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.

A Dark and Deadly Path