Sound Realms turns The Warlock of Firetop Mountain into a fully voiced, interactive audio adventure. Choose your path, hear every trap and monster in spatial sound, and descend into the mountain like never before.
The Fighting Fantasy gamebook that launched a million adventures is returning – rebuilt for a new way to play.
Sound Realms is transforming The Warlock of Firetop Mountain into a fully interactive audio adventure for iOS and Android. A professional narrator guides you through the mountain, accompanied by character performances, an original cinematic score and immersive spatial sound. Every door you open, every creature you encounter and every choice you make is brought vividly to life.
Listen to the opening passage from The Warlock of Firetop Mountain here:
Descend into the labyrinth beneath Firetop Mountain, where every corridor whispers, every monster growls and every decision could be your last. Choose your path, roll the dice, battle deadly creatures and search for the keys to Zagor’s treasure as the story unfolds around you.
This is not an audiobook. This is not a simple digital port. This is the original gamebook experience, rebuilt from the ground up for your ears.
Fighting Fantasy: The Audio Odyssey is the definitive audio adaptation of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, built on the Sound Realms platform for iOS and Android. It is a fully interactive gamebook experience where you make every choice, fight every battle, and navigate every twist of the dungeon, all through the power of audio.
You will descend into the dark tunnels beneath Firetop Mountain, navigate the maze, confront the creatures that dwell within, and, if you survive, ultimately face Zagor the Warlock himself. Your choices determine your path. Your dice determine your fate.
Mockup - Final product may differ from images
Check out some of the stunning dice skins featured in the game at different pledge levels! All created by Sam D. Larsson
Sound Realms is an audio adventure platform built by a Swedish team, who grew up playing gamebooks and rolling dice. We have already brought back Steve Jackson’s original F.I.S.T. (Fantasy Interactive Scenarios by Telephone) from 1988, produced Lone Wolf – The Fortress of Death, and made an adaptation of Call of Cthulhu – Alone Against the Tide.
The Fighting Fantasy license represents everything we set out to do when we founded Sound Realms. These gamebooks are the foundation of interactive fiction, and the audio format brings something to them that no other adaptation has: the feeling of sitting in the dark, listening to a story unfold around you, and making choices that matter.
This adaptation is being built by a team with direct ties to the gamebook tradition it is honouring, alongside artists who've spent years working in dungeon-crawling worlds of their own.
OriginalAuthors: Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone
Narration: Lewis Davies (host and narrator of the Oldhammer Fiction Podcast)
Soundscape: Oscar Carlquist
Implementation: Gustav Sundin
Artwork: Russ Nicholson
Music: GNOLL
Game Mechanics: Gustav Sundin
Lore Masters: Marc Gascoigne and Ian Livingstone
Narrator Lewis Davies is known to fans of classic Games Workshop fiction as the voice behind the Oldhammer Fiction Podcast, bringing decades-old fantasy short stories to life with a one-man cast of distinct character voices, exactly the kind of performance this gamebook's branching encounters demand.
On the music side, GNOLL is no stranger to either dungeon-crawling gamebooks or Sound Realms itself. The long-running dungeon synth project has built a catalogue of analog-synth, percussion-driven scores designed specifically for tabletop and solo RPG use, including a tribute soundtrack for Steve Jackson's F.I.S.T.
Created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone in 1982, Fighting Fantasy introduced a new kind of adventure: part novel, part roleplaying game, with the reader as the hero.
Instead of simply following the story, you choose where to go, battle monsters using dice and character statistics, collect equipment, solve puzzles and determine your own fate. Every decision can reveal a new path – or bring your adventure to an abrupt end.
The series went on to sell more than 20 million copies worldwide, inspiring generations of readers, writers and game designers. Now Sound Realms is bringing that experience to life through professional narration, music and immersive sound – while keeping the choices, combat and danger that made the original gamebooks so compelling.
Every legend begins somewhere. For Fighting Fantasy, that beginning was The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.
Published in 1982, it was the very first Fighting Fantasy gamebook and the adventure that introduced millions of players to the idea that a book could be a game. Its premise is deceptively simple: deep beneath the towering peak of Firetop Mountain lies the treasure hoard of the feared warlock Zagor. Countless adventurers have entered the mountain, seeking glory and riches. None have returned.
Armed with only your courage, your sword, and a few provisions, you must descend into a labyrinth of twisting tunnels, hidden chambers, deadly traps, and monstrous inhabitants. Goblins lurk in the darkness. Ancient creatures guard forgotten secrets. Locked doors conceal both treasure and disaster. Every choice can lead you closer to Zagor's treasure – or to an untimely end.
In Fighting Fantasy: The Audio Odyssey, all 400 passages of the original adventure become a fully interactive audio experience. Make your choices, roll the dice, manage your character and face the Warlock himself through professional performances, an original score, immersive soundscapes and Russ Nicholson’s classic illustrations.
