The Lindenbaum Prize, a competition for short gamebooks, goes into its fourth year. This year’s contest has no less than seventeen entries from a variety of genres, with a wide range of creative approaches. It’s a great opportunity for experiments, and it’s always exciting to see what the authors come up with. If you’re interested in interactive storytelling, you should check it out! (And if you aren’t, why are you even here?)

Winners are partially determined by public voting, partially by the jury. Now I’m not a jury member, but to facilitate discussion, enhance online visibility and give some (hopefully valuable) feedback, I’ll be trying to cover as many entries as I can. The main elements I’m looking for are the following:

• Writing – The quality of the used language
• Plot – This is independent of the writing: A clichéd storyline can still be gripping if the writing creates an intensive atmosphere, while sometimes the powers of language are not enough to outweigh a plot devoid of sense. However, regardless of originality and depth, I really prefer it if I have a clear idea of who I am and what I’m supposed to accomplish, unless uncovering this is a major part of my objective.
• System – The underlying rules. The decisions you can make become much more interesting if you have some items, skills, spells to use and must keep an eye on resource management. Not every story wants heavy rules, of course; both should support each other.
• Structure – This is a point I value highly. What’s the point of having an interactive story if the events only follow a narrow railroad with Morton’s Forks? (Looking at you, Temple of Terror.) I want my decisions to make a difference; ideally, the outcomes are not merely “win or die trying”, and there is at least some replayability. Naturally, the competition limit of 100 sections makes this part somewhat challenging.
• Execution – Like the “bugs” section in video game reviews, essentially. Tons of typos can weigh down the best writing, and badly balanced encounters or a lack of resources can ruin an excellent game system. And once sections are missing options to continue, we are in serious trouble.

With that out of the way, let’s get to our first entry!

The House on Happy Hill

by Andrew Wright

The House on Happy Hill tells the story of “a fearless fortune seeker intent on acquiring fame and glory”; I guess glory alone wouldn’t do it. The introduction and rules system read like something directly out of the good old “Fighting Fantasy” line. Combat especially works with two six-sided dice, just like it already did in “The Warlock of Firetop Mountain”, except for the addition of a damage/armor component. Instead of “testing our luck”, we are “trying our fate”, and instead of 10 provisions restoring 4 health each we have only 5 provisions good for 2 health, but that should work for a quarter of the sections, right? Thankfully, we escape the dreaded “roll 1 for Skill” by getting a point distribution system for the character, or starting with a pre-made character altogether. I was just disappointed that magical battles and physical fights are handled the same way and there are no specific spells to cast, which leaves the whole “wizard” part somewhat underwhelming.

Besides craving fame and glory, the hero’s intentions remain somewhat vague. The eponymous “House on Happy Hill” is the demesne of the wizard Verikles, a legendary practitioner of magic who allegedly deals in interplanar affairs, though there are rumors he’s not all he’s cracked up to be. The hero has apparently made the trip to the house to advance in magical power and “see if the old coot is still up to snuff.” This lack of specified intentions soon turns out to have some consequences, because the very first section leaves us no fewer than ten options to continue; they range from offering to run errands over asking for magical education to straight-up punching him in the face.

Alright.

The entire adventure continues in this way. It’s nonlinear to a fault, leaving us free reign to explore the wizard’s mansion, and later on a landscape with a mountain summit, a waterfall and two settlements. The settlements offer markets where we can buy and sell various objects, and even Verikles himself engages in trade, assuming you don’t start negotiations with something like, say, face-punching. All this openness just has one slight issue, namely the question: “Why?”

The problem is choice

I think it’s common knowledge by now that “The path forks. Go left or right?” just isn’t very enticing design. I need some information why I should prefer one option over the other, otherwise I might just as well flip a coin (a lot of people have written a lot on the matter, but because I’m lazy, I’m linking to this). Now the ten options we have for our conversation with Verikles are quite clear on their nature, but the range of options sends a message on another layer: all of this could be useful. It’s not like in The Forest of Doom, where the very first choice of the game is whether you really want to attack the good old wizard you’ve been sent to ask for help (also smart design). Here, I’m looking at half the options and wondering, “Why would I want to do this? What is the game not telling me?” Because of course I’ll try to determine how powerful a wizard really is by offering my services. Or engaging in trade with him. Or tell him to stop smoking. At least the different aggressive options suggest that eventually, I will indeed have to duel Verikles. Although… why exactly? He is introduced as sitting on the front steps, smoking a pipe, talking to his pet animals and plants. That’s not quite Sauron. Neither does the introductory text portray him as a menace for the countryside. Punching him immediately doesn’t feel great. Why am I given all of those options?

Wait, at the end of the book, in the instructions for creating your own hero, there’s something in the “Codewords” section. “At the end of this adventure, assuming you survive, the Codewords you have acquired will determine your status as hero.”

Well, that was helpful.

In other words, the gamebook’s communication on the player regarding the objectives, which would be imperative to make sense of the multitude of options present at any time, is rather lacking. And because of this, the options themselves muddle the objective. We can acquire numerous items on markets and through other ways, but the only hint that any of them might be useful are the options to continue at specific sections that require these items. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know, which is a little disappointing.

Wait, I’m where?

One matter you don’t have much of a choice in is that you will eventually find yourself far away from Happy Hill, in that landscape I referred to earlier, with mountain summit, waterfall and settlements. That’s Hell, by the way, in case you didn’t notice. This is not really a spoiler, because the book makes nothing from this environment. Lost souls, damnation, eternal fires, pain and torture – none of this. Well, the waterfall is vitriolic, there are a bunch of demons running around and “the true horrors of the night” are mentioned; but I didn’t feel in danger or even just uneasy at any time, as apart from an episode with “High Priest Bongo the Insane”, neither the game mechanics nor the decisions supported the claim that this would be the worst place in all existence, where even death should offer no escape. I’m really not sure why the author thought this hyperbole necessary.

The foundation

On the technical side, House on Happy Hill is excellent. It’s extremely polished, with keywords and checkboxes to track progress, different typefaces to highlight game elements, free-form exploration and no broken links, as far as I could determine. There is a bizarre error, where some kind of processor – either the editing or the PDF application – has converted all “tt”s into either “a” (normal typeface” or a colon (italics). This makes things somewhat irritating to read unless you realize the issue. Apart from that, typos are minimal.

Conclusion

• Writing: Solid, easy to read; some nice touches like the “Peacockatrice”. Doesn’t really convey the atmosphere of what you would assume “Hell” is like, though, especially in contrast to the cozy mansion. This left me with a somewhat disjointed impression.
• Plot: The very, very last section of a successful run gives a glimpse of what is going on in the background. But the general lack of foreshadowing and direction mean that even after multiple runs, I’m still not sure what story the book wants to tell.
• System: As noted, Fighting Fantasy standard with a few add-ons; it works.
• Structure: I did like the general flexibility. If only I had been given a better idea of what to do and to what end!
• Execution: Excellent, apart from the issues noted above. Without having seen all of the other entries, I am absolutely certain that this is a strong candidate for the peak position among all competitors in this category.
• Overall: Good. I’m leaving rankings (i.e., whether it would be in my top 3) until after having seen more entries. Pretty certain this is in the top half, though.