Thursday, December 31, 2015

2015 in review

Happy new year, gamebookers! 2016 is just around the corner, so I thought I'd be original and go review the past year and talk about what's going on in the future.

Year in review

Asuria Awakens!!!!

Yes, my Gamebook Adventures book came out this September. It felt great to finally get my book out to the world and also to have great reviews for it.

Legend of the Wayfarer

My mini gamebook series has reached 8 books now. I want to make shorter gamebooks but also make them better, such as including hyperlinks in the books. I want to system to be sustainable and possible to do in my spare time at the rate of 1 a month. Having books of 80-120 sections each are too big to do once a month with the spare time I have. These books don't have hyperlinks as well and people do want them to make reading them easier.

Windhammer 2015

My gamebook, Isaac Newton: Badass Ninja Crimefighter did not win any prizes, but I'm proud of it anyway. At the very least, I'm glad that I managed to get over my problem with working out titles.

AFF2 - I have contributed lots and lots to the forum. As well as the adventures (see my bibliography), I have made a collection of other things to help with AFF2. Have a look on the forums for loads more homebrew stuff.

For more information on what I have written, here is my bibliography.


My New Year's resolutions

Getting more blog posts

The thing is the gang of us who started blogging about gamebooks around 2010 then went on to write actual gamebooks. We all have jobs and a lot of us have children too. Since I started writing this blog in 2010, I have got married and had two children. I have also been approached by people to write some gamebooks and also my store of thoughts on gamebooks has started to run dry. Writing gamebooks has provided me with more thoughts, but I need the time to write them down.

I don't know how to get more posts - I have shared this blog with people, but they are equally busy. we need to find some new blood out there - people who are interested in gamebooks and interactive fiction and who are eager to share their thoughts and post their books. The audience is there.

If you want to contribute, please email me at sl1605@gmail.com.

Revisiting old posts

I have mentioned before that my gaming guru is Mark Rosewater, lead designer of Magic the Gathering. I read Mark's Monday articles since he started writing them and also long after I played Magic seriously. One thing Mark did was revisit old posts that he had done in the past. I have been thinking about this for a while. I think the first posts I will revisit will be my 'How to Write a Gamebook' posts as I will want to go back to the core of writing a gamebook.

More gamebooks

I have some gamebooks in the works, which I don't want to talk about yet. Hopefully, they will come to light in 2016.

More Interactive Fiction

I have gradually become aware of Interactive Fiction circles, mainly by having my Windhammer entries Sharkbait's Revenge and Isaac Newton: Badass Ninja Crimefighter reviewed by Emily Short https://emshort.wordpress.com/. I have also started reading the These Heterogeeous Tasks blog.

I want to write something using Choicescript or Twine, so that will be something next year.

So there we are. I hope you all have a happy and prosperous 2016. Happy gamebooking!

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