What Ever Happened to Choose Your Own Adventure?

Choose Your own Adventure has maybe been one of the most influential series of all time. Let's explore the history of interactive fiction and the rise and fall (and maybe rise again?) of this incredible body of work!

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[JarsCristobal]

Amazing retrospective. Reading these books as an elementary kid is probably what led to me being a Dungeon Master and game designer now. I guess i owe CYOA a lot.

[Zanji]

in Germany those books are currently having a revivial with the old Lone Wolf books and even newer ones are being produced (even a survival horror book) Also due to the German Roleplaying game "The Dark Eye / Das Schwarze Auge" most of my generation were introduced by solo adventures by this game (TDE has SEVERAL solo adventures) and yeah it was bigger than D&D in the 80s till early 2000s

[jasonblalock]

Heh, I remember as a kid, trying to convert a CYOA book into a BASIC program. The programming was dead simple, but I gave up halfway through because transcribing the book was boring and taking too long. But I think even back then (circa 1985) kid me recognized that computers were going to be the future of interactive stories.

[lucianosgonzalez]

I saw this on the reddit and as a fellow CYOA-video-maker, it's so neat to see other people doing videos on this!

[jonrhoades]

I would highly recommend the CYOA books to anyone with young children. It really does help foster a love of reading and provides some quality bonding time if you read together. When they get a few years with the Adventure books under their belt, upgrade them to the Fighting Fantasy or Lone Wolf series. Great video as always, keep up the good work.

[Anna-Pukite]

Great video so far, but I’m a bit surprised and confused at 2:52 where the bottom text is “vai tu viņai palīdzētu?” which is the Latvian translation for “would you help her?”. I’m confused how Latvian came up in a Czech movie?

[nicholasbarton]

I had totally forgotten about this series! You did a great job making the history of this decades long franchise into a cohesive story. Cool to learn about Choosco, will make great gifts. Can't wait to see more videos.

[angeluslupus]

I loved these as a kid! The time machine ones were particularly good!

[vincentcastor]

I read these books as a kid and loved all the crazy adventures I would go on whilst sitting in my room. Today I have a very nice collection of the vintage releases, the newer rewritten remakes I feel don't have the same nostalgia. One called Super Computer was about what we know today as AI written in 1982- Wild stuff.

[Shannon-igans]

There's a book called The Maze of Games, I think it was from Kickstarter at one point. It is like a CYOA but leans more heavily into puzzles and games to drive the story, vs. the story driving the story choices. I haven't finished it yet but it's fun when I can sit down to it for a while.

[iamtheomnimonkey]

I only red a couple of Choose Your Own Adventure books, but they introduced me to Lone Wolf and a couple other series in the same world as Lone Wolf (although I can't remember the character's names). I read every Lone Wolf book I could find.

[net_spider]

I played/read quite a few book like that when I was a kid. Most of them would fall in line with things like DnD tie-ins or psuedo mystery novels. Today, I'm more in line with playing a TTRPG with friends (if I have the schedule and time for it) or, in my more recent fascination, I've taken to choose your own adventure style game books.

The gamebooks run the gamut of almost sandbox like experiences or more linear experiences, but tend to let you make a character and roll the dice for outcomes. All in all a lot of fun and I highly recommend.

For a good starter, pick up some Destiny Quest.

[LinoWalker]

Thank you so much for making this video! I loved the in-depth research and the historical perspective you've given me (I'd actually love to know more about historical interactive books).

I absolutely love Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) books! Here, in Bulgaria, they came in the 90's. My best friend and I loved these books. They captivated us in a way that video games never could.

While we loved video games and the worlds they let us explore, the magic of CYOA books was always a lot more tangible. See, with a video game there's a wall between the virtual world and the code that makes it all work. It's all "uder the hood", so to speak. But with a CYOA book, you can see how the world is constructed - it's all in the book you're holding in your hands. And yet, there's this intricate web of possibilities and chains of events that's completely hidden. It's an absolutely magical feeling of holding something that has so many hidden possibilities within it.

Unfortunately, both of us were born in '93, so by the time I could read, the fad was already on the decline. We had a really hard time finding new CYOA books. Still, we used make our own adventures, where one of us was the player and the other one was the storyteller (essentially the DM, although at the time none of us knew any of these terms).

In addition to giving me some of the fondest memories I have of my childhood, these experiences gave me a unique appreciation for storytelling, which is a skill I've applied to my everyday life, and even to my job. And it all started with these simple Choose Your Own Adventure Books.

I really love the fact that here in Bulgaria, CYOA books are making a bit of a comeback. Granted, they're very niche, but this video reminded me of how much fun I had with them as a kid, and I'm actually going to buy one for my 7-year-old sister who just learned how to read. They're going to really help her with her reading skills, and serve as great gateway to actual novels and short stories :)

[thesamwisegamegee]

My first “Choose your own adventure” style books were from the Animorph series, and it was magical.

(Also a video about that series would be pretty darn cool! KA Applegate has even been pretty active on Totally-Not-Twitter before too… just tossing that out there. 👀)

[virgo]

Another great video! I'd be super interested in seeing a video about the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks which you mentioned at the end. I remember being fascinated by them as a kid.

[blast_processing]

Ever heard of "Magical Kitties Save The Day!"? It's a tabletop RPG where players read through a "Choose Your Own Adventure"-style story at the beginning to establish their character's backstory and initial stats.

[cobinizer]

For me, the peculiar hobby of Jumpchain is what scratches my CYOA itch.

[Dayshan]

Ay wowzers!! I've never knew anyone else that had read the books so this was just such a trip ❤ My first was the Aztec book that I bought at my first bookfair as a little kid. Such a great memory

[dearls]

My dad would tell me about these books he would read growing up and I thought they were so cool.

[walt]

I was of the right age for these, so that I can confirm that, yes, video games helped kill the series as they provided the interactive, escapists entertainment that Choose Your Own Adventure provided. However, I was more into a knockoff edutainment series called Time Machine. The big difference was Time Machine only had one ending, so your choices more affected your path through the adventure rather than leading to dead ends. But I liked that because I felt I was really exploring history rather than trying to get the best outcome.