Project description
Operation Sundae is an Illustrated Gamebook featuring a little green alien who goes by the name, Chochi. You will control them as they navigate Earth culture. Make decisions as you read to change the outcome of Chochi’s story.
All possibilities are true possibilities, as such, no end will be the true end, it will simply be your chosen route. There are consequences of choices and actions, this is especially important to teach to a younger audience who might not understand the full depth of their choices in adolescence.
target audience
This book is YA (Young Adult) Science fiction aiming for the younger 13-15 audience. Further than that we are aiming for kids who love cartoons and videogames, especially those who are sci-fi oriented.
Format
The book is a standard 11x17 spread comic book with 48 pages of text and 4 cover pages. Currently it is digital only but the possibility of printing is not far off. The illustration style is simple relying more on shapes, character interaction, and posing rather than finer details.
Competition
A well known example, especially for the same target is Dungeons & Dragons. While this interactive fiction is a lot more detailed and immersive it still counts as something that has the same core theme of choice and interactivity with the story to influence the outcome.
Another which is a little closer in style would be Van Ryder games. They began as a kickstarter project in 2018. Their goal was to create an immersive fiction world that you could insert yourself into, similar to regular gamebooks, but with graphics! A lot of people agreed that this was a step in the right direction and Van Ryder raised over 250 thousand dollars to produce the Graphic Novel Adventure series with stories such as Sherlock Holmes, Pirates, Mystery, Tears of a Goddess, and more.
What is a Gamebook?
Gamebooks were influenced by the popular books of the 1970’s Choose your own Adventure, a book series where readers could make choices at certain points of the story to influence the ending they would then lead themselves up to. R.A. Montgomery, one of the first writers for Choose your own Adventure saw the educational value in game structure and decided to help implement it into books, not just for capitalist gain but for educational gain. These books were important because it gave kids the power of choice.
