Travel through different books in a quest to find your uncle! You will travel through a number of stories, seek to understand why they are falling apart, and trying to solve the mystery of your uncle’s bookshop.
Lost in the Pages is a 125,000 word interactive novel by a collection of authors, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
There are over a half a dozen stories to choose from, from fantasy and science fiction, to horror or mystery. Can you rescue your uncle and restore order to the stories, or will you be consumed by the menace hanging over him?
• Play as male, female, or non-binary, with any orientation. • Travel the seas as a mermaid, ride a dragon, explore futuristic worlds or become a detective. The choice is yours! • Stick to tropes, or break them! • Save not one world, but many!
Felicity Banks, Adrao, Cecilia Rosewood, and Sashira developed this game using ChoiceScript, a simple programming language for writing multiple-choice interactive novels like these. Writing games with ChoiceScript is easy and fun, even for authors with no programming experience. Write your own game and Hosted Games will publish it for you, giving you a share of the revenue your game produces.
Thanks for the kind words! (on behalf of all the authors)
Regarding the writing process, it was a bit different from normal. In this story the beauty is that they are all independent books, so each author has quite a lot of freedom with many parts of the story. However, some basic structure was agreed at the start, as there has to be coherence. Then, we all sat and read each others’ stories, which is a great way to review and improve them. Obviously, like with any WIPs, you have to deal with surges and wanes in interest in different members (due to other commitments, be them real life or writing other WIPs). It took quite a bit of time, but I think the result was worth it!
I loved the idea behind “Lost In The Pages;” kinda like Gumby, who (you may remember) could “walk into any book / With his pony pal Pokey, too.”.
But I very quickly abandoned it because I didn’t know a single one of the stories presented, which was a huge turn-off for me. If I’m going to wander through stories, they’ll be stories I know!
Excuse me, and I beg your parsnips, but “Lost In The Pages” is already “Gumby-ish”:
"...He can walk into any book,
With his pony pal Pokey, too.
If you gotta heart,
Then Gumby's a part of you!"
(From the theme song.) You really can’t get too much more “Gumby-ish” than that!
(Indeed, this is precisely what attracted me to it in the first place!)
I didn’t realize that the stories were all original: I thought I was expected to be already familiar with at least some of them, and was very seriously “put off” when I realized I was not. (Perhaps the text could give us a “kloo” as to their originality? Ferinstince, the text might mention – assuming such is the case – that one of the game’s characters wrote each of the titles mentioned?)
The fact that these are not, after all, obscure stories I’m expected to be already familiar with, rather changes things: while I’m still leery, the game is probably worth a second look.