Despite its ongoing lawsuit with Netflix over the unlicensed use of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” trademark, publisher ChooseCo probably owes a lot to the viral Black Mirror: Bandersnatch episode for bringing this style of storytelling back to the public consciousness. We don’t know which came first in terms of development, but now they are announcing a new Alexa skill involving two of its best-selling titles from yesteryears: Journey Under the Sea and The Abonimable Snowman, both by R.A Montgomery.
The voice skill was developed by ChooseCo, Audible (Amazon’s audio book platform), and the Alexa team. It will work on any Alexa-powered device including Echo speakers. All you have to do is say “Alexa, open Choose Your Own Adventure” and you’ll start your journey and control things through voice commands like “go back” (if you don’t like your choice), “start over” (if you want to, well, start over), or “change story” (if you want to switch to the other story).
Instead of listening to the Alexa voice that you’re used to, you get voice actors to narrate the story. For The Abominable Snowman, which has you searching for the elusive yeti, you have Josh Hurley and you get 28 different endings if you explore all the possible permutations. As for the Journey Under the Sea where you go on an adventure in the lost city of Atlantis, it’s narrated by Stephanie Einstein and it has 37 different endings.
Once you enable the skill and cue the voice command, you’ll get the standard “you alone are in charge of what happens” that you see at the beginning of each Choose Your Own Adventure book. The story starts with a narrative up until the point where you will have to pick the next path. If your Alexa-supported device has a screen, you’ll even see some simple illustrations, but don’t expect much.
If this skill picks up steam, we may see some more of the Choose Your Own Adventures added to the catalogue. However, we may also see a bit of monetization later on either through the Audible platform or even through Amazon Prime. So while it’s free now, try it out and see if you enjoy this kind of storytelling.
