Archive for June 2006

The Deathlord of Ixia   2 comments

Project Aon has the next of the Lone Wolf books up here.

(For quick reference: These are books published in the heyday of CYOA books written by Joe Dever. Project Aon is converting them to electronic format, with permission. They are quite good about respecting copyright and have gone through great pains to contact every artist involved in each project so their art can be used.)

Whilst there has been attention paid in scholarship to the CYOA form, the Gamebook variation gets relatively little attention. I’d say there are mechanics worthy of attention, like structural modifications to fit the constraints of the format (allowing for a companion NPC in one branch but having to kill him off before the branch ends because a player who takes the other branch won’t have met said character), simulation gaming aspects (such as a section in one Fighting Fantasy book which effectively simulates a tank battle) and meta-gaming (if you play GrailQuest without cheating, in one part you have to eat soup to cast a certain spell).

Posted June 29, 2006 by Jason Dyer in Interactive Fiction