The original 1982 interior illustrations by Russ Nicholson are some of the most iconic images in gamebook history. For The Audio Odyssey, these classic illustrations will be featured within the app, appearing as you encounter each scene, preserving the visual identity that defined a generation of adventurers.
Classic interior illustrations by Russ Nicholson, originally published 1982.
This campaign funds the full production of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain as an interactive audio adventure on the Sound Realms platform. Funding allows us to record all 400 passages, commission the complete score, build individual soundscapes and test every branching path at the quality this release deserves. Specifically:
Voice acting and narration: Professional recording of the complete gamebook, including all 400 passages, combat encounters, and branching narrative paths.
Music composition and production: An original score composed to match the atmosphere of Firetop Mountain, from the foreboding entrance to Zagor's inner sanctum.
Sound design and spatial audio: Our signature 360-degree immersive soundscapes for every environment in the book: dripping caverns, rushing rivers, crackling torches, the hum of dark magic.
App development and integration: Building the complete interactive experience within the Sound Realms platform, including the dice system, character sheet, inventory management, and all branching logic.
Artwork integration and digital goods: Licensing and integrating the classic Russ Nicholson illustrations, creating dice skins and companion materials.
350,000 SEK: Orc Warlord Dice Skin, rusted iron with crude tally-mark pips. 400,000 SEK: Web browser version of the game and the Sound Realms platform 450,000 SEK: Alternative Adventure Sheet, a re-designed adventure sheet 500,000 SEK: We aquire the rights to use the original Warlock cover artwork by Peter Andrew Jones 550,000 SEK: Dragon's Hoard Dice Skin, polished gold with gemstone pips. 600,000 SEK: Audio Environments Pack, extended ambient soundscapes: river cavern, Zagor's library, the dragon's lair, the maze. Standalone relaxation/focus tracks 650,000 SEK: Skeleton King Dice Skin, bleached bone with hollow eye sockets for pips. 700,000 SEK: Bonus Side Quest, an additional narrative branch (originally published in Warlock Magazine) expanding the dungeon with new encounters, new choices, and new ways to die 750,000 SEK: The Citadel of Chaos, Announced. If we hit this target, we officially greenlight the second Fighting Fantasy Audio Odyssey title!
Sound Realms was founded by Oscar Carlquist and Gustav Sundin in 2020, and the following year the first version of the Sound Realms app was launched on App Store and Google Play. Our investors include Fredrik Malmberg (founder of Target Games/Äventyrsspel and Heroic Signatures) and Jon Gillard (long-time employee of Games Workshop from 1987 to 2022).
The Sound Realms app is free to download for iOS and Android. Download it today and try out any of our free demo adventures – including a demo version of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain!
Download the Sound Realms app on appstore or google play
Steve Jacksons F.I.S.T. In 1988 you could pick up your telephone, dial the F.I.S.T. number and you were immediately connected to a medieval fantasy world of magic, monsters and great riches to be plundered. F.I.S.T. was the first interactive phone game ever, featuring the world of Castle Mammon — Lair of the Demon Prince, created by the fertile mind of games master Steve Jackson (co-founder of Games Workshop and the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series), is now back as it was released in 1988, original audio restored from analog tapes and gameplay intact, but adapted for iOS and Android using the Sound Realms system.
Lone Wolf - The Fortress of Death In 1989, Joe Dever answered the success of Steve Jackson’s F.I.S.T. with a Lone Wolf game of his own for PhoneQuest, his interactive phone game system. You dialled a number on your landline, and a narrator guided you through a story, offering choices along the way, with cinematic music and sound effects. One of these adventures was called Fortress of Doom.
Dever’s original concept is now available on smartphones and tablets as a new game that stays faithful to the original. The Fortress of Death is an officially licensed Lone Wolf adventure, written by August Hahn and inspired by the setting of Fortress of Doom. It brings the glory days of Lone Wolf and fantasy roleplaying into the present, told entirely through sound.
Call of Cthulhu - Alone Against the Tide Call of Cthulhu: The Audio Investigations brings Chaosium’s classic horror RPG to Sound Realms, turning the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft into interactive solo adventures. You play an investigator of the unknown in the 1920s, facing supernatural horrors, chaos cults, forbidden knowledge and ancient civilisations that pre-date mankind. The first investigation, Alone Against the Tide, takes you to the fog-drenched town of Esbury, where you must confront something far older and more sinister than what you were sent to investigate.
We have previously delivered several complete audio adventures on the Sound Realms platform, so we understand the production pipeline. Furthermore, we have already produced a short demo version of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain – that you can try out for yourself in the Sound Realms app – to demonstrate the core functionality and ruleset.
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