Choose Your Own Adventure Books and gaming

[StaceyPowers]

I posted about text adventures in this thread, and @kingpotato mentioned Choose Your Own Adventure Books.

Does anyone else remember these fondly from their youth?

I remember when those books were everywhere. I didn’t realize that they are more broadly called “gamebooks” until now, but I have thought often about how they were essentially non-digital games which in some respects helped pave the way for the modern digital games we enjoy today. I figure that the growth of computer and console gaming probably directly led to their decline.

If anyone reads modern gamebooks today, what series do you read?

[kingpotato]

For me it was the Lonewolf series, well there where a tons of books of the series but I only played about 3. They where really awesome, I cant remember how many times I died unexpectedly and had to start all over again, I had a special notebook for it to keep track of the pages and to know which of the choices where dead ends, I cheated on the first book after the first time I lost but that spoiled the fun, I did played the other two normally.

[StaceyPowers]

 

 

 

 

 

4

16 hours ago, kingpotato said:

For me it was the Lonewolf series, well there where a tons of books of the series but I only played about 3. They where really awesome, I cant remember how many times I died unexpectedly and had to start all over again, I had a special notebook for it to keep track of the pages and to know which of the choices where dead ends, I cheated on the first book after the first time I lost but that spoiled the fun, I did played the other two normally.

Dying tragically in so many ways always made me feel extra satisfied and oddly kind of "relieved" when I found the happy ending at last. My favorite series I think was called "Time Machine" books? Something like that. You jumped through history on adventures, and learned a fair amount of actual historical stuff along the way since they were well-researched and aimed at realism. 

[kingpotato]

8 hours ago, StaceyPowers said:

Dying tragically in so many ways always made me feel extra satisfied and oddly kind of "relieved" when I found the happy ending at last. My favorite series I think was called "Time Machine" books? Something like that. You jumped through history on adventures, and learned a fair amount of actual historical stuff along the way since they were well-researched and aimed at realism. 

I might go looking for another gaming book after this 😆 I'm not sure if they are still being made or if there are still books in good conditions.

[StaceyPowers]

14 hours ago, kingpotato said:

I might go looking for another gaming book after this 😆 I'm not sure if they are still being made or if there are still books in good conditions.

I glanced at Wikipedia and it said that there are indeed still gaming books being made (or made recently, can't remember), though I think they are relatively rare compared to in the past. If you do find any new gaming books and check them out, please let me know!

[Bravosi]

Actually, no. I didn't. Would surely love to glance at few. See how things are! :)

[skyfire]

Never tried those. I do however had few board games that had their own storybook and adventure packs and upgrades. It was fun in that time, these days we don't find enough friends for that. 

[DylanC]

Used to adore choose-your-own adventure books when I was younger! I had a collection on Knightmare books (which were based on a popular children’s serial TV series here in the UK). They were fantasy-themed, and you could make different decisions and take different paths each playthrough. I was pretty obsessed with them. Definitely helped get me into traditional games as well as reading from an early age, for sure.

[killamch89]

I honestly have never tried choose-your-own adventure books and it is pretty ironic because I had a pretty active imagination as a child so it would have been pretty fun for me. Luckily, I have Modded Skyrim for that.