Caverns of the Snow Witch

Caverns of the Snow Witch feels like a bunch of smaller adventures roughly put together to form a larger whole. Don't quote me on this, I might be wrong, but I think this was orginally a smaller adventure which got expanded somehow.

Your job is initially to take out some unknown creature, but you eventually get sidetracked and find yourself on a mission to fight the Snow Witch. Even by Fighting Fantasy standards, the Snow Witch is one of the most underdeveloped villians in the gamebook series, with your first encounter with her being short and quick if you survive, and your second encounter being a short luck based game you must win to beat her. (Spoiler - click to show)You get a pair of companions as well in the process. Afterwards, you escape her lair and find yourself on yet another mission to save your life. The events do not feel like a fully formed and solid plotline.

The icy setting makes for a fairly good change of pace from the usual fantasy settings, but I think this game could have been better with a plot fully around the Snow Witch as an adversary. As far as difficulty goes, there are some tough enemies, but also with ways to avoid them. As with most other Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, you will need to find the one true path by finding the 'right' items to secure a victory.

It was one of the first few gamebooks I played, but also one of the weaker ones in my opinion. It was a fair bit of fun, but I think there are better titles in the series out there.