Woohoo Game Books

I love choose your own adventure books - I owned all of the Fighting Fantasy books as a kid (and I of course backed Fighting Fantasy Adventures on Gamefound!), and I remember there being another series, who's name I can't remember, that I worked through via my local library.

So when I came across Woohoo's game books by Christopher Bünte, I couldn't wait to play through them and start to shoot them.

And not only did he send over The Curse of the Snake Queen, but that included A Lousy Night in Candarlin, and he sent included The Catacombs or Candarlin as well.

I was in for a treat!

Much More Than a Book

I managed to photograph the game books in what I would best describe as order of complexity. The Curse of the Snake Queen is a more traditional "choose your own adventure book" where you use the included dice (nice touch) to check for success, and you map your journey using the included pencil and map (again nice touch).

But as you move onto A Lousy Night in Candarlin and then The Catacombs of Candarlin, what you have to play with, and the systems you use to progress get deeper and deeper, until, buy the time you're playing Catacombs, you're traversing maps, living through day and night cycles and living out the life of someone deeply entrenched in this world.

Creating Candarlin

I wanted the viewer to feel the adventure coming through the images, which meant creating an environment that felt like someone setting out on an adventure.

Maps and letters, surely the elements that start any good adventure, coins from a discarded coin purse and a compass all bring to mind sitting down to plan an journey, to figure out where you're going and what dangers you'll encounter.

I managed to find some beautiful decoupage paper sheets of old maps, letters, sheet music etc. that really added a layer of authenticity to the shoot, and they will certainly come in handy in the future!

A few tea leaves and paper blotting later and we were good to go with the player created maps and profile sheets.

Between diving into these rich, imaginative worlds and setting up scenes that felt like they'd been pulled straight from a tavern table or a hidden explorer’s nook before they set out for the night, it really feels as though we're bringing these adventure to life.