Programming Gamebooks

Note : Gamebook Theory is a very interesting and well-trodden territory. Unfortunately, due to laziness on my part, I have not read and researched into these things while writing this post. I will, however, re-iterate my promise to link in these blogs, other better blogs that explore these things, the best of these, are from my favorite gamebook author(s): Dave Morris , Jamie Thomson , ... and other(s) who have managed to avoid the internet all these years. Once I get a few posts in, I will do my due diligence and start linking them here. Every gamebook I have read that lends itself well to digitization and implementation can be represented as a loop (in the programming parlance). It is quite simple really: Tell a story or a scene Present a choice Continue the story/scene or enter a new scene Unless you die, disappear, or the story ends, cycle back to 1 There is probably a formal, gamebook-book-theoretic-or-esque names for steps 1-4 or more (or less) steps for that matter. I call this

The year 2020 was a strange one. Notwithstanding the worsening effects of the pandemic, a chance encounter with Learning ZIL and related news (in 2019), struck a chord. It became the the spark that (re)ignited my interest in gamebooks. I imagine that anyone who's had any fond memories or nostalgic about the early, text computer adventure games of the late 70's and early 80's, would be excited about the prospect of making similar, Infocom-inspired games. I too, had such dreams of glory. I was confident: I was armed and ready with some newfound ZIL knowledge. Right in the middle of the year 2020, I set about making such a game, set in the Andrej Sapkowski's Witcher universe. In fact, my prototype was essentially a shameless ZIL-reworking of Witcher 3: TheWild Hunt by CD Projekt RED. For days, I threw myself into this hobby. Then it dawned on me: I couldn't write a story to back up my ZIL game programming know-how. Sure, I could write some "cool" games with