Audible launches Choose Your Own Adventure interactive stories

Amazon Audible has launched a new Alexa skill in partnership with ChooseCo, the creators of the Choose Your Own Adventure book series. The interactive storytelling skill will launch with two stories — The Abominable Snowman and Journey Under the Sea — which have 28 and 37 potential endings, respectively. The stories are narrated by Josh Hurley and Stephanie Einstein. The voice commands include options such as “go back,” “start over,” and “change story.” ChooseCo, Audible, and the Alexa team jointly developed the voice skill. It can be launched with the command “Alexa, open Choose Your Own Adventure from Audible.”

Interactive stories have been an area of interest for publishers as voice technologies have become more common and more capable of delivering complicated content. For instance, the BBC introduced an Alexa skill titled The Inspection Chamber in the UK in late 2017. This type of creativity, blended with the nostalgia factor for people who would have read the Choose Your Own Adventure series as kids, could be helpful in getting more smart device owners to experiment with ways to use their devices beyond just requesting music or weather updates.

Anna Washenko