Sky Lord

Background -

It is yet another late night at Puffin HQ.  Phillipa is pouring over a mass of manuscripts.  They are divided into two piles.  One is considerably taller than the other.  Sighing she calls on the intercom for her PA.

A young nerdy youth comes in.

Phillipa "Take these manuscripts will you.  This one is to go to the publishers.  Tell them to get it out now.  No mucking about, we are behind schedule and it has to be printer immediately.  The rest, take to the incinerator, they must never see the light of day!  Am I clear?

PA "Yes mam, ill get right on that straight away for you."

Phillipa turns around to look out into the night sky from her office as the PA puts the piles together and leaves in a hurry.  As he makes his way down the twisting corridors of beige he does not see Ian walking the other way.

They collide, sending papers everywhere.  Ian is aghast as the coffee spills over his nice shirt.

Ian "For Titans sake, watch where you are going!"

He tuts as he moves on in disgust.  The PA though just looks at the piles of paper.  He has no idea which one was to go to the publisher.

Picking one up he looks at the title, Sky Lord.  Well this would have to be it.  Hopefully it was not one of the ones that should have been burned.

It is summer of 1988 when Sky Lord came out and it is another new author, Martin Allen.  He has co authored Clash of Princes before but I doubt I will ever review those.  Now I remember Sky Lord from the cover, so I know I played it.  But I have no recollection of anything about it.  I was never a fan of Sci Fi ones but I am aware of this books reputation as being the one that finally killed of Sci Fi in Fighting Fantasy.  So I am not going in with high hopes.  Other than that, terrible books are actually easier to find comedy in.

Covers - 

Well the yellow background is certainly striking.  I do not mind it.  I think the jet bike thing has a lot of Star Wars about it.

The crazy black limbed, tentacled creature is certainly something.  His mouth takes up the entirety of his face.  I love how instead of hands, the tentacles are wrapped around the handlebars.

I remember seeing this one a lot at the library.  I think the colour scheme helped it stand out.

But I do have a problem.  Why is he wearing a red scarf?  For one thing, it is a clear safety hazard when riding a space bike! It could get caught on anything!  And why is it the only piece of clothing it is wearing?  Maybe the neck is the naughty area of these creatures.

Premise - 

The first section is called about your star system.  We start with finding out about yourself.  I have my own name!  I am Sky Lord Jang Mistral, an elite solar trooper and special agent of the 16th aeon!  A bold move to be named as it takes away a bit from it being you.  A pretty bad ass name though.  Oh and on a small side note I have four arms, no biggie.

My home planet is Ensulina and it is just one of the thousands of worlds in the Faluksh star chain, home to a wide array of worlds.  From baking hot solar flares to cold lifeless husks, home to galactic pirates and space desperadoes.  However there are plenty of nice worlds as well with diverse life forms. 

I belong to race called Ensulvars who have come from two ancient nations.  The dawn time Enzuls and the war like Ivars.  The Ivars invaded and eventually the two races mixed creating four armed humanoids and kept the best traits of each ancestor race.  We are very respected, especially by two armed humanoids!  Ha, look at those losers over there with just two arms!

During the 12th aeon though there were bad times as a vast galactic war broke out.  Two races had been secretly amassing vast fleets and their armies attacked each other.  They are the Fethps who are greedy two headed reptiles and the Deik, large purple molluscoids of unknown origins.  Both ravaged the galaxy and my lot were conquered by the Deik and forced to make weapons for them.

Eventually though in the 13th aeon the two aggressors had sapped each others strength and a rebellion led by the human Ari Skyfarer (not a Skywalker of course) using the weapons they had been forced to create, both races were driven from the star system.

For his efforts, Ari was made Grand Emperor (oh no that does not sound good) and in order to keep everlasting peace the council of Star Kings was formed.  Each Star King rules a world (ours is called King Vaax) and they meet every 500 days to work out any disputes peacefully.  If they need to sort out trouble they use the Imperial Guard (cough storm troopers cough) or heroic solar troopers, which I am one of.

On my planet of Ensulina you have to earn the title of Lord.  My exceptional skill and courage earned me my first title when I was only 20.  I have only got better as well and my most recent title is Sky Baron, earned after capturing Olaf Tharkin and his band of solar cut throats.  Now King Vaax has summoned me and the other lords for a a new mission.  But before we tell you what that is here is how to play the game. 

