I'm admittedly terrible at "choose your own adventure" stories. Flipping through them as a kid, I'd always peek at whatever page the story directed me to, read the first couple sentences, and if I liked where things were going, I'd stick with it. Turns out not much has changed in 20 years.
Twitter user Terence Eden created a 23-step choose your own adventure using only twitter. Each tweet presents a scenario and links to two possible courses of action. Usually, one pushes your further into the story, and the other kills you in some horrible way. I think I was eaten five different ways and poisoned once. Each time I was sent into a panicked "NOPE, NOPE, NOPE," quickly pressing the back button.
Click below to get started:
Obviously because of the inherent character limit, the story details are pretty barren. It reads as like some soul-searching apocalyptic scenario where you're being chased by a ravenous unknown assailant. Traversing through the 23 separate twitter accounts, each dressed with medieval art and ominous character bios, you eventually can survive — though that doesn't necessarily mean you're left with a happy ending.
Just one of the many ways you can die!
Eden mentions in a blog post that he definitely isn't the first to use Twitter for crowd-sourced storytelling. However, Eden brought a few tweaks of his own. Instead of the adventure being contained within his own account, he created 23 separate accounts for players to explore, which was actually the tricky part. Twitter only lets you have so many accounts from the same IP address, but combining his mobile IP with old accounts he had created and discarded, he gathered enough accounts to build his story.
The result is a fun and violent jaunt through a dark and fucked up world. Give it a try, just be sure to have your cursor hovering over the back button. [Quartz]