choose your own adventure

Update on my Choose-your-own-Adventure

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Greetings all.  This is just a quick update on my one and only gamebook: Through the Bottom of the World: A Choose-your-own-Speed-run.  It’s a novel length romp through a fantasy land, but each path is only about as long as a short story.  Every decision gets you closer to one of many wildly different endings, some complete duds, some mastery of reality itself, and some in nooks and crannies between all that.

This gamebook is heavily infused with the format of video game speed running, with the protagonist usually on a quest to complete her life as quickly as possible (a handy time is provided at chapter’s end).  A fresh edit has just been completed, so I’m reposting the introduction to maybe catch a few new eyes.  The whole gamebook is free to read, same as all my other work.  So forge ahead and pick a path in the lands of Shook and Cain!

Through the Bottom of the World – beginning

Chat-your-own-Adventure #36: Pishka of the Moment

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience voting to determine the path of the story.  The underlined phrases in the choice of three were the winning pathways.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d ever like to participate in our interactive fiction.

Burned over an Open Fire        Musical Ice Caves          Nightmarish Car Trip

The Vaatiqaat clan would not survive the ice age. They would never make it to the footnotes of natural history texts. Their bones would never be found; their clothes and tools would be completely obliterated by the encroaching glaciers near the shore. Even their symbol, stitched upon everything they wore and carved into the hilt of their weapons, the boar walrus, was an animal that would similarly become extinct from both the world and history. Continue reading →

Chat-your-own-Adventure #35: 1986

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience voting to determine the path of the story.  The underlined phrases in the choice of three were the winning pathways.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d ever like to participate in our interactive fiction.

Psycho Clown                  Epic Playlist                    The Guy Run Over by the Bus

He didn’t remember the destruction, as he’d never lived it, but he felt like he should have. The event was so cataclysmic, so volcanic, that it probably shook most of the world. People from a continent away did report hearing the boom. Raery Jeed was not one of them. This was not his experience, so he walked through it as cautiously as he could. Continue reading →

Chat-your-own-Adventure #34: Sweeping the Dragon’s Lair

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience voting to determine the path of the story.  The underlined phrases in the choice of three were the winning pathways.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d ever like to participate in our interactive fiction.

Little House                                 Dust Dragon                                       Dental Coma

The storms had ravaged every crop in that town and the next four and the previous four… Sorry. Hard to even think out here. Don’t know if anybody’ll find this story, but I’m pretty sure at this point that the storm can hold it. That means it’ll get spat out whenever this thing finally winds down. When it does there’ll just be a big pile of dead livestock, pulled-up fences, and a few children just as unlucky as the animals. Continue reading →

Chat-your-own-Adventure #33: Pinky Promise

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience voting to determine the path of the story.  The underlined phrases in the choice of three were the winning pathways.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d ever like to participate in our interactive fiction.

King of Horror                                 Nutella Game                    Texan’s Rough Life

“Sire, you can’t remain in here all day,” Attendant Syrril said. She walked over to the king’s four poster bed and pulled back the curtain. The king was a young man, but the recent stresses had aged him noticeably. His dark eyes took a moment to focus on his loyal attendant’s face. She couldn’t even guess what he thought he was seeing: a ghost, an otherworldly ectoplasm, or perhaps some kind of giant speaking insect with an odd number of legs. Continue reading →

Chat-your-own-Adventure #32: The Citronella Moth

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience voting to determine the path of the story.  The underlined phrases in the choice of three were the winning pathways.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d ever like to participate in our interactive fiction.

Sheet Buffalo                          Eleven Million Dollars                   Citronella Moth

It was her first night back on planet Perfosia since the complete and total subjugation of its nature. She was staying in a resort that had only been open for three weeks. The infrastructure had been there much longer, put in place by robots and remote-controlled construction machines. The finer points, lighting, decoration, atmosphere, could only be achieved by human workers, but they couldn’t move in until the monsters had been forced out. Continue reading →

Chat-your-own-Adventure #31: The Worming Llewynn Line

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience voting to determine the path of the story.  The underlined phrases in the choice of three were the winning pathways.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d ever like to participate in our interactive fiction.

Death Hammer                                   Justice Spear                            Majesty Mace

There were more than five hundred graves to sort through, and any one of them might have been the resting place of the death hammer of the hideous commander Baross Varnivore. He might not have always been an evil man, there were tales that his violent behavior and strange last name didn’t come along until he picked up the habit of eating varnish in his adolescence. The facts were that, when he died, he left a collapsing empire that had dominated two continents. Continue reading →

Chat-your-own-Adventure #30: From Morsel to Big Bite

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience voting to determine the path of the story.  The underlined phrases in the choice of three were the winning pathways.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d ever like to participate in our interactive fiction.

Freak Dog Show                     Freak Farmer’s Market                           Freak Star

“Is it supposed to be that color?” Michelle asked. She wasn’t asking anyone in particular. Three of her associates were in the lounge with her, and any of them was welcome to look out the viewing window and see the star in the distance. Only one did; they weren’t getting paid at that moment, so there was no point in analyzing anything. Better to keep their eyes glued to their imitation beef stroganoff before it went cold. Their ship’s food imitator was notoriously uncooperative; anything that went cold went as hard as yeast-less bread. Continue reading →

Chat-your-own-Adventure #29: Parts Littering the Sea

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience voting to determine the path of the story.  The underlined phrases in the choice of three were the winning pathways.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d ever like to participate in our interactive fiction.

Paper                                                          Iron                                                        Wood

The storm made quick work of the cliff side, speeding what should have been more than a hundred years of weathering. The rock fell away, revealing the iron plate beneath. It had no visible hatches or doorways. There were no words or pictograms. It was almost like it was natural, simply a collection of all the most like-minded iron atoms in the world. Continue reading →

Chat-your-own-Adventure #28: Mixing Soda and Stock

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience bidding tokens (earned while watching) to determine the path of the story.  The underlined phrases in the choice of three were the winning pathways.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d ever like to participate in our interactive fiction.

Death Combat                              Slime Culture                              Expiration Date

The palace wibbled and wobbled as the thousand guests rolled and slithered into the exhibition hall. It used to be the ballroom until the slimedom collectively realized they could not dance, at least not by the standards of the solid beings in the neighboring lands. Continue reading →