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This is the entry for the entire genre, also known colloquially as "Choose Your Own Adventure". For the actual series by that name, see Choose Your Own Adventure.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gamebook_6699.png
The choices are yours, and yours alone!

Gamebooksnote  are the analog version of Interactive Fiction videogames. The player advances the action by reading a short passage describing a scene and choosing one of several actions. To take that action, the player reads a numbered section in the book. The Choose Your Own Adventure series is a famous and highly successful example of the gamebook genre with 250 million copies in print. The peak of the gamebook craze came in the 1980s, but the form isn't dead.

Example: You enter the marble-clad forum to discover a GHOUL feasting on a corpse. Do you want to:

  • Attack the GHOUL? (Turn to 203)
  • Use your Potion of Persuasion, if you have one? (Turn to 288)
  • Try to sneak around? (Turn to 17)

Nearly all of these books feature Second-Person Narration, which is justified in a meta sort of way: you're the one reading the book and making the decisions about what to do next, so you should take the role of the protagonist. Occasionally there is a limited role for chance and player attributes in fighting and feats of skill. Mapping and note taking is often needed in more complex works. There are typically more ways of failing and/or dying than succeeding. Death can be cruel, creative, and messy.

Success often depends on a combination of luck, possession of difficult-to-obtain items and sometimes manipulation of the entry number to reach an entry unavailable any other way. Lock and Key Puzzles abound. Sometimes these puzzles are so obscure and unintuitive that they are Solve the Soup Cans puzzles.

The directed graph of entries for a book can contain alternate paths to the same destination, loops, and occasionally island entries unreachable from any legitimate point in the book. Sometimes these unreachable entries are used to humorously scold the reader for cheating. On rare occasions, these islands have included the best ending/only ending in which the PC survives, rendering the whole thing Unwinnable. Most people end up playing with several fingers in the pages in order to go back and try again.

Gamebooks are a rich vein of fantasy, science-fiction and RPG tropes. Illustrations are a key element in setting the mood of a gamebook world.

Several people have written scripts for Internet gamebooks allowing the players to add new pages. The results are... interesting.

For those interested in creating their own choose-your-own adventure stories, several programs on the net allow for easy access and coherent flowchart tool. A notable example is Twine, a completely freeware program that can be either downloaded or used through a browser.

The Visual Novel medium is very similar to gamebooks (except in the case of the Kinetic Novels, which are linear like usual novels), and some may consider them a modern equivalent. Interactive Fiction is a full-on videogame that plays similarly to a Gamebook, and Interactive Comics and Forum Quests use a similar style but are much more open due to having an actual Game Master running them rather than a predetermined set of actions.

See also Cruel Twist Ending, Have a Nice Death. Compare Narrative Board Game, another narrative-focused style of tabletop game with roots in the roleplaying genre.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Originators 
  • Tutor-Text is the first known gamebook. Unlike most later examples, these were made as educational material rather than fiction.
  • Depending on whom you ask, gamebooks were popularized by either the French Oulipo movement, the American author John Thomas Sladek or the English author Edmund Wallace Hildick. It's complicated.
  • Choose Your Own Adventure is the most famous series of gamebooks. A series of over 200 books by many different authors, with varying quality. Most are known for their Cruel Twist Endings. They also include many interesting ways to die: your character gets his head bitten off by dinosaurs, smashed by glaciers, bisected by ninjas, etc.

