Be Excellent To Each Other

I used to be ridiculously hooked on this sort of literature as a child and a teen during my school years, even if I only did read them from start to finish and enjoy reading all the different and numerous death passages in them.

I've always wondered about using one properly, but then realised that I'm not really bound by rules as such, being all too easy as it is to distract yourself from the passage you're supposed to be reading, give yourself extra HP at will, or go back and try another number if the one you chose the first time kills you.

Then I got into the glorious LoneWolfDS project last year - having been familiar with Lone Wolf in the past - and found myself enjoying the repeated playability of these titles, seeing as I could now play it like a proper game and be restrained in ways a simple book couldn't restrain you. As I speak, Book 5 has just come out as of a few days ago, and I hope to be able to try really hard to beat it on my first go without letting myself come a cropper.

By all rights, this should've kickstarted or at least inspired others to adapt other gamebook series, for commercial gain or for free love. But so far there's nothing much. I'm aware the first Fighting Fantasy book - Warlock of Firetop Mountain - got remade for iPhone and DS last year, but I was profoundly disappointed by the DS game on the basis that it was more of a first-person hack-and-slash simple Elder-Scrolls-esque RPG than, y'know, an adventure gamebook. And I haven't played the iPhone title so I don't know if that's more of the same, or actually plays like the original book (feel free to educate me on it if you've already played it).

I for one would love to be able to play the Way Of The Tiger series in a similar manner to LWDS, or more of the long-running Fighting Fantasy franchise. The iPhone is obviously the most ideal platform for this sort of gameplay, so what's the problem? Crap sales of WOFM? Literature-based gaming not as popular as fast-action arcade gaming? I'd be pretty interested.

If you can repost something from WoS, so can I!

Yeah, there are four Fighting Fantasy books out now and the first of Steve Jackson's Sorcery! series. There are other gamebook series on the iPhone, too - I know Gamebook Adventures got a really good reception.

Surely the Adventure Gamebooks were the best that could be done at the time? Any attempt to recreate them now would be nothing more than rose-tinted retro fanboyism, rather than actually producing a product worth having.

I find them a bit small for comfortable reading to be honest. iPad maybe.

Theres an adventure audiobook on spotify at the minute

I loved them as a kid - however some were very hit and miss (I also fondly remember the Lone Wolf ones and the early Fighting Fantasy ones).

The idea was that you had mutliple passes of the game , however I was also at the age where i didnt care about the dice rolls for the fights , i wanted the 'story' so went through them winning every fight , and with fingers holding the pages at different points to flick back to :-)

I do think they were a product of their time - they were a simple way to play an adventure game / D&D without a group of people and a set time.

A lot would be taken over by various computer / handheld / phone RPG's