Steve Jackson is back in the Fighting Fantasy world. The other Steve Jackson (“Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone present: Demons of the Deep by Steve Jackson”). Structurally less experimental than his first one, Demons of the Deep has the player explore the sunken city of Atlantis. Based on the flimsy excuse of an unknown magical force which just happens to enable underwater breathing for a day. How awfully convenient. With such a theme, the big point obviously is the representation of the unusual environment in narrative and gameplay terms. After all, why set an adventure under water when everything works exactly like on land anyway?
Obviously, the main encounters are either with fish (a shark, a kraken etc.) or Mermen and Mermaids. Which don't fulfil this objective yet. After all, you draw your sword and slash at the shark just like would would at a troll. Things get more interesting when you meet the “Deep Ones”. Frog-like creatures at war with the Mermen who may give you a highly twisted fairy tale task. The Bone Demon, excellently depicted on the cover, leading to an unexpected kind of fight. Cyrano, a fishy self-proclaimed sword master, who could still teach your character a thing or two. The Sea Dragon which may help you win the book if you strike the right bargain, but also might just try to swallow you.
It is a big strength of the book that it allows for various ways and paths to achieve different kinds of victory. Many of them involve choosing your allies. Most of which won't just support you for nothing. Like the Sea Dragon, approaching which is a highly risky affair, with one path ensuring its powerful help, but many ending in a fight to the death. Those ambiguous choices how to approach the book's objective make it highly engaging in its best moments.
Speaking of the objective, however, there is a major construction oversight in this respect. Taking a “wrong” choice early on, the player may miss the instructional goal setting section entirely. Floating aimlessly between the buildings until the book suddenly declares: “The sun is setting and you know you must leave soon.” Just that you don't know that at all unless you encountered that one Mermaid early on. Strange.
It is the most striking example of where the overall quite flexible way of connecting episodes contained within the book, avoiding linearity to a degree, flat out fails. Finally, this is what the book is: a mixing pot of individual episodes which can be strung together in various ways and lead to different adventures and outcomes. The connections, all too often, consist in phrasings such as “a strong current pulls you off and takes you to [far-away location]” or “the wizard leads you through one of the tunnels, finally opening a hatch where you emerge [in a totally different place]”. In other words: arbitrary teleportation.
There is something to be said for this rather forgiving gameplay, especially compared to Livingstone who kept insisting on finding the exact one true path. Jackson makes some of the episodes great reads, offering interesting decisions and thrilling outcomes. When in the “best” ending, I summoned a skeleton army like the bad guy in Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts, I couldn't avoid a broad, nostalgic smile.
But finally, the book fails to be more than the sum of its parts. Its overarching theme is thin, its objective of taking revenge on the group of pirates which threw you into the water weak. Why revenge, instead of just escaping? The teleporting currents and tunnels prevent any sense of location. The physicality of the world is not tangible. The book is not a dud, but it fails to achieve its potential.
Comments (1) [Post comment]