Broken Gamebooks #3: Tomb of Nightmares

The gamebook doctor is in again, and he’s diagnosing the penultimate book in the GrailQuest series, Tomb of Nightmares. Whilst the series generally existed to be a bit of a laugh, Tomb is a bit more puzzle-orientated (though still very funny)… because the entire gamebook is basically one big maze (that has a really evil tendency to randomly teleport you back to the same section over and over again, which the book ends up amusingly lampshading). Not only does the adventure feature a large number of monster encounters and precious few opportunities for healing, it also features an extra ‘secret doors’ mechanic, which works like this:

To search for a secret door in any section, throw one die. Score 4, 5 or 6 and you are entitled to check the secret door table which starts on page 186. Score less than 4 and you have missed any secret door that might be there.

(Curiously, a few earlier sections offer you the choice to check for secret doors in the text as well as using the secret doors table, which seems a bit odd.) Anyway, it’s a tricky book, and I was forced to map it by using a spreadsheet for this article.

There are two problems with the book indicating proofreading problems similar to the ones in Realm of Chaos, which are as follows:

In section 137, it is stated that when you fight Grott the Hoddle, none of your magic will work and all damage scored will have a -3 modifier unless you learn a Death Ode from the Poetic Fiend. Unfortunately this isn’t mentioned at all when you do meet Grott, meaning whether or not you meet the Fiend and get the opportunity to learn an Ode is irrelevant.

In section 204, where you finally meet up with the Hoddle, it informs you that he has access to every spell you know. Unfortunately (and this is a problem that afflicts one or two enemies in the earlier volumes), it gives you no indication of how he uses them, requiring the reader to interpret the book for themselves – does he use them in rotation? Are you meant to use them randomly? Loads of the spells aren’t actually intended for combat situations, so what do you do with those?

A slightly odd thing is that section 177 asks you to roll two dice to discover how many Demons are in the pit you’re standing by… even though you never have to fight or make contact with the Demons at all and how many of them there are never matters one jot.

Now, going back to the maze aspect… I often thought that some sort of proofreading error was affecting the maze/secret doors system in this book and it might actually be unwinnable, so I aimed to work out the book’s exact solution for this article. Going backwards from the final paragraph:

224-209-222-204… hang on.

There is, as far as I can tell, no way whatsoever to reach section 204 in this book. Except you have to in order to reach the final encounter. It’s definitely not in the secret doors table, and I’ve gone over the rest of the book with a fine-toothed comb and I can’t see any way into it from there either. Apart from this encoded message at section 221:

WZTK WT TBY TY LSNIFJQ WTTI YJWHJX F QQFB JMY SN5R (69V5 49SPL1354. R514 213KW1R4S 16T5R 453049N7)

Now, this message appears as part of an illustration… which is probably why it’s garbled and apparently not wholly translatable. But it seems this is the message that’s meant to lead to section 204. (I have to admit I can’t work out what the code is myself and had to see what the internet had to say about this; part of it comes out as ‘the wall a secret door leading to two or four’, which should presumably read ‘two-oh-four’.) I think that covers everything; the actual secret doors and maze geography all seem to be sound.

Oh, and there’s one other thing to note: this book has possibly the best plot of any adventure game I have ever played, ever.