It’s difficult to know whether it will be worth paying for a new book until you’ve read it. That’s part of the fun I suppose, and apart from reading it yourself the only thing you often have to go on is customer reviews. Reviews of The Altimer so far have been very positive – I’m really pleased people have been enjoying it – and now there’s a way for you to get a glimpse of the story before making the financial investment. There is now a taster of The Altimer available; it’s only the first part of the story but will introduce you to the world, right up to the moment just before it collapses around you. I…
Author: Samuel Isaacson
I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Interactive stories don’t just land on the perfect round number they’re so often presented as. “Turn to paragraph 400” has to be designed that way, and as a result there are occasionally extra bits of story added in to pad out the main story, or entire sequences removed to get it down to the magic number. The Altimer has 300 sections…but you will only ever read 299 of them if you’re exploring the story. One section in the book has no inputs and no outputs, it simply exists – for two reasons: It makes the book a nice, round 300 sections. It contains a tasty red herring for…
I’ve found designing a gamebook to be an odd experience. The moment I started pulling together the first draft of The Altimer I realised I had made assumptions about what a gamebook is – and it turns out there is no clear definition. Part of me wants a gamebook to be a simulated experience; as a reader I want to feel like I’m exploring a real world which presents realistic (or at least internally consistent) consequences for my actions, preferably as complex and far-reaching as reality offers. A different part of me sees a gamebook as more of a narrative puzzle; mapping out the journey and re-reading it with the “right” choices allows me to solve it. Yet another…
My memory of gamebooks growing up split the interactive fiction world into two. There were the “real” gamebooks where you had stats and rolled dice to determine outcomes, and there were the childish gamebooks, where you didn’t. I really appreciated randomness on gamebooks, because it turned it from “just” a story with multiple paths into a simulation. Crossing that rickety rope bridge over a ridiculously deep crevasse is risky! Sometimes, a good decision might get you out of a tough scrape and on other occasions it may just be down to the place your hands land as you swing your arms round. Of course, gamebooks involving randomness tend to end up necessitating cheating, the frustration of every gamebook…
…I actually made some mistakes when writing The Altimer. I tried my best to plan and create a flawless masterpiece, and that didn’t stop me making changes and forgetting to go back and correct the impact those had made. I tried to be creative and find ways to make the experience of reading a unique one every time, and ended up confusing myself in the process. I had multiple, independent proof reads and play tests, and things have still fallen through the cracks. Just a few, but if you encounter one of those few it could spoil your experience. If you own the Kindle version of the book, congratulations! Your copy will be kept up-to-date through the magic…
The Altimer has received another positive review, this time from My Gamebook Adventures. The whole thing is delightfully encouraging – here are a couple of excerpts: The game system is slick and to the point…[and a] complex, compelling mystery… It serves as a fantastic introduction to his ongoing world, and the well deserved attention he receives from this book will hopefully encourage him to publish more soon…I highly recommend this, and can’t wait for more! My Gamebook Adventures