Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 96 posts

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#21

Post by bena »

I find they're also good for kids who struggle with narrative comprehension. You can read a normal book and not really understand what you're reading. You can read every word from cover to cover and just process it as just words one after another.

Choose Your Own Adventure books ask the reader to make choices based on the information they just read. So the reader has to make the attempt to comprehend. The books are usually light and fun as well, so that helps. When reading is not a chore, kids are more likely to do it.

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#23

Post by JohnBooty »

abecedarius wrote: post #10
yucky wrote: post #3

I used to love these books as a kid. I suspect they're not as popular now with all of the non-linear video game options that kids have. But in their time, these were a complete game changer in storytelling.

I semi-recently read one of the original series (about UFOs) and a much newer one by a different author (still an official choose-your-own-adventure, "#39: Curse of the Pirate Mist"). The first was much better. Suggests another reason for the decline.

#39 was right in the heyday of CYOA books.

There are split opinions on the original CYOA authors. Pretty much everybody agrees that Edward Packard made very tight and well constructed stories. Many folks hate RA Montgomery's stories because they are weird and meandering, almost psychedelic. Personally that's why I always enjoyed them, even as a kid, but I think I'm in the minority.

At any rate I don't think many people feel the series started to decline until maybe #100+

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#24

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #13

Loved the books as a kid and one of the first programs I wrote was a straight up port of one of the books into the computer. Lots of print and if then statements. I wasn't artistically inclined so none of the illustrations made it into the port. After a positive response from a few classmates I gave copies to, I thought about selling them but was crushed when my mother explained copyright to me. One thing I noticed a…

The book Life's Lottery by horror author Kim Newman plays with this (and is inspired by Choose Your Own adventure books)

Review (with spoilers, though not sure that concept applies here) by Interactive Fiction author Emily Short:

https://emshort.blog/2015/01/05/lifes-lottery-kim-newman/

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#25

Post by Eleison23 »

I was addicted to this series as a child. It is heartwarming to know that they were largely produced by single fathers. They definitely made a connection with me in my youth. I particularly remember the "Spacecraft 54-40" story, and how it had a thread that could not be reached by conventionally making choices.

For me, these stories were durable and engaging. I could read a book more than once because it had lasting value still to be found. I was rather spoiled with tons of books that I really never read, but Choose Your Own Adventure surely contributed to my early literacy. That series was one that would often find me reading late at night in the bathroom while my family slept.

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#26

Post by mysterydip »

simonh wrote: post #11

I never got into the fighting fantasy style of branching story game books, but then I discovered the Fabled Lands series by Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson. They're essentially open world game books, you can roam freely from location to location over most of the geography, with local branching adventures. Each book covers one region or kingdom. They also use a system of code words that set flags that enable quests that…

I was coming here to post just this. Fantastic books and system. It's a shame it wasn't completed. The pages that ask you to continue in a book that doesn't exist gives me all kinds of FOMO.

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#30

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

baud147258 wrote: post #5
yucky wrote: post #3

I used to love these books as a kid. I suspect they're not as popular now with all of the non-linear video game options that kids have. But in their time, these were a complete game changer in storytelling.

you can find them nowadays as video games, some with just text, some with higher production values. And I've also taken part in forum-based CYOAs, where one poster writes the adventure and the other posters vote on which option to choose, which can be quite fun and can be more reactive, as sometime the players will think of solutions the author didn't think of.

I'm pretty sure at least some were made into video games back in the day-I could've sworn I played the Escape series as a game on a Commodore 64 back in the 80s.
Post reply on HN