    Literature 
  • A Road Less Traveled series by Jeffrey Dean and Greek Winter Media was originally video games/visual novels for Android. They feature a mutant gunslinger/artifact hunter who's had some time-travel shenanigans and is reminiscing their story to an audience in the distant past.
  • Animorphs has a pair of CYOA spinoffs, which were not well-received. Perhaps it was the fact that the story did not actually branch at all, and making the wrong choice simply got you killed on the very next page.
  • Be a Detective is a choose-your-own Crossover series between The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, which ran for six books.
  • Be an Interplanetary Spy is an interesting variation where you have to solve puzzles (analogues to your current situation) instead of simply making a choice. Essentially a multiple-choice visual logic test with a plot.
  • Blood Sword, a series of five books by Oliver Johnson and Dave Morris created for multiple players. Set in a world very much resembling Medieval Europe (in fact, the same as that of their RPG Dragon Warriors), the series deals with the reawakening of five evil entities, the True Magi, and the coming end of the Millennium.
  • The Boxcar Children introduced a new series of CYOA-style books ("The Boxcar Children Interactive Mysteries") in 2018, the first being Midnight at the Haunted Hotel.
  • Carmen Sandiego: A series of these types of books were also published in the franchise, which follow the premise of the computer games.
  • Steve Jackson Games licensed their popular Car Wars tactical combat game as a series of six books published by TSR (several being expanded adaptations of adventures previously published in their house organ Autoduel Quarterly). The books were notable for including game mechanics so the player could play through combat with enemies. The books even suggested that groups could play by taking control of different characters or enemies.
  • Choose-omatic Books spoofing the trope as well as the genre covered in each book (Zombie Apocalypse and Superhero, so far). Also, like the early CYOA books that told you how many endings each book had, these ones do too. And tell you how the vast majority are some kind of comical death scene.
  • Choose Your Own Autobiography by Neil Patrick Harris is an autobiography in CYOA form.
  • Choose Your Own Horrible History is a brand of novels. Killing Hitler with Praise and Fire is a choose-your-own-adventure type game about killing or eliminating Hitler to make the world a better place. There are a myriad of options available, though the choice is up to you. Some of the options include infanticide, homicide, altering his preferences in partners, biological warfare, art school, raptor Nazis and of course the most cruel, getting him hitched with lots of kids thereby putting to sleep his dreams like he did so many others.
  • Choose Your Own Mind Fuck Fest, a parody successor to the beloved childhood series. All endings are losing situations.
  • Click Your Poison, a series of books by James Schannep, with plots ranging from pirates (Marooned) to super-heroes (Superpowered) to surviving a zombie apocalypse (Pathogens).
  • Brazilian books Coração Acelerando◊ ("Heart Going Faster") and Sobressalto◊ ("Jolt", as in Jump Scare), two Defanged Horrors books, one in a forest and another in the city.
  • Cretan Chronicles, a trilogy of action-adventure Gamebooks set in Crete, ancient Greece. Much like other adventure gamebooks popular in its time, the adventure is combat-orientated, however it's worth noting that Cretan Chronicles averts the typical usage of a Life Meter unlike others of its kind.
  • Crossroads Adventure.
  • DestinyQuest by Michael Ward is a modern take on the Choose Your Own Adventure genre inspired by games such as Diablo and World of Warcraft, featuring monsters to fight and loot to be had. The three books currently available also happen to be pretty damn huge.
  • Disney made some CYOA books for little kids of both genders in The '80s, inserting them into their most classic movies. e.g., the protagonist of the Cinderella one is Cinderella's neighbor who witnesses the Fairy Godmother's spells and gets roped into going to the ball with Cindy, the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs book has a country boy who gets lost in the forest around the same time Snow runs away from her Wicked Stepmother, etc.
  • Doctor Who Decide Your Destiny. These books aren't the first ones done for the show, with six coming out under the Find Your Fate label (fittingly starring the Sixth Doctor).
  • "Down to the Scum Quarter" by Garth Nix, later published as part of the anthology Across the Wall, is more of an Affectionate Parody of the format, with some inspiration taken from The Three Musketeers.
  • Steven Brust authorized one when starting the Dragaera series; it stands as a possible case of Old Shame.
  • Dreszcz ("Shiver"), an old Polish gamebook from the '90s; it emulates Fighting Fantasy, and is mostly memorable for being horribly error-ridden (and Unintentionally Unwinnable many times over).
  • Based on the video game, Penguin books had Eternal Champions. In this duology, you are a generic martial artist who's helping the Eternal Champion and the other characters from the game.
  • The Fabled Lands are a fantasy series of gamebooks written by Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson that have recently been republished in 2010. During its initial release in the '90s, only the first six were ever released. In addition, only the first two were ever published in the USA, under the name Quest. Despite all this, they are amazingly fun to play, mainly because of their open-ended style (That is, they're a Wide-Open Sandbox series of books, each book covering part of the game world's map; if you crossed the border into another book's territory, you'd be told what section in that book to start on and keep playing). While most other gamebooks had a definite objective, the Fabled Lands books just plonked you down in a random place and said, "have fun whatever you do." Other cool features were six unique character classes, the ability to buy ships and houses, and a huge number of quests you can do whenever you want, or not at all.
  • The short run of the Famimaga Gamebook series published by Tokuma Shoten included two gamebooks based on Super Mario Bros. 3 and Final Fantasy II, with the latter being a side-story set alongside the original game's.
  • The Famous Five:
    • Some of the Famous Five books were made into adventure games, with a "rucksack" containing items such as a torch, binoculars, compass, codebook, map. They also had a lunchbox containing provisions such as ginger beer, cherry cake, sandwiches; and if they ran out of these, the adventure was over. These would often be lost through carelessness, such as tripping and breaking their bottles of ginger beer.
    • The first six books were made into The Famous Five and You, with numbered paragraphs where you had to make decisions for the Five, and avoid collecting "red herrings". Some of these books had interesting characters added, and contained modern items such as the Five wearing trainers.
  • The Forbidden Gateway, a horror-action series by Clive and Ian Bailey, which is a contender for Fighting Fantasy back in the mid-80s. Similar elements in both books include stats pre-determined by rolling dice, making tests against the player's ability by rolling two dice and comparing the totals with the player character's stats, and battles being concluded with either combatant's Life Meter (both labelled as STAMINA) reaches zero. The contest turns out to be rather single-sided, though; Forbidden Gateway made it as far as two books, Where the Shadows Stalk and Terrors out of Time before stopping altogether.
  • Freeway Warrior by Joe Dever (of Lone Wolf fame) is set in a post-apocalypse America inspired by the Mad Max movies (but with the world in a much better shape) where you're a young survivor growing into the role of a legendary hero who can help restore the country.
  • Futabasha has licensed the following books based on existing video game IP:
  • A trio of friends under the pseudonym Helena S Paige have written three woman-oriented choose-your-own-ending erotic novels, A Girls Walks Into A Bar/Wedding/Blind Date. They specifically opted for the CYOA format as a way of putting the woman in control.