We will ignore that part and address it in the playthrough.  For now lets move on to the Mission Briefing.

King Vaax had a major-domo called L'Bastin.  He was basically running the Kings household staff.  But he gets into cybernetics and genetic engineering.  So he buys a lot of kit and scientific publications for his new hobby.  The only thing is all this costs a fair amount of money and L'Bastin gets himself into considerable debt.  Kind of like me with Warhammer.

So old L'Bastin goes to the King and asks for a pay rise on his current modest wage.  However the King tells him that nobody has had a pay rise in over 200 years and any pay rise would set a dangerous precedent and undermine the entire economy.  L'Bastin was very upset at his stingy ruler as the economy had never been better.  Sounds like Martin Allen has had this conversation in real life.

L'Bastin then comes up with a cunning plan.  He starts firing all the staff and replacing them with clones from his lab.  These clones give him their pay packet and he is able to clear his debts.  

Free of this financial burden, L'Bastin amuses himself by creating whimsical creatures such as the spider fly.  He gets a bit fed up eventually and decides he must create the perfect life form.  Unfortunately this would require a specific expensive piece of kit called a metramorphosal hydrolizer.  

In order to fund this L'Bastin comes up with another scheme and starts selling the Kings stuff.  Pawning it off, which is easy since its pretty much all his clones doing the work.  However it goes wrong when he sends Ben Frumpet to the pawnbrokers.

While the fake Ben is trying to sell a piece of art, the real Ben Frumpet shows up to pawn his own stuff since he is on hard times after losing his job at the palace.  Real Ben overpowers his fake and takes him to the police.  L'Bastin's schemes are uncovered and after a trial he is sacked, his lab demolished and he is thrown onto the streets.

Are we done with this madness?  Nope we still have time for another L'Bastin scheme.  This time he disguises himself as a famous plastic surgeon and offers the Kings wife, Broomhilda, some free treatment.  Being the devious devil he is, he gives her a massive nose, saucer discolored eyes and .... ahem... a large pineapple attached to her scalp.  This of course is not discovered until her bandages are removed 10 days later, by which time L'Bastin has fled the planet.

Our man has successfully hidden now for a number of years but word has come from a bounty hunter that he is on Aarok, a fortress of a planet that was once abandoned due to a massive radiation spill.  The bounty hunter captured a mutant who fessed up that L'Bastin had been experimenting on the locals.  Rumours say he has bred his perfect life form.  Dog headed super soldiers called Prefectas which he is in the process of cloning an army of.   

Fortress Aarok has a cacophony of defenses that make it invincible to a full scale invasion force.  But luckily for us Fighting Fantasy players a lone invader can sneak in and disable the planet defence system under the dome of marvels.  

Ok so get to the planet, sneak in, switch off the planetary defences, let the fleet land and get the bad guy.  And if I do all this they will let me rule the planet!   

Wow if that felt long, it was, and I have greatly truncated it!  The world building for the star system section was pretty good but the Mission briefing is wild.  L'Bastin just had scheme after scheme.  And grafting a pineapple onto the queens head, its gone from serious world building to comedy.  

Playthrough - 

Now we have a look at the abilities.  We start off with usual Skill, Stamina and Luck.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  We get provisions but in Sci-Fi standard we do not get Cheese and Ham sandwiches but instead provision tablets, which also happen to restore 4 points of stamina.  No word on their flavour.

We also start with 10 credits of money.  I have no idea if that's a lot or not.

We have two types of combats.  Personal Combat is just the normal battle rules but we also have rules for combat weapon clashes.

These rules are different where it has a rating number, lasers and shields.  It starts with rating where we roll 1-3 and your rating is 3 and 4-6 and your rating will be 4.  

We start a combat weapon attack by comparing ratings.  Whoever has the highest goes first.  The attacker then rolls a d6, if the number is less or equal to their lasers score then the defender has to reduce their shields count by 2.  Then the roles change and you take it turn until someone's shields are reduce to zero.  

If you win and your opponent had a higher rating than you, your rating goes up by 1.

My ship the Starspray in all its glory!

Skill - 9

Stamina - 18

Luck - 7

Rating - 4

Lasers - 4

Shields - 12

Well that was a poor set of rolling but at least I got the higher rating.  Also looking at the adventure sheet there is a section saying Oxygen supply with 10 units.  No mention of it in the rules but I can imagine it won't be good.

