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…
Author: Sam Isaacson
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
Ask most fans how many sections a gamebook should have, and the go-to answer will be 400. Fighting Fantasy set that as the standard, and it’s sort of stuck. But it’s by no means universal; Choose Your Own Adventure books are typically much shorter than that, and there are several examples of gamebooks that are much longer. Of course, there’s no right answer when it comes to story length. When browsing for a new book I’m often enticed by a high word count, particularly in a sci-fi or fantasy genre as they need deeper world-building, but the story about the man getting hurt when walking into an iron bar would lose its impact were it any longer. The…
The Altimer has received another review and I think this one’s particularly generous in its praise. You can read the whole thing here, and here’s an excerpt: [The] writing style is clear, crisp and well rounded…the sheer quality of the story [is] something that will stick with you. Goodreads