In the early days of Apple’s iPad, there was a gallon of hype around the potential for interactive book apps. When many of the early, expensive-to-develop examples flopped on the App Store, the hype ebbed away.
Even so, a number of developers, publishers and authors have continued plugging away at the idea, with the results often standing proud as works of fiction or non-fiction, regardless of the way they’re delivered.
Apps like Arcadia, 80 Days and Device 6 are playing with the form of interactive novels, while game-books like Blood & Laurels and A Wise Use of Time are reinventing the Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy era of branching fiction for modern touchscreens.
Here are 10 of the best examples from recent years, which notably have strong writing as well as digital innovation at their hearts.
Arcadia by Iain Pears (Free + IAP)
iOS
This isn’t an app of a book: Pears’ novel was written specifically for app form, with its interweaving characters and stories. The idea is that you follow the characters through the narrative, choosing different perspectives as it suits you – complete with a map to help you get your bearings. But the most important thing here is that the interactive form doesn’t detract or distract from the story.
80 Days (£3.99)
iOS / Android
Based on Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, this app gives the famous tale a steampunk twist, with you taking the role of valet Passepartout, on a global trip with Phileas Fogg. Midway between a Choose Your Own Adventure book and a text-adventure game, it suits longer sittings or shorter, mobile-friendly sessions. Meanwhile its branching route (and thus narrative) mean you’ll want to re-read/play it again and again. Not to mention checking out the other excellent book-apps by its developer Inkle.
Device 6 (£2.99)
iOS
Device 6 came out in 2013, but as another example of a book/game hybrid, it doesn’t feel dated at all. Its eerie story starts with a character called Anna waking up in an island tower with a memory of a “rather unpleasant doll”. The tale plays out through text that turns corners and flips upside down; audio clips; photographs and puzzles. The form is inventive, but it’s Anna’s story that grips you. It’s one of my favourite works of fiction in any format – print included – in recent years. And here too, it should spark your interest in exploring developer Simogo’s other work.
Blackbar (£2.29)
iOS / Android
Blackbar is a piece of interactive fiction that makes you work for your reading pleasure: in this case, by guessing the words that have been censored by familiar black bars (hence the title). The story is told through letters to your character “Vi”, which have been censored by the mysterious Department of Communication. Filling in the gaps gives you crossword-style satisfaction, but again, the writing itself is what really draws you in.
Jack and the Beanstalk by Nosy Crow (£3.99)
iOS
Nosy Crow publishes books and apps for children, with any of the latter coming thoroughly recommended. But it’s the company’s take on Jack and the Beanstalk that experimented most with its format, adding in mini-games as Jack explores the giant’s house, but being careful to make the rewards more story – text and dialogue – putting the game-like elements to work on encouraging its young audience to read. Other neat touches, like the use of children as voice narrators, are common to all the company’s apps.
Blood & Laurels (£2.29)
iOS
As someone who grew up playing (and trying to write) text adventures, I can see a number of modern app developers whose work builds on those foundations. Blood & Laurels, for example, is a political thriller set in ancient Rome, with all the scheming and betrayals you’d hope for. The interactivity is beautifully handled: you feel less like you’re simply choosing between forking paths, and more like you’re thinking as your character (a cowardly poet called Marcus) and responding in real-time.
Ryan North’s To Be or Not To Be (£4.49)
iOS / Android
This app started off as a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign by creator Ryan North, who raised more than $580k to make “the greatest work IN English literature, now in the greatest format OF English literature: a chooseable-path adventure”. Published by Tin Man Games, the results are a ridiculous (in all the best ways) reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, with the ability to abandon the familiar narrative serving to make you think about how it was constructed in the first place. Tin Man’s wider catalogue of “gamebooks” is worth investigating too.
A Wise Use of Time (£2.49)
iOS / Android
Choice of Games is another in the handful of companies exploring interactive fiction in app form, with A Wise Use of Time one of its most recent releases. This eschews multimedia bells and whistles in favour of pure text – 260,000 words of it – and multiple-choice decisions to steer the story. Here, again, it’s the quality of the writing that’s the real treat: a clever sci-fi plot device (your character can freeze time) that’s given plenty of room to breathe. Choice of Games’ quality bar remains high for its other apps too.
Timeline WW1 with Dan Snow (£9.99)
iOS
Historian Dan Snow is best known for his TV shows and books, but he also co-founded apps company Ballista to experiment with history apps. This is a good example of its approach: an accessible take on the first world war with deep archives of images, video, audio and maps, as well as its central timeline to navigate through the conflict’s key moments. It’s an excellent way to dip in and out of the primary and secondary material. David Starkey’s Kings and Queens is another good example of a timeline-based app approach to historical events.
Electricomics (Free)
iOS
Comics fans are already spoiled for choice with ways to read digital editions on their tablets. Alan Moore’s Electricomics is the latest example, offering four stories (including Moore’s own Big Nemo) that make the most of being liberated from print by playing with the digital format. Leah Moore and John Reppion’s Sway, here, impressed most, with its use of the accelerometer for story-shifting purposes. The app is the start of something bigger, too: a platform for comics authors and illustrators to self-publish their digital work.
Apps that just missed the cut include Blinkist, which boils non-fiction books down into text or audio versions that can be finished in 15 minutes; Earth Primer and its hands-on approach to geology; Think Like Churchill, which gives Boris Johnson’s last book an interactive spin; and Persona, a playful graphic novel made for the tablet.
What have you read / played / explored in this genre and enjoyed or hated though? The comments section is open for your recommendations.