  • Ghostly Towers was an adventure gamebook by Steven Thraves in which you attempted to retrieve a diamond necklace from the Oastley Towers estate and mansion (nicknamed "Ghostly Towers" by the locals), accompanied by the absent-minded "ghostologist" Professor Bones, and the medium Miss Crumble, both of whom were terrified of ghosts, despite their professions. You were allowed to take one of four items: two keys, a will with clues, and a map, with a chance of finding more on the way. If you failed to crack clues, you would experience a "haunting" by one of the ghosts of the estate; your nerves could stand one haunting, two hauntings, even three, but four meant the game was over.
  • Ghost Train was a sequel to Ghostly Towers, also with Professor Bones and Miss Crumble, this time on a deserted misty railway in the Scottish Highlands, to retrieve hijacked bars of gold from a train that had crashed from a collapsed bridge. Armed with one of two keys, a codebook or a map, there was a fair chance of being "haunted" by ghosts of hijackers, railway workers, or even the train itself.
  • Give Yourself Goosebumps, a spinoff of R. L. Stine's Goosebumps novels. The "game over" endings were often as gruesome as they were creative, giving many young readers their first direct encounters with horrific imagery. These also have the unusual structure of having the story branch off into two distinct storylines completely cut off from each other, with an earlyish choice in each book determining which one the reader followed. This pivotal choice wasn't exactly pointed out either, so in the early stages of each book, the reader was left in suspense as to which choice would suddenly set them down a distinct path for the rest of the adventure.
  • Golden Dragon Fantasy Gamebooks, a short but atmospheric series with a simple playing system.
  • GrailQuest, written by J.H. Brennan, is a series based on Arthurian Legend. Despite its dark and edgy-looking covers and book titles, the series is mainly comedy and parody, inspired by Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Like Fighting Fantasy, it has RPG elements, with a character sheet and dice-based combat.
  • Gravity Falls: Dipper and Mabel and the Curse of the Time Pirates' Treasure!, a "Select Your Own Choose-venture" based on Gravity Falls, has Dipper and Mabel help Blendin Blandin find a lost treasure; you can go to the Middle Ages, Old West or the future to find the necessary key (with each option providing one "winning" path). It was written with help from Alex Hirsch, the show's creator.
  • Gary Chalk's Gun Dogs from Greywood Publishing is uniquely a print adaptation of the Tin Man Games visual gamebook of the same name (usually the reverse happens). This book had you as a well-armed Boxed Crook on your first mission for a tyrannical Emperor of an early Steampunk fantasy empire. The book was known for Gary Chalk's ornate but cartoonishly rough, semi-goblincore artwork reminiscent of his work in the earlier days of Games Workshop.
  • Badlands of Hark and Invaders of Hark, a sci-fi series from R. L. Stine where the eponymous Death World offers so many wacky ways to die it makes Shadowgate look benign.
  • Horror Classic Gamebooks: Two books by J.H. Brennan, which despite being about Dracula and Frankenstein, respectively, have a humorous tone similar to GrailQuest (fighting a vampiric Granny Smith apple, anyone?). They were also notable for providing two adventures in one, both taking place in the same location but using a different character; in Dracula's Castle you could play as either the Count himself or Jonathan Harker, and in The Curse of Frankenstein you were either the monster or its creator.
  • Into the Dungeon and its follow-up Into the Tower are both by illustrator Hari Conner. The most unique aspect of these books is that combat and actions are resolved instantly and with no dice rolls. Instead, your particular stat whether it's your strength or agility etc. is looked at for that event and there's generally 2 or 3 outcomes. Either you have success or fail (and maybe die) or if your stat is extremely high then it's a complete success, your stat is decent then you are successful but may take a penalty (such as getting scratched up in a fight) and a low stat results in failure (and possible death).
  • Jane, Unlimited: Each section after "Tu Reviens" is in the same order as the list of people who Jane can follow. It's possible to read each section out of order since certain events will happen regardless of who Jane follows (e.g. Jane will always come across her aunt's photo of the gray and yellow fishes).
  • Kingdom of Loathing has a new booklet each year at Comic-Con, often parodying and lampshading tropes common in gamebooks.
  • Konami produced a gamebook series of their own in the late 80s consisting of six books based on the games Dragon Scroll, Metal Gear (acting as a sequel to the NES port), Wai Wai World, Contra, and two separate books based on Ganbare Goemon.
  • Legends of Skyfall, a short series of gamebooks set in the fictional planet Skyfall. Much like Fighting Fantasy most of the adventure is centered around combat, but unusually the battles are sorted out by tossing coins to determine the outcome of attacks, instead of the usual gameplay mechanic of rolling dice.
  • Lemmings was adapted into two, based loosely on the storyline introduced in Lemmings 2: The Tribes. In the first, you took control of eight Lemmings tribes in an attempt to regain eight pieces of the broken medallion. The second took on a more linear narrative where a small band of Lemmings has to go out to battle an unknown enemy, which is making the Lemmings act against their natures (eg, Shadow Lemmings setting up bright floodlights or Highland Lemmings turning English).
  • Life's Lottery by Kim Newman uses the CYOA format to take you through a fairly ordinary life (or extraordinary, it depends on you) from birth in the '70s till death, and the small choices you make may have great impact on your life — in the playground, do you like Illya Kuryakin or Napoleon Solo better?. The first choice you have to make is whether or not to draw breath after being born. If not, "go to 0". It can also be read straight through, to reveal a very different story. The main character later appears in the Diogenes Club stories, in which he has the power to shift between different Alternate Universe versions of himself.
  • Lone Wolf, featuring an epic swords-and-sorcery world and a continuing storyline with the unique feature of importing your character from book to book. You can read most of them all open-sourced and legal, complete with author approval, at www.projectaon.org.
  • The Lunar Chronicles has an e-book sequel, Cinder's Adventure: Get Me to the Wedding! where you have to guide Cinder as she rushes to finally marry Kai.
  • Maze: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle is a puzzle book trimming down the concept to its bare bones (not bothering much with a story), but still fitting as a gamebook with a choice between 1 to 9 doors in each room.
  • Les Messagers du Temps (The Messengers of Time), a French gamebook series that was marketed as being "translated from English" in order to sell better note , and as being written by some guy called "James Campbell". In reality, it's a totally French production (including the illustrators), probably written by Jean-François Ménardnote . The gamebooks focus more on the storytelling and the universe than the actual gameplay (which is quite linear).
  • Midnight Arcade, where the reader visits a haunted abandoned video arcade and plays especially immersive old games.
  • Murder at Colefax Manor is a British murder mystery gamebook set in Victorian Britain. Released as a free PDF here.
  • The American Girls Collection released "My Journey" books with the BeForever reimagining of the historical line in 2014. The books have a female protagonist going back to the Historical Character's time in a Field Trip to the Past, where they have several adventures with the main character. Since the books are aimed towards younger readers (late elementary to middle school), no endings result in death or major injury and the protagonist is always assumed to return home safely to her own time without major issues.
  • My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel is this for the Romance Novel genre.
  • Nintendo Adventure Books, released by Nintendo, which were essentially Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books starring either Link or Mario and/or Luigi. Unlike many examples of this trope, in each book there was only one good ending, with the bad endings having "GAME OVER!" written at the end. Also, when Super Mario Advance was first released, a Choose Your Own Adventure book that corresponded with the game's events was released by Scholastic. Each of the four characters went through one of the various worlds on their own and came together to fight Wart, and at the same time, it was something of a guide for advice. Following it were ones for The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games and Wario Land 4.
