Gritty adventure on the final frontier

If you've read Heart of Ice, you'll know I like my science fiction grim, dark and with no unequivocally happy endings. Actually, for the most part I like my fantasy that way too, but good SF demands an uncaring universe. In fantasy you can be saved by a mysterious prophecy and a saviour. In (too) many fantasy stories, if things look tough, having the right moral code deep down inside can count for just as much as knowing how to wield a sword or weave an intrigue.

But not in the best SF. That's the tale of mankind confronting a vast, awesome, bleak infinity that both terrifies and calls to us. For the brutal collision between guts and survival I'm talking about Apollo 13 or The Martian, for sheer wonder try Europa Report or Rendezvous With Rama, and for the great and terrible unknown take a look at Greg Bear's Hull Zero Three.

Now there's a new title to add to that list: Kyle B Stiff's Heavy Metal Thunder, released last week for iPad and iPhone by gamebook app developers Cubus Games. The art and sound effects are very stylish indeed, building extra layers of eeriness and menace into the story, which was originally published as a regular prose gamebook for Kindle. Humanity reached its golden age, only to have it all snatched away by alien invaders. The sola system is overrun. You have your wits and your courage. That may not sound like much, but it's what got us out of the caves and up into space in the first place. Now it's time to show those aliens the hard downside of picking a fight with the human race.

Even if SF isn't your thing, there's still a point to all this. Fabled Lands LLP have been talking to the guys at Cubus Games about some pretty exciting projects. (Yes, we have apps in the works with Tin Man Games and Inkle, but we have so many gamebooks that one or even two developers could never handle the workload. And on top of that, we like making new friends.) The plans with Cubus are very hush-hush for now, but you know me. Give it a few weeks and I'll be spilling the beans.

Before all that, though, come back Friday when I'll have the second part of the "DVD extras" for Doomwalk. See ya then.

Quick recap

The last post generated a lot of discussion and some first-rate suggestions, so before tomorrow's new post let's have a quick recap.

I mentioned that Megara's European division will not be running any more Kickstarter campaigns for the foreseeable future. But Megara US, under the guidance of Richard S Hetley, is considering a number of possible projects. I can't speak for them, but I do know that one project that's been floated is a humorous gamebook to be co-written by Paul Gresty and Jamie Thomson. If you've read the Dark Lord books you'll know that one ought to be laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Jamie is also co-authoring the long-awaited Undeadwood (only it won't be called that) with Ashton Saylor, and that should be Kickstarted into existence later in the year. I've seen the plot of that and it's sure to appeal to both old-time gamebook fans and those who want a little more character depth and a more satisfying storyline.

Later in the year there will be Way of the Tiger and Golden Dragon apps from Tin Man Games. We're talking to them about our other gamebook series, but they are deservingly very busy, as are Inkle, so it may be a while before we can get the Fabled Lands apps out. But we will.

Oh, that illustration? It's part of Leo Hartas's map of one of the cities of Orb. Neat, huh?

Jamie's 2014 treasures

The traditional New Year's freebie coming up tomorrow, but to fill the gap here's a promo picture by Sébastien Brunet from one of Megara's Way of the Tiger hardbacks that Kickstarter backers will be receiving next year.

The first two paperbacks in the Way of the Tiger series should be coming out from Fabled Lands Publishing by February. These will feature Megara's art but - be warned - only in black and white. If you want a full-color set of books, hurry up and order from Megara as they still have some left, but only a strictly limited edition.

Way of the Tiger is also coming out as a series of apps from digital gamebook supremos Tin Man Games. (The technology doesn't exist to do full justice to Blood Sword yet, but they're working on it.) Jamie has written loads of flavor text for every outcome in the fights, making these much more than straight ports of the book text.

Lastly, before you pack 2013 away for good, here's a shout-out on BBC Radio's Open Book program for Jamie's Dark Lord books. He comes in at 24:05 minutes but it's all good stuff.

Clouds and silver linings

A couple of bits of gamebook news today. First, Fabled Lands LLP has secured a publisher (one of the Big Five, no less) for the ebook versions of the four Critical IF books and my Frankenstein interactive novel. Hang on, though. Before you get too excited: that's the good part, but there's a cloud hanging over the deal. The holdup is in actually taking delivery of finished versions of the ebook files. I'm told by Tim Gummer, who runs the business side of Fabled Lands LLP, that he has so far been unable to get definitive copies of the completed files. We were hoping to have them out in time for Christmas, but now, who knows?

