I saw on the blog that GA1 was nominated in the category for "best eBook app." Those who'd like to vote for it can go here. Congrats on the nomination and good luck winning it Tin Man Games!
Thanks for the promotion medianotzu and thanks for the vote spyky! We're in a pretty hard section, up against some of the big hitters in the eBook reading world so would really appreciate as many votes as possible!
I love Stanza, but it was an easy choice for me to vote for GA 1. If my favorite comic reader had made it into the contest then I might have had some trouble choosing though!
why 2nd, 3rd and 5th books are reduced to 2.99 to celebrade GDC and 1st one is not? that's not fair, I'd like to try this series from the first one ))
You don't actually have to play the gamebooks in order. They can be played independent of each other. Hope you enjoy them!
I was a big fan of the Fighting Fantasy series way back when and had a rather sizable collection of the books (that have all since gone wandering). I noticed this particular series a while ago but didn't pick them up as the gamebooks were (in app store terms only, really) relatively expensive. When I saw that book number five was due out around now, I held off on buying any of the series because I assumed there would probably be a sale, and that seems to have paid off, as I'm about to grab the three that have been reduced in price. However, is there any particular reason the first and fourth books aren't on sale with the others? I'd be more inclined to pick up the whole set now if they were, rather than wait for a potential sale later on for the last two. That said, to be honest I thought that maybe only the first book would go on sale in celebration of the new release, possibly at half price, so it's already a good start. ^_^
@ Appletini Firstly, thanks for getting the three gamebooks and supporting us - hope you enjoy them! As to your question. The reason GA1 and GA4 are not on sale is because basically we've had them on sale before and not that long ago. As our games are quite niche, reduced prices do not actually significantly increase sales for us to make it a regular thing. We reduce price really as a way to promote new books but also to let our core fans find a bargain and fill in their collection. Ultimately though we only make our money to keep producing more books by making sales at the $4.99 pricepoint - what we call the longtail. Unlike FF for example we are not re-printing old 20 year old material and have to write and produce the artwork from scratch which takes a lot of time and can be quite expensive. Hope that gives you a little more insight into our decisions!
Great game.... but a bit frustrating no? I already made it like at least 1/3 across the book with no problems at all (was pretty lucky with dice rolls), then I made one wrong choice and my character got attacked by a shark... while carrying the plague AND with a -6 to fitness due to the plague. Oh and guess what? The shark is ridiculously strong and does like 20 damage per hit. There's no way I could have survived that battle even by using up all my healing items. Now my entire progress is erased and I have to start from the beginning. This is more frustrating than "challenging" and I'm still trying to think of a reason to start the game again. That part is very poorly designed in my opinion, way too much reliance on dice rolls. First you get attacked by TWO bandits, then you automatically contract the plague (-4 fitness) even if you win the fight, then immediately you get attacked by a ridiculously strong shark (-2 fitness since in water for a total of -6).
@November's Chopin Have you been using the bookmarks? They act like save points so you can always go back to that point. If you're using the iPhone or iPod Touch version bookmarks can be found in the inventory.
I didn't use any because I was overly lucky in all the battles and choices I made. Suffered minimal damage, did all the extra things to get the goodies. Does anyone know how to unlock the "cheat mode"? I completed the game and got the "ultimate ending" already. Great story with interesting twist at the end... though I felt the ending was too abrupt and short. Lots of items were unused and unexplained.
If you finished the game in Classic mode, it should have unlocked the cheat mode; it won't if you finish it on a different mode. I actually found the final battle and conclusion pretty lengthy and well done for a gamebook - too many of the old traditional books ended with you walking into a room, and having a straightforward fight followed by a variation of "You've killed the bad guy. Well done!" as a reward. As for the items, I suggest going back through the game and making different choices. Unlike hugely linear mobile adventure games such as Surviving High School or Cause of Death, and even a lot of the old Fighting Fantasy books, the GA stories can play out markedly different depending on the choices you make; it is possible to skip or encounter huge amounts of content based on what you do (like being thrown in prison or visiting the dead noble's family in the starting city). There also really aren't any of the unfair "50/50" choices that end in your instant death just because you went left instead of right, or opened the wrong one out of two identical doors. If you have items that are unused or unexplained, it is simply because they had no part to play in the path you ended up taking; the game is pretty good about not just throwing red herrings at you. Hell, the first time I ran into the monk who can identify items for you, I had neither of the things he could check, and no idea where they were to be found, and I thought I had done quite well up until that point (the second time, I'd still only found the ring). You'll also find that difficult fights or traps can often be avoided by paying attention to information provided throughout the adventure (such as the location of the bandits, or the jackal in the mountains). And yes, I went ahead and bought this book and the fourth one for full price after grabbing the other three on sale. >_<
Well there was at least one dead end that I discovered, simply getting a game over from a "wrong" choice, right at the beginning of the game. I'm pretty sure there are others as well. The only difference between the three difficulties is the Fitness/Vitality stats... then again what's the difference if I simply keep restarting until I get the desired rolls? I chose novice because I don't have the patience to restart the book hundreds of times to get all six's, but the story plays out the same way anyways. Besides the bookmarks I don't see the point of making different difficulties? Starting on classic might be too much of a hassle if I have to keep restarting the book at the beginning,... so I might just mod the vitality into 48 and fitness into 12 or something and avoid the dice rolls.