  • Playing with the Prism's Light (לשחק באור המנסרה) by Israeli writer Hadas Elber-Aviram has the distinction of not only being one of the only Israeli fantasy books ever, but an ambitious attempt to put a mature twist on the standard fantasy gamebook. While it takes place in the traditional, pseudo-medieval fantasy setting of the "Lands of Snow", the story is far deeper and touches upon far more complex ideas than most others — most prominently, ones about gender, love, and the meaning of male and female sexuality. The protagonist grows as a person throughout the book, and depending on their choices, has the opportunity to become involved in one of a few unusually complex political, philosophical and romantic stories (from becoming the pawn of a witch who grows uglier the more she is loved unconditionally to becoming entangled in a civil war between a prince who was crippled and thus can't be a warrior and a princess who was disfigured and thus isn't seen as a woman).
  • Pretty Little Mistakes and Million Little Mistakes by Heather McElhatton are meant to be "adult" variations on the format. Both have a realistic, present-day setting, but it doesn't preclude some very fanciful things from happening to the main character.
  • The Raging Tide or The Black Doll's Imbroglio: Not a game, exactly, but this Edward Gorey non-linear story uses the Choose Your Own Adventure technique.
  • A couple Rainbow Magic CYOA books were written.
  • A couple of storybooks based on the little-known toyline Robo Force have a few points in each story the reader has to "Help the Robo Force!". In each case, there is only one right answer.
  • Sagard the Barbarian (a.k.a. Hero's Challenge) from Gary Gygax of Dungeons & Dragons fame, is a series where you are a Barbarian Hero who starts out trying to win acceptance from his tribe and afterwards would go on doing heroic deeds as a wandering adventurer.
  • Der Schatz im Ötscher (German for "The treasure in Mt. Oetscher") is an Austrian "Choose your adventure book". You're traveling through the caves of the Oetscher (one of Austria's highest and mythological most important mountains) and searching for a treasure while being hindered by traps and monsters from folklore and myths. One especially memorable ending had the protagonist being slowly and explicitly transformed into a toad by an old witch.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog Adventure Gamebooks is a series of six adventure gamebooks released from 1993 to 1996 at the height of Sonic the Hedgehog's phenomenal popularity in the UK, written by the authors of the novel series but not belonging to that continuity. One was an Adaptation Expansion of the second Mega Drive game, in which Robotnik has built Metal Sonic to rampage around and destroy the real Sonic's reputation (any similarity to the plot of the nineteenth Lone Wolf book Wolf's Bane, published the previous year, is entirely coincidental — the book, and sometimes Metal Sonic himself, still have the nickname "Hedgehog's Bane" in some circles) and Sonic has to hunt him down through the game's levels.
  • Sorcery! brought Fighting Fantasy to an older audience; its books feature very dark artwork influenced by Francisco de Goya. The series is being adapted into a computerized version.
  • Stake Your Destiny: Gamebooks based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, each set in different spots in the series. They basically put you in Buffy's role, lucky you. It doesn't specifically say where, the first is presumably during Season 1 and two more in Season 2.
  • Star Challenge, a series of ten books taking place in a Sci-Fi setting whose unique gimmick was a score system depending of how successful was your mission... if you survived.
  • Star Wars Legends:
    • The Choose Your Destiny series. Each book has one canonical path for how things went down.
    • The Lost Jedi, a duology released in the UK in the early '90s.
    • The Star Wars Missions series, which took the form of a very simplified tabletop RPG complete with stats and skill checks. A unique plotline happened across 20 books and players could choose their character (from a number of Star Wars favorites), weapons, and vehicles, gaining experience points and growing more powerful as the books went on.
  • Suspects! by Steven Thraves was a gamebook where you played the part of a detective investigating a murder on the "Olympic Express", where a member of a film team had bumped off the caustic director. The skill of this game was to answer questions about pictures in the book: right answers gave clues to the murderer's identity, wrong answers meant the murderer would attempt to murder you, in varyingly inventive ways, such as rewiring the lamp in your cabin to give you an electric shock.
  • Tolkien Quest and its successor Middle Earth Quest has the main character as minor but pivotal players in the events of the Lord of the Rings, and players could encounter and sometimes even fight major characters from the stories.
  • Virtual Reality, a series of six books from the early nineties. Notable for having much more exotic plots than the average gamebook and for using a unique, non-random rule system. The four books by Dave Morris, the Panurgic Adventures series (of which the best known is Heart of Ice), are some of the most interesting and intricate gamebooks written. Heart of Ice is a slightly different take on After the End; inspired in part by Jack Vance's Dying Earth, it's a quest set in a world where an insane AI has triggered global weather changes and turned the Sahara into a desert.
  • Twist A Plot is a series of eighteen pick-a-path adventure books published by Scholastic in competition to Choose Your Own Adventure, published by Bantam. Contributors to the series included R.L. Stine, who would go on to write the wildly successful Goosebumps! series.note 
  • Way of the Tiger, written and illustrated by FF alumni Mark Smith and Jamie Thomson, is an especially well-written series featuring a Ninja. Unlike many similar books, this series spends pages describing its world while telling an exciting and atmospheric story with a lot of variety that involves the player not only fighting but also having to deal with diplomacy, politics and command strategy.
  • The Weenies short story "Choose Your Own Misadventure" is a parody of these, where you go a certain paragraph. Each attempt to leave the situation gives you a bad ending, and the "good" ending has you read a book with the same title as the story, and you are told to start reading from the beginning.
  • What If... is a series of gamebooks when the reader makes choices for the teenage protagonist as to which boys she flirts with, which group she talks to, etc. There are two different types of endings. The "bad" endings (for example, letting the protagonist exploit her popularity too much or letting her team haze the freshman girls) tell the reader to start over. However, some of the endings that don't tell you to start over have bad outcomes, such as getting a hangover or being left alone in a motel room after prom night. But most "good" endings have fairly good outcomes, while bad endings almost always chastise the reader for choosing the bad choice.
  • What Should Danny Do: A series of interactive children's books to teach children how their choices will shape their days, and ultimately their lives.
  • Which Way Books were a series of simplistic interactive books covering a range of science-fiction and fantasy scenarios, notably also including a pair of Star Trek books and a spinoff mini-series based on DC Comics heroes.
  • Wizards, Warriors and You: Where the player has the choice to control a mighty knight or a wizard on the same quest.
  • You Are Asexual by A.C. Evermore puts you in the shoes of an asexual student attending a prestigious academy that "orients" people by assigning them a sexual orientation with a machine on Orientation Day. Your adventure begins when the machine seemingly doesn't affect you, and it's up to you to try to survive a society that doesn't understand your asexuality.
  • You Be the Jury is a series of Mystery Fiction juvenile books. Written by Marvin Miller, these also count as gamebooks but they owe more to Encyclopedia Brown than Choose Your Own Adventure-style books. Unlike Encyclopedia Brown, these books had you as a juror instead of a detective.
  • The Zaltec series is a pair of puzzle-adventure gamebooks, featuring graphical puzzles where the solutions lead to pages that progress the story.

