Hey all! I basically grew up with Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf (playing them in secret in the classroom during classes). I always found it weirdly comforting how small the worlds were. A few hundred numbered passages, some dice rolls, a basic sword and backpack system, and yet a feeling of agency. I even think I feel more agency playing gamebooks than, say, a massive RPG like Baldur's gate 2, I can't quite explain why. I see game design leaning toward the endless with branching narratives and procedural systems and massive inventories. It's just that to me, the more stuff you cram in, the more mechanical it feels sometimes. In the eighties and nineties, there was a kind of elegance to knowing that everything in the story was hand-written and that your choices, even though limited, mattered because Ian Livingstone (or some such pioneer) wrote them.
2022-2023 I tried recreating this feeling in digital format, resulting in Greymarsh. I followed it up with Bloodwood Dungeon. These titles are basically love letters to those old gamebooks.
Needless to say, input from serious gamebook lovers would be very valuable as I continue to improve and update these titles (which I do quite frequently), so I’d love to hear what fellow fans think. I’ll be happy to send a free key (in a chat) so you can download either Greymarsh or BD for free (but I'd then expect some honest feedback :)).
Here are the link's: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2367690/Greymarsh/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2929130/Bloodwood_Dungeon/
