Kill Time Trying Not to Get Killed in This ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Game on Twitter

Daniel Bean
·Assistant Editor

MS-DOS computer games are being resurrected, you’re wearing a mustache, and now, to fully bring the 1980s back, Choose Your Own Adventure has come to Twitter.

Spotted by Quartz, the throwback-style online journey was created and posted to Twitter by developer Terence Eden (@edent), a man who clearly has more time on his hands than we do. Clicking the first link in his announcement tweet will bring you to a Twitter account that represents step one of the game, called “A dreadful start.” The opening tweet reads, “They’re here. Oh god! They’ve found you!” and immediately you’re asked to click a link to either “Run” or “Hide.”

Thus begins your sequence of jumping from Twitter account to Twitter account until you either get killed or find the end of the story/game. (You know the drill.)

In a blog post describing the game’s development, Eden gives credit to earlier examples of Choose Your Own Adventure stories on Twitter, though he points out that his version, which uses different Twitter accounts for each step rather than a series of tweets all on one page, prevents players from scrolling through a timeline to cheat.

image

Don’t forget that Tom Hanks from Big invented the Choose Your Own Adventure digital book concept a long time ago. (thepenguinpress.tumblr.com)

Since we at Yahoo Tech are busy running a website, there wasn’t a great effort on our part to try to get through Eden’s story. (We kept dying!) But we would, of course, encourage those of you with some downtime — trust fund kids, overnight security guards, or people waiting for paint to dry — to dig in. It sure seems like fun!

Email me at danbean@yahoo-inc.com. Follow me on Twitter at @danielwbean.