Catacombs of the Undercity

Another Classic Gamebook Adventure available on PC!

What is a storybook adventure? It plays like reading a choose your own adventure book where you do dice rolls to decide the outcomes of events. It is fun for a bit, and my wife and I like to play these occasionally (this is the 3rd one we've played) where I read them out loud while she's doing something else. It's kind of a fun thing to do together, but they really boil down to getting dice rolls, so even in my most patient and "follow the rules" mood, I eventually want to just retry a fight or a roll to see a better outcome. Good for what it is, and we did finish the story this weekend. I give it a 3/5

A fun romp through a murky underground fantasy realm. Not as well written as the first two Orlandes game books (which I highly recommend), but still plenty entertaining. Many branching paths and plenty of achievements give it some replay value.

6/10 - "Not bad at all!"
Brain usage: low

Pros: enjoyable read, multiple valid paths, decent atmosphere/flavor , combat is smooth/fast, some funny choices

Cons: the artwork (typical for these titles), a bit too cheesy writing, the story is uninspiring albeit not unoriginal, no sense of urgency or tension, low immersion, multiple decisions do not really matter beside flavor (quite typical for titles after 2010 both books and video games)

One of the better ones from gamebookadventures.com - however, nothing particularly memorable. Don't get me wrong, you can play this through once or twice, but if you are looking for the old-school nostalgia from the classical Fighting Fantasy books, nothing ever really came close to those. "Those were the days" - Damn, I'm becoming a boomer...

Technically, this is the 5th book from the "series", but there isn't anything in particular connecting the total 12 books.

The writer is Andrew Wright, the author of Beyond the Pit (an Advanced Fighting Fantasy title, in the world of Titan).

Generally, I'm thankful for these books (the writers, the publishers) to try to keep alive the tradition in a world where younglings would never bother with something like this. However, the Golden Age of these books is arguably gone.

Has game breaking bugs that won't get fixed.

I love these, they remind me of the books I collected as a child, and still have a lot of. This series is written in a lot more detail and has a more engaging battle system than Fighting Fantasy, and I think it works well ported to a digital format, with options for inevitable cheating being available anyway, and good handling of things like repeeated backtracking in the story. These work well on mobile too. My favourite little quirk is the low gravity dice flinging everywhere when you click the mouse repeteatedly.

This game is not disappointing. It's utter garbage.

I've played every conceivable RPG for 35 years and I've never, ever played anything so poorly constructed.

It's so bad that it asks you for a character name, then doesn't use it - it calls you The Tin Man for no reason given.

Oh it pretends that there are options for you to choose from, but they are all false. There is only one real path. The others all kill you immediately.

This is truly trash.

good gamebook

Not much different to most Tin Man versions of Fighting Fantasy books. If you've read and played the books, this game will be nothing surprising. However, there's not enough game here to warrant paying more than $5 really. A 60/100 effort.

The good

Sticks to the book faithfully
Lots of gruesome ways to die
Fun for a few hours
Easy to get all achievements, if that's your thing

The bad

Dice rolls would fail most probability tests. There's a RNG at work here
Minimal replay value
Not worth full price

I'm avid reader of Gamebooks, and tried other stories by this author, but this one didn't click for me.
The combat system is still a mysterious mess, where you can slay with ease a humanoid opponent and be beaten to death by two measly ratlings. Sure, the old systems (like in Fighting Fantasy) were flawed and made many fights pointless if you had a high enough Skill score, but here, it appears random at times.
Plus combats in such a setting are not as lively as in "classic" videogames, and this basically being a dungeon crawler in Gamebook format, the sheer number of fights is a pit of frustration and unfairness.
Admiteddly I didn't get very far, but when you are easily killed even with perfect stats, one is not enticed to try again and again. I would have persevered, but the storyline is not very attractive : you're thrown into a nasty underworld and have, of course, to make your escape.
It's not worth 5€, buy on sale if you really want to try- or try out An Assassin in Orlandes. It's also quite unfaire at times, but with a stronger narrative.

Another entry in the Gamebook Adventure series, this game sees you wrongly accused of crimes and shoved thru a deep void into the catacombs below Orlandes. (Imagine something like the sewers in "Neverwhere" and you get the idea.)
You have to battle thru the dark, slimy underworld defeating evil monsters and gaining help from the occasional, less malevolent creature.
Sewer or later, if you survive that long, you reach the actual Undercity and can start on escape and revenge.
The plot is rather more limited this time round, altho it does become a bit more lively towards the end.
The dice roll system used in combat can seem a bit harsh at times, but overall the game is really well designed and nicely set-out on the screen. The game has three difficulty settings and it is long enough and challenging enough to provide a good amount of replay value.
There is a series of excellent b&w artworks to collect, as well as a set of nineteen achievements to complete.
Steam trading cards are also available from this game, if you like that sort of thing.
Maybe not as good as the other "Orlandes" games from Tin Man Games, but i bought this game at considerable discount so it was still decent vfm.

This game made me rich
would die again and again

Enjoyable choose your own adventure book. A nice variety of encounters that vary in difficulty.