Examples in other media

    Arts 
  • She Loves The Moon is a strange cross between gamebooks, ARGs, and graffiti, as it was drawn on the sidewalks of San Francisco.

    Comic Books 
  • During the side story of Batman: Endgame, the Joker describes his past not as multiple choice, but more like a "choose-your-own-adventure" story.
  • Turned on its head in a Batman: Black and White short by Kieron Gillen, which uses this format to depict Batman's fighting against a Riddler-Killer Croc teamup. The gimmick is that following any of the turn-to instructions will eventually lead you to a Bad Ending; the good ending is achievable only by focusing on the "island" panels, symbolizing how Batman makes a point of not playing by his enemies' rules.
  • The third Ren & Stimpy comic book special, Masters of Time and Space, is a comic book version of this. Notable for its time travel plot, which makes some of the storylines several pages longer than the comic itself. Also notable for having two endings that couldn't be accessed at all unless you skip to them.
  • Mike Carey's comic book The Unwritten features an issue told as a "Pick-A-Story" book, which tells the backstory of one of the characters. The choices are mostly used to create Alternative Character Interpretation, but there's also a Temporal Paradox ending where the protagonist ends up drugged up to her eyeballs in a mental institution.
  • 2000 AD:
    • The 2012 holiday special has a Judge Dredd story, "Choose Your Own Xmas" that plays with this trope; you have to make choices for an everyman, Jason Packard, who is out doing Christmas shopping until he has to suddenly deal with Dredd; the reader is sent bouncing from panel to panel according to their choices. Packard is concerned about the strange voice talking about page numbers and choices. Meanwhile, Dredd is growing concerned about the way Packard seems to be reappearing throughout the story, despite being run over, arrested, blown up, or just running out of a room a second ago.
  • The franchise also experimented with the format in the short-lived Dice Man comic.
  • Issue 10 of the Adventure Time comic, as well as the KaBOOM! Summer Blast Free Comic Book Day Edition reprint, had Ice King miscasting a mind-control spell that ends up giving the reader control over Finn and Jake.
  • Ryan North, who wrote the above Adventure Time example, also wrote a CYOA issue in The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, which has the reader controlling Squirrel Girl against Swarm.
  • One issue of Marvel's What If? allowed the reader to choose from three different outcomes of a situation involving Iron Man and the Living Laser.
  • Parodied in the first volume of Empowered when ThugBoy is given three choices how to respond to Emp's question.
  • Makaka, a French editor, has started a franchise called The comic book in which you are the hero, or also Diary of a Hero which is a series of CYOA in comic book form. The books exploit heavily this nature by hiding items or instructions for better paths in the drawings, involving the player in a deeper way than a prose book.
  • Superlópez: The adventure Los Petisos Carambanales is this in comic book form.
  • Several stories in the Disney Mouse and Duck Comics written in Italy followed this format. They were known as storie a bivi (crossroads stories) and they were published mainly in The '80s and The '90s.
  • A Deadpool comic, You Are Deadpool, written by the same writer as the Judge Dredd example up above, with a tiny bit of roleplaying added into the mix (different choices come with a meter for Deadpool's badness or sadness meter, and some choices are determined by dice roll).
  • The Futurama comic invoked and parodied this trope in issue #46, Follow The Reader, where the reader is every so often given choices on whether to skip forward or backward in the comic — but the reader's choices don't actually affect the story in any way, they just decide how much of it you actually read (and sometimes alter the context of a scene a little by making different set-ups or payoffs for jokes).
    • Some of the alternate paths offered are even complete jokes in and of themselves, such as the part where Fry wishes he still had the reality-warping die from Bender's Game, and the reader is told to "cut this panel out, then cut the shape out, tape it together, and you have a die! Number it, roll it and go to that page! Unless you've gone stupid, then just read on."
    • One of the paths even leads to a story that was covered in an earlier issue, and if picking this path, the reader is told to go read that issue.
    • And the ending leads to a final path telling the reader to go back to the beginning of the issue, and it's implied several times during the story itself that the story is actually a Stable Time Loop where the same things happen over and over.
  • Meanwhile, according to its cover, has "3856 Story Possibilities."
  • The Terrifics #25, entitled "The Adventure You Ch∞se", has Mr. Terrific use the "possibilities protocol" of an experimental "infinity sphere" to manipulate the timeline, reversing the team's decisions if they lead to disaster. The fact the reader, on reaching a bad end, goes back to the start with knowledge from previous attempts actually plays into the story, with Mr. Terrific realizing he also remembers what happened in the failed branches, a fact which disturbs him and, in the good end, leads to him deciding not to use the sphere again.
  • The Dudley Serious series allowed the reader to make decisions for the title character. These were parodies of their various genres (Space Opera, Superheroes and Swords and Sorcery), and notable for a deliberate lack of satisfying endings.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 
  • Scourge of Worlds, a made-for-DVD CGI-animated film based on Dungeons & Dragons, featured several decision points where the viewer could impact the direction of the story.
  • CYOA had one of those itself based on one of its early books about looking for the Abominable Snowman (and staring the voice of Frankie Muniz). There had been talk of others but apparently there wasn't enough of a reaction to the one they did make.
  • The 2020 film DC Showcase – Batman: Death in the Family is presented as a remake of Batman: Under the Red Hood with alternate branching paths that deviate from the original story. For example, Jason can get saved from the Joker and subsequently become Red Robin, or he could cheat death and become a version of Hush.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The 2001 film Point of View was one of the first produced specifically for DVD in order to make use of its technology. At certain points in the film, viewers could make decisions that impact the direction of the story.
  • The Thrill Ride Edition of Final Destination 3 on DVD features "Choose Their Fate", in which the viewer gets to determine the fates of some characters. Subverted in that each person would be killed in a different fashion immediately after they were saved by your choice. This is sort of in keeping with the predestination ideas of the movie.
  • Jim Henson and Maurice Sendak developed ideas for a film where the audience was able to influence the story's direction... in 1980. Needless to say, it didn't materialize, but that was mostly because Henson and Sendak were becoming too preoccupied with other projects.
  • Return to House on Haunted Hill: The unrated DVD features technology that allows you to change the decision made by a character, and thereby radically alter the outcome of the movie. There are 96 total ways the movie can play out.
  • Netflix's Branch Manager technology was designed with this in mind. It is an interactive interface that lets viewers choose what will happen next, with transitions happening seamlessly and the dynamic script accounting for choices you had previously made.
    • The mind-bending videogame-esque game-within-a-show-within-a-game-within-a-film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, where the characters, incidentally, are also trying to choose their own adventure whilst "knowing" that you're doing it for them, too. From the mind of Charlie Brooker.
    • The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt finale Kimmy vs. The Reverend uses the choose-your-own-adventure technology to tell a wacky story about Kimmy in the lead-up to her wedding.

    Live-Action TV 
  • An example from UK children's TV: sci-fi drama Jeopardy (CBBC) (not to be confused with the US game show) gave viewers the opportunity to vote on the ending of the final episode from a choice of "happy", "sad" or "spooky". The spooky ending was chosen with the other two options appearing on the CBBC website for several years before disappearing.
  • Scrubs has the "code blue" game on their website, in which your choices of lines of speech can dramatically alter your first day at the hospital.
  • There was an adults-focused long-running television series in Brazil called Você Decide, the other wiki claiming it could be localized as either "You Decide" or "It's Your Call". It had three blocks and a choice was given to the main character of the episode on the first block, where viewers would call one of two (later three) phone numbers to vote for the ending to be shown on the third block, the second one being mostly to develop the story and maybe balance viewer's opinion. There were cases like one of the first episodes where the audience's chosen ending was considered immoral afterwards, or one episode where votes were so close both endings were shown.
  • There was a televised example on UK children's TV in the '80s hosted by Sylvester McCoy called What's Your Story?, where viewers phoned in after each episode to suggest what happened next.
  • Man vs. Wild had a Netflix-spin-off You vs. Wild, where the viewer gets to make several choices for protagonist Bear Grylls (like which tools to bring for an adventure or which course of action to take).

    Magazines 
  • The British tabletop roleplaying magazine Arcane once had a Choose Your Own Column: An op ed about Wizards of the Coast buying TSR let the reader choose if they wanted a column about how this was great news and would shake up the industry, about how this was terrible news and contributing to the continuing homogenization of the industry, or about how this was irrelevant news, and why was anyone supposed to care if a big American company bought another big American company?

    Music 
  • The Canadian rapper Classified did this with his "Self Explanatory" CD. The tracks were, aptly named, CYOA 1 - 6.
  • Another music-related example is the electronic music collective Gescom's Minidisc, which has 88 tracks ranging from mere seconds to a few minutes. The record is supposed to be played on shuffle, with a different hour-long consistent piece being played each time. (At the time of its release, only the obscure Minidisc format allowed gapless playback between tracks.)
  • From Neil Cicierega of Lemon Demon and Potter Puppet Pals, "Haircut, a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Song!"
  • A billboard in Los Angeles band Lord Huron's music video "Fool for Love" features a 1-800 phone number that, if called in real life, leads to a choose-your-own-adventure story.
  • Not exactly music, but there was a series of interactive audio dramas called Terror T.R.A.X. where the user would skip to certain tracks based on their decisions. The Spoony Experiment once did a review series on them.

