Puffin Books, £2.50, ISBN 0-14-032265-5
Sci-fi, 1987

Oh no, President Xerin of the Galaxy One Federation has been kidnapped by the evil aliens Gromulans and he’s now in “a quadrant in the northern hemisphere of Earth”. Wait, what? Did the kidnappers send out an intergalactic bat signal to tell everybody where they are?

Despite knowing where the President is being held, these guys send only one guy to rescue him. That’s you and only you, armed only with a weapon. No, you’re not given nukes or anything like that to help you. Worse, you’re a bounty hunter. Does a bounty hunter do retrieval missions? What you and not an elite tactical squad?

Maybe they like the President of the Galaxy Two Federation better?

Star Strider is the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook by Luke Sharp, and considering how dire his later gamebooks are, how awful can this one be?

Well, from the first entry alone, there are noticeable issues, such as eating to restore lost Stamina points when you start out with full Stamina points in the place, and how drinking a cocktail causes you to lose 1 Skill point just because the author wants to warn you about the dangers of drinking even a little alcohol.

This may not be entirely on Mr Sharp, as he is only starting out here, but it does suggest that the editor or whoever it is that checks these things before publication was not doing their job at all.

Just like other campaigns by Mr Sharp, this one has his usual trademarks: it is a race against time, so you have to keep track of the time you spend going here and doing that, and there are many things to keep track of, including how much oxygen supply you have left. The whole thing is just a drag as it’s just a tedious gimmick to create artificial urgency.

It’s especially annoying how this is a race against time, but you have to run around collecting clues like you’re a novice—in spite of being told that you’re the best in what you do. You have to scramble around like a clueless dolt, and the narrative doesn’t have a sense of urgency at all. This creates a sense of disconnect as you’re asked to reduce your time score even as you seem to be walking around leisurely in every scene you’re in.

Interestingly, this is the liveliest gamebook by Mr Sharp, in the sense that there is a stronger sense of place and setting here compared to his later ones. Perhaps this is because he is creating a brand new setting of his own, instead of merely borrowing a corner of Titan to set his campaigns in. Still, playing one isn’t as fun as reading it like a novel, as you’ll come across many random death scenes that sometimes see you dying in most undignified manners (being vomited to death, anyone?).

In other words, you’ll be wandering blindly and stumbling around in a pretty interesting setting, your experience greatly marred by poor campaign structure and sometimes vague wording of rules. It’s like playing the first ever incarnation of Cyberpunk 2077, come to think of it. It has some interesting moments, but these moments aren’t really worth the hassle of having to sit through and actually play the joyless campaign.