Chooseco and Asmodee bring CYOA gamebooks to life as a collaborative family board game
Chooseco, publisher of the world-famous Choose Your Own Adventure® book series is working with publishers Asmodee and Z-Man Games to create the first-ever board game based on the Choose Your Own Adventure series, being released worldwide this spring. The game was developed by Prospero Hall and Forrest-Pruzan Creative, who were kind enough to trek out to our Vermont offices during a massive snowstorm and play the game with us earlier this winter.
The game is based closely on Choose Your Own Adventure #6, House of Danger by R. A. Montgomery. Everything you remember from the cult favorite has made it in: Ghengis Kahn, oversized Venus flytraps, and the band of evil counterfeiting chimpanzees all show up for epic appearances.
See below for a 2008 interview with R. A. Montgomery on his thoughts on the title that inspired it all, a.k.a. the weirdest one in our collection:
For our friends who are librarians: demos of the game will be at the Public Library Association Conference in March and the Texas Library Association Conference in April.
“Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks have a natural crossover to gaming,” Shannon Gilligan, Chooseco CEO & Publisher explains. “Fans of the series have reached out to us looking for new ways to expand the Choose universe and what is better than as a board game?”
Gaming has always been a driving force of the Choose Your Own Adventure construct. The interactivity or “gaming” that powers a Choose book is one example of how CYOA books are stealth reading programs. Reluctant readers are empowered by the ability to choose where the story goes, while also engaged to read for longer periods of time.
Z-Man Games, along with Forrest-Pruzan Creative, and Chooseco are partnering to develop a game based on Choose Your Own Adventure #6, House of Danger by R. A. Montgomery. House of Danger was originally published in 1982 as the 15th title in the original Choose Your Own Adventure lineup, and was republished in 2006 by Chooseco. This title has over 2 million units sold and has been translated into ten languages, including Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Turkish, and Japanese.
“I have many fond childhood memories of late-night excursions with CYOA books: spelunking in dangerous caves for mystical artifacts, traversing the Himalayas in search of the Abominable snowman, or embarking on an interstellar voyage aboard an alien ship,” says Z-Man’s Head of Studio, Steve Kimball. “The opportunity to publish a House of Danger board game was too good to pass up.”
“House of Danger is an excellent choice for a CYOA game adaptation,” says Associate Publisher Melissa Bounty. “The title is a cult favorite because it embodies what many people remember about Choose: off-the-wall wackiness, the unexpected, and true excitement. Notable characters in the book are Genghis Kahn, human-sized Venus fly traps, a time-traveling group of Civil War prisoners, hologram chimpanzees, and an ending where you turn into a baby. I can’t tell you exactly which of these artifacts appear in the game, but the zeitgeist will be maintained.”
The Choose Your Own Adventure board game is slated for production in the spring of 2018 and will be available for purchase at all game distributors in time for the coming holiday season.
About Chooseco
Founded in 2003, Chooseco publishes the Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook series and the YA Weregirl trilogy, which was featured on TEEN VOGUE, HELLO GIGGLES, FOREWORD REVIEWS, and BOOKLIST. The Choose Your Own Adventure series is widely commended for its appeal to reluctant readers and is the fifth bestselling book series of all time, with more than 265 million copies sold in over 40 languages. Each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character’s actions in response to the plot and its outcome. Find out more at http://www.cyoa.com.
About Z-Man Games
Since 1999, Z-Man Games has published over 100 critically acclaimed games with a wide variety of themes and game mechanics from casual to complex. Z-Man is known throughout the industry for its eclectic catalog that encapsulates the best of what games have to offer—from beloved classics like Tales of the Arabian Nights to shiny new products like Pandemic Legacy. A keen eye for design innovation, attention to visual aesthetics, and top-notch components has attracted the top creative minds in the industry to partner with Z-Man, and the results speak for themselves. Find out more at https://www.zmangames.com.
To find out more about Chooseco, please contact Elizabeth Adelman at webmail@chooseco.com or by telephone at 802-496-2598.
###