Blast off!

We get the big countdown from 10 before we take off and enter the warp lane.  I am told from this lane we must steer into a more appropriate lane for galactic travel.  Either time travel in the 4th dimension, or light travel in the 6th dimension.  Each has its advantageous and dangers over the other.  Which way?  Oh wait so you are not going to tell me what the advantageous and dangers are?  Even though I am a sky baron super agent dude and veteran of many successful missions?  Well do we go left or right, pretty much a fancy blind t-junction!    Ok do we go Doctor Who (David Tenant of course, why even ask?) and time travel.  Or do we go Star Wars and fire up the hyper drive and go to light speed?  Well time travel seems super dangerous so I am going for light speed.

Firing into the light warp and the universe fold in on itself and I can reach anywhere in a millionth of a second just by entering the appropriate portion of the colour spectrum.  Before I can reach Aarok though someone is shooting missiles at me.  A red rocket scooter appears from a higher dimension.  Its rider is black tendrilled creature that wears a scarlet choker the marks of the Fahbad Redneck gang!  They are from the 33rd plane and he gestures rudely at me before attacking.   Ah this sounds just like our friend from the cover.  Wow Redneck, see what they did there.

So why does the picture look like this and not the guy on the cover!!??

Well he is Rating 4 so as I do not exceed him it means he goes first.  Lasers 5 and Shields 8.  Wait so he goes first and only misses on a 6?  What the hell?  I have to not roll a 5 or 6 to hit.  Amazingly he misses, but just once and and I have lost half my shields on the first go.  I do not miss.  We have the same rating but I guess that does not mean he has a higher rating, even though he went first anyway, so no plus 1 for me!

The Redneck slams into my Starships tail which luckily still has some shields so I exit light warp early.  Wait I thought it only took a millionth of a second?  Anyway, back in real space I extinguish the smoking pods and clear the blood streak left behind.  About now I decide to use the less dangerous time-warp.... Yeah thanks for telling me that now.  Before I do though a monstrous black hulk appears and I get the option to investigate.  Keen not make this trip using light-warp a complete waste of time, I go for a look.

It is a big space station and it is emitting some kind of distress code so I dock for a look.  But there is an auto drone shooting at me.  It has rating 6 so its bound to go first.  Its lasers are 4 and shields 7.  Great so we are even but he has 1 shield more than me and goes first. 

I then proceed to roll the most amount of 5 and 6s in a row I've ever rolled in my life.  I can honestly say it went into double figures.  How this played out must have played out for any NPC watching must have been really cringe as we both keep missing each other.  It eventually blows me up though and its game over.  Ok I think the ship combat is completely broken.  Not the concept, but the stats given to the ships.

This would make a poor blog so I decide to restart without rerolling any stats and instead use time travel.

Time traveling is also a crazy wash of colours.  I think Mr Allen might have liked Pink Floyd.  Anyway it takes six minutes real time to reach Aarok but after two minutes I find some space weed growing in the time warp energy field.  It could spread and choke the thruster and blow up the spacecraft.  Do I ignore the fungus or risk exiting time warp to cut it away?  

Well after my last experience of leaving the warp I am in I decide to press on.  And the ship blows up.

Ok third time lucky but this is the last one.

I of course decide to stop and sort out the dangerous weed.  

It is just as well I stopped as that could have been really dangerous.  The fungus has grown to an enormous size covering the starboard thruster and has changed to a light blue colour.  I can leave the ship to cut it off or search for a planet to pass through its atmosphere to burn it off.  Well that sounds dangerous so ill go for a space walk.

Well turns out its alive and has Skill 8 Stamina 6.  It hits me once before I defeat it.  But apparently I only retreat back to the space ship and then decide the only way to do anything is to find a planet to burn it off.  Ok then....

I find a planet on my scanscope and its only 26 million miles away.  I set cruising speed and wait for 5 hours to get there.  But before I get there a silver sting ray shaped ship materializes from another dimension.  A ship used by thee Pelhon Rangers, a misguided band of galactic vigilantes.  They attack me.  Not sure why, I do not get to speak to them and if they are vigilantes why do they think I am bad? 

Oh Joy, another space fight.  They are Rating 5 so always going to go first.  Lasers 5 so they only miss on a 6 and shields 8.

