Top 5 Choose Your Own Adventure books, which you can still thoroughly enjoy in 2022!
Long before the mainstream success of video games, at the dawn of the Dungeons and Dragons era, young adventure seekers around the world had another medium that allowed them to take control of their fictional destinies - gamebooks.
For those of you born after the late 80s, gamebooks - also known as "choose your own adventure books" or CYOA books - are printed works of fiction, which for all intents and purposes resemble regular books, apart from one key characteristic - allowing the reader to participate in the story-making process. Paragraphs and/or pages are usually numbered and the narrative takes a non-linear approach, typically branching out along various paths, thus allowing for several possible endings, as well as premature fatal encounters, which prompt a restart of the adventure.
Choose Your Own Adventure Books Allow You To Gamify the Reading Experience In a Fun and Creative Way! Photo Credit: Unsplash.
Not really sure how it works? No worries, we'll walk you through it. Imagine you open up your typical hero's journey book. The story zooms in on a young lad somewhere on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly, his whole life is turned upside down by an attack from evil, supernatural forces. What does he do? In a typical reading experience, you'd normally just keep reading to find that out. Not in gamebooks though. Around this point, you're likely to be presented with a few options. For example: "If you'd like to pick up a sword and go test your mettle against the armies of darkness, go to page 13", or "If you'd like to cower in the hut with the women and children, go to page 74". Once you've made your choice, you go to the required page and read the next bit of text. Maybe, it will prompt you to make another choice? Or maybe, your character will find themselves with an axe permanently stuck in his skull, thus ending his dreams of becoming a hero.
Of course, the scenario above presents a very simplistic explanation of how gamebooks work. Things can get as complicated as having proper "RPG adventures" to rival current generation video games in their sophisticated rules and complex monster-slaying mechanics. If you really want to take things a step further, dice, cards extra rules can be added to intensify the experience.
Therefore, getting to the "end" of a gamebook can be quite a challenge, but things don't suddenly stop when you get there. What if the ending you just got is not the ending you envisioned for your character? Well, luckily quite a few CYOA books have multiple ending possibilities, which means that you can backtrack your steps to a certain point and see if you can get the story to move in another direction. Or, you know, trip and fall in a ditch somewhere.
The first books to boast multiple endings trace their roots all the way to the 1930s, but it wasn't until the early 70s and up until the mid-90s that gamebooks truly hit their sweet spot. Today we're taking a look at our picks for the top 5 Choose Your Own Adventure books (or book series), which you can still thoroughly enjoy in 2022 to break away from your average reading experience.
Number One: The Cave of Time
The Cave of Time is often hailed as the original CYOA book. Created by Edward Packard & R. A. Montgomery, the gamebook wasn't their first attempt at the genre, but after being picked up by Bantam in 1979 it became an over-night sensation. In fact, it became so successful that it was the progenitor of the entire Cave of Time series, which is one of the most famous gamebook series of all time.
In the book, you experience the world from the eyes of a protagonist who begins his journey hiking in Snake Canyon. Suddenly, you find yourself in a strange, dimly lit Cave of Time. Immediately, you are presented with two corridors, one leading up and one leading down. It occurs to you that the one going upwards likely leads to the future, while the other likely leads to the past. Which one will you choose?
Number Two: Endless Quest
The Endless Quest was originally released in the 80s as a series of books, which usually follow a protagonist simply known as "you" who is thrown into adventure in a famous game settings - Dungeons and Dragons, Gamma World, Conan or Tarzan, to name a few.
Totalling 55 books spread across several series and collections, the gamebooks were first released by TSR in the 80s and featured fairly straightforward game mechanics, with no-dice rolling or statistics trackers, but had characters with extensive and defined pasts, thus deviating from the tradition of keeping the "hero" identity as generic as possible. In the 90s Wizards of the Coast acquired publishing rights, releasing a second series, which contrasted their predecessors by having sections numbered independently from pages. A third series was re-launched by Mirrorstone in the 2000s, but found limited success. Today, Wizards of the Coast are again at the steering wheel, having released the last 6 titles in the series, which take place mainly in the Dungeons and Dragons settings of Ravenloft and the Forgotten Realms.
Despite the large number of books, they don't follow any linear progression structure, so you can simply pick one at random and start your adventure!
Number Three: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
One of the most famous books in the genre, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain has quite the intriguing backstory. Random chance played a part in its conception, as a Puffin Books representative decided to check out a Dungeons and Dragons convention in the 80s and was stunned when he saw a hall filled to the brim with nearly 5000 people. He immediately had the idea to publish a book about role-playing games and approached Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson with the idea. The duo instead proposed to create a series of books, which would simulate the role-playing experience, which all the people at the convention seemed to enjoy so much.
The first book they came up with was titled The Magic Quest, but in the editing process the name was changed to The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, planting the seed for the entire Fighting Fantasy series of gamebooks.
The story takes place in a magical realm, setting the player, an unnamed adventurer, on a quest to find the treasure of a powerful warlock, hidden deep within Firetop Mountain.
Number Four: Lone Wolf
Lone Wolf is a gamebook series created by Joe Dever, consisting of 31 gamebooks, which have sold over 12 million copies worldwide.
All stories are set in the fictional world of Magnamund - a battlefield arena for the forces of good and evil. Players take the role of a young monk initiate named Silent Wolf. While away on chores outside the monastery grounds, his home is attacked by the forces of darkness and everyone he knew is massacred. Hearing the attack, Silent Wolf rushes back to help but is knocked unconscious. Once he awakes, he finds himself the only survivor of his order and takes the name Lone Wolf, before venturing out into the world.
Number Five: Grailquest
As the name suggests, this series is heavily influenced by Arthurian myths and legends. Created by J. H. Brennan, GrailQuest is set mostly in the realm of Avalon, following the adventures of Pip - a young hero, who is constantly sent by Merlin on missions of vital importance to the realm of King Arthur.
Having a much lighter tone and even inserting humorous and nonsensical elements, the series is a great recommendation especially for young readers, or those new to the genre. The player gets to explore a surprisingly hilarious rendition of King Arthur's world, accompanied by a sarcastic and grumpy Merlin, a vampire poet who vastly overestimates his own poetic abilities, and Excalibur Junior - a magical talking sword, which Merlin creates based off the design of Arthur's own infamous blade.
What do you think of our list for the top 5 Choose Your Own Adventure books to try out in 2022? Did we miss any of your favorite titles? Let us know in the comments below.
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