#edward packard

[thehauntedrocket]

Vintage Paperback - Choose Your Own Adventure #01: The Cave Of Time by Edward Packard

Art by Paul Granger

Bantam Books (1979)

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Choose Your Own Adventure books - Bantam Books (covers from 1979 to 1985)

[longlistshort]

Kentucky Route Zero  is a point-and-click adventure game created by Jake Elliott, Tamas Kemenczy, and musician Ben Babbitt working together as Cardboard Computer. Started in 2011 with Kickstarter funding, it contains five parts and four interludes that were released over several years, with the final section completed in 2020.

The game begins with a truck driver named Conway arriving at a highway gas station with his dog. He is having trouble finding the address he was given for his delivery. From there you travel with him over various roads, an underground highway, and eventually even by boat. Along the way you stop at museums, an abandoned mine, local bars, an odd office building, a cave filled with bats, and more while meeting several of the area’s residents. You can choose to learn more about the characters and often join them to explore locations. The story unfolds with no sense of urgency and you are often given the choice to move on or to stay and explore further.

Filled with magical realist elements, it is often a world that can still feel depressingly familiar. Most of the characters are struggling in some way with the effects of a failing economy, something that feels even more relevant since 2020. But there are also glimmers of hope in the ways the characters show up for each other- adapting, creating, and forming communities.

Below are a few selections from the game’s interludes that provide engaging breaks from the main story.

In Limits and Demonstrations three characters visit an art museum. You can check out several artworks including- Overdubbed Nam June Paik installation in the style of Edward Packard, which pays homage to Nam June Paik’s 1963 work, Random Access.

Scenes from The Entertainment– a play directed by one of the characters-

One of the phones from Here and There Along The Echo– you dial the number and the character Will (played by musician Will Oldham) reads information from the Echo River’s Bureau of Secret Tourism.

Scenes from Un Pueblo De Nada take place at the public access station- you can also find a live action version here.

Kentucky Route Zero is a game that stays with you long after it finishes. There are lots of things to discover and it’s worth playing more than once to find them. The website Highway Zero is good for things you may have missed.

The game is available for purchase on their website and can also currently be found on Netflix.

[spacenoirdetective]

Jeff Mangiat, cover art for "Choose Your Own Adventure #168: Hostage!" by Edward Packard, 1996

I love that this was a book for children. This is...peak 1990s.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

𝔇𝔞𝔳𝔦𝔡 𝔅. 𝔐𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔩𝔶

[paperbackpurgatory]

Choose Your Own Adventure 118: Vampire Invaders (1991)

By Edward Packard

[djlechat]

[thefugitivesaint]

The Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure Books

How a best-selling series gave young readers a new sense of agency.

Did you ever spend any time reading Choose Your Own Adventure Books? I did back in the late 1970s/early 1980s (I’m getting old people). While I don’t have strong memories associated with any particular CYOA book, I do have this vague impression that my interaction with CYOA books shaped I how I approached playing games like Planescape: Torment or Baldur’s Gate or Fallout (to give a few examples of games that involve multiple choices with branching paths). Making alternative choices and indulging in the pleasure of reaping different consequences is what incentivized replaying these games and the same impulse applied to re-reading CYOA books. (While I would mostly accept the outcome of each decision, I clearly remember marking my place in a CYOA book, skipping to my choice, and then going back and making a different decision if things went poorly [similar to save scumming a game] Turns out, as this piece demonstrates, this is [was?] a widespread habit of CYOA readers).  As author and essayist Leslie Jamison writes, “When you read these books as a child, your process was always the same: you started by following your intuitions, trying to approximate what you would actually do in these far-fetched situations, and—once you’d reached that first ending, the one you probably deserved—you let yourself try anything you wanted. You let yourself make reckless choices that ran counter to your intuitions in every imaginable way. It was like wearing brave-person drag. You let yourself rummage through the rest of the book to find every single ending, the same way you’d rummage through a bag of chips (if your nutritionist mother let you eat chips) to find every single shard.” I’m glad I came across Jamison’s piece because CYOA books are a genre that I haven’t given much thought to in years. (Funny that because I was just reading a twitter thread by the author Ursula Vernon [aka T. Kingfisher] that’s structured to be a CYOA). While I don’t do nostalgia, it was enjoyable diving into the history of CYOA books again and it sent my down a brief CYOA rabbit hole.  Speaking of which, these are some of the things I dug up: 1. A video on ‘The Rise & Fall & Rise of Choose Your Own Adventure Books’ from “Toy Galaxy TV” (haven’t watched it yet so this is not exactly an endorsement)

2. An interview with one of the creators of CYOA books, Edward Packard by the author Grady Hendrix. 

3. The CYOA book collection from the open library hosted by the internet archive (should the desire to experience the thrill of reading a CYOA for yourself arises within you).