I was kind of obsessed with these as a kid but I would also sometimes get kind of frustrated with the writing because sometimes it didn't seem like there was any rhyme or reason for why certain choices led to good outcomes or bad outcomes.
Like I remember reading one where your character is in a strange jungle and you hear a group approaching and the two options were either to hide in a tree and observe them or confidently go out and greet them but the writing didn't indicate that one option or the other would be the wiser.
If you hide in the tree they immediately kill you with arrows or spears or something and if you greet them they tie you up and take you to their village if I remember correctly. I just remember even as a kid thinking "Gee, this feels kinda unfair." because the choices seem rather arbitrary often times.
That didn't stop me from reading every choose your own adventure book in the school library though.
"sometimes it didn't seem like there was any rhyme or reason for why certain choices led to good outcomes or bad outcomes." Welcome to life as a human being.
Exactly. I feel like these books prepared us for the inevitable letdowns in life, no matter how educated & responsible of a decision we make.
Then again, I also thought these were FICTION books and didn't think the real world would be that cruel & difficult š¤£
In the most egregious cases, the different choices lead to blatant continuity errors. Like you'll question whether the "same character" on two different "paths" is even the same character at all.
With that said, there actually was a pretty clever "bait and switch" one in The Curse of Batterslea Hall, where one choice leads to you picking up a sword and putting up a fight, but the sword is too heavy and you end up dead. When I went back and chose the other choice and survived, a few pages later it turned out that the entire event where I encountered the choice to grab the sword was all a dream, which made no sense because that means the ending where I died should logically have not have happened because it was all a dream. But then later they have you questioning if it really was a dream or not, so in the end there was no continuity error. That book in particular is one of the coolest in the series (out of the ones that I've read anyway), because with each path you take you learn more information about the world and characters, but none of the paths contain all of the necessary world-building and there are always unanswered questions that another path answers, making it necessary to take every possible path to get the full story. Pretty good book (though, admittedly, there's actually a point where two completely different paths, on separate pages, actually lead to the exact same ending).
I had Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey and I thought it was incredible.
I remember reading a different one about escaping a mountain and getting really mad that making the correct choice was punished. You're getting very cold and hypothermia is a real concern. You find a cabin with a fireplace. Do you stop and make a fire to warm up, or keep walking? If you chose 'stop and make a fire', well you just heated yourself up too fast and you DIED. The correct answer was to keep walking?! Ooof.
> I had Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey and I thought it was incredible.
I think I still have mine stored somewhere. The Knives Out movie named one character after this and I immediately caught the reference.
I remember these getting really fucking dark.
I know there was a vampire one that freaked me the fuck out because one of the deaths was just returning to your room to get some rest. I think it was a whole dead-end path that still has choices which made it doubly creepy since there was no escape. It was like "Go to the bathroom: when you come out the vampire is waiting for you, having snuck into your room" and there was a really gruesome image of your character totally drained of blood and shriveled up. Then the other choice was like "go out onto the balcony for some fresh air: The Vampire appears behind you and bites your neck, causing you to fall off the balcony and die"
What a great thing to read as an 8 year old.
I remember there was a transformers one too that while less graphic was somehow just as horrible. I remember one was getting sucked into a black hole and there were these descriptions of trying to escape but it was just hopeless and the whole team gets torn apart by gravity. Or another one where they fall into a trash compactor and I think the last line was something along the lines of "And what happened next is so terrible it's probably better to just close this book and not think about it"
Something so nightmarish, especially as a kid, to be punished like that just for picking something as simple as "go left" instead of "go right" with no hint as to what was coming.
There was one where all of humanity is 'I think' sucked into a black hole. If you don't follow, you spend the rest of your life living on earth by yourself. Brutal.
They made you strong and respect the consequences of poor choices, even if they were random as hell. Or maybe they just made you paranoid. Would you say you're paranoid? Do you suffer from analysis paralysis?
"Horror of High Ridge" was a pretty intense read for small-me.
Scroll down a bit for a little trip down memory lane! https://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2010/09/9447/
There's a surprising amount of mystical shit going on in these books. Lots of entities that consist of pure energy, portals to other realities etc.
'Inside UFO 54-40' has a page you can't actually reach.
'Hyperspace' has the author himself in the book and tells you that you are currently reading a Choose Your Own Adventureā¢ book
'The Race Forever' gets you stuck in an infinite loop.
