So it turns out that gamebooks are still going strong, with new books being written (including recently a new Ian Livingstone effort to celebrate 30 years of FF). Some concessions to modern life have been made with tweaks to rule sets, but there does tend to be a strong link to the fantasy game world that these sort of book originally came out of.
I think the biggest change has been the use of gamebook "apps" available for all good smartphones and tablets. I've been playing one this week on the train, "Revenant" by Tin Man games.It's actually quite good, virtual dice are thrown across nicely designed "pages" from the story. However, there is one problem.
You can't cheat
You do get some bookmarks to go back to, which I guess is the modern equivalent to keeping various fingers in pages containing difficult decisions, but you can't just choose a random passage to read, or let a picture catch your eye and read the associated text. A cheat mode does unlock when you complete it, but I died so many sodding times near the end, I just can't be arsed.
So I've now got some ideas about how I want my attempt at a gamebook (or gb as I'm now going to call them to save typing it out every sodding time) but more research is needed. I am about to return to City of Thieves (go to 006) to try and learn some more, but hopefully I'll soon start planning some of the decision paths.
As an aside, it also turns out that there's a whole sub-genre of guys writing about their exploits playing through the old school FF books. Two of my favourites include Fighting Dantasy, which makes me wish I'd spent a bit more time coming up with a slightly more catchy name for this blog, and the honestly hilarious Turn to 400. I didn't think that reading about some bloke playing a 30 year old gb could make me laugh out loud, but it did. My missus (and cat) think I'm a weirdo, but whatcha gonna do?
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