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The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

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Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#31

Post by Apocryphon »

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.

The visual novel genre is a huge non-Western electronic version of CYOA gamebooks. Wikipedia states "Visual novels originated in and are especially prevalent in Japan, where they made up nearly 70% of the PC game titles released in 2006." They descend from '80s early adventure games, and not paperback CYOA, though.

Similarly, in the U.S., the popular 2010s licensed titles from Telltale Games were essentially electronic CYOA as well, since they were heavily narrative-driven and had simpler gameplay mechanics than traditional point-and-click adventure games.

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#33

Post by jonathankoren »

rvieira wrote: post #14

I used to love Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf as a kid. Hypertext (and consequently, epub, etc) is the perfect medium for this. Is there any official ebook version of the original FF books?

Lone Wolf was a great series. That series introduced me to fantasy more than anything else. I always thought it would make a great TTRPG.

Surprised there never was a crossover between Lone Wolf and Grey Star.

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#34

Post by Apocryphon »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #24
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/

I love Kim Newman for his Anno Dracula series, as well as his other genre-deconstructing work. "Coastal City" is a neat little jaunt through the progression in superhero comics, and The Night Mayor is quite a surreal VR love letter to film noir. Had no idea that he wrote a CYOA about a young man in '80s Britain! Sounds like Netflix owes him some inspiration credits for their own Bandersnatch streaming CYOA.

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#36

Post by abecedarius »

JohnBooty wrote: post #23
abecedarius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

I don't know what the deal is with the #39, but it's copyright 2011 and by a different author than most of the originals. The #39 does seem to conflict with the copyright year.

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#38

Post by importantbrian »

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…

Funnily enough, the first program I ever wrote was a choose your own adventure on my TI-83 while I was supposed to be doing my math homework.

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#39

Post by dylan604 »

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…

I had so much hope that with DVDs, Choose Your Own Adventure style content would become a large-ish segment. Unfortunately, it just didn't do what I wanted. So when I became a DVD programmer in the late 90s, I was searching for a CYOA style project to work on to the point of trying to produce it myself. People kept complaining about the difficulty of writing the script.

Years (decades) later, Netflix did their attempt at it, but saw the interactive bit flop so that majority of people just saw the "default" decisions made for them. Just never could find like-minded people to make this work to the level I was hoping.

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#40

Post by stolenmerch »

mmastrac wrote: post #6

I was always a fan of the Fighting Fantasy books - they were big in Canada and the UK, but less so in the USA. Interactive role-playing gaming in book form! And dice too!

I was a big fan of Endless Quest for similar reasons. Loved CYOA, but loved the non-linear narrative along with tracking stats throughout your story.
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