Wow, this is the first gamebook I won on the first try, and with SKILL of 7 to boot! I didn't try too hard, and really expected to get killed by the options somewhere down the line, but nope, somehow the most important skill checks got passed, and the whole thing worked!

In all, Bad Moon Rising certainly warrants its "easy" rating. Personally, I prefer at least the difficulty of Impudent Peasant! (where some wrong choices can still kill even really early on), up to about A Princess of Zamarra, with the upper end of difficulty like Hellfire and Soul Tracker requiring the ability to anticipate some extremely arbitrary logic more than anything else. Still, while this is about as easy as Tomb of the Ancients, Bad Moon Rising is a far superior work, with a much stronger sense of location and a far better defined protagonist (not to mention more interesting supporting cast.)

There's only so much to say about a winning run of <50 refs, so I might as well post what I have encountered so far right now, to preserve this moment, and proofread the other paths later.

SPOILER

END SPOILER

YARD
Sun Sep 3 15:32:19 2023
Star - optimum ending reached

After checking out the remaining options, I really appreciate that here, traps are not eternal, and actually degrade and rot! While I certainly agree with one of the other comments there isn't exactly character development or the like going on, the only example where I can recall it happening in a slmilarly-sized story was A Midwinter Carol, where it was extremely awkward. (Brings to mind some critical arguments that adult personalities are typically sufficiently strongly formed that character development ends up unrealistic more often than not.) Refs like 14 are fun enough to read that all is forgotten.

First things first, though - some comments have already mentioned this many years ago, but I have to confirm that at 78, "Go east ?" seemingly redirects back to 78.

SPOILER

END SPOILER

davy
Fri Feb 2 19:56:24 2024

cheers for the feedback buddy.
It's honestly like, twenty years since I wrote this so I am really not sure how much coherent feedback I can give. The core idea behind it though was the idea of playing a game as one of those random thugs or theives you kill without thinking about in most game books/fantasy games, and making them more real people - like, Jak and Marts are total nightmare horrorshows, but I still have deep affection for them even after all these years. I've known a lot of lost but not hopeless people like these guys over the years.

MPerera
Tue Feb 6 06:42:14 2024
Star - optimum ending reached

Short and sweet.

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