I haven’t looked very far, but it looks like the single player version is no longer available; they only discuss the MUCK it looks like.
Oh, it looks like they’ve buried it a bit (perhaps because of the age-walling at the front page of the site). It looks like you can get the single-player version here (that page in itself looks to be SFW, unless there are images further down in the comments or my Adblock is blocking someone; though if you’re somewhere that won’t let you view NSFW stuff there’s not much point in going there to download the game).
This is the page you want.
blog.flexiblesurvival.com/p/links.html
As a non-donation-person the version you’ll get is always the oldest, but it’s never too far behind.
EDIT - And it’s SFW. What’s NOT SFW is the main page: it often has pictures.
EDIT 2 - Ok, maybe “SFW” is relative, when the very first comment says (and you’re gonna love this out of context) “Doesn’t seem to be working for me, I’ve got a cock and balls both at once and it doesn’t seem like either is going away.”
WHO TOLD YOU MY THING
Looking back at a majority of game books that are hailed as classics many of them share the similar theme of the general fantasy setting. I guess that the popularity of dungeons and dragons spurred their existence and the growth of computer games and television game units helped to bring their end. There are many well written game books that do not use the fantasy setting but they are minor when compared to the volume of the other.
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Video games and movies I would love to see set as IF or Gamebook in an unsorted top ten format is as follows.
- Two Worlds
- TES Oblivion + skyrim + morrowind (cover it -ALL-)
- Pirates of the Caribean
- Soul Reaver (the numerous sequels gives its backstory considerable depth)
- Thief: the dark age (I’m not sure about a sneak game but its worth a try)
- Ecsatica (oh I played the HECK out of that game, spooky and lots of locales)
- Alone in the Dark (I have my version on the backburner,bogged down by game system)
- The Addams Family tv series (Everything from horror to camp! whee)
- Bioshock
- I’m at a tossup for the last slot. I’ve narrowed it down to 3 movies.
. a. Coraline. Creepy on a twisted family brothers grimm level.
. b. The shining (ala kubrik)
. c. Sleppy hollow The johnny dep version as a detective game.
Soul reaver, a.k.a. Legacy of Kain: I’m really not too sure about that. The games owe an awful lot to the actual gameplay. You’d have to redesign it from the ground up and probably kill it in the process.
AitD: That would probably be quite cool, since it’s an adventure game already. If written properly it could work.
Bioshock: Oh no. Really best not to. Let me give you a f’rinstance: you can play System Shock in pure adventure mode, i.e., turn down combat difficulty to such a level the enemies just sit there, posing no threat and not firing back, and you just play it like an adventure game. It’s supremely boring, because the game wasn’t built that way. By playing it as normal you get a dose of tension that is an integral part of the experience. The Bioshock series is what it is, and you couldn’t convert it any more than you could convert Deus Ex. What you CAN try is a fan-fiction-ish IF…
Shining: Have you played the non-IF “5 Days a Stranger”? 
If not, go play it, and the sequels besides.
I tell you one thing you could do with a Soul Reaver gamebook: use world-shifting as a persistent choice element. “Any any time, you may turn to page N+50 to enter the spectral realm. If you are at a spectral portal, you may turn to page N-50 to enter the physical realm.”
Has anybody tried this? It would be more page-heavy and scene-repetitive than most published gamebooks, but I don’t think it would be physically impossible.
(This is equally suited to any videogame with an alter-world mechanic, such as Constantine-the-movie-the-videogame or the Silent Hill series.)
“Trapped in Time” worked similarly, though not in that exact, awesome way.
Alternatively, in a really well-designed gamebook, you could just turn it upside down; the alternate world could be printed that way on the opposite page. That’d be way harder to achieve, of course.
Hardly any good, though, is it? Hardly meant to be good, even. You can also talk about the Heavy Rain and God of War “IF versions”.
Well, it’s good for what it is, which is a piece of satire. I can’t speak to how well it represents Binfinite, but it definitely doesn’t represent whatever anyone enjoyed about it.
Right. I’m not sure that the guy who brought this up was thinking of satire, didn’t seem that way. Again, see Deity of Hostility and Lots of Rain (which seem to be by the creator of Gish! That was a surprise!).
Personally I think there’s a distinction between satire and throwing pieces of the work-to-be-satirized together in a hodge-podge, chaotic, mindlessly derogatory way. You may have gathered I’m not too keen on the piece you linked to.
EDIT - Replaying LoR. That I find to be a better satire, though not less derogatory. What is it with satires that are all in the style “Dude, what’s up with that?” (To put it another way: Dude, what’s up with satires that are all like “Dude, what’s up with that?”)
So’s this one. I guess it’s a series?
The main think I picked up on soul reaver and bioshock in a personal way was the setting. The mood and ambiance. Now that you mention how action plays into it, your right. ‘dark danky room’ can only be described so many times before becoming boring. On the flip side the Dual world element sounds like it could work but only if you completely twist everything around. Block certain passages and open other ones. Mainly reworking the entire map and room descriptions. The astral and real realm would have little resemblance to one another with the exception of a few portal locations and key description locales that help to give a feeling of similarity between the two. But not much else.
