This month, my second gamebook will be released into the marketplace.
For those of you who are unaware, gamebooks are forms of interactive fiction where the reader can determine how the story pans out through the making of various decisions throughout the story. The most well known example of this form of fiction is the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series.
With this book, I have created a new gamebook mechanic, not used before, called "Hidden Choices". I explain the motivation for this new mechanic, on my website.
"One thing that a lot of computer games, particularly adventure games, have had over the written adventure gamebook was the ability to attempt any action (within the accepted range of actions for the game) at any time, not knowing whether the attempted action would be permitted by the game or not. This added significantly to the challenge of puzzle solving.
With gamebooks, all available choices given to the reader are almost always displayed on the page. The reader does not have to think 'outside the square'. At no point is the reader able to think, 'Now I wonder if I could use item X that I collected back at location Y to get by this problem.' and be permitted to act on that thought.
I wanted to increase the level of the gamebook experience by encouraging the reader the option of trying something else and not just be limited to the choices on the page. By engaging the reader this way, I think it significantly increases the value of the gamebook experience."
Have any other people here read any type of gamebook before? If so, how did you find the genre?
For those of you who are unaware, gamebooks are forms of interactive fiction where the reader can determine how the story pans out through the making of various decisions throughout the story. The most well known example of this form of fiction is the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series.
With this book, I have created a new gamebook mechanic, not used before, called "Hidden Choices". I explain the motivation for this new mechanic, on my website.
"One thing that a lot of computer games, particularly adventure games, have had over the written adventure gamebook was the ability to attempt any action (within the accepted range of actions for the game) at any time, not knowing whether the attempted action would be permitted by the game or not. This added significantly to the challenge of puzzle solving.
With gamebooks, all available choices given to the reader are almost always displayed on the page. The reader does not have to think 'outside the square'. At no point is the reader able to think, 'Now I wonder if I could use item X that I collected back at location Y to get by this problem.' and be permitted to act on that thought.
I wanted to increase the level of the gamebook experience by encouraging the reader the option of trying something else and not just be limited to the choices on the page. By engaging the reader this way, I think it significantly increases the value of the gamebook experience."
Have any other people here read any type of gamebook before? If so, how did you find the genre?
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