'Choose Your Own Adventure' Is Moving Into the Digital Age

Choose Your Own Adventure, the beloved 1980s book series with over 180 titles, might be getting a tech makeover for a new generation. The company behind the books, Chooseco, is launching a Kickstarter campaign to turn the bestsellers into cartoon iPad apps for this century's grade schoolers.

Choose Your Own Adventure, the beloved 1980s book series with over 180 titles, might be getting a tech makeover for a new generation. The company behind the books, Chooseco, is launching a Kickstarter campaign to turn the bestsellers into cartoon iPad apps for the 21st century's grade schoolers.

The first animated Choose 'Toon, as they're being called, is based on Your Very Own Robot, a story that follows the adventures the reader has with a robot built in his parent's garage. (For what it's worth, we would have gone with something a little flashier, like an adaptation of Space Vampire, for our first project, but no one asked.) If the project is funded, the app will have 20 story branches, 11 possible endings and 32 minutes of animation.

This isn't the first choose-your-own-adventures style app out there, but the project will probably gain traction amongst fans of the original series, which was popular with members of Generations X and Y. The Kickstarter has been running for one day; as of this writing, some 100 backers have donated over $22,000 of the $130,000 goal. And there have been some big spenders — two backers donated $5,000 each to lend their voice to the characters, and someone donated $10,000 to win a trip for two to a destination chosen by backers.

On the one hand, turning books into animated apps is a sad development for fans of the written word, but this is a natural step in the digital age. At the very least, this is more interactive than the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure movie.