''Ian Livingstone's Deathtrap Dungeon'' is an action-adventure video game developed by Asylum Studios and published by

Eidos Interactive Square Enix Limited (formerly Domark Limited and Eidos Interactive Limited) is a British subsidiary of the Japanese video game company Square Enix, acting as their European publishing arm. The company formerly owned ''Tomb Raider'', which was in ...

for

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and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

in 1998. It is based on the adventure gamebook ''

Deathtrap Dungeon ''Deathtrap Dungeon'' is a single-player adventure gamebook written by Ian Livingstone, and illustrated by Iain McCaig. Originally published by Puffin Books in 1984, the title is the sixth gamebook in the ''Fighting Fantasy'' series. It was later ...

'' (the sixth in the ''

Fighting Fantasy ''Fighting Fantasy'' is a series of single-player role-playing gamebooks created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. The first volume in the series was published in paperback by Puffin in 1982. The series distinguished itself by mixing Choos ...

'' series) written by Ian Livingstone, and published by Puffin Books in 1984.

Gameplay

The game is a third-person action-adventure, with the player taking the role of an adventurer (either the Amazon "Red Lotus" or the

barbarian A barbarian (or savage) is someone who is perceived to be either Civilization, uncivilized or primitive. The designation is usually applied as a generalization based on a popular stereotype; barbarians can be members of any nation judged by som ...

"Chaindog"), who at the invitation of a wizard explores a series of dungeons and must overcome both monsters and traps to find riches.

Development

Ian Livingstone was heavily involved in determining the game's level design and art style. The aesthetics and atmosphere are manifestly inspired by Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi, whose ruins drawings fascinated Ian Livingstone. Though the game's 3D engine is very similar to that of '' Tomb Raider'', another Eidos-published game with a development cycle which overlapped that of ''Deathtrap Dungeon'', the two games were developed in isolation. Livingstone said the character Red Lotus was created as "a combination of all the girls who have caught my eye over the past 20 years. Not all of these girls were real, though. Comic books have had a big influence on her creation."

Reception

''Deathtrap Dungeon'' received mixed reviews on both platforms according to the review aggregation website

GameRankings GameRankings was a video gaming review aggregator that was founded in 1999 and owned by CBS Interactive. It indexed over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 video games. GameRankings was discontinued in December 2019, with its staff bei ...

. ''

Next Generation Next Generation or Next-Generation may refer to: Publications and literature * ''Next Generation'' (magazine), video game magazine that was made by the now defunct Imagine Media publishing company * Next Generation poets (2004), list of young ...

'' said that the flaws in the PlayStation original "continually distracted us from the fun parts. Overall, there are only three words for this game – bad, bad, bad." '' Edge'' gave both the PlayStation and PC versions each a score of seven out of ten, saying that the former version "isn't going to seriously challenge ''

Tomb Raider 2 ''Tomb Raider II'' is a 1997 action-adventure video game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. It was first released on Windows and PlayStation. Later releases came for Mac OS (1998), iOS (2014) and Android (2015). It i ...

''s dominance of this genre, but it is a solid, playable and well-designed fantasy romp that will at least pass the time until Lara Croft's next appearance"; and later saying that the latter version was "certainly worthy of attention, though not, as Eidos might suspect, because of the presence of a busty heroine."

Reviews

*'' SF Site''

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Deathtrap Dungeon (Video Game) 1998 video games Action-adventure games Eidos Interactive games Fantasy video games PlayStation (console) games Single-player video games Video games based on novels Video games based on tabletop role-playing games Video games featuring female protagonists Windows games Video games developed in the United Kingdom