Fighting Fantasy gamebook #43, originally published back in 1990, has received a digital facelift. Foul necromancer Lord Nydaedus of Hagor has been inadvertently freed from his eternal imprisonment and he has resumed his campaign to conquer the world with his own undead army and nearby marauding pirates. The player, choosing between a rogue or a paladin, has been engaged to penetrate Lord Nydaedus’ inner sanctum of Vognar Keep and quell this threat.
Game play consists of selecting options (conversational, directional) from a list presented. Selections will impact numerous numerical statistics that the game tracks under the hood, and which come into play during occasional automated skill challenges (including combat). Discretionary use of inventory items can also skew the numbers in the player’s favour.
Perhaps for licensing reasons, many of the character and place names in this conversion have been altered from those in the original gamebook, extracting the game from the Fighting Fantasy context and instead situating it in a Fabled Lands one, a game world in which the developers have prior experience working with. The character and opponent statistics have similarly been altered.