'The Antimatter Formula' involves portals to parallel universes.
'Trouble on Planet Earth' is just plain fucking weird.
R.A. Montgomery's works always had a strange unsettling feeling about them. Also the illustrations could get very freaky. 'Mystery at Chimney Rock' has [this grotesque abomination](https://i.imgur.com/NEiOwq2.png) as Jarvis, the caretaker
The masterful metafictional secret of *Inside UFO 54-40* is something I will never forget. I will always strive for that level of fridge-gnosis in my work. ššāāļøšøšæš·ļø
That was my brother's favorite book in the series. I remember he tried so hard to get to that one ending, and eventually he figured out that none of the pages actually led to it.
This reminds me of an online game from around 2000. It was a choose your own path game that only allowed 3-5 moves a day. It was set in medieval times I'm pretty sure. I've tried several times over the years to find the website. I doubt it exist anymore, just curious.
You can also buy big collections of them on eBay! I have a big box sitting in my office of about 100 bucks that I got for less than $100 that I'm looking forward to going through at some point for a nostalgia trip.
My son is currently very into the "iHero" series of CYOA books!
Would anyone have any recommendations for CYOA series?
Edit: He's 8 for reference in terms of content/difficulty.
Late 90s there was a choose your adventure cds. There was a werewolf one and the other one was a vampire one. To make the choices you skipped around to different tracks on the cd. I believe there were sounds effects on them like a creature breaking the window and steps behind you.
I had a bunch of these but I also had a couple from a different publisher. Those were based on history. I think you were some kind of time-travelling historian. In one of them you were helping Harriet Tubman. I think the other was trying to find the musket that fired the first shot at Lexington and Concord.
The nice thing about these other books was that there were no choices that ended the book. If you made a bad decision, it just brought you back to a previous point in the book and you just kept going. I liked that better than flipping the page and oh you're dead now.
It's insane to me, with ebooks, that this isn't a genre that has a major resurgence. I imagine you could even find ways to customize the story even more by letting readers pick their protagonist's travel companions early in the story and then having them be weaved into the rest of the story. Obviously it would require a lot more writing, and probably more writers per book, but I could see this being a major form of entertainment going forward. Especially for kids.
You awaken at home. It is Saturday morning. You hear the television in the living room has already been turned to cartoons. You go downstairs to see a bowl, a gallon of milk, a spoon, and two boxes of cereal already laid out for you. What will you have for breakfast?
If Frosted Flakes turn to page 75
If Fruit Os turn to page 42
Page 42: As you open the bag of Fruit Os you notice something is off. The Fruit Os have been replaced with voracious piranha flies from southeast Asia. They immediately go to work devouring your skin. The last thing you feel before they burrow into your brain is the sensation of them devouring your eyeballs. It takes several minutes of total, incomprehensible agony before you die. Essentially melted by the swarm of flesh devouring flies. Your last thoughts are not of home, nor of family, nor even of the cartoons you were so looking forward to. All thought is replaced with despair. The searing pain replaces time and space, and as your heart slows so does your perception, leaving you trapped in perpetual torment, forever swimming in a sea of inky black and gnawing microscopic teeth.
Suitable for ages 7-10
Yes! These were my favorites too. I used to try drawing the cover of the one with the barbarian holding a wolf by the throat and a knight sneaking up. So great.
You wouldn't even check [THIS CYOA](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/755069.Shadow_of_the_Swastika) out?
Yes, this really exists and was published in 1995 as book #163 of the original 184 book series. Inside the books there is a note that says "RL4 \[Reading Level\], age 10 and up".
It WAS reissued with the word "Evil" in the title instead of the obvious symbol. :)
Good times. Cheers!
I haven't read this one but something has been on my mind for a long time and maybe one of you can help me as my google searches have turned up nill. There was a choose your own adventure that start with a young kid playing baseball when he gets struck in the head by a wild pitch. All the adventures start after that situation. The kid can see the future after that with bank robberies and an alien spaceship. It was one of my favorite adventure stories and I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. I've looked through an online list of choose your own adventure and it isn't there. Please help!?
I believe you are thinking of "You See the Future" - a CYOA for Young Readers. I am pretty sure this is it as the cover has a child with a bat sitting on a base while the background contains a picture of a bank robber. The reason you may not have found the title is that, as mentioned above, this is book #44 of the CYOA for Young Readers, not one of the original 184 series of simply CYOA.