I unfortunately miss a couple of times and it blows me out of the sky and I am dead.  It is not even that I rolled poor stats as my ships stats are given at the start.  Terrible, dead 3 times with only a few pages turned.  Not often the premise takes longer than the playthrough.

Notable Encounters - 

The space station I tried to land on is infested with orange jelly blobs.  One poor gent is being devoured by one and tells you its quite painless but that its a shame you did not turn up earlier.  He advises not to shoot your gun as the gas leak will ignite.  Would a gas leak not be killing you anyway?  With the gas?

If you make it to the stations sports hall you can play some snooker.  Glad to see snooker is such a universal sport.  Of course instead of continuing to flee for your life you decide to play a bit of a game and after breaking off and potting a red, decide to pot the orange ball.  Only to then realise there is no orange ball and its a baby jelly blob.

We also have Barty Baxter!  A good space sci fi name that....  If you shake his hand he turns out to be another orange jelly. 

Or flee from a blob on a scooter as it chases you on a motorized trolley.

The only way to stop the blobs is to feed it enough stuff so you can get away.  But not all stuff is equal.  It is pure luck what each item does, and good lord there are a lot of items.  Lets have a look at some of the best ways to avoid being eaten by a jelly orange blob.

Top things to feed a blob - 

Tibia Bone
Cinnamon Stick
Chewing Gum
Hypodermic Syringe
Oxygen Cylinder
Laminex Sheet
Leg of Mutton
Strawberries
Can of Beer
Poison

Top things not to feed the blobs - 

Wrist Watch
A Robots metal arm
Jar with a pickled brain
Flame Torch
Chair
Teapot
Cricket Bat (you can tell this was before Shawn of the Dead)
Weed Killer
Broom
Sonic Screwdriver 

These guys are farming energy from a star, not really caring about the millions of lives.

So the King sends you on a mission to save this star system from the Starfire Valoog.  You get a cacophony of options to fight this thing.  So many different moves but instead of barrel rolls they have funky names.  Most end with you being blown up and killed.  You have to take the boring options to find weak spots.  It could have been cool, like an epic x-wing v star destroyer but the options are odd.

Do you want to try your anti-detector defences, select the image intensifier scanscope, activate the atomic polarizer, press the flashing orange button or fly at Mach speed, etc etc.  There is a lot of these options which makes it sound pretty cool.  Well it would be if you knew what any of these would do.  But despite being a top secret space agent you get no indication at all on what each option is or would do.  They are glorified t-junctions.  

But this is still better than if you get sent after the pirates on the ship called the Grand Archipelago.  Here its the same battle against a large ship but instead of options like before, here you get stats of your pitch, roll and yaw (numerical values) and its compared to the enemy ship along with your relative speeds.  Then you are asked what you want to change.  Now the aim is to get all of them to match the enemy ship which means getting behind it.  But you only find that out after you do it, not before!  Which means you are just guessing.  For example at one point you get the option to increase speed to 4000, which of course gets you hit by a nuclear bomb.... 

If I had managed to get rid of the pesky space weed I would have crash landed on a planet after being hit by lightning.  No matter what you do the Star Spray is pretty much destroyed.  However by then you have picked up a droid which goes off to find its odd master called Krill which just so happens to be on this world.  Its very much Star Wars.  This version of Yoda can manipulate time though and if you help him fight the evil Shaine who is turning the locals into mutants, he reverses time and you get your ship back.  Why he can not manipulate time to sort out his Shaine problem though is not made clear....  Not that you will actually win the space fight with her ship at the end.  Oh and watch out for the jelly fish bounty hunters.

Crash landing in a swamp (a lot of crashing so far) and escaping into a bell shaped ship.  On board you can have your arm ripped off by a robot shaking your hand.  It then puts a tentacle on instead.  Closely followed by meeting some robots called bric and brac who try and blast you unless you answer a question which in my opinion the answer makes no sense.  The owner of the craft dies from all the excitement.  

Just wait until you get to the desert sky pirates naming schemes.

This fine gentleman is known as captain big ears, because he of course has big ears.  He is one of two captains that are fighting.  The other captain, is captain long nose.  His nose is so ling you see it peering over the ship before you see him.  Its certainly a choice.

You can avoid the pirates by being captured by space spiders.  These guys are intelligent and you have to escape a cocoon before becoming the queens next meal.  You get the option to feign death which it turns out you have mastered the art of, but you only find that out AFTER you pick the option.  You would think you would know this when making the choice.