    Poetry 

    Roleplay 
  • 4chan:
    • The Web Original known as Ruby Quest was a Choose Your Own Adventure operated via Wild Mass Guessing, played out over the course of two months by an author/artist known only as Weaver. It has spawned various other so-called "collective games", varying in quality. Most were trolled to death, while Dorf Quest (based off Dwarf Fortress, which is very popular on the /tg/ board of 4chan) and Joan's Quest are still running.
    • However, the "Quest Threads" have not stopped appearing, and have become a staple of /tg/, with multiple different settings and gameplay rules to choose from. Just look up the "Quest Threads" or "Collective Games" tags in the /tg/ archives..
    • The /m/ board has also seen three major Quest Threads, with the largest being Super Robot Wars Quest (based off Super Robot Wars). There's also MusouQuest (a Gundam / .hack mix), and /m/ Quest.
    • The /mlp/ board has spawned numerous quests including RenneQuest, the never finished AuraQuest, and Shooting Stars, among others. A mostly complete archive can be found here.
    • By 2017, all quest threads were moved to a new board, /qst/, while /tg/ received a permanent sticky thread informing about it and making it a bannable offense to start a quest thread, but basic CYOA threads are left alone. It is still a highly diverse subject for fa/tg/uys, years later.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Many RPGs rulebooks include a short (under 100 scenes) example of this trope, where the reader uses the game system (and a pre-generated character) as the randomizing element, as a way of teaching the rules and RPG concepts. For example Ghostbusters RPG, Champions, Teenagers from Outer Space...
  • Space 1889 has the solo adventure Sub Africa in Challenge 58.
  • The Tabletop RPG Tunnels & Trolls has a line of "Solo Adventures", which were essentially gamebooks with the game's rules and dice added as a randomizing element.
  • Such things also existed for other systems, such as early editions of Dungeons & Dragons or The Dark Eye. The concept really only worked for fairly rules-light games with reasonably abstract combat. And even then, only for a restricted range of characters as anticipated by the writers (which generally meant "no magic-users" and might plausibly limit the player to a single class — commercial solo adventures were most popular during the heyday of class-and-level systems, which helped).
  • Paranoia:
    • The original Tabletop RPG rulebook features a remarkably edgy and sour short example to teach basic game concepts, mechanics and help confuse the tone of the game.
    • It's probably a different one that was in the Jan/Feb issue (No 77) of Fantasy Gamer magazine, which is now available in the Python programming language. Just search for "doesn't exist. Can't happen with computer version," and compile. It's the Paranoia Christmas Special! Contains Stupidity Is the Only Option, But Thou Must!, and You Can't Thwart Stage One.
  • There was once a two-player example called 1 On 1, where the players were opposing factions and would role-play the monsters the other fought as well; naturally, there was a combat system and stats so the players could interact. There were even a pair of entries based on Marvel Comics series. The Combat Heroes series by Joe Dever (of Lone Wolf fame) is another example of this concept. Also, the Lost Worlds gamebooks; each character in the system had his/her own book, and any two players could battle by exchanging books. The series was franchised to Marvel Comics and Star Wars; right now, arguably the most famous version is the Queen's Blade series, which is basically Lost Worlds WITH HOT ACTION GIRLS IN TINY OUTFITS!
  • Choose Your Own Adventure received a board game version with House of Danger. Later War with the Evil Power Master was adapted into a board game as well.
  • Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective plays out like a hybrid of a gamebook and a tabletop game, with lots of reading being involved in order to learn the facts of the various cases so that you can successfully pass the Final Exam Finale. You're given props like a map and a directory to consult, but not a proper game board or tokens, since all the players are cooperating to solve the case.

    Theatre 
  • The musical adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood stops at the point where Charles Dickens died writing the original novel and lets the audience choose who the murderer is.
  • In the play Shear Madness, a murder occurs off-stage. In the second act, audience members are allowed to question all of the characters in the play and try to figure out who the murderer is. The ending of the play changes based on what the audience decides.
  • Team Starkid's musical The Trail to Oregon! allowed the audience to choose names for the main characters, which of the family will die at the end and the method of their death.