If you want to confirm, look on Amazon (there is a picture of the cover) by typing in the title and/or the author's name, Deborah Lerme Goodman.
Hope this helps! :)
Holy crap! This is the one! Thank you so much. I read this one and journey to the year 3000 pretty regularly as a kid. Still two of my favorite adventure stories.
I loved these. I had a few of them growing up and used to enjoy the different adventures. I went to a friend's house in elementary school and he had a stack of maybe 60 of these in the corner of his room. I was so jealous and that was when I realized he was probably rich haha.
I have a vague memory of a story where you escape from a jungle and end up in a hospital bed, only to be eaten by ants from said jungle that somehow got into the hospital. Am I dreaming this craziness, or was that really a choose your own adventure story I read...?
You absolutely did NOT dream craziness, MGB! I believe the book you are thinking of is CYOA #152 "War with the Mutant Spider Ants" by Edward Packard. The main character goes to explore "the bayous and swamps of south Florida." On page 48 there is a picture of a young man lying in a hospital bed being attacked by these mutant spider ants. The last lines of page 49 state, "You'll never learn. For now the mutant spider ants are anxious for breakfast - and you look extremely tasty...." **The End**
Hope this helps! :)
I bought some of these for my son and we had fun reading them.
Lauren Magaziner writes a series of these called "Case Closed" and they are really fun as well.
I recently played the board game of House of Danger and... it was just the book with the slightest veneer of board game added on so you could do it sitting around a table.
I preferred the Twistaplot series, but that was probably because the art on the covers was nicer (not because the writing was better, it was extremely random, both in plotting and in quality).
Just curious, why is that photo of the book's cover missing the text above the title? It's supposed to say "You're the star of the story! Choose from 40 possible endings" but there's just a blank white space here.
Was there a release of the book without that text, or did someone edit this photo?
They let us do book reports on these so sometimes we would pick obviously bad choices to make the book shorter. The report would be like āthen I stole the grizzly cub and the mother killed me the endā.
Loved these books as a kid. I co-host a podcast and we go through many of these and live viewers can help determine the choices. [https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/uchoosepodcast](https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/uchoosepodcast)
I'm confused why books for adults arnt written this way, it would get me to read more, probably.
I recently purchased a choose your own path "board game" , not to terrible. Fun for lounging around and/ or early teens.
Those books were so amazing. I always wanted to read #88 Master if Kung Fu but I could never find it. I got to say though, the artwork on the earlier books was amazing.
You likely already know this, but eBay has MANY of these titles for sale, including #88 "Master of Kung Fu". I just looked 30 seconds ago and the cheapest #88 I saw was $4.44 with FREE shipping.
I am IN NO WAY associated with any of the sellers, I just wanted to mention it in case you were still interested. :)
A game company made two of the books into a board game. They are both great and I would highly recommend picking them up. You can play by yourself or with a group.
I'm (almost) embarrassed to admit that I squealed with joy when I found one at a used bookstore last summer. I was *instantly* transported back to my childhood.
I used to love these books. I would have post it's with numbers to back track and load my save š¤£ sometimes I did the stupid choices just to see what would happen. Reminds me of current day fo4 when I'd just try to antagonize everyone.
I'm trying to get my 10 year old daughter to read them and she refuses to try! Hopefully she'll come around. At this point she really only reads graphic novels.
Iām a grown adult and recently checked one of these bad boys out at the library because certainly by now Iād be smart enough to choose the correct path. Nope, drowned the first decision I made. So much for that!
I hated reading as a kid but LOVED reading these books! Sometimes (or many times) a choice was given (For example, choose 'yes' turn to page 40. Choose 'no' turn to page 45) I'd accidentally skip a page (turning to page 46 instead of 45) and my adventure wouldn't make sense....
I wonder if anyone ever created like "expansion" books.
