The Little Book of Death

Escape the Dark Castle: The Game of Atmospheric Adventure is about survival. About making a break from the deep dank dungeon cell you have been thrown into and working your way through the rooms and corridors of the dark castle until you can get to the main gate and escape. Of course, in between there is lots of uncertainty and plenty of death—the latter your own included, and that is all before you encounter the big Boss who will definitely try to kill you and prevent your escape. Published by Themeborne Ltd., inspired by the Fighting Fantasy series of solo adventure books and also the dark fantasy artwork of those books, Escape the Dark Castle offered plenty of replay value and variability with six Character Cards, fifty-three Chapter Cards—fifteen of which form the encounter deck, and five Boss Cards. Then of course, there are game’s three expansions: Escape the Dark Castle: Adventure Pack 1 – Cult of the Death Knight, Adventure Pack 2 – Scourge of the Undead Queen, and Adventure Pack 3 – Blight of the Plague Lord. Each of these provided players with new characters to play, a new mechanic—which meant a new challenge to overcome, new equipment, and of course, a new Boss standing in the way of the players’ escape. However, when it came to death—and there is no denying that Escape the Dark Castle is definitely about death, as well as escaping, if not more so—what neither Escape the Dark Castle, nor any of its expansions could offer was much mote than a mechanical outcome whenever a player’s character dies in the game.

The solution is The Death Book. This is a book of over one hundred death scenes, each corresponding to a particular Chapter or Boss. It is very easy to use. Whenever a character dies as a result of the vents in a Chapter or the showdown with a Boss, he checks the relevant entry in the pages of The Death Book. This is made possible because every card in Escape the Dark Castle as well as in all three of its expansions is marked with a unique code. Cross reference the code with corresponding entry in the book, whether for a Chapter or a Boss card, read out the description provided, and so provide an unfitting, but final end for your character, followed by that of everyone else.

For example, the details on the Boss card, ‘The Dark One’ reads as follows:

“Your pitiful trinkets are no match for my dark magic!”

As YOU enter the Dark One’s presence, any items YOU are carrying vaporise (other players keep theirs). Discard them now.

If a player should die in the course of this final confrontation before he and his companions, always a strong possibility in Escape the Dark Castle, he picks up The Death Book and after finding the entry for ‘The Dark One’, he reads aloud the following:

The Dark One

From the strange, clawed fingertips of The Dark One a terrible torrent of dark magic pours, crackling through the air and striking you down. The unrelenting stream intensifies, coiling around you and holding you in place like spectral chains. You roll and twist on the chamber floor, wracked with agony, foaming at the mouth. With a single motion of it staff, The Dark One sends you hurtling through the air. Your body slams into each of fellow prisoners, the impact knocking them from consciousness one by one. By an upward motion of the staff, you are now sent soaring high into the air, only to be released as The Dark One turns his back and glides out of the chamber. As quickly as rose you tumble helplessly downward, slamming to the cold stones and exploding in a shower of gore.

Your adventure ends here.

Physically, The Death Book is a neat and tidy, if plain affair. A page of introduction explains how to use the book and contains the book’s single illustration which shows where the unique code for the Chapter or Boss card is located. Then each entry has a page of its own. There is a degree of repetition to the entries, but only a little, and it really only becomes apparent when reading the book from end to end, which is not its intended use. A small and relatively slim book, The Death Book fits easily into Escape the Dark Castle: The Collector’s Box Set.

The Death Book is book of endings, but one that provides a final narrative and some context to that death. Escape the Dark Castle is an enjoyable game, but character deaths can feel little, “Is that it?”. With The Death Book, it is no longer the fact that you died, but very much how you died. Grim and ghoulish, The Death Book brings the death of every character, and with it, the game of Escape the Dark Castle to a nasty and unfortunate, but fitting end.