Thisisnot,strictlyspeaking,a
videogame adaptation of the book
Deathtrap Dungeon. With a few tiny
tweaks, it is the book Deathtrap
Dungeon, albeit a version that allows
you to pretend that you’re friends
with the actor Eddie
Marsan, who takes care
of the reading and dice
rolls for you.
Perplexingly, there’s no
option for subtitles at
the time of writing, but
these will be added in a
post-launch update.
The use of video does
at least allow for lip reading, aside
from brief sections where an
illustration dominates the screen.
Every word is read to you by
Marsan while he sits in a supremely
comfy-looking chair. Although the
setup initially feels rather weird,
Marsan’s subdued yet nuanced
delivery quickly places you squarely
into a world of danger, death and
avarice. He’s a very good storyteller.
The dungeon of the title is like a
cross between Saw and The Hunger
Games (although the source material
precedes both), but in a D&D style
world. You’ll need to make your way
through a constantly challenging
gauntlet of puzzles, traps and combat
with the promise of wealth at the
end. Success or failure is down to
skill checks, so how you set your
character out at the start is crucial.DO OR DICE
My first run through sees me not so
much Conan The Barbarian as Mr
Bean. I laugh at myself as I seemingly
fall into every trap and mistake
possible, unerringly hitting every
pratfall available. Luckily, as with the
book, where you could flip back to apreviouspageifyoufumbledinto
death, the game saves with pleasing
regularity and allows you to reload
one at any time.
However, these saves are icons on
the map, with no indication of which
scenes they represent,
something that will
cause me plenty of
frustration later.
Battles are simple.
Your Skill value is
pitted against that of
your opponent, plus
the value of two dice
(that is, each fighter
rolls two dice). If the totals are the
same, nobody takes damage; if one
side has a higher skill plus dice
number, the other loses two stamina
points. The random nature of the
dice rolls means that, unless you
begin with extremely high skill,
surviving until the end is difficult,
and even unlikely. Depending on the
path you take and how your luck
holds out for certain events, you can
lose some or all of your stamina-replenishingprovisions,and/or have
yourskillpermanentlyreduced.
Ireachapointwhere an
unavoidableeventkillsme before I
canevenbeginabattle,because I’m
missingmyshield.Istart going back
throughmysaves,andrealise with
dismaythatI’dhavetogo back at
leastanhourtobeconfident of
getting past that point.
I decide to restart the whole
adventure instead, rolling and
rerolling dice until I have maximum
skill and luck, and I’m just one point
shy of pure stamina perfection. I’m
going to play in goddamned God
Mode this time.
It is only at the very end of the
adventure that I discover I must
possess three very specific items, and
that this is the only way to
successfully complete the dungeon. I
have one of the items, and no idea
where the other two are.
A perfect playthrough would take
about two and a half hours. It takes
me seven hours of trudging
backwards and forwards before I
finally exit the dungeon triumphant.
While that doesn’t sound too bad, at
least half that time feels more like
work than play, and I skip a lot of
skippable footage. Plus I eventually
cave and search for a walkthrough for
the original book, because I just want
the whole thing to be over.
The adventure by its very nature
involves an enormous amount of
repetition as you learn where to go
and what to do. But where with a
book you can flip past entire pages
once you’ve read them, the PC
version has lots of little pieces of
narration that you cannot skip,
including quickly annoying battle
commentary. Each hour after the
third adds +2 to your frustration and
+1toyourboredom.NEEDTOKNOW
WHATISIT?
Avaliantbutflawed
attempttobring
FightingFantasyto
yourPC
EXPECTTOPAY
£8
DEVELOPER
Branching Narrative Ltd
PUBLISHER
In-house
REVIEWED ON
GeForce GTX 1650, AMD
Ryzen 5 3550H,
8 GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
No
LINK
branching
narrative.com55
Deathrap Dungeon is
proof that a good book
doesn’t automatically
make for a good
gaming experience.VERDICTEveryword is
read to you by
Marsan as he
sits in a comfy-
looking chairI
f reading sounds like too much hard work to you, then a book that
also has the cheek to ask you to expend valuable snack-fetching
energy on rolling dice would be positively insulting. But fear not!
This adaptation of one of the most successful Fighting Fantasy
books, a series co-created by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, is
perfect for the lazy. It does almost everything for you, including proving
that books and games are most definitely not interchangeable.WRITE AND WRONG
DEATHTRAP DUNGEON throws the book at you,
and it hurts. By Luke Kemp
BAIT AND TRAP
The arc of a playthroughFunTimeThis is brilliant!Sigh.What’s
goingto
happen
next?Wait,Ineed
WHAT?0 30mins 1hr 2hrs 3hrs 4hrsOdd,
butfun.Deathtrap Dungeon
REVIEW