I loved these books as a kid, probably had the first 10-15 of them, probably more, and I'd always hang out at the bookstore and would check if any new ones came out. They were far, far better than "Choose Your Own Adventure", which I also loved, but FF was probably, I guess, the next level. I loved FF, and I especially loved the Lone Wolf books (different author/publisher), if anybody remembers those. I'd actually put Lone Wolf at a notch above FF. Still, FF has a special place in my heart. I got my daughter into them a couple years back, and she totally loved them, retelling me all the same stories I remember. Brought a tear to my eye.
I was a little confused about this because you can order FF books on Amazon today, but it looks like this new reprint will be a larger-size paperback format with the original artwork, which is awesome, because I did notice that the FF books I bought for my daughter had all new artwork, which was kind of disappointing, however the stories are pretty much the same as I remember. My favorites are of course, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, then Deathtrap Dungeon and The Citadel of Chaos. Steve Jackson, I believe, also authored the Sorcery! series, which is another of my all-time favorites.
If you haven't read and/or prefer an app format, the "Sorcery!" series was made into a wonderful set of games by Inkle in 2013: https://www.inklestudios.com/sorcery/
I strongly recommend the Sorcery games for anyone looking for any kind of rich gameplay experience on mobile.
In an ecosystem that's been almost entirely consumed by upgrade treadmills and habit loops, it's a perfect counterpoint that is about storytelling and gameplay that's all about emphasizing craft.
The map art reminds me of that used in Elden Ring, I wonder if that's been influenced by this. I wouldn't be surprised as the director of the Souls games was an avid adventure book player.
From what I’ve heard, his story is rather interesting. He had books with knights and medieval imagery, but couldn’t read or speak English, so he’d make up his own stories.
I think that’s part of why the Souls games (and later Elden Ring) have such a fascinating fusion of East and West. Isolation necessitates imagination.
For people who like LW for more than just nostalgia, Joe Dever's son is republishing all the LW books in a unified format, including a greatly expanded edition of Flight From the Dark using Joe's notes. They're also pursuing new projects, last year they published three new books set in the same world and a (non-game) anthology, and some other games through various partners.
I would get these from the library one after the other, I had to use pencil in the character sheet so I could rub everything out before I returned it. I remember keeping bookmark-fingers in as many pages as I could in case I had taken a wrong turn of inevitable death. Good times.
A friend and me played these books together. We printed our own character sheets so that we wouldn't have to write into the book.
As we already had this book-independent character sheet, we decided to re-use it for the next book, carrying over all inventory and stats from the previous book, amassing a huge hoard of useful items during our journey across books.
One could call this 'cheating' - but it made the game much more fun and creative for us. What I hated about the books was that you could take a wrong turn at the beginning of the book, only to realize this at the end.
"If you have a small silver key and a rope, continue on page 33, if not: you die.". Of course we got the key - we collected a few of them in previous books. And the whip we got in another book should work as a rope, too.
I loved the Lone Wolf books so much and still remember the randomness grid in the back that I would use when I didn’t have dice in class. A lot of 7th grade loneliness was helped by these books.
I found a few of these recently at a Half Priced Books. Had to get them for my kids for nostalgia reasons. Unfortunately the ungrateful shits won't put their manga down long enough to experience the greatness of Lone Wolf.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_(gamebooks) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson%27s_Sorcery!