Dragon Books, £1.25, ISBN 0-583-30762-0
Fantasy, 1985

Castle of Lost Souls is the easiest gamebook in the Golden Dragon line, and this could be due to the fact that it was actually an expanded version of the campaign that was initially published in White Dwarf back in 1984.

The plot line is standard. There is an arch-fiend, Slank, who lives in a creepy castle. He harnesses human souls in his castle to fuel his hunger for power, and guess who has to infiltrate the castle and whack that foul villain. Yes, you. In order to save a soul imprisoned by Slank in that castle of his, you have to confront Slank in his castle and give him his just desserts. But first, you need to collect six special items to finish off Slank, and luckily for you, these items aren’t hard to find at all. You can miss out on some of these items if you are careless, of course, but I managed to get them all in my first run so I don’t think you will have much problems. In fact, I managed to finish the whole campaign in my first try.

Castle of Lost Souls is a pretty generic campaign. Confronting Slank is easily the toughest hurdle in this campaign, but if you have found all the items you need to finish him off, he’s not really that tough. The rest of the campaign is standard stuff. There is nothing particularly bad about this one, but there is nothing about it that stands out as well.

It’s pretty odd, if you ask me, for this particular line to start out with very tough gamebooks only to end it with what seems like the perfect gamebook for beginners.