ChooseYourOwnAdventure
Latest
Snapchat's first swipeable lens is an AR partnership with Tinder
Tinder recently launched Swipe Night, an app that lets you choose your own adventure by -- wait for it -- swiping left or right. If you want to check out the experience without actually downloading Tinder, Snapchat has you covered with the new Swipe Night Lens. It will give users a sneak peek at the experience by bringing up various scenarios from Swipe Night and letting you swipe left to "save yourself" or swipe right to "save the world," according to Tinder.
YouTube is working on interactive original shows, too
Netflix isn't the only big-name streaming platform working on interactive shows. YouTube is also developing programming that uses the format. Ben Relles, who was YouTube's head of unscripted programming, is heading up a new division focused on interactive shows and live specials.
Audible has a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' experience on Alexa
If you have fond memories of those choose-your-own-adventure books as a child, well, you can now enjoy them in audio form. Audible has partnered with ChooseCo, the company behind those aforementioned publications, to create an Alexa Skill called Choose Your Own Adventure: An Immersive Audible Experience that will transform those childhood classics into professional audio and voice performances.
'Choose Your Own Adventure' publisher sues Netflix over 'Bandersnatch'
Netflix's choose-your-own-adventure style film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is the subject of a new lawsuit, brought against the streaming giant by Chooseco LLC. The company is known for publishing the "Choose Your Own Adventure" book series popular in the 1980s and 90s, and it's claiming Netflix infringed upon its trademarks, Variety reports. Netflix tried to obtain a license for Chooseco's trademark in the past, according to Chooseco, but never reached a deal with the publisher.
Interactive movie 'Late Shift' comes to consoles this April
Is it a movie, a video game, or a choose your own adventure book? I'm tempted to say it's a mixture of all three. Late Shift emerged last year as an interactive film where you, the viewer, can make choices in specific scenes. It was released as an iOS app (compatible with Apple TV) and shown in select theaters, allowing audiences to collectively vote on each decision. Now, it's coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, giving you another way to watch it at home and craft your own storylines with family and friends.
Someone turned 'Fallout: New Vegas' into an interactive video
If you have a soft spot for Choose Your Own Adventure stories but wish they were set in your favorite video game universes... well, you'd better clear your schedule. Many A True Nerd has turned Bethesda's Fallout: New Vegas into an interactive video (a Choose Your Own Apocalypse, as it's called) that you play solely through YouTube. As you might imagine, it boils down the action role-playing game's experience into simple this-or-that choices -- the route you take and the people you befriend determine whether or not you'll make it to New Vegas in one piece.
Amazon Echo offers a choose-your-own-adventure 'Batman' story
Amazon's Echo speaker can do everything from controlling your home to ordering pizza, but its latest trick is something special... at least, if you're a fan of caped crusaders. As part of a team-up with DC Comics and Warner Bros., Amazon has launched a Choose Your Own Adventure-style interactive Batman story, "The Wayne Investigation." The tale has you telling the Echo where you want to go as you search for clues following the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents. Depending on how well you do, the voice-guided game lasts anywhere between a brief 5 minutes (clearly, not the successful path) to a lengthy 40 minutes -- at that point, it's basically a radio drama for the internet era.
Adorable, grisly adventure game 'Jenny LeClue' hits PS4 in 2016
Jenny LeClue is a coming-of-age story wrapped in a choose-your-own-adventure novel and tied up with the pixelated ribbon of a point-and-click detective game. And it's coming to PlayStation 4 next year, creator Joe Russ announced on the PlayStation Blog today. We've been keeping an eye on this one since its $105,800 Kickstarter in 2014 -- it's poised to be a witty and charming investigation game starring a pugnacious young woman, Jenny LeClue, on a mission to prove her mother is innocent of murder. However, Jenny is fictional even within the game, where she's the star of a series of (also fictional) choose-your-own-adventure novels. As Jenny hunts down evidence and discovers secrets in her sleepy, creepy town, her author narrates, and the two characters play off of each other in often-humorous ways.
Insert Coin: Choose Your Own Adventure launches interactive cartoon app on Kickstarter
In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you'd like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with "Insert Coin" as the subject line. There may be an iPad version of Choose Your Own Adventure coming, but will it happen or not? It's up to you to decide. That's how the creators of the famed series of children's books are cheekily pitching their new Kickstarter campaign for an app called Choose 'Toons. The first title, Your Very Own Robot (based on the book) would have you, er, your kids putting together a droid named Gus from discarded robot lab parts. It would feature 20 branches, 11 possible endings and over 30 minutes of total animation. Such productions are pricy, however, so that's where Kickstarter comes in. The creators are looking for $130,000 to fund the project, and backers will be able to pick up the iPad app around May 2014 starting at $6 (an Android version could come later). Other pledge levels will get you a custom stylus ($18), a chance to beta test the app before others ($30) and even your likeness drawn into background of the app ($90). Naturally, all that depends on your "numerous talents and enormous intelligence" -- hit the source to choose.
8-bit Mad Men Choose Your Own Adventure looks awesome, is awesome (video)
Hearing "8-bit", "Mad Men", and "choose your own adventure" all in one sentence is a bit too much for us to handle. But yes, that's very much what we have here. So, if you just can't hold out those final few days until the next season of whiskey swilling misogyny, then hit up the video above and make your own story in the meantime. Just don't forget to take your shoes off before bursting into Cooper's office.
Choose Your Own Adventure on iPod
If you're of a certain age (which I am), you may fondly remember a little series of books called Choose Your Own Adventure. Right around the time a little game company called Infocom was really cranking out the interactive computer games, which I spent countless hours playing on my Apple ][, CYOA books were a regular staple at my house. Yeah, we'd all skip ahead to make sure we weren't about to wind up as ant food, but the books did a lot to foster reading across the country, long before Harry Potter was a gleam in Rowling's eye.Anyway, Choose Your Own Adventure books are back! Sure, you can buy dead tree versions. But you can also buy iPod versions, which use the iPod's primitive hyperlinking in the Notes. And as astute reader Amy pointed out to us, there's a free sample iPod CYOA book, The Abominable Snowman, on their website. It's neat to see the old series faithfully reproduced, but even better knowing I can carry these around in my pocket (and read them to my kids).
