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Soft & Cuddly (Book Review)


Boss Fight Books has released Soft & Cuddly by Jarett Kobek.

The synopsis for the book reads:

A computer game so nauseatingly gory that it came with a barf bag. Bright druggy graphics that sickened scores of proper English parents. Gameplay so violent that it inspired one of Britain's most infamous killing sprees. Soft & Cuddly, released for the ZX Spectrum in 1987, wasn't quite any of these things. But in an age of manufactured moral panics, John George Jones's fluorescent punk manifesto sure pissed off a lot of people.

Featuring new interviews with the game's creator, Jarett Kobek's book dives deep into the gritty world of British yellow journalism, snarky computer fanzines, DIY home programming, and Soviet bootleg mixtapes. If Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party was right that "video nasties" like Soft & Cuddly were the epitome of 80s depravity, then this book is headed straight to Hell.


Soft & Cuddly was a horror game published in 1987 and was the sequel to Go to Hell  for the British computer system. A bored teenager designed the games, and they involved such aspects as collecting the dismembered limbs of your mother while visiting your headless father in the fridge. A little weird and strange for the time, but it is one of the many titles that have paved the way for today's horror classics.

Jarett Kobek’s book Soft & Cuddly gives us the timeline of Go to Hell and its predecessor with intrinsic detail.The books have some intriguing interviews with the game's creator that gives more insight into the games and development than ever before.

In the end, Soft & Cuddly was a well-written book that features some excellent content and is a must-read for gamers who love a good backstory. To learn more, visit the official Boss Fight Books website.

Book Information:
  • Author: Jarett Kobek
  • Publisher: Boss Fight Books
  • Paperback
  • 192 Pages

Score: 8 out of 10

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