A Dark and Deadly Path

ADAP is a curious oddity, an engine allowing the production of Choose Your Own Adventure-type games with Dragon's Lair-style snap-decisions that must be made by entering a valid and correct input in a limited window of opportunity. A further unusual dynamic is that the entire system is based on audio output, the games scripted in simple XML with all assets consisting of spoken narration in the common mp3 format. With character input ranging from "press 3 to talk to the witch" to "press 1 quickly to get out of the way!" gameplay can feel much like navigating a voice mail maze, perhaps giving games created under this system much in common with Steve Jackson's F.I.S.T. (Fantasy Interactive Scenarios by Telephone) CYOA games played with touch-tone buttons over telephone lines.

A whimsical sample game, featuring such novel plot elements as a menacing monster in a dark and foreboding forest (the story apparently improvised, like a bedtime story, as the author went along), is included, with gameplay consisting of a single correct path with a series of immediate dead-end branches. Personalities from the programming community are incorporated into the game as characters.