Think back to when you were a kid and you picked up your first “choice” book. You know, those book littered with cliffhangers, each one prompting you with options for you to choose from? Remember the thrill of a Choose Your Own Adventure? One choice would lead you deeper into the current thread, others would lead you off on to some new adventure—or possibly the premature end of your character? For many of us, these books sat on our shelves with dog-eared pages and finger smudges from holding the last option in case this one lead to your doom. You stayed up all night, trudging off to school the next morning a sleepy mess. You would pass them amongst friends and talk about your favorite death or which path was your favorite. If you were like me, you had a stack of them you revisited over and over again, because you weren’t just reading—you were playing a game!
Maybe you never read “choice” books and aren’t quite sure what you missed. It’s time to find out. But now that we’re adults, wouldn’t it be awesome if we could explore what a ’grown-up’ version might be like? What say you to zombies and the humanity’s imminent doom?
That’s Decide Your Fate - Project Z, a choose-your-own-adventure-style book that features the same fun you had when you were a kid, but with all of the grit, violence, and tension you’ve come to expect from zombie stories. The difference is that you get to choose whether you are the world’s savior, a survivor getting by, a coward hidden away, or just another victim in the probable end of humanity.
You distinctly remember when you went to sleep last night. The world was a little boring. Your significant other called to tell you that they love you and to have a nice night. Everything was mundane, pleasant, just as you expected it to be. But the world you went asleep in is not the world in which you woke.
Waking up late can throw anyone off their game, but why didn’t your alarm go off? Was there a power surge? As you get out of bed, rushing to get ready, you are struck by the sounds of your town. They aren’t right. A town sings a song and yours seems off key. Helicopters? More sirens than you’re used to? What the hell is going on!?
Finally, you turn on the radio but what it’s saying can’t be true. The dead rising? Vicious infections? Thousands of dead? You have to get out of here...or is that a horrible idea? Maybe you are the answer to this problem, but maybe you are just another undead and just don’t know it yet...the choice will be yours with tons of endings, exceptional ways to die, and perhaps even a way out of this mess.
"Choice" books weren’t just reading. Many of them featured full-page art of some of the key scenes in your adventure. Project Z is no different. A handful of pieces will be scattered throughout the book, highlighting your choices, both good and bad. When it comes to teeth-biting horror, there is only one thing that makes reading about hearing the sound of the chipped and yellowed teeth of the undead gnawing against the bone of your obnoxious next door neighbor...and that’s seeing it in all of it’s beautifully horrendous glory. Taking the helm for the artistic side is Nick DiFabbio, a.k.a. GhostFreeHood, a Baltimore artist and cofounder of Super Art Fight known for his work in webcomics and his heavy line style.
Project Z is both a game and a book. You make choices and they have results—come on, they always told you when you were little that choices have consequences. You are going to want to read once, put down and come back to later to see what another choice might get you. It’s the perfect book to share with a friend to see if they made the same decisions you did. With a range of shorter and longer passages, it is easy to pick up and put down where ever you happen to do the bulk of your reading.
This book takes a little bit from a lot of things you love, and is the sure sweet spot of your nerdy Venn Diagram. It’s Choose Your Own Adventure meets The Walking Dead meets The Worst Case Scenario Handbook meets George Romero, all blended into one tension-packed adventure.
Backing gets you in on the process, and helps make this dream project come to (un)life. From the moment you wake up, to the last description of baseball bats cracking skulls, you get to be there. Join in on the fun, share it on your social media du jour, and tell everyone how you want to ’Decide Your Fate.’
Background photo credit to Patrick Emerson under Creative Commons License.