    Video Games 
  • The Age of Decadence: Quests "can" go down the path of violence, but unless your character is specifically geared toward it, that tends to be discouraged. Instead, most quests will end up being a series of dialogues with plenty of skill checks.
  • Angel Devoid: Face of the Enemy (alternatively titled Death Mask) has you playing as a police investigator who woke up in a wanted criminal's body without your vocal chords, and must uncover the truth behind what actually happened. The entire game is played out using pre-recorded cinematics, with the outcomes depending on the routes you clicked on.
  • The A Road Less Traveled from Greek Winter Media is a post-apocalypse visual novel series involving the Traveler, a mutant artifact hunter/gunslinger who's adventuring in the wastelands a few hundred years from now.
  • Battle Chasers: Nightwar: You can find a magic one in the Deadheart dungeon. It has a small choice of routes for confronting an evil sorceress, and your choices determine your loot. You can only play it once per attempt on the dungeon.
  • BioWare specializes in this format. Baldur's Gate, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age are the best known examples that they've made.
  • Choice of Games and its labels Hosted Games and Heart's Choice are companies specializing exclusively in text-based CYOA games, with several dozen already on offer. Some of them available for free on their website. Some examples are:
  • A few relatively obscure CD-based interactive movies were this, called Choose Your Own Nightmare. There is no shortage of Nightmare Fuel in them, being adapted from the books of the same name. Humorously, you can hear Mithos Yggdrasil and possibly Spinelli in a few.
  • Darklands has non-combat encounters and interactions done in CYOA format.
  • Games made in the Twine engine are, generally speaking, variably elaborate versions of gamebooks: some tell a lightly interactive story, while others have audio-visual elements and some additional game mechanics. The most famous/infamous of these is probably Depression Quest, though many other Twine-based games have some degree of acclaim in independent game circles.
  • You can find a non-playable one in Drakensang 2. Apparently it's seems to be a Take That!.
  • A Duck Has An Adventure
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim adds a short but playable one called Kolb and the Dragon to its list of in-universe books.
  • Fable III has a book like this called "Choose Your Own Endeavor", but since like all books in the game the contents are limited to a short audio clip, you can't actually play it.
  • Fahrenheit and Spiritual Successor Heavy Rain are two high-profile videogame examples of this trope, but are more accurately described as Visual Novels.
  • Fire Emblem Fates has you choose which side to fight for: The peace loving Japanese-like Hoshido, and the Medieval Europe-like Nohr. You could also Take a Third Option and have Corrin initially reject both families, only to rally them all together after discovering the game's Greater-Scope Villain.
  • Foretales is a digital card game wherein the player draws ability and resource cards that can interact with location cards, with different combinations leading to gaining different resources or progressing a narrative. Depending on the interactions, such as by dealing with an enemy through flaunting status or bribery rather than murder, there will be consequences that impact not just the rest of the current mission, but all future missions as well.
  • Firewatch focuses a lot on this trope. The choices can lead to several branching paths in the game. Some of the choices affect The Protagonist's relationship with another ranger.
  • Hard West alterns Turn-Based Tactics sequences à la XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and a worldmap on which the party travels between points of interest, which triggers dialogs which can give new party members, gold or items (or loss of them), allow to visit a merchant, receive buffs or de-buffs (usually from receiving a wound), and enter into fight sequences.
  • The Henry Stickmin Series is all about this trope. The player has to make multiple choices throughout the game.
  • Numerous sections of Kentucky Route Zero play out like this.
  • King of Dragon Pass and its sequel Six Ages are set in the Runequest setting where you attempt to lead your clan to prosperity in a CYOA format.
  • Mix Ore allows the player to choose which girl they will follow. However, each route will result in the character either nearly dead or completely broken.
  • Monster Loves You! follows the general format of a CYOA book, with some Life Simulation Game elements thrown in.
  • Overlive: A Zombie Survival Story and RPG from Fire Rabbit Inc. is a CYOA type of game where you choose your actions (combat is done in 1st person "Wizardry" style) in the text presented, as your character wakes up during a zombie outbreak.
  • Ring Of Sias, an early effort on the PlayStation. Which is sadly Japan-exclusive; as no English version of said game exists it's playable only by speakers of the Japanese language.
  • Saints Row: The Third has a short parody text adventure during the mission where you confront Matt Miller, leader of the Deckers, called "Dragons and Tears: Part 1 of The Spiraling Darkness Trilogy." How do you win? Kill the unicorn.
  • In Saints Row IV, the mission to rescue Matt Miller from the Zin involves a text-adventure segment calling back to the previous game.
  • Shisha No Yobu Yakata is another Japan-exclusive video game where you are among six guests investigating a murder in a mansion before getting hunted down and murdered, Ten Little Murder Victims-style. 28 endings are available throughout.
  • In The Sims 4, the game sometimes presents choices like these while your Sim is at work, at school, exploring the jungle, or exploring space in a rocket. It's particularly pronounced in the latter.
  • The Stanley Parable is a deconstruction of 'Choose Your Own Adventure Stories' (and video games in general), highlighting how essentially, all the 'choice' is meaningless since they're all pre-existing paths that you cannot alter. Also, ironically, the 'best' ending, where Stanley manages to throw off his mind control, escape to freedom and be happy, can only be obtained by following the Narrator's instructions to the letter.
  • Between missions in Star Fox Command, the player is given choices about what to do next, and the choices made affect the characters that join the group and the direction the plot moves, eventually leading to one of ten different endings.
  • Swordbreaker: Origins is a fantasy-themed CYOA adventure made for modern-day platforms like the PlayStation 4 or 5, meant to capture the nostalgic feel of Fighting Fantasy and Fabled Lands.
  • Similarly to BioWare, Telltale Games specializes in this style of gameplay. Most of their output is in the form of episodic licensed games.
  • Tin Man Game predated Choice of Games for electronic game books and are well-known for their in-book artwork to enliven the pages (where many other companies opted for pure text). Besides their own books in the fantasy realm of Orlandes and other settings, Tin Man Games is known for adaptations of some Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and J.H. Brennan's The Sagas of the Demonspawn which they renamed the The Complete Sagas of Fire*Wolf. Additionally they had a unique Judge Dredd adventure and also a Warhammer 40,000 adventure called Herald of Oblivion which was supposed to be part of the adaptation of the Path to Victory books, but only Herald of Oblivion was made. After scaling-back and losing the rights to many of their adapted works, their most recent adaptations has been for Phryne Fisher mysteries.
  • Adventures in WildStar play like this, having branching paths that affect the storyline and the environment. Do you quell the rioting prisoners, save the Warden, or get stronger munitions for the guards?
  • The YAWHG gives you six weeks to decide how your characters will live their lives — and raise their stats — before the YAWHG arrives.

    Visual Novels 
The entire Visual Novel genre can be described as a kind of gamebook, since the gameplay is entirely about reading text and making choices to direct the story. There is no need to list every individual visual novel here.

  • Some gamebooks that were originally published in print have been adapted to digital format and sold as video games. These are mostly published by Tin Man Games. Entries include "The Forest Of Doom" and "Starship Traveller", both of which were originally published as Fighting Fantasy books.
  • Sword Daughter is a direct adaptation of a gamebook from the "Dragontales" line, now illustrated in the style of a visual novel.
  • In My Harem Heaven is Yandere Hell, the reader has two/three choices for each situation. The choices will determine who Yuuya gets and what his ultimate fate will be.
  • Yandere I Love You So I Want To Kill You goes this way as well. There are only two choices available for the whole novel and they point to ten different endings.
  • Purino Party has something like this going for it. You can interact with all of the girls in the game or just to stick to one at a time.

    Web Animation 
  • The video series The Journal of Morning Mist, based on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, features Morning Mist going to a seemingly-deserted island and finding evidence of a Religion of Evil that worships an Eldritch Abomination known as "Mother," and writing about what he finds. Whichever path the viewer chooses, the expedition all goes to hell quickly, and the journal turns into an Apocalyptic Log. None of the paths end well for Morning Mist; some entries feature him getting brainwashed by Mother, some feature him dying from Mother making him tear his own eyes out, and a few have him begging for help after the cult captures and tortures him. Even the entries where Morning Mist isn't dead, tortured or indoctrinated are ambiguous, but the implications are clearly unpleasant.
  • Cheese Festival is an interactive game based on the cartoon "Hey Arnold" with teenage versions of the characters. The player chooses Helga's moves throughout the three days before the Cheese Festival, however the outcome of the story remains the same.
  • Homestar Runner
    • The 2005 Halloween cartoon is the interactive animation Halloween Potion-ma-jig. It actually features a bit of Bait-and-Switch, presenting the viewer with one adventure in the intro (helping Homestar find his costume and escape a haunted mansion) and then giving them another (helping Homestar find ingredients for Marzipan's Halloween potion... after he had doodled all over her recipe).
    • The Strong Bad Email "1 step ahead" took the form of a gamebook after the e-mail was read to determine whether to glue Strong Sad's hands to his face. The choices left for the user is "Yes", "Maybe" and "Take it in a bit of a different direction", with a different scene playing for each choice.
  • An episode of Bonus Stage titled "2 Fast" had an ending where the viewer chooses how to resolve the plot of Joel being cursed by living in the house next door into a female blue blob creature, with the choices "Normal Ending", "Creepy Ending", and "Sheep in the Big City ending". The first ends the episode with a de-transformed Joel stabbing Phil, the second with an out-of-character romance that was later Orwellian Retconned into puppetry, and the third with a non-sequitur pun.
  • My Little Pony: Equestria Girls Digital Series did a number of interactive shorts with Multiple Endings, where one of the girls has a dilemma (like Sunset trying to pass her driving exam in "Driving Miss Shimmer", or Fluttershy trying to overcome her stage fright in "Fluttershy's Butterflies") and you choose which of their friends helps them out.
  • Plan 3: Hart, as GM, runs scenarios for Stephen and Hosuh in a "choose your own adventure"-style of storytelling.

