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Doom Pilgrim! – War Claw’s Solo Card-Game-Book

Doom Pilgrim! – War Claw’s Solo Card-Game-Book

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Narrative game books steered my interest into dark fantasy reading and playing. The 1980s phenomenon of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks championed blending RPG elements into the choose-your-own-adventure genre. Although these persist in 2025 (in releases, digital versions, several tabletop games… all susceptible to reviews here soon), the last decade has enabled new forms of narrative, choose-your-own-adventure solo games.

This post highlights DOOM PILGRIM, a narrative-card-game-book by War Claw Games. The company is based in the Czech Republic. Most of their lineup has Print-to-Play options in addition to physical copies (produced by US-based manufacturer, The Game Crafter).

Released in 2022 as a physical and print-and-play game, Doom Pilgrim was awarded “Best Small Game of the Year” from the solo-dungeon-crawler guru Daniel from  Dungeon Dive (see also his his Doom Pilgrim tutorial).  In short, it is a superbly elegant, beautiful game. Doom Pilgrim has several expansions available now, with more on the way. Also, these proven game mechanics have evolved into Arthurian Legend,  Sci-Fi, and weird horror games.

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Review: Night of the Necromancer

Review: Night of the Necromancer

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Bela Lugosi's dead.Night of the Necromancer
Jonathan Green
Wizard Books (384 pp, ₤5.99, CAN$12.00, April 2010)

One of the many things I admire about the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks is how little space is wasted establishing the scenario. In Night of the Necromancer, you are a crusader returning home after a three-year campaign against vampires and diabolists when an ambush at the foot of your own castle leaves you slain in a ditch. But the dead shall be raised! A paragraph later you are reborn as a ghost, launching you on a quest to avenge your own murder.

Over the course of a single night, you explore a wonderfully atmospheric English countryside haunted by things worse than you, a landscape that is half M.R. James and half Ravenloft (you may even encounter a ghost hunter named Van Richten). Rather than a linear course, progress is made from crossroads to crossroads, allowing you to explore areas branching from a central nexus, then return to that nexus to investigate other avenues. When you’re ready, you move on to the next node, and so on.

Night of the Necromancer is a new addition to Wizard Books’ reprints of Fighting Fantasy from the ’80s and ’90s, and nearly 30 years of evolution shows in Necromancer‘s sophistication.

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