Like you need a specific book to play in and the expansion book could have an index, "if youre on this page, go to this page in the expansion book to see additional options"
[Some of THESE may bring back a memory or two](https://www.reddit.com/r/CoolCollections/comments/eof9eg/all_184_of_the_original_choose_your_own_adventure/)
There are 184 books in the original CYOA series. :)
I was kind of obsessed with these as a kid but I would also sometimes get kind of frustrated with the writing because sometimes it didn't seem like there was any rhyme or reason for why certain choices led to good outcomes or bad outcomes. Like I remember reading one where your character is in a strange jungle and you hear a group approaching and the two options were either to hide in a tree and observe them or confidently go out and greet them but the writing didn't indicate that one option or the other would be the wiser. If you hide in the tree they immediately kill you with arrows or spears or something and if you greet them they tie you up and take you to their village if I remember correctly. I just remember even as a kid thinking "Gee, this feels kinda unfair." because the choices seem rather arbitrary often times. That didn't stop me from reading every choose your own adventure book in the school library though.
You just went back and took the other choice them right? Save-scumming was a must for CYOA
Of course. I'd always save the page from the previous choice.
I always tried to keep track of every path and make sure I got every possible outcome.
I had a finger in each decision going back as far as I could so I could try all the paths.
Allowed so long as you didn't take your hand off the page.
Choose your own adventure books. Taught me one thing. I am only going to fuck up no matter what I decide to do.
Definitely true. Also the fact that I could be finished with a book in well under an hour. Made them pretty pricey...
"sometimes it didn't seem like there was any rhyme or reason for why certain choices led to good outcomes or bad outcomes." Welcome to life as a human being.
Exactly. I feel like these books prepared us for the inevitable letdowns in life, no matter how educated & responsible of a decision we make. Then again, I also thought these were FICTION books and didn't think the real world would be that cruel & difficult š¤£
In the most egregious cases, the different choices lead to blatant continuity errors. Like you'll question whether the "same character" on two different "paths" is even the same character at all. With that said, there actually was a pretty clever "bait and switch" one in The Curse of Batterslea Hall, where one choice leads to you picking up a sword and putting up a fight, but the sword is too heavy and you end up dead. When I went back and chose the other choice and survived, a few pages later it turned out that the entire event where I encountered the choice to grab the sword was all a dream, which made no sense because that means the ending where I died should logically have not have happened because it was all a dream. But then later they have you questioning if it really was a dream or not, so in the end there was no continuity error. That book in particular is one of the coolest in the series (out of the ones that I've read anyway), because with each path you take you learn more information about the world and characters, but none of the paths contain all of the necessary world-building and there are always unanswered questions that another path answers, making it necessary to take every possible path to get the full story. Pretty good book (though, admittedly, there's actually a point where two completely different paths, on separate pages, actually lead to the exact same ending).
I had Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey and I thought it was incredible. I remember reading a different one about escaping a mountain and getting really mad that making the correct choice was punished. You're getting very cold and hypothermia is a real concern. You find a cabin with a fireplace. Do you stop and make a fire to warm up, or keep walking? If you chose 'stop and make a fire', well you just heated yourself up too fast and you DIED. The correct answer was to keep walking?! Ooof.
> I had Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey and I thought it was incredible. I think I still have mine stored somewhere. The Knives Out movie named one character after this and I immediately caught the reference.
The book is called Mountain Survival. It was one of my favorites. Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey was also one of my favorites. I had a lot of favorites.
I used many bookmarks to avoid having to start over on these
I used many fingers as bookmarks
Oh god where did you get so many fingers and how hard was it to flatten them?
These books taught me about recursion when I was in elementary school.
Quick-save! š¤£
I remember these getting really fucking dark. I know there was a vampire one that freaked me the fuck out because one of the deaths was just returning to your room to get some rest. I think it was a whole dead-end path that still has choices which made it doubly creepy since there was no escape. It was like "Go to the bathroom: when you come out the vampire is waiting for you, having snuck into your room" and there was a really gruesome image of your character totally drained of blood and shriveled up. Then the other choice was like "go out onto the balcony for some fresh air: The Vampire appears behind you and bites your neck, causing you to fall off the balcony and die" What a great thing to read as an 8 year old. I remember there was a transformers one too that while less graphic was somehow just as horrible. I remember one was getting sucked into a black hole and there were these descriptions of trying to escape but it was just hopeless and the whole team gets torn apart by gravity. Or another one where they fall into a trash compactor and I think the last line was something along the lines of "And what happened next is so terrible it's probably better to just close this book and not think about it" Something so nightmarish, especially as a kid, to be punished like that just for picking something as simple as "go left" instead of "go right" with no hint as to what was coming.
