Before Video Games Took Over, We Had Gamebooks and Text Adventures

Before open worlds and dialogue trees, there was a page number and a blinking cursor.

Today, interactive storytelling is everywhere.

Video games let us explore vast worlds, make meaningful choices, and shape the stories we experience. Whether we’re navigating branching conversations in role-playing games or building our own adventures in sandbox worlds, we’re used to the idea that stories can be interactive.

But long before modern video games took over, readers and players were already choosing their own paths. They just did it with books and blinking cursors.

My Macintosh Plus and a box of floppy disks. Interactive storytelling existed long before smartphones, apps, and even the web.

Turn to Page 56

If you grew up in the 1980s, there’s a good chance you encountered a gamebook series like Choose Your Own Adventure, Which Way Books, Twistaplot, or Endless Quest.

The premise was simple. You weren’t just reading a story. You were participating in it.

At the end of a section, you might be asked:

If you enter the cave, turn to page 56.

If you return to the village, turn to page 17.

Every choice created a new path. Every path led to a different outcome. Today’s interactive books, including the Pick Your Own Quest® series, still use that same magical formula.

But books weren’t the only place interactive storytelling was evolving.

Before Zork, There Was Adventure

While researching my nonfiction book, Write Your Own Quest: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Your Own Interactive Adventure, I spent time exploring one of the earliest interactive stories ever created: Colossal Cave Adventure.

Written between 1975 and 1977 by Will Crowther (and later expanded by Don Woods), Colossal Cave Adventure is widely considered the first interactive fiction game.

Instead of turning pages, players typed commands.

The game began like this:

The Game >> YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING. AROUND YOU IS A FOREST. A SMALL STREAM FLOWS OUT OF THE BUILDING AND DOWN A GULLY.

You type >> go south

And the game would describe what happened next.

There were no graphics. No mouse. No controller. Just text and imagination.

The opening of Colossal Cave Adventure. Every choice was typed as a simple command.

The Game Had Personality

One of the things that surprised me most about Colossal Cave Adventure was its sense of humor. Take this snippet:

You type >>> go west

The Game >>> YOU FELL INTO A PIT AND BROKE EVERY BONE IN YOUR BODY!

The Game >>> NOW YOU’VE REALLY DONE IT! I’M OUT OF ORANGE SMOKE! YOU DON’T EXPECT ME TO DO A DECENT REINCARNATION WITHOUT ANY ORANGE SMOKE, DO YOU?

You type >>> yes

The Game >>> OKAY, IF YOU’RE SO SMART, DO IT YOURSELF! I’M LEAVING!

Modern players often think of early computer games as primitive.

But Adventure had something many modern games still struggle to achieve: Voice.

The game felt like it was talking directly to you. Sometimes it even argued with you.

Enter Zork

If Colossal Cave Adventure laid the foundation, Zork helped popularize the genre. Zork became a cultural phenomenon in the early computer era and introduced countless players to interactive fiction.

Like Adventure, Zork relied entirely on text. Players explored underground passages, collected treasures, solved puzzles, and occasionally met unfortunate ends.

Unlike gamebooks, there wasn’t a list of choices waiting for you. There was simply a blinking cursor.

The game asked: What do you do next? And whatever happened next depended on what you typed.

That simple idea felt revolutionary.

Before the Quest Marker

One thing modern readers might find surprising is that players often drew maps while playing. There was no minimap available. No GPS. No glowing objective marker telling you where to go.

If you wanted to survive Colossal Cave Adventure or Zork, you frequently needed to sketch your own map and keep track of where you’d been.

In many ways, exploring the cave became its own adventure.

Players often created their own maps while exploring Colossal Cave Adventure. This map appears with permission of Mari J Michaelis in Write Your Own Quest. Looking at it reminds me just how much imagination these games demanded from their players.

A map from Castle of Doom (Pick Your Own Quest). Forty years later, interactive adventures are still inviting readers to explore, choose paths, and discover secrets.

Get Lamp

If you’re curious about this era of gaming history, I highly recommend the documentary Get Lamp (2010).

Named after one of the most famous text-adventure commands, the film explores the history of interactive fiction through interviews with the people who created and played these games. It’s a fascinating look at a form of storytelling that helped shape everything that followed.

While researching Write Your Own Quest: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Your Own Interactive Adventure, I found myself tracing the roots of interactive storytelling all the way back to the 1970s.

The Same Question

Looking back, gamebooks and text adventures weren’t competitors. They were cousins.

One offered a page number. The other offered a blinking cursor.

But both were asking the same question: What happens if the reader gets to choose?

Whether you’re reading Choose Your Own Adventure, exploring Zork, mapping Colossal Cave Adventure, or creating modern interactive books like Pick Your Own Quest®, the appeal remains the same.

We don’t just want to hear the story. We want to step inside it.

Long before open worlds and dialogue trees, there was a page number and a blinking cursor. And somehow, that was enough.