This is game is ridiculously hard. I've tried about 30 times now, from the point at which you *SPOILERS* defeat the first guard in Eltane's castle. I've gotten the best armor and weapon, headed into his secret room, only to be defeated by the Captain Guard or whatever his name is, due to having to fight three battles in a row with no way of resorting my vitality apart from one healing herb in the same room you find the lockpick in. On another occasion, I made it back to Orlandes and after laying down my weapons, was immediately executed. I see literally no way to finish to realistically get the best ending now. Limited bookmarks for the easiest mode was a seriously bad design choice IMO because as a first time player of games like this I assumed I would be able to enjoy the story from beginning to end with relatively little frustration and a small degree of challenge but that hasn't proven to be the case. Playing the same section over and over again, in order to make one different choice only to be immediately pushed with death yet again is not fun. I was really engrossed in the game up until I hit this brickwall this evening. If all the other books in the series are this unforgiving on the easiest difficulty (maybe I'm just terrible at the game, although I can't see how that could be entirely responsible for the problems I've having with it seeing how much of it is based on luck), I may have to pass on them.
For the love of god, someone please tell me how to *SPOILERS* get the name of the wizard in Eltane's room? It's the only way out this mess I can see. I'm losing my mind here trying to finish this damn game! Oh and in regard's to my post above, combat has gotten a lot easier since I realized you can shake the dice after they land to have another chance at getting better numbers. *facepalm* Edit: Christ, I don't see how anyone could get the best ending without a walk through. How am I supposed to know I need object x or object y even after defeating the main bad guy? . Spent about three hours tonight, replaying certain sections in order to reach a situation where I could face Eltane, I beat him and then I get thrown out on my ass with a shitty ending. Ridiculous. Can someone tell me if the other books in the series are unreasonable as this one?
I was actually going to mention this after your first post, as it's pretty much a necessity later on, especially when you're up against 5 or 6-dice attacks; being able to do a single re-roll also makes passing fitness checks a bit less of a gamble, if still not guaranteed. As you can only roll the dice a single extra time per round/check, and you can easily end up with worse dice than you had, it's not hugely overpowered, while having the benefit of making combat feel less frustratingly random. That said, I just replayed AiO (taking some new paths) because it didn't seem that difficult when I played through it originally (although I didn't make it all the way the first time - the first time I hadn't found the clues I needed, and fled Orlandes right at the start, and the second time I was killed by a piece of bridge hitting me in the head while swimming). This time (always playing Classic) I had 11 fitness, 35 vitality, and didn't take a single point of damage during the entire adventure. Using the re-roll is pretty much the way to go, as is using fitness constantly during combat (a successful fitness check in combat means that a single six beats any enemy roll for that round, even if they manage to throw six sixes), as well as exploring and picking up as much as you can. By the end you should have the best weapon and armour, six healing items, and enough gold to pay off the wizard if you didn't find out his name; you need to go through the main gate of the castle to discover his name, incidentally, as opposed to entering through the cave. The GA series, unlike the FF books, is pretty good about not throwing instant death scenarios at you without warning; there are a lot of fitness checks that can punish you if you fail them, but if you come up against a dead end, it's usually because you did something stupid that you could have avoided if you were paying attention, or because you didn't find - or ignored - important information. That said, in the third book (Slaves of Rema) there is a particularly nasty "gate" near the end of the book, which leads to instant death if you haven't taken certain actions earlier in the game. The game starts with the choice of three opponents in an arena, and defeating an opponent puts you on an invisible "path" (two based on items you collect, and one based on your choices during the fight). Being deliberately vague here, certain key actions and items in the story form "combinations" with those opponents, and if you don't have the right combination of events/items, you're dead. For example, if you defeat arena opponent C, but then proceed with path A's key choices instead of path C's, you simply won't be able to get past the roadblock. It's pretty easy to deduce which things should go with what when you've tried a couple of different paths, however, based on what certain pages ask if you've found or done. On the plus side, there are a huge variety of different ways to get through the third book, including two completely different second acts depending on whether or not you've become a spellcaster. This does make the overall story shorter than AiO, but gives it more replay value.
Honestly, while you could conceivably miss the item you need at the end of the game, the game actually puts you in the exact places you need to be to be able to use it (first, finding the item, and second, identifying it). If you ended up without the item, it's because you simply headed onwards and didn't explore when you were given the option to; the game doesn't unfairly skip past those points without giving you the chance to find it. Unlike some games, in AiO you won't miss a game-critical item just because you went east instead of west (other than the clues at the start, that is, but you have to put in some concerted effort to miss out on or screw up with those), but you certainly will miss them if you don't explore. Without actually giving anything away, the first place you need to look is underground, and the second is in the grasslands.
stuck in a dice game So im in the underground crypts ive crossed a river...now ivr met the hooded figure who insists on a dice game...where i can only pickone two or three dice... Can i win this game with the hooded figure...??? What combination would let me win...??? Thanku