Well worth picking up if this is your type of game :)

It's fun.

Its "Choose your own adventure" with skill checks and difficult to understand combat.
I died on my first save. Pretty sure this game doesn't require skill, pure luck.
GREAT WRITING, Gameplay, well, its lacking.
Good thing I bought this with a coupon!
Fun isn't the word to describe, more like, kills time :P
IF ITS LESS THAN 5$, GO FOR IT, GET THE BADGES, ENJOY A BIT OF STORY, BEFORE YOU INEVITABLY, ALWAYS, DIE.

Tin Man Games are responsible for the recent Fighting Fantasy gamebook adaptations which have been turning up on Steam, and unless I'm mistaken this is the fifth "book" in a series of their very own devising called...wait for it...Gamebook Adventures! And for better or for worse, there's no denying that they've succeeded deftly in their aim to "recapture" the spirit of those ye-olde Fighting Fantasy books...thereby inheriting both the good AND bad aspects thereof. Read on, brave adventurer...

Thus far I've only played one other Tin Man game, and that is the classic FF book entitled "The Forest of Doom". The book in question, perhaps even more so than many of its kin, is infamous for the "oops, just happened to go left when I apparently should have gone right, now I don't have the object I need to complete my quest, THE END" syndrome. Add to this the expected "RNG" die-rolling antics - and combat almost entirely devoid of any tactics, and thereby suspense - and you do end up with a very random game in which your decision-making frequently seems arbitrary at best. These gamebooks are essentially designed in such a way that you're almost guaranteed to fail the first playthrough you attempt, and only through trial-and-error will one ultimately emerge triumphant (my own progress thus far, while not negligible, seems to have reached the point where I may as well start over again, as I seem perilously ill-equipped to deal with a certain half-shark, half-human hybrid I keep encountering)!

Fortunately this particular game has been generous enough to give you a number of "bookmarks" to slightly circumnavigate this problem, but if there's one thing which ain't changed about this genre of gaming - be it in paper-bound or digital form - it's that it requires quite a bit of perseverance to complete. It's up to you whether or not you believe you are that kind of person. Me? Kinda, sorta...up to a point. And while this particular "gamebook" doesn't seem QUITE as reliant on the sheer dumb luck of its ancestors, it's still much the same thing. Patience will DEFINITELY be a virtue, should you choose to accept this quest.

Oh, and unless I've somehow missed it - which is entirely possible - this game doesn't have, and could sorely use, a MAP. Sure, you can draw one of your own, but then again you could also turn your own pages, and roll your own dice, so while we're all trapped here together in the virtual realm...how about a map, please? Forest of Doom had one, wisely enough. Not quite sure why this one doesn't.

Now, one regard in which I definitely prefer this to the likes of Forest of Doom - a book not QUITE as grim and/or spooky as it sounds - is the actual setting and scenario. I basically bought this one - rather than, say, the four which precede it! - because it looked like one of the more tonally "dark" gamebooks on offer, and sure enough it does live up to that promise. Dank sewers, grubby creatures, freakish cultists, and demon-summoning sorcerers abound. The "story", in other words, is pretty darn nice, if you're as morbidly-inclined as myself...and that's a pretty good thing when you consider that it's a text-based adventure, and thereby ALL ABOUT the story, really! Music and artwork are also very nice and atmospheric, and the text lovingly relishes the details of your each and every demise (and those of the creatures which you slay)...so no complaints from yours truly about any of that.

Tin Man Games have certainly done their homework. Old-school FF-style antics, brought kicking and screaming into the modern age with a new-school interface. Who would I recommend this to? Certainly anyone who tolera...sorry, ENJOYED...the gamebooks of yore, and anyone curious enough to give it at least one go and see what those long-gone days were all about. How relevant is this kind of "gaming" in the modern age of ultra-immersion, in no less than the year that we are to be officially blessed with VIRTUAL-REALITY HEADSETS in the mainstream marketplace? Hmmm...I'm not quite sure. Myself, I actually LIKE a bit of "retro", at least from time to time. In my world, not everything has to be the latest, OR so-called "greatest".

If you're definitely NOT that kind of person, and think that anything released more than a fortnight ago qualifies as "old hat", then give this a wide berth. But if you empathize with my own sentiments then, well...your fate is only a die roll away (well, okay, MANY die rolls away, but bear with me, trying my best to set some kind of a TONE here, damn it)...

Verdict: 7.5/10.

(PS Whatever you do, don't purchase it outside of a sale. It's definitely not worth ten bucks, unless you devour these kinds of things for breakfast.)

its a fun little game with awsome writing but wait for it to go on sale like it is when i post this for $6 its a good game better than some of the crap on steam

This was the first "gamebook" I've ever played, and I like it!

It combines a virtual novel, a choose your own adventure, and D&D dice rolling based on your characters stats in order to determine the story you get, and this will certainly very every time you play it! This creates a huge replayability in the game, and it is also pretty well written to create a fun fantasy to imagine yourself in.

Here's my "First Play on Launch day" video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1f_S-hhXUE