I bought the Escape the Dark Castle game shortly before the lockdowns, as it promised an easy to learn and quick to set up game that can be played both solo or in a team. The price tag was convincing, and the cover art faintly reminded me of the classic Fighting Fantasy artworks, so I bought it without hesitation.
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Summer Haul Report 2020 – aka The Treasure Hunt Goes On
This quarter has been busier than expected, practically I haven’t painted anything but have luckily had very good RPG (Cepheus Light and D&D) and wargame (Stargrunt II) sessions. COVID-19 is still around, so there was no wargame show to report about and the games I played were online, not face to face. But there is something reassuring about buying hobby stuff. This time it wasn’t panic buying like it was in the spring, but a more methodical one.
Let’s start with Patrick Todoroff’s Hardwired rulebook and The Tsim Sha Tsui expansion: these are both short, fifty-page black and white booklets with a bit of background, complete rules, list of equipment and a handful of missions for cybernetically enhanced agents. Sounds familiar? There’s a good reason: Syndicate, the old PC game was one of the inspirations for this game. The subtitle “Cyberpunk espionage and mayhem” refers to a cyberpunk setting, but it’s very adaptable – you can swap the agents with a black ops team, a commando unit, a squad of mercenaries, a recon or a SWAT team and swap the opposing security forces to insurgents, alien bugs, zombies, rogue AI robots, vicious gangs, or your favourite villains.
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Assassins of Allansia: Hungarian Edition – Review and Comparison with the Original
I received a copy of the Hungarian edition of Assassins of Allansia from Chameleon Comix for review a few months ago. It is a very neatly designed book, with the look and feel of the classic softcover Fighting Fantasy series, using the same artwork that’s visible on the hardcover edition. It immediately triggered a wave of nostalgia in me.
But why did it took me so long to write this review? Reading Fighting Fantasy books was one of my treasured childhood memories and I got paralyzed, and started wondering if I still enjoy them as much as I used to. Are they still as good as I remember they used to be? Does this book meet the standards that I expect, or is it just exploiting nostalgia? Luckily, I had no reason to worry: twentyfive years have passed since I last read an FF book and this was just as immersive and gripping as I remembered.
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