BQ01: Caves of Fury

Written by Steven Thraves - Illustrated by Terry Oakes

I though Shadows of Doom (another book by Thraves) had a stupid story but this one is even worse. An old man whos lost multiple sons to Cragcliff, the evil mastermind who rules over the Caves of Fury, wants you to steal some treasure so he can cause a minor inconvenience. He doesn't want you to seek out revenge in a blood-for-blood type scenario or explore the cave system to see if any of his boys are still alive, maybe they're being held captive over there.

No, just nick a bit of treasure and be on your way.

The writing itself is incredibly well done, lots of detailed descriptive passages and a great dungeon layout. There are some really interesting character interactions and the puzzles you'll find are pretty fun to solve if a little cryptic.

You'll come across various items in the caves which let you use these accessories that come with the book to help you pass. They feel great to usee, I don't normally care for extra peripherals in gamebooks but these were actually useful. 

Combat is handled with 2 custom dice where you have to roll a specific combo of a blue sword and a red enemy face to attack and inflict a damage point. If you happen to roll a blue warrior face and a red sword then you'll take damage and have to flee, missing out on any treasure that this encounter was hiding. Every other combination is counted as a miss, which is incredibly frustrating as these encounters are so unbalanced. Often you're required to get 9 hits in a row while trying not to get hurt. 

(*SPOILER ALERT*) Just like in shadows of doom, all of this is for nothing at the end. You just get another simple passage that says "Try again if you want to get more treasure". I really wish we would just get a few lines to finish off the story. It's very anticlimactic and considering the difficulty of the combat, it would be nice to hear that it all meant something in the end.

It's certainly better than shadows of doom, I love the way real items are used alongside the book to help you solve puzzles and work out riddles. They actually feel like you've found these items in the game, a kind of +1 for immersion. Sadly the unbalanced and somewhat unfair combat just makes it almost impossible to complete and if you get lucky and manage to slog your way through to the end, all you get is another shoddy half-assed "Well Done Mate" and that's really not cool.

Reviewed by Harrison Marchant