Thoughts by Mr Creosote (30 Nov 2024) – Gamebook
Weird opening alert: the player’s alter ego, no less than a king, is summoned by a magician, bossed around and sent on a mission to stop an evil sorceress trying to take over the world with the help golems animated by the eponymous masks. Alone. No army, not even some magic items as common in other books of this kind. After this seemingly lazy, borderline nonsensical beginning, expectations for the rest of the book are at the bottom of the barrel. Just when pressing on nevertheless, turns out it wasn’t lazy nonsense, but an intentional, almost deconstructionist subversion of tropes established by the same series…
The plot idea is fairly strong. Robin Waterfield’s evocative writing makes for good individual scenes throughout. And yet, Masks of Mayhem is not a good book, for not just one, but two reasons.
Beyond the idea of pulling the rug from under the player’s feet at the last moment, the plotting leaves a lot to be desired. The many small vignettes which make this overall quite long book don’t contribute much to what should be the central theme. Until all of a sudden, at the very end, there is the big reveal which puts the mission into a new, much more interesting light. Too little, too late applies. Plus, the book even expects to have its player to have found the secret out by themselves, which given the broad non-existence of hints throughout, is pretty much an impossibility. Wrapping it into a number decryption puzzle which due to its high ambiguity is more than awkward.
On top, what lies between may be well written on the small scale, but gameplay-wise, it is not particularly entertaining. No, strike that. It is an exercise in pure frustration. Instant death choices are everywhere. In one sequence, there are so many luck rolls to succeed in back to back it’s hard to imagine how any character is supposed to succeed. The first sub-quest the player is sent on is even rewarded by a magic item which then turns out practically useless. Hard to imagine that this is by mistake. Rather, the design is just intentionally nasty.
Not badly planned. There are plenty of non-explicit number hints inside which, with the exception of the crucial final one, work solidly. The sequence of events may not be particularly logical from a plotting point of view, but there are no breaks, no bad game states… it’s all meticulously planned out, intricately laid out to provide the maximum challenge. A challenge, however, which is overall unreasonable at all times.
In that regard, it even surpasses the cruel Trial of Champions. It is less bland, feels less bored with itself. Some ambition is present. And yet, it subscribes to that difficulty paradigm which, one must assume by now, was haunting the Games Workshop offices by this time. Toned down, this one would be serviceable. Not a big success due to the aforementioned storytelling imperfections which are also present, but it would have been memorable for positive reasons overall. As it is, getting through the book needs so much cheating that it’s not funny anymore.
