SPOILER FREE REVIEW BUT READ THE WHOLE REVIEW!
Fighting Fantasy Adventures (Wallace Designs, 2025)
Box 0: The Orb of Lucis
[Random intro: My brother-in-law saw me messing about with this deck of cards. His chosen vocation is online transvestite Hindu fortune-teller and he thought it was an innovative new tarot system. That’s how cool the cards look!]
Backed Tier Reward: Treasure Chest
Basics: Shipping was received early, probably due to Bangkok’s proximity to the presumed China production origin, packaging was excellent, very sturdy. Plastic corner protectors on the box, no damage whatsoever, mint condition.
The big box contains 8 smaller boxes, 1 for counters, markers and dice, 1 for Hero cards plus a signed card by Steve Jackson, Ian Livingstone and Martin Wallace, (my backer bonafide card is #3346), 6 for the various adventure boxes. There is a map printed on the inside of both upper and lower boxes (both of which make very sturdy dice rolling containers). There is also a 16-page rulebook and a hardback tactical board for combat and marching order.
This review concerns Box 0: The Orb of Lucis. This review will start in reverse with the ugly, the bad, the good, and my final thoughts, on this box only. Each box contains a set of Dungeon Cards, which form the map, and Encounter Cards, which form the meat of the adventure.
The Ugly
The elephant in the room is the AI-influenced art. To be honest, I was expecting it, having seen some early pre-release art that was obviously AI. I said nothing, hoping at the time others would, and maybe they did, because the obvious AI art has been disguised to some extent. The kicker when playing the game though, was encountering a monster card where one wing was growing out of the rear of the monster’s eyeball, while the monster’s other wing was sort-of on their back. The sort of lazy AI art we see because AI doesn’t actually know what it’s doing. Unfortunately, once you’ve seen that example, you can’t unsee it, and then you start seeing it everywhere. I could be wrong, and all it takes for proof are the original artists’ PSD files or equivalent. Unfortunately, while the artists are credited, who did what is not so clear, so I don’t know who is responsible for what art. As far as I can see, the AI art takes three major forms, most of which are creatures and monsters (note, some creatures’ art appears AI-free).
Firstly, such as wing-eyeball monster, there are creatures where AI generated the image, which was then processed – slightly – by a human, and the rest obscured with “Dungeon Smoke”, so all you see is the head and maybe a few limbs at best, or cropped out as a ‘porthole’ effect, again, with just the head. It’s actually a shame everything is so obscured with “Dungeon Smoke” because there are two monsters in particular, I would love to see the original AI images as they are well gnarly, insanely so even.
Secondly, there are humanoid monsters where an original AI configuration, recognizable by the bland expression and strange design choices, are traced over and masked by some first-class digital texture work. They need to get the artist who did the texture work to draw the actual pictures next time, the textures are that good. These cards are bearable, not too bad, clear and refreshingly free from “Dungeon Smoke”.
Finally, there is a repeated legless dragon motif where the belly scales become a weird rope pattern half-way down, which repeats until the tail. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were just that (I believe the technical term for such a creature is an Amphiptere), but the wings are attached to said rope-belly and not the back of the dragon, making the problem more acutely visible. Again, once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee the rope-belly-wing. This is repeated on all boxes, and every card, encircling the encounter or dungeon number. Ironically, the head is based on the original black dragon ‘Titan’ from the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, and in this form the dragon occurs on the tactical board, happily free of rope-belly or rope-belly-wings. The whole thing could be a weird design choice, but there’s also a monster card with a similar problem, the belly scales invert to become an armoured carapace before reverting to belly scales and finally, thankfully, being obscured by “Dungeon Smoke”.
[I could be wrong on all of this, all we need to see are artist PSD files, timelapse videos or equivalent.]
The maps inside the box look great, but there are mistakes, misspellings and mislabeling with place names. Briefly, these are as follows: it should be Zengis not Xenghis, Kay-Pong not Kai-Pong, Carnex not Carner, Skaar not Skaal, Kalong Marshes not Kalon, The Dragon Reaches not Dragon Reach, Blood Island not Blood Isle, and Snake Island not Snake Isle (thanks to Victor Cheng for the last one). This is not difficult to get right.