We get the Sky Lord equivalent of the Star Wars Cantina with a visit to the Deiks inn.  We are hear to steal a brain and not wake the Deik up.  Of course we get some impossible choices such as going to the drinking pits and getting this choice to make -

Absolutely no idea, you will probably wake up the Deik.  Lets head over to the bar instead.

This guy is so startled he spills his drink.  And of course wakes up the Deik.

Lets play it safe and just stand next to the candle.  You are a candle are you not? Oh god stop screaming!  You will wake up the Deik.

So its pretty safe to say that you wake up the Deik.  I would love to describe him but I can not even begin to explain it.  Would have been nice to have a picture, but instead we have an alien dropping his drink and a screaming candle.

This leads into more madness.  The Sphere of three trials.  Where do I even begin.  Okay so the Deik has a magic sphere that sounds for all the money like a snow globe with a castle in it.  Well you get warped into it.

Raiden from mortal combat shows up to ask you how many stars there are in the system.

I could not find a reference to knowing this, must have missed it.  It can't be another random choice could it?  

Next challenge please!

You have to fight all four of his arms separately as you are clearly disadvantaged by the amount of arms... wait a minute do I not also have four arms? 

Anyway if you beat him its challenge number three and this is where it gets really wild!  So from what I can work out (and its not that easy to just read it) you and the Deik are in two bubble like vehicles that are slowly sinking and they have open vents so you will eventually drown.  You are both locked in and the key to each hatch is on each others vehicle.   Your bubble car thing comes with a grabber and a host of described weapons.  How does it work?  Well the Deik does not tell you and instead you get choices like these. 

There are loads more like this and its just completely random.  I can not even begin to describe how bad this whole thing is.

But why are you even looking for an alien brain?

Because it powers Zud's fancy wheelchair.

But why help this guy?  Well because when you meet him he somehow tricks you with a cylinder that goes into your chest.  Inside said device is a creature called Gnasha which apart from sounding like something out of the Beano, is slowly eating its way out.  

Of course he still tries to kill you after you give him the brain.  But luckily you were really clumsy and stood on the brain earlier so it does not work that well.

But getting it removed actually hinders you later on where Gnasha can actually free you from another situation. 

 

If you thought the writing has been bad already.....

These two are Kogo and Woderick.  You are meant to think Woderick is in charge but its actually the three eyed cat controlling the human.  Of course it does not work perfectly and has given him a really bad lisp.  Which even gets explained if it was not obvious enough.  

Anyway, these two easily overpower you no matter what you do and you get sent to the torture chamber where you meet the equally well named Dr Strangething.  The good doctor was the previous owner of the mansion that you are now imprisoned in and the two rouges have captured him and looking for the magic crystal Dr Strangething has created as it can teleport you instantly anywhere.  But you need the cursor to make it work which is hidden and they have not found it yet.

Hopefully you escape, with or without Gnasha's help.  And when you do, you and the doctor have to get across a really trippy puzzle which is found on the front cover.  Well it is on my book but apparently some versions did not even have it.

Watch the colours!

Each time you step on a tile all the colours change.  So you need to keep track.  Which would be fine on a console game, its really not that fun on a gamebook.  There is no real reason for it other than, its there.

Anyway get across and the Doctor climbs up his clock tower.  But the evil cat turns up and traps you and the doctor sends down one of the clock hands which is the cursor.  However he throws the wrong hand down and the bad guys fall for it and get zapped out of existence and you get to use the real one.

We also meet Sam the Snail, who looks like a slug (so not a snail).  He is another of L'Bastin's creations.  He has escaped and appears to be gardening these days in the abandoned city.  However L'Bastin has sent people out to hunt him so asks you to help out.  He gives you a clapped out boat while they have a nice sleek one.  So just like most vehicle combats its near impossible to win as they will go first and your shields are a lot lower.  However you get some rock salt for your efforts, which sounds terrible but its the key to winning.

But if you win you get treated to this scene, although I had to work out what it actually was as it did not really have any resemblance to the text.  No pic of Sam the snail! 