Is this vexing? Considering that we have a shot at worldwide distribution with a major publisher, yes it is. But you can still get the books from Amazon (paperback and Kindle editions) so if the epub3 versions never see the light of day it'll be a pain, but not a total disaster.

The other news is all silver lining - well, a step up from silver, in fact. Tin Man Games, the undisputed kings of gamebook apps, will be releasing my six Golden Dragon gamebooks next year in the form of two compendium apps, each comprising three books. Read all about it on Tin Man's site, and while you're at it, be sure to check out their advent calendar, which trails a lot of gamebook goodies for 2014. The one that most interests me so far is Marie-Paule Graham's The Second Garden, a magical realist journey through seasons and stages of grief. No zombies or luck rolls in there, I suspect.

As it's Tin Man, who have a spotless track record for both reliability and innovation, you can be absolutely sure of seeing the Golden Dragon apps for both iOS and Android in 2014. And if the Critical IF ebook publishing deal does fall through, we'll probably be offering those books to Tin Man to turn into apps instead. What I'm really hoping for, though, is a Warhammer Quest style version of the Blood Sword series. If you agree, better start pestering Tin Man about it right now.

Tin Man has a brand new shine

Lately this blog has been focussing more on print than digital. That's not because I've lost faith in ebooks, just that Fabled Lands LLP is in the process of bringing all our gamebook back catalogue back into print, so page sizes and printing costs have been occupying our attention.

And mostly I think that if an interactive story is going to work in digital form, it needs to be written for that medium. In my digital version of Frankenstein (available for Android now as well as iOS), the interactivity is designed in the form of a conversation with the narrator. The relationship would not be nearly so convincing in a print version, where you'd get to see his Trust and Empathy variables.

So it's interesting to see some revolutionary new changes being hinted at for Tin Man Games's forthcoming Fighting Fantasy titles. Rather than just convert the old text to digital form, Tin Man are giving the books a thorough overhaul (with the authors' blessing) to make them suitable for digital format. Among other things, this means getting rid of nostalgia features like the dice (hooray!) and making the books a lot more visual.

There's some speculation that this revamping is in response to Inkle's recent app-daptation of Steve Jackson's Sorcery, but I suspect the seeds of what Tin Man is doing now were planted earlier, in their visually rich Judge Dredd gamebook app.

My own gripe about dice is not in the clattery cubes themselves - bonkers as those are on the screen of a digital device. It's that when I'm reading an interactive story on iPad, I don't want to be bothered with the mental arithmetic of adding dice scores to combat skills and subtracting defence levels and then dividing by... Sure, the device can do all that for you, but it was never a great part of gamebooks, it was just a necessary evil. At any rate, it fitted with the pace of reading a print book, but feels like steam radio in the era of e-readers.

Putting more graphics into the apps also makes sense. After all, how many text adventure games are released these days? Unless framed within the structure of a novel, interactivity is always going to be more convincing in the context of immediacy that images and audio provide.

I'm also hoping Tin Man will do away with all the "turn to 273" legacy stuff. I should just tap on the option and be taken to the next section. Well, we'll see. It's a bold move, as I see they've already got a comment on the blog saying, "You changed something! How dare you!" (I'm still bracing myself for the snit-storm that'll come when diehards see that the new edition of The Lord of Shadow Keep now has artwork by Harry Clarke.)

The first of the new-style Gamebook Adventures is Appointment with F.E.A.R. and it's due to be released in October.

Patience, grasshopper

The mad hunt for bugs in the epub code of the upcoming Infinite IF books has left me with no time for anything else, but hopefully this little taste of a certain famous gamebook series will make up for the dearth of posts.

Those covers, which you'll get to see in all their glory in just a few weeks now, are courtesy of Mikael Louys, sorcerer supreme at Megara Entertainment, and his talented artists Aude Pfister and Mylène Villeneuve. I've been looking at some of the advance material for Megara's Way of the Tiger RPG and it's looking pretty Orb-some.

To anticipate some of the questions about this series:

Will there be print versions?
Osprey are describing the series as "digital only" on their website, but you can bet I'm lobbying strongly for print editions. I don't believe ebook-only is a viable publishing strategy for any books, but most certainly not for something like this. You want something you can collect and keep. Well, I would.

