Any Gamebook fans? (Forest of Doom on Steam)

Greetings Watchers

I was just curious as to whether there were any fans of the ol' vintage game-books from the 80s and 90s. Reading these books in my childhood definitely captured my imagination and provided a major influential platform for getting into role-playing games, both computer and tabletop.

Some essential favorites include: Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, Choose Your Own Adventure, Grailquest, Golden Dragon series, Way of the Tiger, Cretan Chronicles…etc!
There are many more series to discover as the output during this period was immense.

Any particular favorites of resident Watchers or any lesser known recommendations?

I recently joined Gamebooks.org and took stock of the books that I've managed to accumulate over the years and found the activity oddly enjoyable. I also recently bought Jonathan Green's amazing Kickstarter book "You Are the Hero": A history of Fighting Fantasy, which I'm slowly devouring page by page and loving every minute of it. http://youaretheherokickstarter.blogspot.com.au/

Interestingly, Tinman Games http://tinmangames.com.au/blog/ (a local developer here in Australia) have made their app/interactive Fighting Fantasy game-book "Forest of Doom" available on Steam. When I saw this, I bought it immediately, unearthed my buried game-book maps from a folder in my cupboard and then merrily worked my way through Darkwood Forest all over again.
It was great fun! I also think it would a highly enjoyable activity for parents to do with children who are interested in interactive reading/gaming.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/270490/

As a game genre, this is relatively unexplored terrain for me and certainly unique in this age given the decline of the readership of game-books in the mid-to late 90's.
I've subscribed to Tin Man's mailing list to find out when more of their Fighting Fantasy apps are released. Any readers/fans/players? Feel free to comment, cheers.

Edit: I did a quick search of the archives; I see moderator Jaz is a fan!

I call it 'rogue-like books'. I used to like them when I was young, but out of nostalgia I found some site that had some of those books, tried it and... it didn't hold up to my memories.

I've played quite a few of the ones from tinmangames on my phone. I also tried some from https://www.choiceofgames.com/ which were very good.

The ones from tinman were too much of a "time to die" or "you lost 1HP earlier so the next fight is impossible".

I've not tried too many other ones for now.

I have a couple of old ones, like the first 6 Fighting Fantasy ones, a lone woof book and one set in the Chock universe. I actually tried to play Forest of Doom less than a month ago, but sadly it was not very fun. Without these game books, I would probably never had played pen & paper RPGs, so they were an important part of what shaped me into what I am today, but those books are best left as nostalgia.

When I was a child (late 80s early 90s) I was saving my allowance to buy Choose Your Own Adventure books. In our country they were translated as Macera Tüneli (Adventure Tunnel books). They were legendary among kids. At these times I didn't saw a computer yet alone a cRPG. But they were the books that ignited the never ending RPG fire in me.

I certainly think they can be still read and enjoyed today with a particular mindset; obviously the adult mind puts a completely different filter upon the experience, but nonetheless, they can still be fun and relaxing. A little bit of harmless regression now and again never hurt anyone.

Also, the later books in the FF series especially, became so much more elaborate and really pushed the boundaries for what's possible within such a simple gaming system. Some of the puzzles are also challenging and tricky to navigate: I never did finish one of the more celebrated titles "Creature of Havoc" for this reason!

I have the entire main series of Fighting Fantasy; just missing a few of the additional materials. (Such as Allansia, Out of the Pit etc) I'm also looking to pick up some of the lesser known Jackson and Livingstone projects (such as the Tasks of Tantalon and Casket of Souls).

@ Gokyabgu. I know what you mean regarding the fire, it was definitely the same for me too. I have about 50 of the first 100 Choose Your Own Adventures. They were so influential in simply forging a love of reading and the fact that they allowed reader choice was so inspirational at the time.

Pessimeister said:

Also, the later books in the FF series especially, became so much more elaborate and really pushed the boundaries for what's possible within such a simple gaming system. Some of the puzzles are also challenging and tricky to navigate: I never did finish one of the more celebrated titles "Creature of Havoc" for this reason!

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Only the first 6 were translated to Swedish, and when I discovered these books, I was just about to enter first grade, so my English was not exactly great. If they fix the issue of massive trial & error and the rather lackluster combat (when I tried to replay Forest of Doom, after the first 3 fights, I just went with "I win every fight automatically", as it was just dice rolling with no choices at all), I could easily see these game books being fun. It's not a fundamentally bad concept, I just thought the ones I played left a lot to desire.

Hey, I saw this thread come up when I Googled for gamebooks on Steam and so it seemed timely. I'm in a 2 person shop and we just launched DestinyQuest Infinite. DestinyQuest is a modern day, 600-page gamebook and DQI is the digital version.

What do you all think? Here's the demo. We're doing a Kickstarter-style sale for the next few weeks - giving away posters and books and all that good stuff.

I started a separate thread to ask about reviews.

G'day interrupting Cow, thanks very much for dropping by and providing the links. (Bookmarked!) Enjoy your time on RPGWatch.

It's always good to know that the genre is finding a way to evolve and live on through the challenges of the modern digital age. All the best with your DestinyQuest project; I'll have to check out the demo at some point. Cheers.

interrupting cow said:

Hey, I saw this thread come up when I Googled for gamebooks on Steam and so it seemed timely. I'm in a 2 person shop and we just launched DestinyQuest Infinite. DestinyQuest is a modern day, 600-page gamebook and DQI is the digital version.

What do you all think? Here's the demo. We're doing a Kickstarter-style sale for the next few weeks - giving away posters and books and all that good stuff.

I started a separate thread to ask about reviews.

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Looks nice, and I don't mind supporting small developers and writers, so I'm going to buy all three acts...

Thanks so much, Pessimeister and Pladio! We've still got some polishing to do, but we're going to continue working at it so hopefully it's almost perfect by the official launch time. I'd love feedback and suggestions.

Well it says the troll's blood still needs to be skilled up

Sorcery 1&2 (with 3&4 coming out early next year) aren't too bad. They are remakes or Steve JAcksons original Sorcery series. They are a bit lighter in terms of text but does reuse some of the original artwork and has a reasonable combat system (better than the lone wolf remakes).

As bjon045 mentioned, just for those who are interested, you can read about the first two ports for Sorcery: The Shamutanti Hills and Khare: The Cityport of traps via the Inkle Studios website: http://www.inklestudios.com/sorcery/

Interesting to see how they go about porting Crown of Kings - that book is a monster!
The Seven Serpents was also one of the more challenging to complete.

Whilst I don't have an iOS or smartphone of any description, I would certainly be interested in trying these apps out if they made it to Steam or were made available for PC by some other means.

Pladio said:

Well it says the troll's blood still needs to be skilled up

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Yup, we just fixed that in the code.

By the way, in case I forget to post, we're doing a Kickstarter-style promotion for DestinyQuest that's closing this Friday (12/5/2014). We're a tiny studio and we'd really appreciate the support. You can also get yourself the gamebook to play now, as well as a poster and some other goodies - all the extras are gone after Friday, though.