Hello, welcome back to Gamebook Corner.

In 1998 the 28th book in the Lone Wolf Saga: The Hunger of Sejanoz was published.  This happened right at the end of the popularity of the first ‘era’ of gamebooks as different forms of entertainment become more popular and gamebooks stopped being published.

Unfortunately for Lone Wolf fans this meant that the final four books of the epic saga would not be released.  To me the Lone Wolf series of gamebooks are some of the very best.  Written by Joe Dever, who has created the detailed and vivid world of Magnamund.  It was a huge shame that we would not find out the conclusion to a great series of books.

At the turn of the millennium Joe gave permission to grant the rights to distribute his books for free online.  This gave birth to the Project Aon website and gave the Lone Wolf books and source material a new lease of life and was able to garner new and old fans.

The popularity of Project Aon has subsequently lead to the re-publication of the Lone Wolf books as the ‘Collector Series’.  The series was kicked off with a brand new re-write of book one from Joe which expanded on Lone Wolf’s ‘Flight from the Dark’.  Each book was hardback bound and also included a short bonus adventure which involved the reader playing one of the other characters featured in the Lone Wolf adventures.

The collector series of books have been gradually re-published by firstly Mongoose and then more recently by Manticore-Verlag.   Currently the first 22 books have been released, the popularity of these books has led to Joe Dever to begin writing the final four books of the series and to complete the epic saga of Lone Wolf.

Finally after a very long wait, book 29: The Storms of Chai was finally released to the Italian Market in November of last year.  Frustratingly no English publisher was announced but around Christmas time it was announced that C7, the publisher of the Lone Wolf Role Playing Game was going to pick up the English publishing rights.  Sadly they had to give up the rights shortly afterwards leaving the English publishing of book 29 in limbo.

On 1st April 2016 Joe Dever announced on his Facebook page that book 29: The Storms of Chai is going to be published in English by his own imprint – Holmgard Press.  The book is available to pre-order at the following site and will be released on 11th April.

Personally I am really looking forward to reading this book as well as finding out the conclusion to the Lone Wolf saga in books 30-32.

Hopefully we won’t have to wait eighteen years for the next one!

Catch you all again soon.

Welcome back to Gamebook Corner, your one-stop site for all things gamebook.  The big news for this week is the announcement from Fighting Fantasy digital gamebook developers Tin Man Games of their Kickstarter campaign for the forthcoming release of their version of the classic gamebook of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was the original gamebook in the Fighting Fantasy series, first published in 1982 and was jointly written by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.  This book release is what quite literally kickstarted the whole gamebook phenomenon.  The book takes the player into the fantastic world of Allansia and pits you against the powerful Warlock Zagor and his evil minions as you attempt to navigate your way through his underground lair at Firetop Mountain, defeat all the enemies and run off with all of Zagor’s treasure!

Aussie developer Tin Man Games have had the license to produce digital versions of the Fighting Fantasy series for a number of years now and their initial releases have been well received and definitely worth purchasing.  I believe that they have added another dimension to experiencing interactive fiction.  They have been working on Warlock for quite some time and have promised something a bit different from their previous releases.  Some tantalising previews have shown a 3D style game with gamebook elements which shows off their newly developed Gamebook Engine.

Recently Tin Man Games announced that in order to complete their initial vision for the app they realised that they needed lots more artwork.  They have now turned to crowdfunding website Kickstarter to attempt to raise funds from the fans in order to make something that will be even better.

The Kickstarter went live on 30th October and incredibly within a day the goal of raising AU$ 15,000 was reached.  At the time of writing the current amount that has been raised now is over AU$ 31,000 and there is still 26 days left before the campaign ends.

You can check out the Kickstarter yourself here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/warlockks/fighting-fantasy-the-warlock-of-firetop-mountain and follow the Kickstarter on Twitter with the hashtag #WarlockKS.  The Tin Man Games website can be found here http://tinmangames.com.au

I’ve backed this project and I’m really looking forward to travelling through Zagor’s domain in search of riches!

Hello everyone, just a quick news roundup from some of the articles that I have come across over the last week.

I recently found a really interesting interview with Lone Wolf creator Joe Dever on the Fascinating Nouns website.  The interview lasts for about 80 minutes and goes into quite a lot of detail as to how the world of Magnamund was created and the hugely popular Lone Wolf gamebooks.  Anyone who is interested in the series or gamebooks in general should tune in, I found it a great listen.

In the realm of the digital gamebook domain the most wonderful Tin Man Games have just recently announced their latest release which is due to be released at the end of September.  The title is called Legacy of Dorn : Herald of Oblivion and is based in Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 universe.  They also mention that they are putting the finishing touches to their version of Fighting Fantasy’s Warlock of Firetop Mountain which promises to be a bit of a departure from their previous Fighting Fantasy releases.

Creator of the digital version of Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! gamebook series Inkle Studios have recently revealed on their Twitter feed that parts 1-3 of their applications will be coming to PC and Mac in November.  This I will definitely be purchasing as I have really enjoyed Inkle’s take on truly classic gamebooks and one of my all time favourite gamebook series.  Hopefully I can produce some play though videos when this is released.  Inkle Studios are currently hard at work creating the fourth and final part of the series The Crown of Kings.

Finally not really gamebook related although this will be of interest to pretty much all Fantasy fans, I recently came across the Kickstarter campaign for Legend Quests which promises to be a live action dungeon crawl adventure game.  Check out their Kickstarter page which has an introduction video featuring none other than former Doctor Who actor Tom Baker.  At the time of writing they are currently up to 6% funded with 27 days left in the campaign.

I hope that you all are enjoying my blog so far, I would like to publish soon part two of my play though of the Lone Wolf Series : Fire on the Water.

Catch you all again soon.