20 Comments

I loved these as a kid. My reading journey started with these and the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books that you mentioned. After that I was really into solo gamebooks such as 'Grailquest' , 'Tunnels and Trolls' and the 'Fighting Fantasy' Series. There was also a series called 'You be the Jury' where you have to read the interviews of witnesses and the accused, and look at diagrams of the crime scene and look for contradictions. I can't remember the name but there was also a series of solo gamebooks set in ancient mythology, and after I had progressed from Fighting Fantasy, I started the 'Lone Wolf' series were very involved and had so much depth and replayabilty. Like you, I do miss these types of books, and I can honestly say that my desire to become a writer started from reading these books endlessly.

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I don’t think we had these books specifically in the US. Or at least I don’t remember them. We had a lot of “find certain things in this mess of a drawing” type of books, like Where’s Waldo. I do remember choose your own adventure, though.

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Jun 13, 2023Liked by Simon K Jones

Just randomly stumbled across this blog and thought I'd let you know Usborne now have similar books (Shadow Chaser, Curse Breaker and League of Thieves) as well as new updated version of the old classic puzzle adventures due out later this year. You can find them here: www.beausbooks.co.uk

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I remember borrowing these from the library in the late 80s or early 90s.

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I loved the Usborne puzzle books (mid to late 90s for me). There is possibly a space for them, a bit like the 13 Storey Treehouse books as a short but attention-grabbing way for kids to engage with reading.

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As the other US people have said, we didn't have these specific books. CYOA is a classic... In fact, just yesterday I came across this Atlas Obscura article, which is basically about the flowchart maps for the branch points of the CYOA books:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cyoa-choose-your-own-adventure-maps

But those Usborne books looked fun, and I enjoyed solving the puzzles on the extracts you posted. There's certainly a place for them to return. If I were still a kid I'd enjoy the hell out of them.

I'll join those recommending Affinity Publisher and will point out that the v2 versions just dropped. That's a one-and-done buy until v3 is released, and since the v1 Suite went for seven-years-and-change before progressing to v2, and given that Serif is running a launch special of 40% off until January 25, 2023, I'd say this is the perfect time to jump on. I'd say just go ahead and pick up the entire Suite - Photo, Design, Publisher - and have your photo editor, vector graphic and page layout locked in for the next few years. Obviously proprietary formats mean it'll be easier to shuffle photo/raster elements, vector elements and text around within the Suite without having to render out your elements to other formats. One buy will grab you all three programs for Windows, Mac and IOS. Look, man, I'm not even a brand Ambassador and I'm pushing hard.

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Dec 26, 2022Liked by Simon K Jones

I loved these books as a kid! I was always hunting down the next one at the library! It’s a shame they don’t publish them

anymore. I know my daughter would be into them!

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Thanks for the shoutout! I agree about their being magic in the print version of a gamebook. And in the old days, the illustrations in solo gamebooks were generally more sophisticated than the ones in computer games.

I’ve never heard of the Usborn books in the US. Ironically, the most similar thing I can remember growing up were the Nintendo Adventure Books, which were CYOAs with heavy use of puzzles. (I remember having to solve puzzles to get the correct page number to flip to.)

In today’s kids market, you might find inspiration with Hocus & Pocus and Knights Club, which are modern gamebook comics with unique mechanics.

Looking forward to seeing what you make! If you need anything on your journey, I’m happy to help.

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I wish we'd had the Usborn books in Canada - I've never heard of them before this! Adam Weiland mentions a number of other books that I'm more familiar with.

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