One card typo that leapt out was a creature being described as ‘hagged’. While I quite like the idea of the word ‘hagged’ as a possible contemporary expression to ‘fragged’, I think it should be haggard.
I realize none of these things affect gameplay in any way, but given how much money the campaign raised, and how good the product looks otherwise, they all combine to detract from one’s overall enjoyment of said product.
The Bad
My counters aren’t great as the counter material has interfered with the print quality. They are legible but weirdly distorted, reminiscent of bit-mapped images to some extent. Hard to tell if it’s a poor-quality print job or a low-resolution image file usage or both.
There’s not much lore in the initial quest. We don’t know who or what Lucis is, why they have an Orb worth stealing, and who or why there needs to be a guardian for the Orb. Nothing here ties it to Fighting Fantasy or the Allansia map, other than the fact your Heroes are measured by SKILL, STAMINA and LUCK.
Some of the Encounter Cards have this weird ambient background text on them, but it has no tangible effects. It makes for nice atmosphere, but you’re never told when you should read it.
I understand it’s a bonus introductory quest, but the ending to this quest is remarkably anticlimactic. It’s very satisfying to play, so it’s quite strange you get no tangible benefit for completing it.
Some of the creatures, despite, or possibly because they are/were AI inspired, are remarkably bland in name and absence of lore. They look wicked! I want to know who they are and what they’re doing in this god-forsaken dungeon.
There’s a lot of “Dungeon-Smoke” on the cards. This is not a game for playing dark dive bars or for those of poor eyesight. Some of the counters are tiny and fiddly. The dungeon sprawls, and not in a regular grid either. Prepare to spill beer or coffee or pizza or chips all over it.
It’s a total one-shot. Once you’ve solved the secret of the Orb of Lucis, that is it. I might dig it out when my daughter gets back from college or my wife finally consents to playing a fantasy board/card game instead of root canal surgery, but there is no replay value once you’ve rumbled the mysteries here.
The Good
Gameplay! It’s fun, fast, exciting, terrifying even! Stuff happens, and like the gamebooks, once something’s happened there’s no comebacks, no five finger bookmarks even. It’s balanced, intuitive even. Despite all my tedious bitching and moaning above about the aesthetics, I was having fun. I felt I was playing a board/card game version of a previously obscure, unreleased Fighting Fantasy gamebook. The general atmosphere of 80s dungeon bashing is alive and well.
The Heroes were all fun in this initial adventure. I played solo with all four, which is a bit book-keeper-ish, but nothing too extravagant. Their abilities are all cool and complement each other well. One even has a “Smoke Bomb” ability to match all that “Dungeon Smoke”. Marching order is important. Tactics are important, but not tedious. Monsters are scary. Resources have to be managed carefully, items are gratefully found and acquired. This is all good gameplay and certainly adds to the fun value. The central puzzle is very, very satisfying to solve. Rules are easy to understand, writing is generally clear although it could be slightly more descriptive.
The art that is not AI is excellent. This includes the map, of which I would happily buy a print if the names were corrected. The Hero Card illustrations are epic and atmospheric. The Dungeon Card room pictures are fantastic, particularly once you clear a room by flipping the card over, which shows the bloody mess of a slain monster carcass everywhere. You could make an entirely separate random dungeon-bash game with the dungeon cards drawn from a stack, a lone Hero, and the Encounter Cards randomized on a table. There’s some hidden art on the outside of the bottom box that looks insanely brilliant but is sadly “brownscaled” out. I’d like to know which artists drew what pictures, because there is some outstanding artistic talent on show here.
Final Thoughts
It’s a fun, exciting one-shot card-box dungeon adventure, marred by some sloppy AI art. I’m looking forward to playing Box 1: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain next week (have to pace these one-shots out) and see how it tackles recreating an actual published gamebook. I liked it so much I’ve started re-engineering THE ORB OF LUCIS as a short non-linear amateur Fighting Fantasy gamebook, which, once typed up, I will repost here for interested parties to play. Would I back it again? Only if they ditch the AI art, use 100% human art, and run the whole thing by a Fighting Fantasy fan who knows their Zengis from their Kay-Pong. Flawed but intriguing.
