Caverns of the Snow Witch

This wins my award of worst gamebook I've ever read.

Story: Divided into three weak parts - the titular caverns, a journey sequence, then a survival sequence. For all the vaunted evil-ness of the snow witch and her minions, no one seems to mind you just strolling in and start taking things out room by room. You obviously don't expect character development in a gamebook, but the reason the author gave as to why you went after the titular snow witch is just plain ridiculous - nothing more because the author wants you to. Same thing with the motivation for part 2 - you just have to, never mind the logic of it. The motivation for part 3 is survival, so that's fine, except for how you're supposed to go about it - it makes absolutely no sense.

The titular caverns just happens to be primary setting of the first part. The titular snow witch? Just a checkpoint for the first part. For all evil-ness that's attributed to her and her minions, she's nothing more than just than just two encounters, the 2nd one being really tacked on. And speaking of tacky, I got the feeling that the editor or publisher rejected the gamebook initially because it was submitted with just part 1. So parts 2 and 3 were appended just to pad it out. The later parts were just as horrible. Why travel with two complete strangers to their hometowns instead of just back to what you were doing before? And the steps to cure yourself of the so-called Death Spell just borders on stupidity. No wonder only one other person in the world had survived it - and that person just happens to be living in a nearby cave where you need begin with the weird "healing" steps.

Gamebook: Very “One True Path”. There are many items that you must obtain to get past certain encounters - miss them and you die. And it's very easy to die. In fact, the chances of winning this gamebook honestly is very low. The game mechanics of needing to roll higher than your opponent just to damage them a little means you need several lucky streaks to get through the numerous fights thrown your way. The enemies are very tough, especially right at the start. This is the first gamebook I've died in the first fight I got into. You really must roll max skill, max stamina, and max luck to even have a reasonable chance of reaching the end.

I remember thinking these books were just so darn cool when I was growing up - I had purchased the second and third off the shelf on a whim from a used bookstore. I sold them and regretted the decision almost instantly, so I was excited to be able to request the first book in the series through our library's new Outerlibrary Loan service.

I “played” a full game through and remembered why I liked the books more as a concept than in practice: I'm terrible! I always get the plague or run over by a boulder because I think I may be able to figure out a clever way to save my skin (I'm no Indiana Jones)! The “interface” is very ingenious - how perfect to have a printed, randomized set of die at the foot of all right-hand pages to make the game playable out of the box. The story is creative, and I love the interactivity. Next-level Choose Your Own Adventures.