Review of The Death Book

Blurb from the publisher: 'Welcome to your doom...

A copy of Escape the Dark Castle is required to use this book.'

What you get: Your GBP 9,99 or equivalent will buy you The Death Book, a 116-page expansion in softcover, black-and-white book format for the Escape the Dark Castle game line. It is reminded that Escape the Dark Castle is a one to four player cooperative fantasy adventure game that lasts around half an hour. The present expansion does not alter either the game's running time or its player count.

Gameplay: In case you haven't noticed, each card in the game and its expansions has an almost undiscernible reference code. Up to now, this code was used in order to separate the cards of the basic game from the different expansions, in case the players were looking after a particular experience. With the help of this book, these codes are now linked to deaths in the hands of particular adversaries or traps. In other words, when the group, or the single player simultaneously controlling two characters, loses against a Chapter, a Boss, or an Item, he can check the book's reference to see how exactly he perished.

The book is broken down in three chapters: Chapter Cards, Boss cards, and Item cards, or at least those that can kill off a character. Each entry occupies one page, even though in reality it is just a couple of lines long. The style is reminiscent of Tales of the Unexpected and The Twilight Zone. Creepy things happen, yet the writing never uses explicit language, nor does it go full on gore and body horror à la Lamentations of the Flame Princess. I will reproduce a single entry (DCSE-CH24) for the sake of the example: that of the disgusting, drooling monster that attacks you because you stepped on her eggs.

'The creature lifts you by the ankles and dashes you against the chamber wall over and over. When you eventually fall limp it takes you up, cradles you in its arms, and begins stroking you, rocking back and forth and petting you as if your shattered frame were one of its young.

Without you, the rest of your party is soon overcome by the forces of darkness and hauled back to the deepest, darkest of cells, where their screams ring out in vain for the rest of their days.'

The strong points: The first and foremost criterion to judge a book that contributes to fluff only would be the quality of the writing. If you are a fan of Roald Dahl and of horror writers writing in that style, you are in for a treat. The narratives are dark, but not too dark. There is insinuation, but the text never goes beyond a certain threshold. The game addresses itself to anybody above the age of 14 after all, and we wouldn't want explicit dismemberments, necropedophilia, or what have you in such a product. If you are a fledgling GM and you are looking for inspiration in describing death scenes, you are unlikely to find a product more concise and to the point than this one.

The book has been written holistically, with the basic game and every single expansion in mind. I applaud the approach. No matter the Chapter or Boss you die at, you deserve a grim narrative about how that happened.

The entries are easy to find, and the table of contents helps a lot. The designer prudently registered bosses and items by name instead of reference code. No matter which death you are looking for, you are never more than five seconds away from finding it.

The weak points: In case it was not obvious, the book does not offer any gaming content. This is all fluff, trying to make the escape from the dark castle a more immersive experience. I don't mind that personally, as long as you know what you are buying into. I am in doubt as to whether hardened roleplayers actually need this book. The stories that have been concocted around my table every time we lost are far more vicious than those presented here. I can see however how a casual gamer might be impressed by this insidious writing and perceive the game under a new light.

I really wish the book offered more content. Each entry hardly takes one sixth of a page. It is not easy writing evocative narratives for similar, if not identical, situations over and over again, on the other hand however it would have been interesting to have more than one death per Chapter or Boss or Item. Taking space into account, my vote would have been for three per. We didn't get it, so there. Every time you die in the hands of the Plague Lord, you become 'his clean-flesh concubine'. Not bad, but still. The more I think of it, the book could have also served as the inverse (with the aim of providing even more fluff in the same amount of pages). It could have included a victory text, what happens when you defeat the Chapter or Boss. Taking the nature of the castle into account, victories wouldn't need to be heroic. They could have been bitter, vicious even, dog-eat-dog affairs in an uncaring setting. Alas, such stories are not here either.

Conclusion: The Death Book provides solid fluff for the endings of your escapades in the Dark Castle. I wish it provided more content, be it victory- or defeat-related. That doesn't mean however that it is not enjoyable per se.

For more info on The Death Book, Escape The Dark Castle, as well as Themeborne, visit their website at https://www.themeborne.com.

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