You do get another companion as well.  Marsatu is a trader that is wondering around the city.  He takes you to his mansion and he has a servant called Bok.  The first problem is you can accidently drink foot ointment.  Why he does not tell you what it is before hand I don't know.  You can have a wander around the mansion and get into lots of different problems.  Like putting on a suit and jumping between dimensions and ending up in the kitchens fighting the chef.  Marsatu offers you a selection of items to pick to help you.  What he does not say is that its a trade and just takes your Laser Sword from you.  And each gift he gives you is a disaster.  My favorite back fire is when the robo dog attacks you instead with you shouting at it to heel as Marsatu cries with laughter.     

Marsatu takes you to see Giant Jym Ego who controls a roundabout that can send you anywhere you need to go.  Ah so a Magic Roundabout....

Seems to be a lot of special transportation devices.  Of course though its another game, also on the inside front cover... sometimes. 

I forgot to mention we are riding a giant grasshopper, for reasons...

You have to joust the others but you have to move the rings, your opponents also have rules for moving circles and if there is clear path you can attack.  And to make it tougher you have to beat them in four turns.  Its all very complicated but I guess you could work it out.  However if you have the right item it can tell you the correct sequence.  Its a strange mini game.

Oh and Marsatu turns on you when you get past it, its should be a shock but its so obvious by then it is not a surprise.

Finally I will call out the Yappies.  These are the scientist currently breeding more of the super soldiers.  But if you given them a walkman tuned to the funkiest station in the galaxy you get lines like -

"Cool Man Thing, Rock my cosmic marbles"

"This is terrifco"

"Ok we will keep the beat box and you can space out o'here"

Yeah those are actual lines near the climax of the book.  

Artwork - 

Tim Sell is the artist for this one.  We last saw him back in House of Hell which I said was a mixed bag but overall thought it was quite good.  I do not think he was quite as into this one, but the sci fi art has always been poorer in my opinion.  The biggest issue here is that some of the descriptions are so wild we need some art to help us.  But I feel Tim went, erm nope and stuck with some safer ones.

The Starfire Valoog is my favorite and the jellyfish is quite good, but the rest we have seen so far have been poor.  

Here is me dying, happens a lot.  Forgot I had four arms.

Here is a Glip riding a grasshopper.  Very sci-fi...

Lets try again for Sci-Fi how about a fantasy looking beetle and scorpion hybrid...

Right how is this for Sci-Fi, its a spaceship but only from behind with a word clip art 97 background.

Look just copy War of the Worlds yeah?

Ok I think I get it, how about this?

Just go back to fantasy and give the thing a gun.

Big Bad - 

In case you are still reading or caring there is a twist at the end.  Just a warning in case you are going to play this book....

So things have gone south for L'Bastin by the time we find him as his super soldier Prefecta's have decided they do not need him and have put him in a torture tank.

L'Bastin?  Is that you?

Marsatu is shocked as well and we are all imprisoned.  The tank is a Crumps tank and it sounds awful.  Suspended upside down in a tank of liquid with a device for breathing and speaking (or screaming) into.  In the water are tinselfish which have metal teeth to eat flesh.  How much they eat depends on how deep quills are inserted into the machine.  It is diabolical and also a huge tone shift from the rest of the book.

Marsatu plays the role of bumbling flunky.  He is also one of L'Bastin's creations and he snaps and tries to kill him in the chamber.  You have to stop him and get L'Bastin out, that way he gives you an escape route and the way to save the day.  

Its quite a change around that you end up working with him and probably the best thing about the book.  But make no mistake about it, L'Bastin is a bad dude.  You get a lot about his backstory and it kind of resonates for a bit.  I feel the author put his own feelings into it with the lack of pay rise and it seems he is fantasizing about what he would do to his boss (in this case the king).  But he does go off the deep end and we see evidence of that on Aarok with his experiments roaming about trying to live their lives.  

But no final end boss fight, he just dies at the end after you get him out.  Its not a forgiveness arc though, he just hates the fact this has been done to him and wants his creations to pay and gives you the ability to stop them.

Menagerie - 

Well its Sci Fi and this book is trippy so you get a lot of madness here.  Most creatures are humanoid and most get named things like Bald-Headed Rogue or Feather-Faced Rogue or Foppish Dignitary.  Also what has Martin Allen got against Chefs?  You end up fighting two of them!

Guess the name of this guy?  Bet you didn't say Fog Farkin!

