Fighting Fantasy: House of Hell

I was delighted to hear about the reprint of the Fighting Fantasy books and have since started collecting all of them again. House of Hell was one of my favourites in particular and still gives me the creeps to this day! Don't let the idea of new illustrations put you off, they're still great books!

Love it! Yes the artwork is new, but the rest is as good as I remember it. If you like/liked the Fighting Fantasy (or any other choose your own adventure books), just buy it :)

Loved these books as a child and they are even better now with the updated illustrations. Great stories and easy to follow instructions.

It was really good

The original FF books were great. I grew up reading themHowever, the new editions, leave a lot to desire. At least, they are being printed again and for that I am grateful.If only the new illustrations were better...

I am so happy that the classic Fighting Fantasy are getting a reprint :-)

House of Hell by Steve Jackson (UK) is perhaps the only Fighting Fantasy gamebook set on what is probably our Earth, rather than the world of Allansia, Orb or one of the others not explicitly named in the series of books. This is a refreshing change, as being set in our own world adds to the tension as you explore a mansion filled with terrifying creatures and events.Most Fighting Fantasy readers, including myself, have fond memories of House of Hell, though we remember it being difficult to complete; almost impossibly so (it isn't impossible though; with careful mind-mapping, I was able to plot the best route through the adventure, and it is entirely achievable). The structure of the house is smart, one of Steve Jackson's best map designs, though the inability to turn around and head back in certain directions does place some restrictions upon you that may lead you into premature failure. House of Hell also has one of the most satisfying endings of any Fighting Fantasy gamebook, being in part due to conquering the book's difficulty, but also just because the writing feels satisfying (which isn't always the case with the endings included in other books in this series).House of Hell isn't perfect, sadly; not by a long shot. There are some genuine annoyances and pet hates of mine present:* There are times after you explore a room and wish to exit that the book will ask you which direction you came in to enter the room. While this is to determine which way you will naturally exit, it's a bit silly on two counts; 1) the reader isn't always likely to remember which exact direction (left or right) they came from because the descriptions on the upper floor of the mansion can get confusing as the paths turn around on themselves, and 2) there's no logical reason not to allow the reader to leave out of one door or the other by choice, rather than forcing them along a linear path.* You are forced to fight a battle at one point, but upon winning it, you then die in the very next section. Forcing a reader to perform a combat engagement and then killing them immediately afterwards could be seen by some as annoying and unnecessary.* You are asked to subtract stamina points or other attribute points, only to be killed immediately on the very next section. Perhaps it's just because I'm poor, but I don't really want to waste my pencil changing a stat that I'm just going to have to redo seconds later because my character was killed.* There is a statistic in the book called 'Fear' which will rise when your character experiences certain terrifying things. This is a neat mechanic, but I discovered upon mapping the book out that there is a specific minimum fear amount you need to finish the book, even if you take the best and safest route through. This means if you roll poorly for Fear when you roll up your character, you are basically dead before you have even started.* I spotted instances of glaringly-obvious 'padding' in the book, which is when the author doesn't quite have enough material to make the full 400 sections usually featured in a Fighting Fantasy book. For example, at one stage, you hear somebody approaching the room you are in and are asked if you wish to hide beside the door or do something else. If you choose to do something else, you are asked again if you want to hide beside the door (which sends you to the exact same section number as the previous option for hiding beside the door) or hide somewhere else in the room. This is basically a duplicate of the last option and appears to have been written this way to waste a section number deliberately. It doesn't ruin the book, and sometimes padding is necessary to round out the numbers in a gamebook, but there are a couple of other areas which could have benefited from that spare section number.* To defeat the final enemy you need to find a specific magical weapon. The book then tells you the weapon adds 6 SKILL during the final battle, but as you probably have a weapon by that stage which already has you at your initial/maximum SKILL, it means you get no benefit from this supposedly powerful item. I believe it may have been the author's intention that the weapon adds 6 to ATTACK STRENGTH instead, which would make more sense and make the weapon less useless in the final battle.Despite the shortcomings I have rumbled about above, this is still a fantastic (and classic) Fighting Fantasy book with a unique theme and setting. If you collect gamebooks, make sure this one is in your collection, especially if you like a difficult challenge!