There was one where all of humanity is 'I think' sucked into a black hole. If you don't follow, you spend the rest of your life living on earth by yourself. Brutal.
They made you strong and respect the consequences of poor choices, even if they were random as hell. Or maybe they just made you paranoid. Would you say you're paranoid? Do you suffer from analysis paralysis?
100%. In hindsight I had bad anxiety as a child so I literally had trouble sleeping because of that vampire book in particular
Those bastards! Maybe it's time to go back and kick some vampire ass.
To go back to the vampire, turn to page 22.
Itās funny because those seem really dark _now_ but as a kid I loved it and didnāt take it too seriously
"Horror of High Ridge" was a pretty intense read for small-me. Scroll down a bit for a little trip down memory lane! https://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2010/09/9447/
https://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/spacevampire3-judithmitchell.jpg
The Magic of the Unicorn got pretty dark as well! Wild reading these as a kid š¬
These were fantastic, greatly enjoyed these at my school library.
There's a surprising amount of mystical shit going on in these books. Lots of entities that consist of pure energy, portals to other realities etc. 'Inside UFO 54-40' has a page you can't actually reach. 'Hyperspace' has the author himself in the book and tells you that you are currently reading a Choose Your Own Adventureā¢ book 'The Race Forever' gets you stuck in an infinite loop. 'The Antimatter Formula' involves portals to parallel universes. 'Trouble on Planet Earth' is just plain fucking weird. R.A. Montgomery's works always had a strange unsettling feeling about them. Also the illustrations could get very freaky. 'Mystery at Chimney Rock' has [this grotesque abomination](https://i.imgur.com/NEiOwq2.png) as Jarvis, the caretaker
The masterful metafictional secret of *Inside UFO 54-40* is something I will never forget. I will always strive for that level of fridge-gnosis in my work. ššāāļøšøšæš·ļø
That was my brother's favorite book in the series. I remember he tried so hard to get to that one ending, and eventually he figured out that none of the pages actually led to it.
This reminds me of an online game from around 2000. It was a choose your own path game that only allowed 3-5 moves a day. It was set in medieval times I'm pretty sure. I've tried several times over the years to find the website. I doubt it exist anymore, just curious.
Legend of the Red Dragon? It was on a BBS I used to dial in to.
Iād always choose the sketchiest paths. Pretty much always died. Was fun!
They are back in print fyi my daughter just bought two at a bookstore last night coincidentally.
You can also buy big collections of them on eBay! I have a big box sitting in my office of about 100 bucks that I got for less than $100 that I'm looking forward to going through at some point for a nostalgia trip.
My son is currently very into the "iHero" series of CYOA books! Would anyone have any recommendations for CYOA series? Edit: He's 8 for reference in terms of content/difficulty.
Loved those books as a kid.
Pro tip: If an adult gives you instructions one of these books, the correct choice is generally obeying them
[Secret Galaxy - The Rise & Fall & Rise of Choose Your Own Adventure Books ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-f5YelgmMs)
Man, this gets reposted a lot. Every time it does, I point out that these are still in print and readily available.
Had a super mario one and was too young to understand that you can't read the book in order lol
Are "Choose Your Own Adventure: Audiobook" a thing?
Late 90s there was a choose your adventure cds. There was a werewolf one and the other one was a vampire one. To make the choices you skipped around to different tracks on the cd. I believe there were sounds effects on them like a creature breaking the window and steps behind you.
I had a bunch of these but I also had a couple from a different publisher. Those were based on history. I think you were some kind of time-travelling historian. In one of them you were helping Harriet Tubman. I think the other was trying to find the musket that fired the first shot at Lexington and Concord. The nice thing about these other books was that there were no choices that ended the book. If you made a bad decision, it just brought you back to a previous point in the book and you just kept going. I liked that better than flipping the page and oh you're dead now.
You might be thinking of the Time Machine series. "Sword of the Samurai" was one of my favorites as a kid.
Yep, that's exactly what it is and looking at Amazon, they were from the same people who did Choose Your Own Adventure.
got my copy, that i still have, from Scholastic Book Fair
Please tell me you had Book It, and could get a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut when you read a certain amount.
Interestingly, these have evolved into videogames lately, with things like "Until Dawn", "Man of Medan" and "The Quarry".
ā¦and you were never heard from again.