Where can I begin with Fog Farkin?  Well for a start we only see his head in the artwork, but apparently he has no arms and a couple of legs.  He is a Charg and he sticks his tongue on your face to suffocate you.  This is why you need the oxygen as its a race against time to get out and it plays a little bit like the cyclops fight in Seas of Blood.  Then if you escape its a normal fight.  Oh and he wears pyjamas.  

The Ogre Oid is a space Ogre.  But space ogres are only skill 6.

How about the Gooblepotomus?  Which its pretty much just a talking hippo.

The Brutes are described as warty brute and red nose brute.  Yeah red nose is clearly his defining feature, not the two heads......

If you try and hide in a ventilation shaft, you find a red hooded terrorist also hiding in it.  No word on what he is a terrorist of.  Might have even been on the same side but you just fight.

Yep Killer Krun and his gang are Cosmic Jellyfish.  With erm.... a very dated Mexican accent and calls you a Gringo.

The Gruesome Armatilda, whatever that is.

The perfect being!

The Prefecta's are the pinnacle of L'Bastin's experiments and why you are on a mission to stop them.  They show up in various occasions but to be honest they wouldn't even last five paragraphs in an Ian Livingston Allansia adventure.  But why Prefecta, prefects were older kids at school?  Why not Perfecta?

Entertaining Deaths - 

Shaking Barty Baxters Hand and he turns into a orange gelatinous cube and eats you.

Trying to outrace an orange jelly bob on a scooter.  It catches you and eats you as its a great trolley driver.

Getting nuked.  In many different ways.

Changing into a mutant and being led by a silver chain onto Schaine's crystal ship.

Jumping through dimensions and arriving in the middle of a reactor core, which of course was next to the kitchens.

Trying to Lasso a spider shaped craft, its crushes you.

Bending over to read an inscription on a tetrahedron and stumbling and falling over into eternity.

My favorite though is shouting abuse at a spider guard about his father being eaten by the queen to try and rile him.  Unfortunately this was true and did happen and he beats you to death with a rock. 

Pete's Corner - 

You had me at Pineapple.

Final Thoughts - 

Oh boy.  Where do I start?  Ok lets try a bit of positivity.  I liked the bit about the star system at the start and I liked the twist with L'Bastin at the end.

Well that's the positives out of the way.  For me the worst part is the combat weapon mechanics.  They are just flat out broke.  I can see the concept and idea and have no problem with it but something went horribly wrong here with the execution.  So many of them have the lasers score far too high.  Its almost like someone did not read the rules and thought it was skill so had to be a higher number.  I have never had such a bad playthrough experience because of this.  At least give us some missiles to instant kill.  Looking through the rest of the book it does not let up, and these are not optional, you have to have at least a couple of battles.  I know we have had insane difficulty before but at least its come later in the book, not killed you straight out of the gate.

Oddly though the normal combat is very easy.  All these weird and wonderful creatures but they are not much of a challenge.  So the difficulty is wildly skewed from easy to impossible, not much middle ground. 

At least when you get into a battle with a giant ship you don't have to use the dice.  Instead you have to make a series of impossible decisions!  At first I thought the Starfire encounter appeared as a really cool encounter.  Almost like an X-Wing going up against a star destroyer.  But none of the choices can really be made without guessing.  You are meant to be an experienced agent and this is your ship.  It could easily give you some information on the pros and cons or even risks of each decision.  Instead you get presented with some options with no clues.  One may be right, the other will get you obliterated.  The grand archipelago is worse, as its boring as well.  All the stats mean nothing to me but if we were told up front what you had to do it might have made it more interesting.  I guess people that play flight simulator would like it.  The worst offender of this though is fighting the Deik.  The random choices are just that, random.  There is no way you can know and each one is a complete guess.  That is three major encounters that are out and out guessing.

But the book is littered with guessing.  Even the choice at the start between time and light travel.  No indication giving the advantages of each form.  Its a glorified blind left or right.  But you are meant to be this experienced campaigner so you should know these things!  There is a section where you are in a restricted area with two handles and you have to decide which to pull and in what direction direction.  Again its just pure guesswork.  I am just scraping the top of the barrel, the book is full of a lot more examples like this.  An awful lot.

If that design is not bad enough, be prepared to rely on luck.  Not luck as in the in built game mechanism to test your luck, no instead you will be rolling plenty of dice to see what happens.  Again complete lack of control.  I would say maybe one of these is fine but it keeps repeating over and over again.  For example, roll too low and your ship never gets time fixed and the game ends.

