtrap Dungeon. But it is no Starship Traveller either. Yes, the gameplay is frustratingly easy. But it is a shame that the basic concept of free travel based on a map of one's own devising wasn't given a second run as it make for a very different gamebook to its brothers. Even more intriguing, is the idea of having 3 adventures to choose from depending on whether you want to work for good, for evil or good old-fashioned capitalism. This is the sort of mechanic that could have been used by other books in the series to great effect and made replay a much more exciting possibility. As for the prose and illustrations, both are well above par, in case you were wondering.To sum up, I appreciate the flaws with this particular entry but please give it a go and enjoy it as an alternativel to the others. It may be flawed in its execution but it is never dull. And you can't say that of Starship Troopers.

This adventure is a very different and very good fighting Fantasy adventure well recommend A+++++

Interesting, different, aventurously experimental. And it Works! Game mechanics like a computer RPG, but in book form.

'Scorpion Swamp' was the first Fighting Fantasy release not to be written by the series founders Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson (but confusingly written by another Steve Jackson). This probably explains why it has a somewhat different feel to the previous books in the range.It is more Dungeons and Dragons orientated in that your character can choose to complete three different missions within the swamp; a choice of good, neutral or evil. If you serve 'good' then you seek a magical plant within the swamp, the neutral misson involves traversing and mapping a route through the swamp and if you opt for the path of evil you seek several magical amulets. This is a very different approach to what came before. It has the huge advantage that you get three adventures in one book, meaning good value for money. Although this sounds good the reality is that your missions rarely change what happens within the swamp and most of the adventure is quite similar with only the start and end being particularly different.This adventure also utilises magic. It is a reasonable system and works quite well. It's main advantage being that it is different to any use of magic elsewhere in the series because the spells are divided into good, evil and neutral categories. What quest you select decides what spell categories you can choose to use from.'Scorpion Swamp' was also innovative by having a fully open plan adventure (it still probably remains the least linear). The ability to travel entirely which direction you want and to re-visit locations gives the reader a lot of freedom. Sometimes this works very well but often it means you will end up returning to a clearing with some corpses and nothing to do there. That can get a little tedious.Most of your opponents are creatures you might expect to find in a swamp but the author has done a good job of making them as varied as possible. There is no main villain and few of your opponents are that challenging statistically. The only exception being a demon that you might meet outside the swamp if you're very unlucky. There is a good selection of wizards though and they too are either of good,evil or neutral orientation. One of the best bits of the book is that they react differently depending upon your disposition.One of the biggest problems with this book is that it is far too easy. Most readers will probably complete it first time. There is little difference of difficulty between the missions either. It might have been better if one was much harder to provide a bit more game play.It's a reasonable adventure that has tried a few new things, none of which have been completely successful, but have fared okay. It is quite enjoyable to start with but soon becomes very tedious if you complete all three missions. There is a lacking in atmosphere and it doesn't quite draw the reader fully into its world. This is more to dip into rather than become immersed in.

One my favorite FF books back from in the days. Slightly different from most of the other books in the series, as you are allowed to explore more or less as you (remember to make a map). Loved it :-)

As with all these, takes several plays to get all the through, if you don't cheat.