What will the apps run on?
Technically they're not apps, they're fully interactive ebooks, and they'll run on any epub3-compatible e-reading software. Currently that means iBooks, Astri-Bee for Android devices, and Firefox's e-reader plug-in. (If you use that last one, you'll need to switch on Javascript; look for the cog icon at bottom left of the screen.)

What about artwork?
There are a few new filler pieces for the ebooks by Bruce Hogarth, and I'm currently designing covers for the four VR books. (Note to self: hire an artist.) If I get to set up the print books, and if Russ and Leo agree, we'll use their original artwork for those

Are there going to be more Way of the Tiger books?
What's the obsession with Way of the Tiger anyway? Maybe I should read them. If the first two are successful, we'll hopefully go on and do the rest and maybe even continue the series, which fans have told me ends with the hero stuck in a hellish cobweb about to be eaten. I expect Mark Smith had just been watching The Fly on TV or something. "Help meeeee!"

Will the Infinite IF series include any other classic gamebooks?
Fabled Lands LLP owns the rights to Falcon, Golden Dragon, Blood Sword and Duel Master. I can't see how we'd do the last two in this epub3 system - only something like Tin Man's gorgeous apps would do them justice - but Falcon and GD would be easy enough. (Just as long as I don't have to code them. The experience of writing all the Javascript for Frankenstein and four Virtual Reality books over the last seven months has been quite enough, thank you.)

What about all-new gamebooks?
Well, Undeadwood didn't happen. That's a shame, but it doesn't mean we won't try other new titles if the series takes off. Personally I'd like to push the envelope a bit towards the more mature character-driven approach I used in Frankenstein, as zombies and dungeon bashes have zero appeal to me compared to stuff like the Story Mechanics' 39 Steps, but the overall imprint for Infinite IF is called "Osprey Adventures" so I suspect that my own experiments in interactive fiction are more likely to come out elsewhere. Meanwhile, Jamie is going to be fully tied up on Dirk Lloyd and our new kids' series Starship Captain - which is what put the kibosh on Undeadwood. But there's no shortage of excellent gamebook authors out there who we can enlist. Hey, it worked for Jackson and Livingstone.

The biggest gamebook ever

I mentioned a little while back how UK author Michael J Ward is single-handedly aiming to turn the tide in favor of print gamebooks with his impressive epic new series Destiny Quest. And Andrew Wright, genre historian and writer of the latest Gamebook Adventures app, has an in-depth interview with Michael Ward over on his Fantasy Game Book blog, covering how the DQ series was conceived and written as well as (of equal interest to many of you, I suspect) the inside dope on its publication. If that whets your appetite, Destiny Quest 1: The Legion of Shadow is available on Amazon and there's a wealth of material on the DQ website.

And talking of gamebooks, this seems to be a good place to link to the Slate article about the origin and (possible) future of gamebooks, flagged up in a recent comment by Mike Mielke. I noted this bit

"Researching interactive books," Demian Katz, gamebooks archivist, says, "There's pretty much the same pattern in every country. A few come out, they become explosively popular, a flood of knock-offs are released, they reach critical mass and then drop off into nothing. When I first started cataloguing them, around 1998, it was happening in the Czech Republic. That was one of the last booms."

and couldn't help wondering if China has had its gamebook craze yet...

This Tin Man's got heart

Gamebooks are alive and thriving in 2011, as you can see from this dramatic trailer for Tin Man Games' upcoming iOS gamebook Catacombs of the Undercity, the fifth in their Gamebook Adventures series that began with An Assassin in Orlandes. The blurb ought to whet your appetite for some serious sword-n-sorcery action:

Captured by one of Orlandes City's most infamous brotherhoods, the Red Hand Guild, you are thrown to the mercy of the subterranean world deep beneath the streets of the great capital. Wading through the sewers and other dark menacing places, your goal is to reach Undercity, the City beneath the City. Only there can you find the help you need to escape this underground horror and bring down the dark brotherhood from within.

The author of Catacombs is none other than Andrew Wright, whose Fantasy Game Book blog keeps the interactive literature torch burning very bright. Want to know more? Of course you do - and the Tin Man Games blog will beam you up fast.