For many years, you could set your watch to the output of Tin Man Games on the App Store. Their mission was to deliver gamebooks in the classic style, in the form of both real classics like the Fighting Fantasy books and entirely new works done in a similar style like the Gamebook Adventures series. In the last couple of years, the developer has tried their hand at experimentation, resulting in the lush board game-style adaptation of Warlock of Firetop Mountain ($7.99), the highly-entertaining Miss Fisher ($3.99) visual adventure, and the subscription-based branching story host Choices That Matter (Free). Well, it’s all come back around again, as their newest project is none other than Fighting Fantasy Classics.
So what’s new about that, you ask? Didn’t they put out some of the classic Fighting Fantasy books before, Shaun? You even said, right up there in the second sentence! Okay, yes, but this is different, my inquisitive and slightly cheeky friend. Fighting Fantasy Classics is going to be your one-stop location for many of your favorites from the banner series of RPG adventures. It’s basically a library app that will host books from the series, done up in an upgraded version of the trusty Gamebook Adventures engine. The initial plan is to release additional books to the app over the course of the 18 months following launch, with new arrivals coming regularly. These will include some Fighting Fantasy books that had already been released on iOS earlier, along with some brand-new (and highly-requested) revivals like Deathtrap Dungeon, Sword of the Samurai, and Creature of Havoc.
The Fighting Fantasy Classics app will arrive for iOS and Android in February of 2018, with a PC and Mac released planned for a few months after. We can expect Tin Man’s usual quality and attention to detail, along with some nifty new extras like music options, additional dice designs, and page skins. There’s no word on the release schedule yet, but I think we can at least expect a more gamebook-y version of Warlock of Firetop Mountain to be near the front of the charge. We’ll keep you posted as we get more information.