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Tabbed out on the Oregon Trail
- runsonrum 2y agoThis is cool! I love Oregon Trail and did not realise there is a chose your own adventure book. Thank you.
- jweir 2y agoThere are many. My kids read them in fourth grade - this particular one I had not seen before. Lots of fun.
- ameliaquining 2y agoWhere's the walking-dead node? I've been staring at the state diagram for a bit and haven't managed to find it.
- ggillas 2y agoLove the Oregon Trail and Powell's--it's a magical book place. I had a chance to work with one of the original Oregon Trail creators on a board game concept these past three years. Don is a true pleasure to work with and has a sharp mind plus great stories. Highly recommend HN folks look up his GDC talk or send him some work (he's open to select projects) https://www.linkedin.com/in/donrawitsch/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/donrawitsch/
- throwup238 2y agoPowell's is great. On the top floor is a rare book room with tons of old books, including a copy of the Journals of Lewis & Clark in its original binding with all the maps in tact. They were the first to map the eastern and western river valleys that the Oregon trail crossed.
- zerkten 2y agoThey used to have an incredible technical bookstore a few blocks away. Sadly, it closed over 10 years ago.
- wizardforhire 2y agoIt moved to i think the forth floor and is as big as ever, just way more dense. But yes, in my younger years the technical bookstore over looking the park was a monument not to be missed.
- ddingus 2y agoYes, I recently rediscovered it. Man, in the 90's when I was learning about a lot of manufacturing processes, that tech book store was a gold mine! I would get the pre-computer era books and those contained all the manual, analytical geometry means and methods. Awesome skill builders for the time. I still use that stuff when making things sans a nice shop environment today. My first internet account was at techbooks.com ISP run on a Sun Sparc 10 and a few Linux boxes. I could dial in at 9600 baud, just smoking fast! Ahem. It became teleport.com later. Fun times. In any case, Powells books is very highly recommended.
- incanus77 2y agoI miss the old computers on display, though.
- 082349872349872 2y agothe author's own games: https://eblong.com/zarf/if.html https://eblong.com/zarf/if.html
- csmcg 2y agoAndrew Plotkin is one of the best IF authors there is, in my opinion. Highly recommended the following: Spider and Web: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=2xyccw3pe0uovfad https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=2xyccw3pe0uovfad Shade: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=hsfc7fnl40k4a30q https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=hsfc7fnl40k4a30q So Far: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=rcrihauxixy48svr https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=rcrihauxixy48svr
- bkcooper 2y agoHadean Lands is also very cool
- ziddoap 2y ago>best IF authors there is Never seen the acronym IF before, so for those in my position: IF = interactive fiction
- duskwuff 2y agoSpider and Web is a particularly neat bit of storytelling, and I'd highly recommend it. "Don't be absurd," he says. "You're no more a sightseer than the Old Tree in Capitol Square; and if you'd had enough sense to walk away from that door, you wouldn't be here. You don't and you didn't and are; we caught you. And you're going to start by telling me how you got through that door. Do you understand me?" Without spoiling too much: it's a story about a spy infiltrating a military complex, told from the perspective of that man being interrogated after being captured. It's an unconventional narrative approach which does a nice job of giving the player some direction.
- GauntletWizard 2y agoThe author mentions Jason Shiga's Meanwhile as one of the only other books using this flowchart+tabs "gameplay" system. Meanwhile is one of the best experiences I've ever had reading a book, including it's hidden/unreachable pages, it's circular and looping options, fourth wall breaking, etc. I highly recommend it - I also recommend all of Shiga's other works, such as Demon[1] and Fleep[2]. It seems he's also got another book in this style[3], which I'd missed the news of and have immediately ordered. [1] http://www.shigabooks.com/ http://www.shigabooks.com/ [2] http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/fleep/ http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/fleep/ [3] https://www.amazon.com/Adventuregame-Comics-Leviathan-Jason-Shiga/dp/1419757792 https://www.amazon.com/Adventuregame-Comics-Leviathan-Jason-...
- Loughla 2y agoWhy would you have unreachable pages? What purpose does that serve? I feel like I'm missing something.
- GauntletWizard 2y agoSpoilers for Meanwhile: https://imgur.com/a/51u80NR https://imgur.com/a/51u80NR
- Loughla 2y agoYours makes more sense. Is just absurd. I like that.
- egypturnash 2y agoWhen you’re flipping through the book, going from a choice you made on page 17 to a result on page 94, you cannot help but see parts of stuff on pages 18 through 93. Sometimes these things are captivating and surprising - how the hell do you get from “exploring your aunt’s spooky house looking for grandpa’s will” to “riding dinosaurs”? Sometimes you even abandon the choice you made and start working backwards through the book, looking for the path that leads to riding dinosaurs on page 42. Possibly this is “cheating”. Possibly this is just the book equivalent of looking up a video game puzzle’s solution. You could argue both ways. It’s certainly breaking the basic rules outlined in the front of any game book, of starting at page 1 and reading until you’re told to turn to another page. Having pages with crazy stuff on them that cannot actually be reached by starting at page 1 and turning pages as directed by the official narrative plays with this experience. For more thoughts on this I would suggest finding a copy of “UFO 54-40”, which is probably the first book to do this. Play it straight for a while. And do it with a real book, not a PDF or a Twine adaptation or something. The whole point of this is an artifact of the fact that you can’t stop the reader from glancing outside the rails as they flip through the book.