We have come across unfair books before, and even broken books.  For example Crypt of the Sorcerer and the insane finish.  But it had a great story.  Unfortunately the story in Sky Lord is poor.  It starts off well with a really good background section.  But none of it matters!  Nothing you learn there is of any relevance other than meeting a Deik.  It then goes into L'Bastin's story which I found a bit lackluster.  What follows is a series of isolated set pieces which do not really add to the story until you get near the end.  But as I said I did like the end twist.  But I think what does not help the story is the odd writing style.  Its clear that its meant to be funny and not serious (well I guess it is meant to be for kids) but its absurd in places.  But the tonal shifts can be jarring.  All of a sudden we are talking about a horrific torture device.  But my word, the stuff with Woderick and the lisp, the racist jellyfish, the names of characters.  I mean come on, Big Ears and Long Nose, bric and brac!  It is the most childish of attempted comedy and its just not that funny.  Maybe to really young kids I guess, certainly not a jaded 44 year old.  And the Yappies, good lord the dialog with the Yappies.

I have just checked my notes and laughed as one of them was I forgot I had four arms.  So we get a character name and elaborate back story and the fact you have four arms.  It means nothing really.  The only thing from your past is the racist jellyfish know you and call you by your name.

The Mini games were an interesting attempt to make things different, but they were a bit boring.  The one where you had to step on the coloured shapes was like a rubbish spectrum game.  The magic roundabout jousting was better but its so out of place in a sci-fi adventure.  And twice we had magic mcguffins which would just so happen to warp you to the next place you had to get to.

Even the blob space station could have been good if you knew why you were collecting all this equipment.  But any sense of jeopardy is killed when you decide to have a quick game of snooker instead of running for your life.

When on Aarok, the author tries to make it sound large when you are walking around.  But you go one way and you meat Marsatu.  If you go the other way you walk for ages, meet Sam the snail and then Marsatu, did you just walk in a massive circle?!

Credits were a waste of time. I saw one place where you can use buy something and then another where you lose whatever you have left.  

You know how much importance I put on the interior art but I was left disappointed here as it was sub par.  For one I thought the choices of illustrations were wrong, and with the crazy descriptions of some creatures (looking at you Deik) we really needed them.  But I suspect the descriptions were far too wild for Tim and he just went yeah that's impossible you can have one of these instead.  But even the ones we got were no where near what he produced for House of Hell.  Some of the times I had to check as I could not work out which paragraph they were meant to be referencing.  This does seem that the author and illustrator were on different pages here.

L'Bastin was an interesting villain and we certainly get a lot of backstory which I normally like.  But are we really trying to stop him breed super soldiers or is it because he grafted a pineapple to the queens head?  His presence is certainly felt when you get further into Aarok with Sam the Snail but having to work together at the end was a nice unique change to normal Fighting Fantasy.   And I did like Marsatu, even if it was telegraphed that he was a traitor.

I don't mind the Fog Farkin fight to be honest.  Yes it could be labeled the same as the big starfights where you have to make random choices but it did have the feel of the cyclops fight of Seas of Blood and I felt the decisions kind of made sense.  Not that the Fog Farkin itself made any sense.  I do not want to cast undue aspirations but some of this felt like the author was taking some, erm, medicinal inspiration.     

This book is certainly a wild ride.  While mapping it out I was almost relieved I died early.  I can see what Martin Allen was going for and he had a lot of unique ideas.  But the execution is poor.  Everyone is different but the writing style was just not for me, I found it too childlike.  But its compounded by broken mechanics and far too much random guesswork meaning you can't even play it as a gamebook.  I know most of Fighting Fantasy involves a lot of guessing but most of it you can make an educated attempt at it.    

By the way, I could not figure out the message, can anyone help - 

I cant find any more ciphers for it.

But in the end we can be thankful for Sky Lord.  Why you ask?  Well because it killed off the Sci-Fi entries.  And I can see why!  Its lucky it did not kill off the series.  I was always a fantasy person first through so at least I can acknowledge its achievement.  It also made me laugh a lot.  Unfortunately not with it, but at it.

But is this the worst Fighting Fantasy book (at least so far)?

Yes.  

Glad I paid £23 on eBay for it.

Score - 1 out of 10.