They’re all movies that deal very specifically with the occult sub-genre of horror, which was riding high at the time thanks to popular movies like The Exorcist and Poltergeist. These movies all have a common theme, aside from the obvious Christopher Lee connection.
Finally, he credits the well-known To The Devil A Daughter, yet another Christopher Lee-starring movie based on a Dennis Wheatley book. He also mentions the 1968 film version of the Dennis Wheatley novel The Devil Rides Out, also starring Christopher Lee. Terror’s House Of Horrors, specifically the short about the possessed hand. First, the Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee vehicle Dr. Looking back, Jackson specifically cites three films as inspiration for House Of Hell. House Of Hell debuts in a shorter form in Warlock Magazine that year, with an expanded version becoming the tenth Fighting Fantasy novel, released in 1985. Jackson decides his next gamebook would pay homage to the comics and films he grew up on.
Now creating books individually, Ian Livingstone is mostly putting out more titles in the fantasy genre, while Steve Jackson is juggling traditional fantasy in his Sorcery! ($4.99) series with other genres like science-fiction, as seen in Starship Traveller ($5.99). That book had successfully kicked off the series known as Fighting Fantasy, a variation on Choose Your Own Adventure books that infused the concept with contributions from pen and paper RPGs. It’s 1984 and writers/game designers Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson are working as hard as they can to capitalize on the sudden enormous success of their hit collaboration, The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain. I’m sure some eyebrows are arched ever-so-slightly at this choice, but as I’ve mentioned before in various reviews of gamebooks, these were the original handheld RPGs, albeit with a few more random choices and adventure elements than we typically associate with the genre today. Still, it’s probably one of the earliest examples of a horror-themed RPG, and if that’s not worth saluting in the month of October, I don’t know what is. This week’s game, Fighting Fantasy: House Of Hell ($5.99), tries to play things a bit more seriously, though since it was originally aimed at teens and young adults, there’s only so far it can go.
Last week, we looked at the quirky cult classic Cthulhu Saves The World ($1.99), which takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to its horror themes. We’re rolling along into the second week of the RPG Reload‘s month of Hallowe’en celebrations.
You can also feel free to leave your thoughts, comments, and suggestions in either place, since playing games is more fun when you can talk about it with your friends. The next reader’s choice is in RPG Reload 013, so get your vote in as soon as possible by leaving a comment below or dropping into the Official RPG Reload Club thread on the forums. Once per month, you guys get to choose what I play and write about, which should help that balance stay intact. As this week obviously demonstrates, all kinds of RPGs are welcome here, and I’ll do my best to make sure we get a good variety chosen from the selection.
It’s a bit of reflection, a bit of revisiting, and perhaps a bit of an excuse to have fun with an old friend. Each week, we take a look at a game from the App Store’s past and poke it with a stick to see what happens. Hello, gentle readers, and welcome to the RPG Reload, the weekly feature where we open random doors hoping we aren’t scared to death by what we find inside.