DS RPG fanatics, this one’s for you!

In from Aspyr and Big Blue Bubble today comes the final box art and a fresh batch of new screenshots (and two pieces of concept art for good measure) from Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the first-person RPG adaptation of Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson’s gamebook of the same name. Once you’re done eyeballing that splendid pack shot above, hit the jump for the full gallery of today’s Fighting Fantasy assets.

Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson’s Fighting Fantasy series of ‘choose your own adventure’ style gamebooks is being adapted into video game form for the DS, courtesy of Aspyr Media and Big Blue Bubble. Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, based on the original book of the same name, is a first-person high-fantasy action-RPG powered by a “highly optimized 3D engine” that “might be the best looking game that we’ve ever seen on Nintendo DS,” according to Aspyr’s Executive VP Ted Staloch.

With help from authors Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, Big Blue Bubble is authentically recreating the Fighting Fantasy universe for DS adventurers to enjoy and working hard to make The Warlock of Firetop Mountain the preeminent FPS RPG on Nintendo’s portable. That’s a pretty ambitious goal considering how many quality FPS RPGs are already available on the DS.

Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is scheduled to ship this holiday season. Read below for a quick synopsis of the story and gameplay, along with four screenshots.

Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain follows a lone adventurer on his travels through the old Dwarven keep within Firetop Mountain. Now the residence of an evil warlock and hordes of foul creatures, the keep is a mysterious and dangerous place from which no one has returned in many years. As players guide the adventurer through the many passageways and dungeons, they develop the character’s abilities and attributes to suit their play style. Enemies will fall before the player’s brute strength with sword and axe, power of the arcane arts, nimble quickness or custom combinations of skills. A wealth of weaponry, armor, potions and enchantments are equipped through an intuitive drag-and-drop inventory system while helpful (or not-so-helpful) NPCs provide guidance, quests, trade goods and skill training.

Mindware Studios, developer behind PC FPS Painkiller: Overdose and stealth game Cold War, has a new “fast, frantic and mega-bloodbath first-person shooter” in the works continuing in the spirit of People Can Fly’s Painkiller series. It’s called Dreamkiller and it’ll be out this fall on PC and Xbox 360 courtesy of publisher Aspyr Media.

Dreamkiller is set to pull gamers “inside the dark and twisted nightmares of tortured souls possessed by unknown forces.” The game will follow the story of Alice Drake, a psychologist capable of delving into the minds of her patients and fighting off the demons turning their dreams into nightmares. As Alice you’ll fight off these dream demons with a host of crazy weapons and special abilities through 12 single-player story missions, and then once that’s over you’ll be able to hop online for some intense multiplayer mayhem.

I adore the Painkiller games and thought Mindware did an admirable job with Overdose, so I’m stoked for this.