Game review 53: Fighting Fantasy: Forest of Doom
Trying out the five-finger bookmark once again for this return trip to Allansia
The perils of a misspent youth. Fighting Fantasy helped lots of bored 80s and 90s kids become legends on their own bookshelves.
With its dice-rolling battles, map making and choose your own adventure decisions to make, the series was board games in book form.
And of course we all cheated; I refuse to believe any adolescent way back when didn’t deploy the five-finger bookmark technique to retrace steps in the all-too-often event of an instant death paragraph. And no one, I’m sure, didn’t do an instant re-roll if their character scored a weakling 7 skill score.
Anyway, computers happened and the series wrapped up in the mid-90s after 59 books in the main series and several offshoots.
But the adventure didn’t end there; those teenage players have had kids of their own and subsequent new stories have been published since 2005, thanks in large part to them foisting their collections on to a new generation.
And I, of course, am one such dad.
The question is, is a dice-based adventure set in some medieval world, an enticing enough prospect to keep my daughter happy and entertained.
But which book to choose? Which one would bring out the swashbuckler in a younger kid. I thought about Freeway Fighter, but thought that, while the plot - a terrifying virus is unleashed killing untold millions and leaving the rest to survive in a Mad Max dystopia was, while topical, a little on the nose.
And I thought about starting right from the beginning with book no.1, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. But then I thought about the hellish maze toward the end of the book, and realised we might never complete it.
So I went to the man himself, FF author and co-creator Ian Livingstone to see which book of his own he’d suggest as a good beginner’s guide to Allansia, the Fighting Fantasy world, for very young children.
His response? Forest of Doom. So let’s enter the woods. It’s only my continuing sanity on the line, while trying to keep my tiny child distracted from crying because a woodlouse in the garden won’t come out of the garden and say hello to her, Ian. No pressure.
The pictures may only be in black and white and my daughter hasn’t been reading for long, but, somewhat surprisingly, E takes to the action. I read the story to her, and she gets to decide what she wants to do.
So decision making is a huge bonus of these books when getting kids involved. It is their own adventure and, in real life, they don’t often get to be the ones to decide what’s going on.
Her approval is also helped by the fact in battles I roll for the monster. As the monsters don’t often have the greater skill of your own adventurer, this means she gets to beat Dad into the bargain.
Forest of Doom captures E’s attention for more than an hour. Good choice, Mr Livingstone.
Game facts and stats
Year published
1983
Publisher
Puffin (but Scholastic is the current rights holder)
Author
Ian Livingstone
Player count
1
E’s review
What do you like best about the game?
“When we do fight those little monsters”
Is it difficult?
“No, not at all”
Marks out of 10
“14”
My review
Advised age range
7+
Set-up time
Under a minute. Unless you’ve misplaced the dice. In which case, up to an hour
Price
Depending on how rare the book is, between £1–£175. Forest of Doom will definitely be veering toward the first figure.
Practicality
The book is small and compact. Some gamebooks were even printed with a set of dice on each page, in case the reader didn’t have any to hand
Fun for parents
Absolutely. Much more so if you’re passing on the hobby to a new generation.