My love/hate affair with the Survival series began all the way back in 1995, when I was browsing the shelves of my school library, and came across a hardback book with the provocative title "Could You Be A Frog?". That was not a challenge that the younger me was going to see and just let pass. The book was essentially a Choose Your Own Adventure story, in which you played at being a frog trying to navigate your way through the wide and distinctly un-frog friendly world, catching butterflies and avoiding getting picked off by the hidden nasties lurking in the grasses. Most of the book was comprised of an assortment of double page illustrations, each with a selection of choices, any of which could obliterate the paper-thin barrier between life and death. Such is the life of a wild critter. I was doing quite well at being a frog, until I got to a page where I had the option of jumping off onto a bank or into a cool, refreshing stretch of water, and chose the water. I turned to the page number specified to be met with a Grey Screen of Death, and the rebuke that, "You did not see the water snake!" I guess I didn't. I turned back frantically and tried to identify the rapacious serpent that had allegedly just swallowed me whole, but for the life of me I couldn't. All I saw was a murky collection of vaguely-defined pond weeds and shadows, any one of which felt as though it could have transformed into that elusive snake if you gazed at it long and hard enough (which I did). At one point I thought I saw the snake's jade green eyes leering up at me from just where the light appeared to glisten on the water's surface, and it chilled me to the bone, but by that point my mind was blatantly playing tricks on me. Eventually I had to return the book to the library, leaving that phantom snake forever etched upon my psyche and conceding to the fact that my snake-blindness meant I'd flagrantly sucked at being a frog.
Somehow or other I got to ruminating on that snake again in the latter half of 2022, and how much it troubled me that I had never found it, and it dawned on me, why didn't I buy my own copy of that book and have another crack at looking these older, adult eyes? I'd bet it'd be embarrassingly easy to locate now, so I could put the mystery to bed and have a good giggle at the expense of my childhood self into the bargain. Easier conceptualised than done - the book was obviously long out of print, and what sellers were asking for their second-hand copies was generally way out of my price range. It was here that I discovered that the book was in fact part of a series, and that I could also have the opportunity to live (and die) as a deer, fox, otter, squirrel and mouse, if I was willing to fork out the required cash. Most of these titles weren't exactly going cheaply either, but I figured that with enough time and persistence I'd be able to snag copies without breaking the bank. Time and persistence were indeed my friends. By January 2023 I had five of the six books in my possession, including the Frog edition (yes, that snake was embarrassingly easy to spot now, but at the same time I can see where the callow me went wrong in trying to find it). I became obsessed with the series, and I knew it was something I absolutely wanted to sing the praises of here. The one book that continued to elude me was the dratted Deer edition, and this stalled my plans for a Survival retrospective for a couple of reasons - a) "Deer" was one of the earlier installments, and I would have preferred to go through them in a rough kind of order and b) I feared that bringing even the most minimal of attention to the series would increase the competition and make it that much harder for me to ever acquire a copy. So I kept my mouth shut and hung fire, checking online listings on a daily basis for months on end, waiting for the prices to drop to an acceptable level. Once again, time and persistence proved to be sure-fire allies. In the dying days of March 2023, "Deer" finally dropped down onto my doorstep, and now the coverage can finally begin. And I wish anybody else aiming to collect the full series the utmost of luck.
The Survival books follow the same basic format, allowing you to play as a given animal going about a day in its life - which could end up being the last day of its life, if you don't make all the right decisions. Either you'll keep going until your player animal has returned to its place of safety, ending the story, or you'll meet a Grey Screen of Death, indicating that you just made a fatal error, prompting you to head back to Page 1 and start from scratch. These are accompanied by a harrowing image of your animal's lifeless body (your animal always leaves a clean corpse, even in situations where the cause of death probably should have entailed blood and entrails). In all of the books there are three sections that, in place of the usual double page
illustration, are broken down into four separate squares, each
containing a different outcome - it's in these sections that you'll find all of the death endings, but a number of them are also green, indicating that you just made a good decision or at least one that didn't kill you. It's here that we should address the slight design flaw in how the books are put together - whenever you turn to these pages, it is somewhat inevitable that you're going to notice which squares are grey and which are green and, even if you're trying desperately hard not to, register which numbers are safe and which are to be avoided. It's annoying, but I suppose it was easier and more economical than doing a double page illustration for every individual choice (not to mention, those death endings are already so grim and depressing that I'm not sure I'd want to see them magnified into two whole pages). If the pressures of staying alive weren't enough, there is an additional gameplay mechanic allowing you to gain or lose points as you progress through the story (so non-fatal mistakes can prove costly in other ways); it's a mechanic that I was generally indifferent to, but it might add greater replay value, in seeing how you can increase your score on subsequent playthroughs. The books' objective was fundamentally educational, the idea being to get young readers thinking about the needs of the species in question and the kinds of challenges they face on a daily basis. In most of the books there is also an underlying narrative about how human intervention has, whether intentionally or not, made the process of survival that much harder. The series was aimed at children, and it goes without saying that they're not the most difficult gamebooks in the world, but you might be surprised at just how intense and involving the gameplay can get. What most impressed me about the series is the atmosphere of omnipresent dread that accompanies you up until the end, not knowing quite what was coming next, just that danger could be lurking anywhere and it could all be over with a single slip-up. I came away wishing that they'd made a whole lot more than just six of
these things. Since all but one of the volumes selected mammals as their
subject, I would have suggested that for a hypothetical seventh edition
they might liked to have focussed on a species of bird. Really, there are so
many ways in which they could have expanded this series - I think
the concept would have made for a very good range of point and click
adventure games during the CD Rom era. But it's all just a lot of missed opportunities now.
