Interactive fiction in the ebook era

Now that we're all getting comfortable with the notion of reading books on digital displays, it's little surprise that developers are starting to explore the interactive possibilities of electronic novels. In fact, simple interactive fiction has been available on the iPod since the very beginning, with a community of writers using the HTML functionality in the device's Notes application to create "choose your own adventure" stories.

Since then, the actual Choose Your Own Adventure Company, which now owns the rights to the classic interactive children's novels, has ported a couple of old favourites to iPhone. Meanwhile, Edward Packard, the original author and creator of the CYOA series, has a new brand name, U-Ventures and is adapting and updating many of his old titles for iOS platforms.

Fans of the eighties interactive novels will no doubt recall the more elaborate and involving works by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson. Their Fighting Fantasy series merged interactive fiction with RPG elements, adding dice-driven combat and simple character inventories to the mix. Canadian developer Big Blue Bubble has made a reasonable job of porting several titles including Deathtrap Dungeon and The Warlock of Firetop Mountain to iPhone, while Bright AI is working through conversions of Jackson's own Sorcery! series.

My favourite examples so far though are the iPad and iPhone-compatible Gamebook Adventures, a series of lovingly crafted and extremely well-written interactive fantasy novels from Australian developer Tin Man Games.

All set within the same Tolkienesque kingdom, the series kicks off with An Assassin in Orlandes, in which the player must discover why a sinister killer is targeting the city's noblemen. There are fights in dank graveyards, labyrinthine sewer systems and looming gothic buildings, all using a simple dice-throwing mechanism that pitches the player's stats against the competitors. It's surprisingly engrossing stuff, the economically written narrative packing in masses of detail, while rattling out a pacy, involving story.

I also like the sepia-tinged pages, the basic but elegant illustrations, and the rattle the dice make as they bounce about the screen. The provision of three different game modes, designed to suit interactive fiction veterans as well as newcomers, is another nice touch, as is the bookmarking feature which lets you save key pages as you go along. The fourth title, Revenant Rising, was released at the end of 2010, and further instalments are expected this year.

Meanwhile, there are also a couple of handy apps that let you discover and download a wealth of free interactive novels and text adventures. Twisty is a free app for Android phones which emulates the Z-machine, a virtual platform designed by adventure game pioneer, Infocom, to run classic text adventures such as Zork and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. There's a similar app for iOS platforms called Frotz. You can find out more at this wiki.

The Kindle, Amazon's highly-successful ebook reader, has also seen plenty of interactive applications and novels. Choice of Broadsides, an entirely text-based interactive story by Choice of Games, has just been released on the platform and was given an honourable mention in the 2011 IGF award nominations.

Interestingly, the developer has made its scripting language, ChoiceScript, available for free on the web, and will host titles created by users, sharing any download revenue with them. It's not the only DIY interactive fiction option for handheld devices – there's also iStory for the iPhone, which boasts a community of authors, although the app itself is not enormously user-friendly and hasn't been updated for over a year.

I'd love to see more of this sort of user-generated content entering the ebook space. All the current devices have connectivity features, meaning communities of keen writers could share their work. There's also room for a Consequences/Exquisite Corpse-style shared narrative app, in which groups of smartphone owners could take it in turns to update a single work – in this way the interactive element is the creative process itself.

For now, it's just fun to re-discover the concept of interactive novels; their limitations and quirks, their conventions and narrative tactics. There's just one problem – very few of the above apps allow you to re-trace your route through the pages or to re-roll the dice. Like the computer game versions of family favourites such as Monopoly and Scrabble, this represents the removal of tactile, emergent player activities, it is the prescriptive victory of the ruleset over the player. In other words, it means I can't cheat.