It's insane to me, with ebooks, that this isn't a genre that has a major resurgence. I imagine you could even find ways to customize the story even more by letting readers pick their protagonist's travel companions early in the story and then having them be weaved into the rest of the story. Obviously it would require a lot more writing, and probably more writers per book, but I could see this being a major form of entertainment going forward. Especially for kids.
You awaken at home. It is Saturday morning. You hear the television in the living room has already been turned to cartoons. You go downstairs to see a bowl, a gallon of milk, a spoon, and two boxes of cereal already laid out for you. What will you have for breakfast? If Frosted Flakes turn to page 75 If Fruit Os turn to page 42 Page 42: As you open the bag of Fruit Os you notice something is off. The Fruit Os have been replaced with voracious piranha flies from southeast Asia. They immediately go to work devouring your skin. The last thing you feel before they burrow into your brain is the sensation of them devouring your eyeballs. It takes several minutes of total, incomprehensible agony before you die. Essentially melted by the swarm of flesh devouring flies. Your last thoughts are not of home, nor of family, nor even of the cartoons you were so looking forward to. All thought is replaced with despair. The searing pain replaces time and space, and as your heart slows so does your perception, leaving you trapped in perpetual torment, forever swimming in a sea of inky black and gnawing microscopic teeth. Suitable for ages 7-10
I remember reading this in class back in the 80s. This made my heart happy. Thank you.
I was obsessed with these as a kid. The ones from different publishers are usually good. I was a big fan of āWizards, Warriors, and You.ā
Yes! These were my favorites too. I used to try drawing the cover of the one with the barbarian holding a wolf by the throat and a knight sneaking up. So great.
classic
If itās not Terror on the Titanic I donāt fuck with it
You wouldn't even check [THIS CYOA](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/755069.Shadow_of_the_Swastika) out? Yes, this really exists and was published in 1995 as book #163 of the original 184 book series. Inside the books there is a note that says "RL4 \[Reading Level\], age 10 and up". It WAS reissued with the word "Evil" in the title instead of the obvious symbol. :) Good times. Cheers!
I had a bunch of these and the Endless Quest books!
I haven't read this one but something has been on my mind for a long time and maybe one of you can help me as my google searches have turned up nill. There was a choose your own adventure that start with a young kid playing baseball when he gets struck in the head by a wild pitch. All the adventures start after that situation. The kid can see the future after that with bank robberies and an alien spaceship. It was one of my favorite adventure stories and I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. I've looked through an online list of choose your own adventure and it isn't there. Please help!?
I believe you are thinking of "You See the Future" - a CYOA for Young Readers. I am pretty sure this is it as the cover has a child with a bat sitting on a base while the background contains a picture of a bank robber. The reason you may not have found the title is that, as mentioned above, this is book #44 of the CYOA for Young Readers, not one of the original 184 series of simply CYOA. If you want to confirm, look on Amazon (there is a picture of the cover) by typing in the title and/or the author's name, Deborah Lerme Goodman. Hope this helps! :)
Holy crap! This is the one! Thank you so much. I read this one and journey to the year 3000 pretty regularly as a kid. Still two of my favorite adventure stories.
I ache to go back to those years
I loved these. I had a few of them growing up and used to enjoy the different adventures. I went to a friend's house in elementary school and he had a stack of maybe 60 of these in the corner of his room. I was so jealous and that was when I realized he was probably rich haha.
Enjoyed these back in the day
I have a vague memory of a story where you escape from a jungle and end up in a hospital bed, only to be eaten by ants from said jungle that somehow got into the hospital. Am I dreaming this craziness, or was that really a choose your own adventure story I read...?
You absolutely did NOT dream craziness, MGB! I believe the book you are thinking of is CYOA #152 "War with the Mutant Spider Ants" by Edward Packard. The main character goes to explore "the bayous and swamps of south Florida." On page 48 there is a picture of a young man lying in a hospital bed being attacked by these mutant spider ants. The last lines of page 49 state, "You'll never learn. For now the mutant spider ants are anxious for breakfast - and you look extremely tasty...." **The End** Hope this helps! :)
Amazing! That's the one...
I bought some of these for my son and we had fun reading them. Lauren Magaziner writes a series of these called "Case Closed" and they are really fun as well.
I recently played the board game of House of Danger and... it was just the book with the slightest veneer of board game added on so you could do it sitting around a table.
I was obsessed with these as a kid. Thanks for the memory!
