Devil's Flight

I've added Gaetano Abbondanza's new gamebook to the downloads page. There will also be an online version of this in the relatively near future.

bcyy
Mon Apr 16 06:58:12 2012

By the way, congrats to Gaetano Abbondanza for the new sci-fi horror adventure!

Still waiting for WWGB ep7. Brilliant series!

duffmeister
Wed Apr 25 10:05:32 2012

'Devil's Reach' is completed at last! Excellent adventure, I felt a real chill throughout the adventure and I thought it was an excellent Survival Horror themed adventure. The 'Aliens' similarities were enough to make it a noticeable similarity while allowing it to stay different enough from it to be every original.

SPOILER

END SPOILER

I thought the setting was very well concieved, with all the parts of the ship different and interesting. Many congratulations on a horrific but awesome adventure!

duffmeister
Wed Apr 25 19:19:02 2012

Whoops...'Devil's Flight' rather...ah well, what I said still stands.

Gaetano
Wed Apr 25 22:55:34 2012

Glad to hear you enjoyed it, Duffmeister.

Gaetano Mon Aug 13 22:57:39 2012	@ C-Star and Glen- Thanks for the kind words. I do have another adventure, "Devil's Flight", in downloadable form, (you might have already played it, if so, apologies). The webmaster has mentioned that he may create an online version of it, permitting he has the spare time.
	Yes - I'm more than half way through with this.

ffproject
Thu Nov 29 18:41:36 2012

Devil's Flight

The latest gamebook for online play is this 300-reference space-horror by Gaetano Abbondanza.

You are an Astro-Geologist; as such the determination of whether a newly discovered planetary body could hold permanent human settlements is dependent upon your professional opinion. You enjoy the work; it is interesting and stimulating if somewhat lonely. Today, however, will be unlike any other day you've ever experienced...

Pat
Fri Nov 30 10:17:49 2012

Thanks for adding Devil's Flight Andy!
I started on the same gamebook here for offline playing.

C-Star
Sat Dec 1 13:11:09 2012

Hey me again. Just started playing Devil's Flight and must admit, it's pretty awesome! Another great work of horror by Gaetano. Really reminds me of Dead Space. But i'm having one problem, right at what I believe to be the end of the book.

SPOILER

END SPOILER

Gaetano
Sat Dec 1 19:11:32 2012

@ C-Star
Thanks for the kind words. Interesting comment about Dead Space- I'm not a big videogame player and had never heard of it. After looking it up online, though, I can definitely see the similarities! In response to your question-

SPOILER

END SPOILER

I won't get too explicit with the spoliers, since you say that you've just started playing. If you explore more of the paths and still are having no luck, let me know.

Haoie
Fri Dec 7 21:44:54 2012

Nice new entry, Devil's Flight. Sort of like Alien with a trace of Sky Lord haha. I got to admit though, I'm stuck on the chokepoint.

C-Star
Sat Dec 8 08:40:57 2012

Where is that? Maybe I can help.

Aiken
Mon Dec 10 11:56:58 2012

Just completed Devil's Flight. I really enjoyed it, and congratulations are due to Gaetano.

The setting was interesting: essentially House of Hell (or indeed House of Horror) in space. You can even find some brandy if you're lucky!

A few minor criticisms. First, much as with the HOHs, there is one very narrow path to victory (as far as I can tell), so a large amount of interesting content and problem solving is actually just a disguised prelude to later failure. Secondly, it seemed to me that the Fear stat is too high, making this mechanic largely irrelevant. And finally, the very end of the book seemed a little rushed.

But those are just churlish quibbles. Taut writing and a relentless barrage of creepy twists, sly references and shocking reverses made this a deliciously suspenseful journey!

Gaetano
Mon Dec 10 18:43:45 2012

Hello Aiken,

Thanks for your feedback! I'd have to agree with your comment on the Fear Stat- it's pretty difficult to actually get scared to death in the story. I should have done a more thorough playtest.

Your comment on the ending is also very perceptive. I had orginally planned for this to be a 400 section adventure, but had to set it aside for a while to work on another project (another Gamebook Adventures title,) and somewhere along the way I misplaced my notes for Devil's Flight (add 1 fear point and 3 frustration points!!) Ultimately, I didn't want many hours of work to go to waste, so I compromised and completed it as best I could.

As far as the narrow path to the ending, this is totally by design. One of the things that I admired about Steve Jackson's House of Horror was that, even though it had a narrow path to victory, there was a lot to be learned about the house, it's inhabitants, and its history along the false hope paths, even though, as you put it, all of it was a prelude to failure. In other words, there was real information to be gleaned along these paths, instead of just filler, and this made the experience of reading it much richer, since the player would have to read it multiple times anyway to find the true path. This was what I attempted to duplicate in Devil's Flight and House of Horror.

Regarding FEAR, I would have to echo Aiken's comments : in testing, I never once got anywhere near being scared to death. Maybe I should reduce the initial FEAR score to make it more of a challenge.

Gaetano
Mon Dec 10 18:47:39 2012

Oops, of course I meant Steve Jackson's House of Hell.

Aiken
Tue Dec 11 16:42:38 2012

Hi Gaetano,

Thank you for your response- it's one of the things I love about this site that you can discuss works directly with their authors!

It's also very interesting to hear your narrow path philosophy and how it applies to, and was inspired by, HoH. It certainly makes sense. I suppose it just comes down to taste. On the one hand you can have a fiendishly difficult book where a highly concealed true path can only be found through extreme persistence- but where each fatal path is a rich world-building experience (the other classic of this sub-genre is Creature of Havoc). On the other hand books like Sorcery! (or Ulysses AI's superb The Diamond Key) have many ways to victory but are still very difficult- there are fewer completely blind allies, but each successful route is still tough indeed.

I guess the difference between Creature of Havoc and House of Hell (which is why I prefer the former, although they are both all-time greats IMHO). Is that there is (at least sometimes, although definitely not always) a logic to CoH which makes several of the deaths a clue as to how to proceed next time, whereas in House of Hell you really must map exhaustively to stand any chance of survival at all - you often have no way whatsoever of knowing whether the route you just took was completely doomed or partially correct, and often apparently positive developments turn out to be completely, ineffably fatal (upon finally realising this, any HoH reader will, naturally, add 3 Fear points to his own increasingly disturbed psyche- perhaps that's part of the fun!).

Finally (and forgive my rambling) sorry to hear about your lost notes, and thank you for completing D'sF anyway.
Because it was a (military grade) blast!

Gaetano
Wed Dec 12 00:04:15 2012

@ Andy- I'm fine with altering the starting Fear score. I think cutting it in half would be o.k., especially since the player has a supply of Neuroxin to recover from bad frights.

Ibrahim
Sat Dec 15 22:59:21 2012

Hi Everyone. I'm getting nowhere fast in Devil's flight, I can get so far but always end up either going down in a hail of fire or being frightened to death. I've played through the gamebook as far as I can numerous times trying different pathways each time, but I must be missing something somewhere, could the author or someone who has played through this gamebook give me some pointers please? You can email me on ibrahim_gucukoglu@sent.com if you dont want to clutter up the guessbook.

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