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House of Hell

FF10-CoverYOU become a hapless chump when your car breaks down. In a move straight out of Rocky Horror Picture Show, you see a castle with a telephone line and go ask for help.

Unfortunately, the castle is not populated with singing, dancing transexuals and transvestites (that’d be awesome), but a murderous earl and butler, a satanic cult, monsters and zombies and dead bodies, and other creepy-crawlies that may literally scare you to death.

 

Review and Opinion

An excellent book, keeping me busy for a few evenings.

The story opens with a pleasant dinner with the Earl — which often ends in being drugged, tied up, injured, and dosed up with fear. Ideally you would begin your quest conscious and not tied up, though you may also get beaten up by a door or a hunchback before you even leave the bedroom.

The rest of your quest revolves around trying to find a hidden room with a magic knife, and then finding the room where the final battle takes place. It doesn’t really follow a layout of chapters, as much as exploring a house with 3 floors, and that’s really quite something. [spoiler title=’Eight Steps To Spoilerifc Success’ style=’default’ collapse_link=’true’]1. Stay awake and get a look at the hunchback, then get out of dodge. 2. A window introduces you to Mordana. 3. Mordana knows about secret doors. 4. Get into the cellar, sweet-talk a hunchback, find bats. 5. Secret room and knife. 6. Mirror, keys. 7. Boss fight.[/spoiler]

The map is replete with red herrings and false clues, whole sections of map you can explore that lead to inevitable death, and secret doors that are well hidden. Some of the key rooms behave differently depending on how you enter them, so the map is only part of the story. To me, this makes a book more than amusing but well-crafted and deeply interesting to figure out.

The book is very light on combat and on test Your Luck, preferring instead to kill you with Fear or Your Adventure Ends Here situations. Most of the critters have a Skill under 9, and even the big boss’s 14 Skill is mitigated by your +6 magic knife. But that Fear, lurking in nearly every room, will kill you many, many times as you find the right way through.

Note that you cannot win with a Fear of 8 or less. The minimum possible Fear you can have with a perfect playthrough is 8, unless you cheat. [spoiler title=’What are the 8 Fear points?’ style=’default’ collapse_link=’true’]Mordana 2, Falling into the cellar 1, Bats 1, Mirror 1, Demon 3. If you don’t talk to Mordana , then you’re cheating when you use the secret door![/spoiler]

House of Hell is one of my favorites, for its unconventional atmosphere and unconventional play style.

 

Errors

The Mephisto Room is the room you started in, if you were drugged and bound. But it’s only called that on your way back from the right-side rooms.

Leaving the Abaddon room (159) or the Belial Room (329), drops the option to visit the third room which was present on 175.

From the store room (377) back door, the Asmodeus and Eblis rooms are not accessible. They’re mentioned only if you leave the Shaitan Room or Mammon Room, and in the context of bypassing them completely and being sent directly to 272 outside the Tutivillus Room.

 

Maps

FF10-Map1

FF10-Map2

FF10-Map3

FF10-Map4

 

Publication

Written by Steve Jackson

Illustrated by Tim Sell

1984

Book 10 in the series

 

Other Players and Links

 

Tags to Other Adventures

1984 Earth Fighting Fantasy Horror Steve Jackson Tim Sell

The Comments Section

One comment

  • Socky says:

    Ian Miller’s cover art is a classic IMO, maybe the only time that he was able to deliver a really suitable cover concept. Never mind the disconnection of the scene from the events of the book: the raw FEEL of it is perfect for what you find inside.

    His interior illustrations were superb for many other FFs, but his covers are widely derided for pretty good reason, so it feels kinda necessary to comment on just how good this one was.

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First published August 20, 2015. Last updated May 19, 2023.