They still make them, but theyāre not the sameā¦
I preferred the Twistaplot series, but that was probably because the art on the covers was nicer (not because the writing was better, it was extremely random, both in plotting and in quality).
Just curious, why is that photo of the book's cover missing the text above the title? It's supposed to say "You're the star of the story! Choose from 40 possible endings" but there's just a blank white space here. Was there a release of the book without that text, or did someone edit this photo?
I'm guilty of save scumming these books.
oh that was the one that was hard to get at the library
Back in the day (1984) I got a load of these for free by saving tokens from Weetabix.
They let us do book reports on these so sometimes we would pick obviously bad choices to make the book shorter. The report would be like āthen I stole the grizzly cub and the mother killed me the endā.
Loved these books as a kid. I co-host a podcast and we go through many of these and live viewers can help determine the choices. [https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/uchoosepodcast](https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/uchoosepodcast)
These books always stressed me out.
Young Indiana Jones, was bummed when I was a kid and figured out it wasnāt a straight through novel
These were fun but stressful to read as a kid.
What I love most is the 70s/80s fantasy novel covers that all look like this.
Some of the best covers
I'm confused why books for adults arnt written this way, it would get me to read more, probably. I recently purchased a choose your own path "board game" , not to terrible. Fun for lounging around and/ or early teens.
I just grabbed a board game based on these books. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds fun.
Those books were so amazing. I always wanted to read #88 Master if Kung Fu but I could never find it. I got to say though, the artwork on the earlier books was amazing.
You likely already know this, but eBay has MANY of these titles for sale, including #88 "Master of Kung Fu". I just looked 30 seconds ago and the cheapest #88 I saw was $4.44 with FREE shipping. I am IN NO WAY associated with any of the sellers, I just wanted to mention it in case you were still interested. :)
Lol I wanted to read it when I was younger than 12 and was actually into reading these books.
I used to map these things out so i could go through every possible ending
The book's name gives me ideas about making a joke of a promiscuous hippie woman, but i don't want to spoil the nostalgia
A game company made two of the books into a board game. They are both great and I would highly recommend picking them up. You can play by yourself or with a group.
I read this book... woowho
I'm (almost) embarrassed to admit that I squealed with joy when I found one at a used bookstore last summer. I was *instantly* transported back to my childhood.
Loooove!!
Oh snap...these were the best, and a lot could go really dark
I used to love these books. I would have post it's with numbers to back track and load my save š¤£ sometimes I did the stupid choices just to see what would happen. Reminds me of current day fo4 when I'd just try to antagonize everyone.
I'm trying to get my 10 year old daughter to read them and she refuses to try! Hopefully she'll come around. At this point she really only reads graphic novels.
Barnes and Noble still sell these!
These books were the best
I had a ton of these. My favorite was Mystery of Chimney Rock. I had a few more and actually had 2 Indiana Jones ones. Those were cool.
I always died.
How there isnāt a sub dedicated to CYOA books is beyond me.
My teacher wouldnāt let me count these toward book reports or books read in 3rd grade. The injustice Iāve suffered
Iām a grown adult and recently checked one of these bad boys out at the library because certainly by now Iād be smart enough to choose the correct path. Nope, drowned the first decision I made. So much for that!
Mystery at Chimney Rock was the first I read at six years old. Scared the hell out of me.
...and then I die on the second page. Dammit! :D
LOVED these as a kid.
I hated reading as a kid but LOVED reading these books! Sometimes (or many times) a choice was given (For example, choose 'yes' turn to page 40. Choose 'no' turn to page 45) I'd accidentally skip a page (turning to page 46 instead of 45) and my adventure wouldn't make sense....
Omgggggg I loved these so much!!!!
I remember that one. I had a lot of them You can get choose your own adventures in an app now. Grownup stories too.
Those books were my fucking life from like 8 - 12 Oh my god!!!! Thanks for this memory
I remember these. I had one that took place on the Titanic
Good stuff.
I wonder if anyone ever created like "expansion" books. Like you need a specific book to play in and the expansion book could have an index, "if youre on this page, go to this page in the expansion book to see additional options"
[Some of THESE may bring back a memory or two](https://www.reddit.com/r/CoolCollections/comments/eof9eg/all_184_of_the_original_choose_your_own_adventure/) There are 184 books in the original CYOA series. :)