Après moi, le déluge

A blog of terrible deaths from Choose-Your-Own-Adventure type gamebooks?Yes, this is pertinent to my interests. youchosewrong.tumblr.com

— Rowan Lipkovits (@UnwashedMass) August 4, 2012

Yes, I'm still spending a lot of time thinking about gamebooks, about playing them, analysing them, and writing them. Sadly, reverse-engineering them is extremely time-consuming, unfortunately for the four or five I partway completed two summers ago and never managed to wrap up (the hilarious The Ascot, The Great Machine, and a few more minor works).

Anyhow, after finding the above-Tweeted site the other day numerous folks thought my discovery was interesting enough to RT and further share; I, conversely, thought I'd go down into my basement of delights (for 13-year-old boys circa 1990 at least) and scan a few more deadly endings for their gallery of Space Quest-ian endless torments. They have been received by that site's host, and hopefully will end up coming through the pipe with credit extended to this site here.

All visitors (to whom I say: Welcome!) will note that this site is, for all intents and purposes, currently defunct. That said, a handful of works interesting and otherwise are playable here, and someday more may wash up on its shores.

...

Just today I was thinking that it was a shame that the interactive narrative format ended up so chained to its biggest success story, the Choose Your Own Adventure series, such so that gamebooks everywhere are often abbreviated as CYOAs. If their historical analysis had gone a step or two further, we might have instead the splendid general terms "stories as you like them" or "gardens of forking paths". But no.