The first four editions of Survival were written by Roger Tabor, with John Norris Wood taking over for the Frog and Mouse editions. The books were published by Heinemann in the UK and by Ideals in the US - and, despite the series being British in origin, I actually had an easier time sourcing US copies. The UK setting is important, since the absence of large predators means that the three bigger animals - the deer, the fox and the otter - have only two things that can feasibly kill them, those being humans and dogs...although, believe me, there's no shortage of ways in which that former threat can manifest itself. With the squirrel, frog and mouse, you have the additional pressure of knowing that pretty much everything is out to get you. The differing perspectives according to the animal's size and where it ranks in the food chain do a lot to add variety to the proceedings; what does become apparent is that all of these creatures are, in their own way, as vulnerable as each other.
Having played through all six editions, I've compiled a list of tips for anybody else looking to dip into the series:
- A good chunk of Survival effectively boils down to a continual game of "What's wrong with this picture?", so study the illustrations carefully.
- In addition, be sure to read the accompanying text in full. Often it's tempting to jump straight to the illustrations when thinking about what page you're going to turn to next, but the text frequently contains vital clues and narrative information. In particular, look for details in the illustrations that aren't mentioned in the text, as these are likely to be of significance in terms of how your decision is going to play out.
- In a situation where you find yourself in a stand-off with an enemy, it's a good rule of thumb to avoid the option that flagrantly underestimates your enemy.
- On a similar note, don't underestimate yourself. You'll be surprised at what your animal is capable of doing when under pressure.
- Sometimes the game rewards you for making a bold decision, so don't always err on the side of caution. The distinction between a bold risk and a stupid risk isn't always obvious, but worth considering.
- Don't. Step. Out. When. You're. Close. To. The. Edge. There is one scenario that shows up in four of the six books that invariably leads to disaster. You'll figure it out soon enough.
- If you're working from a Heinemann softcover edition, then DON'T be tempted to peek at the index at the back before you play, as it lists where all of the death endings are. That was considerate of them, wasn't it?
The "Deer" edition, published in 1989, was an early foray for the series, and the concept definitely doesn't feel quite so polished here as it would in subsequent volumes. The images (a mixture of photographs by Fiona Pragoff and drawings by Tim Hayward) are great straight off the bat, but have less of an opportunity to incorporate the kinds of sinister visual clues that make the Survival series so involving - the "What's wrong with this picture?" approach actually doesn't apply too often here, with the book relying extensively on the text to do the heavy-lifting. Furthermore, the death endings don't always make it too explicit what you did that was wrong - there is at least one death where it's not altogether clear to me what was supposed to have tipped me off that this was a bad decision - intermittently having it seem as though they inserted the death arbitrarily as opposed to it feeling like a truly logical outcome of your actions. This adds up to the gameplay feeling all-round less involving, and more a case of passively turning the pages to see how the narrative works out. On the other hand, that atmosphere of omnipresent dread is something they absolutely nail - throughout the book, your deer is repeatedly stalked by hunters, and the unsettling sensation of being followed by something you can't actually see (the hunters are glimpsed in only two of the illustrations) is something that really permeates the gameplay.
"Deer", along with "Fox", has an additional symbol on each page to indicate the direction in which the wind is blowing - if you move downwind, then you obviously risk making yourself more vulnerable - although this was abandoned in later editions. To be honest, it has very little relevance in determining the outcome in most scenarios (in both "Deer" and "Fox"), but it definitely adds another dimension of peril to the proceedings. The points system, meanwhile, isn't too creatively implemented here, as there's no way you can have your score lowered other than to die - later books would play around with this a bit more by implementing non-fatal mistakes that would result in a reduction of points.
"Deer" is the only edition in which the sex of your player animal is specified (it's hinted in "Squirrel" that your character may be a male, but not made explicit), and the only book in which reproduction is clearly on your character's agenda as much as feasting - you play a male deer travelling with a harem of does, and the imperative to keep your does from being lured over by the charm of rival stags is an additional factor in determining how well your day is going to play out.
As I go into more specificity about the content of "Deer", I feel it
merits doing something that I have never before done on these pages,
which is to insert a page cut in order to protect you Survival
virgins out there from having the solutions spoiled. Cuts are not
something I ever got into the habit of implementing as a blogger, but
here it just seems like good courtesy. If you're going to read further,
then I encourage you to play the books beforehand, if possible, and I
emphasise that the hidden text is intended for those who have already
done so (not that I'm banking on there being legions of you out there,
given how tricky the books are to get hold of). If you don't care, then
you can of course click anyway, but you do so at your own peril.
