The Horror Gamebook

Officina Menigi has just completed a successful kickstarter for The Horror Gamebook - the second in their series of horror-fiction-inspired gamebooks a la Choose Your Own Adventure. The first adapted the works of H.P. Lovecraft; this one focuses on many of the short novels of Edgar Allan Poe.

If you are of a certain age, you will remember interactive Choose Your Own Adventure books from your childhood - these sold over 250 million copies in the 1980s and 90s. Ed Packard first conceived of a book with branching paths in 1970 when he was making up bedtime stories for his daughters improvisationally, ran out of ideas and asked them what they would do. Each girl had a different idea and he made up endings for both - and realized he was onto something.

Since those early days, gamebooks have evolved. The Horror Gamebook takes the idea and runs with it - in these pages you will encounter not only fateful decision points, but puzzles and other challenges you must solve. All wrapped in the dark mysterious worlds of Poe, the early American master of the short story, so influential to the form - and the first well-known American to earn a living solely through writing. Surely there is not a person alive who doesn't have some familiarity with Poe's works - The Raven if nothing else! His legacy is indelible and everlasting.

Some of the works which have inspired this book include: The Pit and the Pendulum, The Black Cat, The Masque of the Red Death, King Plague, the Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, and many more. These works are skillfully blended with an original narrative - what could have come off as slavishly imitative is instead true to the original text while also revealing something new.

Fans of horror fiction, especially Poe's work - and fans of gamebooks in general - would do well to investigate The Horror Gamebook. Your path is fraught with dark challenge - and engaging mystery.