Gamebook Friday: ACE Gamebooks at AireCon 2025

Two weeks today, Friday 14th March 2025, I will be at AireCon in Harrogate, until Sunday 16th March.

You will find ACE Gamebooks at Booth A11 in Hall M, sandwiched between Mantic and Red Mug Crafts. 

If will have copies of all my ACE Gamebooks with me - seeing as how 2025 is the 10th Anniversary of the publication of the first book in the series, Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland - and all three ACE Gamebooks Roleplay RPGs.

If you're attending AireCon over the weekend, do stop by Booth A11 and say hello, and maybe pick up a book as well.

Meanwhile, don't forget that the ACE Gamebooks/YOU ARE THE HERO Quick Deal is still running on Bundle of Holding, whereby you can pick up $129's worth of PDFs for just $19.95 (or your currency equivalent).

You Are The Hero Bundle of Holding Quick Deal Offer

Live now is the YOU ARE THE HERO Bundle of Holding.

For a limited time, this YOU ARE THE HERO Quick Deal presents the 40th anniversary edition of YOU ARE THE HERO plus seven interactive ACE Gamebooks, and the Heorot RPG.

Part history, part celebration, YOU ARE THE HERO chronicles four decades of the Fighting Fantasy phenomenon, written by Yours Truly (author of eight Fighting Fantasy gamebooks), this revised, updated, and lavishly illustrated tome will appeal to anyone who ever whiled away a washed-out summer holiday with only two dice and a pencil for company.

The YOU ARE THE HERO Quick Deal is live until 11:00pm PST on Tuesday 4th March 2025.

Gamebook Friday: La Nuit du Loup-Garou

The new edition of La Nuit du Loup-Garou, the French language edition of Howl of the Werewolf, is out now from Gallimard Jeunesse

Here's the translated blurb from the back of the book:

You would have to be crazy to cross the borders of the windswept, fog-shrouded, and soul-haunted principality of Lupravia. And yet, that is what YOU must do. A monstrous wolf has cruelly bitten you and you are now struck by a terrible curse. Fail in this new adventure and the beast that now lies dormant within you will not be able to resist the call of the Werewolf. You have until the next full moon!

Bonus: The Archives of the Old World will reveal to you everything a hero worthy of the name must know!

Two dice, a pencil and an eraser: embark on the adventure! YOU alone will decide the route to follow, the risks to take and the creatures to fight. GOOD LUCK... 

This is the fourth of my FF gamebooks to appear in this new edition, although all eight have been published in French at one time or another.

  

Gamebook Friday: I ♥ ACE Gamebooks

It's Valentine's Day and nothing says "I love you" like buying your sweetheart an ACE Gamebook. With that in mind, there is currently a sale running over on the ACE Gamebooks Roleplay page on DriveThruRPG this weekend.

So, if you're missing a book from your collection - such as the new The Box of Delights RPG - now would be a great time to rectify that situation.

Love you guys!

The Box of Delights - The Roleplaying Game

Physical copies of The Box of Delights RPG are now available from DriveThruRPG.

To grab your copy, follow this link. To check out the print proofs of the book, watch the video below.

Gamebook Friday: Can You Solve the Murder?

This week, I was excited to receive an advanced reader copy of Antony Johnston's new interactive crime novel Can You Solve the Murder?

I was fortunate enough to be a beta reader for this last year. Since then a few changes have been made to the story, including the gender of one of the main characters, so it will be interesting to give it another read now.

Here's the publisher's blurb...

There’s been a murder at Elysium, a wellness retreat set in an English country manor. You arrive to find the body of a local businessman on the lawn – with a rose placed in his mouth. It appears he was stabbed with a gardening fork and fell to his death from the balcony above. But that balcony can only be accessed through a locked door, the key is missing, and everyone in Elysium is now a suspect…

Gather the evidence and examine the clues. Choose who to interview next, and who to accuse as your prime suspect. But remember that every decision you make has consequences – and some of them will prove fatal… 

Do you have what it takes? Can YOU solve the murder?

The great thing about Can You Solve the Murder? is that while it isn't a gamebook in the style of Fighting Fantasy or ACE Gamebooks, it isn't simply a branching narrative like a Choose Your Own Adventure story, where everything is revealed at the end.

There are clues to be collected and a puzzle to be solved. At the end, in classic murder mystery style, you have to declare who you think the murderer is. But you can't just guess who it might be - you have to have the evidence to back up your suspicions.

I met Antony Johnston for the first time last year after Fighting Fantasy Fest, despite having both worked for Abaddon Books when the imprint started out, and he is a huge gamebook fan. In fact, he wrote a glowing review of Dracula: Curse of the Vampire.

Can You Solve the Murder? will be published by Penguin Books* in June 2025.

* Parent company of Puffin Books, who originally published the Fighting Fantasy series.