Now, let's go over all the grisly ways you can kick the bucket as a deer, accompanied by my personal analysis...
Again, if you care anything about spoilers, turn back now.
- Death #1 (4) - Death by incoming traffic: A possible ending that involves you being pulverised beneath the wheels of a vehicle in motion is one that would prove near-universal to the Survival series, and I suspect the educational intention here was actually two-fold - death on the road accounts for a large number of wildlife casualties on an annual basis, and our tendency to modify their territories by inserting roads right through the middle has obviously made things a lot harder for our animal friends. At the same time, it serves as a reminder to the books' target audience that roads are not a safe place for them to linger, either. Since "Deer" was the last book in the series I got round to playing, I'd already learned from experience that stepping out into the road is not a scenario that tends to favour you. And in this case, the text flat-out tells you that a car is coming, so if you jumped straight into the road - you were either morbidly curious, or just plain foolish. This is one of the more punishing deaths in terms of points deducted, so I presume that Tabor would agree.
- Death #2 (6) - Death by hunter: Here's what I'm getting at when I say that Tabor has a tendency in "Deer" to not always clearly spell out where you went wrong, as he would do in subsequent editions. In this case, you were being stalked by two hunters who had you in a pincer movement, so running from one just leads you directly into the path of the other. Psych! The mistake I think you made was in galloping off downwind, leaving you wide open to whatever danger might have been lurking in that direction. It's not well-explained, but I can make sense of it. If I'm right, then this would be the only death in "Deer" in which the wind direction comes into play.
- Death #3 (11) - Death by barbed wire: This is the only death in "Deer" that makes clever use of the kinds of visual tip-offs that would prove indispensable to later editions of Survival, and one that I'll admit did trip me up (no pun intended) on my first playthrough. You find yourself in a situation where you have to get past a barbed wire fence and have the option of going either under it or over it. I thought the answer was going to be that if I tried going under I would get my antlers caught against the fence, so I elected to go over it - not noticing that the specific area I was being prompted to jump over had a massive coil of loose barbed wire on the other side. What a way to go. In my defence, it was pretty well-camouflaged against the forest floor. And it was certainly heartening know that this series was still capable of throwing some nasty surprises my way, even after playing through the five other volumes. I'd rate this as the best-implemented death in "Deer", although there is still a minor quirk I must flag up, this being the only Grey Screen of Death in the entire series not to show an image of your dead character, and instead shows your deer very much alive and looking incongruously pleased with itself. That's got to be an editing error, surely?
- Death # 4 (14) - Death by snare: This is the death in "Deer" that I struggle the most with (again, no pun intended), because for the life of me I can't identify any visual clues in the relevant illustration (on page 17) that point to there being a snare if you go down the deer path. Thanks to the aforementioned flaw in the book's design, I had figured out that 14 was a bad number before I'd properly explored page 17, so I stared at the image intently, trying to decipher what the hidden danger was before I checked my answer. And really, it was like watching for that phantom water snake all over again. At one point I thought I saw a shotgun poking up out of the grasses, and then I was momentarily convinced I saw a man's face hidden in the bramble, but it was only my mind playing tricks on me. Eventually, I admitted defeat, turned to 14, only to discover that I'd been killed by a snare I'm convinced that Tabor had just pulled out of his ass. Typically, the death pages provide a close-up image of the tell-tale detail you neglected to pick up on during your previous turn, but in this case all Tabor could show me were the back-ends of three of my doe groupies. Is there actually a snare hidden aware on page 17? Or is Tabor going for a rationale that's more along the lines of "hey, wally brain, a DEER path would be the very first place a hunter is going to think of looking for you"? That would be my best guess, but as it is it just feels like kind of an arbitrary outcome.
- Death #5 (22) - Death by rival male: I was wrong when I said that dogs and humans were the only things that could potentially kill you in the first three editions. For "Deer" is unique in being the only adventure in which you can potentially be done in by a member of your own species, and that's quite interesting in itself. Rutting stags don't typically fight to the death, although I suppose accidents will happen. In this case, your antler broke and you wound up being gored by your rival's front spikes; you survive in the short-term, but ultimately die of infection. This makes sense as a death, but it's another example of "Deer" relying extensively on textual pointers rather than visual clues, with the narration flat-out telling you that your antler is beginning to weaken, so continuing to brute force through the situation might not be such a good idea. I suspect that a later edition would have opted to convey this through more visual means, eg: by showing a crack appearing in your antler. Then again, looking at the illustration of those two stags rutting on page 15, I'll admit that I'm not 100% clear on which is meant to be you and which your opponent, so maybe it would all get too confusing.
Other observations:
- I wouldn't say there's a lot of room for humor in the Survival series, but the section on Page 16 that gives you the opportunity to troll the humans on your trail by observing them from behind is pretty endearing. I'd assumed from the outset that this was going to backfire on you, but as it turns out to be a lovely breather from the main action. The text calls out your behaviour as "not healthy", but allows you to get away with it anyway. And that's cute.
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