As for Aitd. I’ve rewritten the world out of that sucker. There are tons of similarities but ive completely rewritten the back story. The ‘maps’ are identicle but the room descriptions are different to some degree. The 92 Aitd game’s mansion looks like a new coat of paint and it would be good as new. Mine is nothing like that. The way I describe the mansion ‘Traumentaur’ german for “dream door” makes you feel like taking gasoline to it and burning it down. The monsters are way more detailed and scary than the video games paltry images. Loads of lovecraft references to the point of being a lovecraft funhouse. Each monster with their own death and with a unique death BY the monsters. Grammer needs to be fixed a ton but otherwise it paints a spooky picture. Right now its bogged down by the technical aspects of the game system.
Really? Bit of a disappointment, then.
EDIT - Ok, replaying it. I give; it’s not as bad as it seemed to me when I first played it. When I first played it I haven’t played Bioshock Infinite. Now I can see where the author’s coming from.
[code]Colorado Lounge
The high windows leading outside admit ultra-bright sunlight reflected off the snow. This slightly over-lit feel makes the native-American tapestries and more organic features of the room such as chairs and tables (didnt the workers remove all these on closing day?) stand out against the 1970’s contemporary architecture.
Daddy’s typewriter is here on a high table. A lit cigarette smolders in a heavy glass ashtray nearby a stack of typed pages.
Your bigwheel is here, off to the side.
GET ON BIGWHEEL
Okay, you’re ready to ride.
NW
You pedal smoothly, picking up speed.
The bigwheel’s hard plastic “tires” make an echoing racket on the floor, except for the places where you roll (thump-thump) over one of the vast hotel carpets.
Back Kitchen Alley (on your bigwheel)
This lane behind all the kitchen areas has been painted red. You briefly try not to look as you pass the elevator corridor on the left.
(thump-thump…thump-thump)
[/code]
Good grief… that game would be bigger than the Wheel of Time.
Good grief… that game would be bigger than the Wheel of Time.
But of course.
That’s why I said it’s “The silly Video game Thread Concept thingy, whatchamacallit.”
A land that huge can’t possibly be described bueatifuly enough for all its variations unless one stipulation is met.
You are locked in time. The atmospheric effects of the lands seemed just as locked. So as the far west would be morning, middle of the map afternoon, and far east would be almost morning again. Giving the entire map ‘times of day’. Different descriptions despite having the exact same ‘hill to left, forest to right’ feeling. That way locked locations have consistent weather yet so much variance in those due to the map-time lock. It would also explain why there seems to be nobody around. or if there are you cant interact with them. Only you are moving. all else is frozen. And on that note I need to plug a forbidden pun.
The cold never bothered me anyway.
For some reason I believe that World of Warcraft would work with an expansive open form as found in the ‘Fabled Lands’ series. (ie each book had quest going into other books, a intertwined multi volume system) Now with a digitial production that is not a limitation. Although I believe that the D10 based combat from Lone wolf, or the map based from Blood Sword series would be great.
Soul reaver with its ‘astral realm’ qualities would work. You could easily make the PDF so the astral world pages are upside down. So read front to back its reality, read back to front and turn the e-book upside down and its the astral realm. Literaly a physical aspect to reading it. You could also add in two other realities if you add in ‘reading from the SIDE’ of the page. I would think just ‘The Past’ reality & Astral. That way you have your time travel element shoved in there. Either that or Switch to another character. Like in LOK:Defiance where it keeps switching between Kain and Raziel as the player character.
As for combat, I would use a simple system like lonewolf or fighting fantasy. Keep it simple. Most weapons would be absent but its magical powers that act as weapons. Use tokens to keep track of your energy pools. In my current game there is a ‘ticking timer’. Everything cost time. Everything. From searching for objects to using weapons. You have a limited amount of time. This could be used as ‘health’ in soul reaver. Each attack consumes health of the players character. I’ld suggest using 3point pools with an imbalanced exchange/cost system. Physical health, Psychic Health, and Attack power. Use poker chips (suggested) or a number of D6’s as counters.
In this way you have all the famous elements of the LOK series that players seek. That point pool you have to keep track of, The astral and reality realms, and lets not forget about option 3. Time travel/second character.
Now if you really want to get Evil use color pages that utilize the anaglyph red-blue 3d glasses. That way the astral realm is always there right in front of you.
Am I evil or What.
I recently did a web search as to what people want most out of online RPG’s. Over and over I found that the top 5 are the same things over and over. With A&B always on top.
A. Story & Plot
B. Exploration and freedom of travel
C. Character customization past initial build point
D. and lastly the battle system.
Seeing that both story and exploration are the top strengths of both IF and Gamebooks ,depending on the author, this is a wonderful tid bit of knowledge. It also explains why the Fabled Lands gamebooks were so popular. They choped up regions of a large world map into seperate books, tons of exploration, mini quests, and major quest. Some even went across the differnt book regions entirely but all the first 3 elements above were present. Fighting Fantasy seemed featherweight compared to fabled lands for their aspects of explortion. Conversely Fighting Fantasy delievered great stories that had a stronger impact on the reader in the end.
Since story and exploration are so important to that online rpg feel, there is one question in reguards to oblivion.
If you took all the combat out of oblivion, save for a few key squences, would the remaining side quests, major quests, stories and exploration keep it afloat? Or would it flounder?
Then you have my evil evil retro idea.
Reduce oblivion to an 800 section (ie paragraph) gamebook. Not including the instructions.
Yes I like fighting fantasy. Back in the day “turn to 400” meant. You finished the quest!! Thats the last paragraph! I have doubts it could be done in 400 but 800 gives it a lot more wiggle room.