What if you can combine the joys that come from reading and play in one enjoyable experience? That’s exactly the premise behind gamebooks!
A gamebook is a fiction book that lets you take part in the story by making choices. They are sometimes called choose your own adventure books (CYOA), thanks to the success of Bantam Books’ Choose Your Own Adventure series.
Production of new gamebooks saw a dramatic decline in the 1990s, with choice-based stories moving away from print books. In recent years, however, the genre has experienced a rebirth thanks to ebooks and mobile platforms.
How Do You Play a Gamebook?
Gamebooks can come in a few different forms, but all gamebooks present the story as a series of portions of printed text, which are often, though not always, numbered.
The simplest one is the branching-plot novel. For this type of gamebook, you just read, usually a few pages at a time, until you come to a decision point. Then, you make a choice and follow the instructions as to what page to read next based on your choice.
You don’t read it chronologically, and instead go through a different reading experience each time you make a different choice at any decision point.
Another form of a gamebook is the solitaire RPG adventure or adventure gamebooks. These may feature highly intricate rules related to battling with monsters or overcoming problems. This type of gamebook usually includes other things that affect how the story turns out, such as the rolling of dice or the reader’s health points.
You also make choices at the end of each section, usually a couple of paragraphs at a time, and then go to the section indicated according to your choice.
Most adventure or soliataire gamebooks offer only one happy or “successful” ending, while the others results in a “failure.” As such, they become almost like a puzzle, with the reader trying to figure out which path will lead to victory.
In contrast, branching plot novels may have more than one good resolution to the story, so there is less pressure to pick just one correct path.
The History of Gamebooks
One of the earliest gamebooks in print is Mary Alden Hopkins and Doris Webster’s romance novel Consider the Consequences! published in 1930. It boasted of the reader getting “a dozen or more” different endings, according to her individual taste.
Ayn Rand also published a play in 1936 entitled Night of January 16th, about a trial where some people from the audience are called to play the jury and give their verdict, which affects the ending of the play.
In 1945, a children’s book entitled Treasure Hunt by the most likely pseudonym of Alan George offers multiple paths that that reader can follow.
Textbooks also followed the format of branching path books, from the proposal of B.F. Skinner. Interactive textbooks under the TutorText series were in print from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, offering the reader a set of problems and letting him choose among a handful of possible answers. If his answer is correct, he gets to move to the next problem. If his answer is wrong, he receives feedback that asks him to pick a different answer.
In the late 1970s, R.A. Montgomery and Edward Packard authored a two-book series called The Adventures of You. After writing several books that gained popularity among readers, they still needed a publisher with the strength to market them to mass audiences. When they took the idea to Bantam, the Choose Your Own Adventure series came about in 1979.
Other influences in the gamebook genre include tabletop role-playing games, like Dungeons & Dragons.
5 Gamebooks You Can Experience Now
If you haven’t tried reading gamebooks, here are some options you can try right now:
1. Choose Your Own Adventure by R.A. Montgomery and others
This series has more than 200 books you can choose from, and they’re great for young readers.
The first book in the series is The Cave of Time, but each book is a stand-alone, and the series has been translated into over 25 languages. In The Cave of Time, you get to enjoy 39 different endings by altering your choice over and over again!
2. Into the Dungeon: A Choose-Your-Own-Path Book by Hari Conner
Written by an award-winning illustrator and comic artist, this fantasy gamebook contains more than 100 pages of choices, and with a pencil, you’re good to go.
You get to explore a hidden passage of an abandoned castle, find treasure and ancient artifacts, encounter strange creatures, and either make it out safe and sound—or find yourself dead!
3. The Oregon Trail: An Interactive History Adventure by Matt Doeden
Experience history like never before in this creative gamebook that takes you back to the United States during the Westward Expansion years.
Make your own choices as other settlers seek better lives out west: will you go with a wagon trail with your own family, serve as a guide for other settlers, or find a way to cope with the changes in life as a Native American? These are all choices that real people had to face during that critical time in history!
4. Case Closed #1: Mystery in the Mansion by Lauren Magaziner
This hilarious middle grade series is the first book of four. As the reader, you need to find a way for Carlos and his friends to figure out the clues to a mystery while his detective mom is out sick, or risk letting her detective agency fail for good.
5. Heroes of Urowen by David Velasco
While most gamebooks are targeted to young readers, this gamebook for adults combines the fun of role-playing games and videogames with the thrill of reading fantasy novels.
You get to travel to a land of magic to defeat your enemies by gaining powerful weapons, learning spells, finding treasures, and upgrading your armor. You even get to create your own character, complete with your chosen race and profession.
Modern Gamebooks
While gamebooks continue to be an entertaining read for young readers, it has since evolved into different digital formats.
After all, HTML links to different pages of a website has a similar structure to the different sections of a gamebook. As such, we’ve seen the rise of story websites, visual novels, and other experiments.
If you’ve never tried reading a gamebook, give it a shot. It’s also a great idea to gift a hesitant reader, as the interactive structure will encourage greater engagement.
Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments below!
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Yen Cabag is the Blog Writer of TCK Publishing. She is also a homeschooling mom, family coach, and speaker for the Charlotte Mason method, an educational philosophy that places great emphasis on classic literature and the masterpieces in art and music. She has also written several books, both fiction and nonfiction. Her passion is to see the next generation of children become lovers of reading and learning in the midst of short attention spans.