    Web Comics 
  • Angela's Magic Lesson is a spin-off of The Underburbs by one of the original creators, in which the reader chooses the consequences of the titular witch casting a random spell on herself. The project is fueled by commissions, with people paying to create new routes or elaborate on existing outcomes with Epilogue sequences.
  • The Book of Lore is a collection of ongoing gamebook-style stories by Ted Bishop, the creator of Trader Lydia. There are two versions of the stories: here is the DeviantArt version, which has more short-form entries, and here is the version on Ted Bishop's website "The Owl Quill", which has more long-form entries. Both versions have a Framing Device starring the guardians of the titular Book of Lore that the other stories are kept in.

    Web Original 
  • 6Quest is collection of interactive gamebooks
  • Nostalgia website I-Mockery has a few Halloween-themed CYOA stories. They used to be called "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories, but are now called "Select Your Destiny" stories.
  • Anon-kun is a website created due to CYOA overflow in 4chan. As per their origin, most stories are written live with the audience discussing the current state of the story in a chatbox.
  • Lore F. Sjoberg's "Choose Your Own Damn Adventure" on the website Brunching Shuttlecocks. In stark contrast to the usual escapist fare, a sardonic take on Real Life is played out in the form. It was later followed up with four sequels, "Choose Your Own Damn Serial Murder," "Choose Your Own Damn Sex Act", "Choose Your Own Damn Pokémon Adventure," and "Choose Your Own Damn Harry Potter Adventure."
  • Multiverse Mayhem, subtitled A Multiple-Choice Cupid Caper!, the 1st anniversary special of The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, was a choose-your-own-adventure story in second-person narrative.
  • Brad: the Game is just one big Mind Screw. One gross, perverted, strangely attractive mindscrew (it's also written by a Reverend).
  • The Addventure series and spin-offs took the concept, put it online, and did the obvious thing of allowing readers to write their own chapters to add to them... How well this worked varied considerably, although those moderated for spelling and sanity (or at least consistency) tends towards being decent.
  • Dream High School is a variant where you vote on what happens next and once voting closes the next page is written.
  • Some of the aforementioned Internet gamebooks includes the Unending BE Addventure, Anime Addventure, and one on a site called Vampyou.com.
  • Neo-Adventures allow players of the website Neopets to create their own Choose Your Own Adventure stories. They can then be shown to other players, who go through them by clicking a series of links in a pop-up window. There's even an option to add 'Turn to page __' at the end of each link!
  • Tub Adventure, as seen on Something Awful's Flash Tub.
  • Mike Kayatta, of The Escapist, created a Mass Effect Pick Your Own Adventure.
  • Writing.Com has an entire section devoted to these, simply calling them "Interactives" and allowing the readers to not only choose their adventure, but add to it as well.
  • Create Your Own Story is a wiki based site specifically for user submitted choice based stories where the reader assumes the role of the main character. Readers can add in different paths or start new stories of their own. The content is divided up into separate featured, family friendly, quizzes, PG-13, mature, and adult categories.
  • Choose Your Story is a website allowing all members to join and take part in writing their own interactive stories, otherwise known as story-games. (However, due to the versatility of the site's editor, CYOS (or CYOA) are not the only option. Quizzes, games of chance, regular stories, and role-playing games are also possible.)
  • ClickHole has a series of articles called "ClickVentures."
  • Uncyclopedia has a "Games" sub-wiki made entirely of these.
  • A Cracked photo contest "35 Famous Video Games (If They Were Made in Different Eras)" has Mass Effect as one of these.
  • SCP Foundation: SCP-2975's after action report.
  • The FF Project.
  • Arborell's Gamebook Archives.
  • Questden is a website that has quest authors running a story using a mixture of pictures and text and readers able to suggest actions in between updates.
  • WHAT COLOR ARE YOU?: After the creator tires of making a personality test, they change it into being a journey through a vast and dangerous labyrinth in order to reach a grand castle, with gamebooks as the clear inspiration. However, as it's hosted on uquiz, there are no branching options and all choices give the same results: you cannot save the creatures you encounter during your journey, and you will always die before you reach your destiny. The creator comments on this, wondering if this means that the journey was pointless since your choices all had the same results.

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • The Ruby-Spears Saturday-Morning Cartoon of Dragon's Lair would give the viewers set of choices of what Dirk the Daring should do during a Commercial Break Cliffhanger to solve a problem or beat an enemy. One choice would win, but the cartoon would also show what happens if the other choices were made.
  • Carmen Sandiego had the special To Steal or not to Steal, which lets the viewer choose Carmen's next action.
  • An episode of Family Guy has Peter reading one in bed.
    Peter: Hmm, to follow the ghost into the cave, turn to page 32. Okay, we'll just go on over to— AH! AH! AH!!! Wait! It doesn't count because I kept my finger on the page! You seen it, Lois! You seen my finger on the page!
    Lois: [sighs] Yeah, Peter, I seen it.
  • Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale is the first of the Netflix interactives series that use this format, allowing the player to choose what happens next.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants has an episode that let the audience call in their choice as to how the episode ended. The two choices that didn't win were shown before the one that was. Since then, only the chosen ending has been shown in syndication.
  • An early episode of Futurama had movies set up like this; theatergoers voted on where the film goes. The joke was it always went with the shit option no matter what.
  • The Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode "Race for Your Life, Mac & Bloo" had the two characters partake in a 30-mile foot race from an arcade back to the titular home, with viewers getting to vote for the winner during the days prior to the premiere via an online game. The Mac ending was the one that was broadcast, but the Bloo ending could be viewed afterwards on the Cartoon Network website, and both are available to watch when purchasing the episode on streaming services. Both endings share the same structure; no matter who wins, the winner passes out from exhaustion as soon as Frankie greets them. They then wake up in the hospital, with the loser claiming that it was either a tie (Bloo, if Mac won) or that they won by technicality (Mac, if Bloo won). The ensuing argument leads to the episode ending on them racing through the hospital as a tiebreaker.
  • We Lost Our Human is of the same ilk as many other Netflix examples, but without being tied to an existing intellectual property.

    Real Life 
  • Choose Your Own Adventure has branched out into real life, as a cult of "dice living" has developed. People make real-life decisions, ranging from where to go on Saturday night to what career to choose, based on rolls of the dice. Dice living was inspired by the novel The Dice Man and other works by Luke Rhinehart. (Though it might be argued that this is an inversion of the trope. Choosing Your Own Adventure in fiction gives the reader control over events that they would normally only be able to observe and not influence. Letting the roll of a die make a decision for you in real life takes away a decision that otherwise would have been yours to make. However, you ARE choosing to leave that decision to chance...)

Alternative Title(s): Gamebook

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