Fighting Fantasy’s creators on its 40-year legacy

I must have been around 9 years old when I picked up my first Fighting Fantasy gamebook, House of Hell. It was mid-morning as I wandered the makeshift aisles of a local car boot sale in the height of summer, rubbing a pair of 20p coins together in search of a bargain. There was nothing particularly entrancing about the plain green spine yet once I saw the cover, it immediately stoked the fledgling horror fan within me. It was this same summer that my mum surprised me with a carrier bag full of A Nightmare on Elm Street VHS tapes. She was never one for checking age ratings, bless.

What stuck with me most wasn’t the grotesquely chilling artwork, nor the title. I remember flicking through those first pages, completely stumped when House of Hell demanded that I go and find two dice and a pencil. This wasn’t a novel or a collection of short horror stories, it was a “gamebook”. For those who have managed to avoid the Fighting Fantasy series for the past four decades, that term may be lost on you. The idea behind these books is devilishly simple but, at the same time, groundbreaking. Instead of being a reader, you’re the hero in your own adventure, choosing where to go and which actions to take by flipping to the assigned pages. It felt like a lighter, more streamlined version of Dungeons & Dragons created for solo players, rolling dice to fight battles and keeping track of your stats and inventory on those front pages. At the time, I hadn’t even heard of D&D and like so many others, Fighting Fantasy was one of my first forays into roleplaying games.

“Fighting Fantasy is an interactive experience whereas traditional books are a passive experience,” said co-creator, Ian Livingstone, on the enduring legacy of the series. “YOU, the reader, are the hero. Having agency to control the direction of the story is compelling. People remember their adventures as though they were actually there. Slaying hideous monsters and finding hidden treasure feels excitingly real and is fondly remembered by people for many years.”

Needless to say, the series has become somewhat of an institution, so much so that fans will once again flock to Fighting Fantasy Fest when it opens its doors to adventurers on September 3, 2022. This year also marks FF’s 40th anniversary, with both Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson penning two new adventures: Shadow of the Giants and Secrets of Salamonis, both of which will launch on September 1, 2022.

There’s been no better time to dive back into gamebooks while also examining their impact on the wider gaming industry. With more than 20 million copies of Fighting Fantasy sold around the world, translated in 32 different languages, these books have inspired gamers across the globe, some of whom would go on to make their own landmark creations.

Dark Souls and Elden Ring director, Hidetaka Miyazaki (left) and Ian Livingstone (right).

“There are famous video games designers who have stated publicly that their work was inspired by the Fighting Fantasy books they read in their youth,” Livingstone told us. “For example, Dark Souls designer Hidetaka Miyazaki.”

He continued, “Fighting Fantasy has certainly had an impact on the games industry but it’s impossible to say absolutely what the full impact has been. We know that a lot of tabletop and video game designers and artists credit Fighting Fantasy for their starting a career in the industry, incorporating combat, role-playing mechanics and branching narrative storylines into their games.”

Revered as pioneers of the British gaming industry, Livingstone and Jackson are perhaps best known as the co-founders of Games Workshop, working to bring Dungeons & Dragons overseas before launching games such as Warhammer Fantasy Battle and its Warhammer 40,000 sci-fi counterparts.

There’s been plenty of overlap between Fighting Fantasy and the world of video games, too. However, as Jackson explains, adapting gamebooks for this format wasn’t so straightforward.

“As the digital era approached gamebooks were obvious candidates for video game adaptations and FF was the leading brand. The problem with interactive books is that you were limited to two or three choices. When the digital era arrived the choices were potentially limitless. The other major advantage of digital versions was that graphics were more sophisticated.”

As a result, 1998’s Deathtrap Dungeon felt more like a conventional third person action game than an attempt to capture the gamebook essence in digital form. Put simply, that’s what audiences wanted at the time. Since then, however, developers have worked to create video games that serve as digitised versions of those older books, tracking stats, inventories, and dice rolls for you.

While these games continue to find an audience, that hasn’t stopped Livingstone and Jackson dreaming even bigger, envisioning what a big budget, AAA experience set within the Fighting Fantasy universe could look like:

“Set in Allansia, player-characters could explore Port Blacksand, Darkwood Forest, Fang and Firetop Mountain in glorious 3D. It would be brilliant to encounter Zagor, Lord Azzur, Throm, Mungo, Yaztromo and Balthus Dire to name but a few!”

You’ve sold us on the idea, but who would FF fans trust to develop such an ambitious adaptation?