Fighting Fantasy: Deathtrap Dungeon is a game in the same vein as all of those choose your own adventure books that demanded you ‘turn to page 36 to fight the ogre ‘ or ‘flip to page 78 to eat your sandwich instead ‘. Sure there are extra dice rolls and statistics, but the iPhone takes care of all of those RPG elements for you and lets you focus on one thing: enjoying the adventure.
[mouse over an image to see the title, click to see the gallery]
Story
I can ‘t give away too much of the story here, although given the number of ways you can die a horrible, horrible death, I probably couldn ‘t spoil anything for you even if I tried. You play a hero who has volunteered to enter a deadly labyrinth in a quest to come out the other end. The goal is that simple, but there is apparently only one true path through the dungeon, and about a billion dead ends. Playing through this game is part instinct, part luck, and frequent use of the ‘back ‘ button to turn the page backw when you inevitably die somewhere and weren ‘t expecting it.
The choices are always fun, though. There are all sorts of ominous doorways, dark pits, and shiny jewels to examine or simply pass by. Some of them really are just deathtraps, but others can hold amazing little bits of loot that boost your statistics, or provide items of great value that can be used later in the adventure.
Graphics
Hahahahaha ” you ‘re kidding me, right? Aside from Helvetica and the other fonts, you won ‘t be seeing much of anything in this game. However, there are some great full-colour illustrations that you can zoom in on. They start off as black and white drawings, but as you zoom in on them they ‘ll literally bloom into full colour. Slick.
Porting the experience
I ‘m sure some people will miss the experience of actually holding a book in their hands, but I think this Deathtrap Dungeon port has done a great job of bringing the adventure to a digital medium. The game supplies its own eerie little soundtrack and even the sound of pages turning.
Gone are the little irritations like accidentally peeking at page 77 when you ‘re really only supposed to be looking at page 76, or simply forgetting which page to turn back to when you reach a dead-end. The game remembers everything for you, and you can even shake the device to roll the dice.
The only thing that really bugged me were some of the minor puzzle interfaces. Some of the buttons are far too small for the iPhone screen, and I found myself failing some of them simply because of a mis-tap.
Conclusion
I think this app will have a limited appeal on an App Store full of adrenaline-injected $0.99 applications, but for those of you who would like a different pace for your adventure, then Deathtrap Dungeon definitely has a good couple of hours for you to enjoy. I think that Steve Jackson ‘s later games (Munchkin) are probably better and more refined experiences, but Deathtrap Dungeon still provides a lot of thrills and spills in a format that you ‘re probably not used to seeing on the iPhone.
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Fighting Fantasy: Deathtrap Dungeon is available for $2.99 on the App Store.
The app was provided by Big Blue Bubble Inc. for review on Just Another iPhone Blog. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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TAGS: rpg
