If you’re both a reader and a gamer, as I am, you’ve undoubtedly had the experience of finishing a novel, setting it down and thinking to yourself, “Dang. Someone should really make a video game out of that.” I think we can all agree that the following books fall under that category.
The Book(s):
The Golden Door and its sequels The Silver Door and The Third Door, is a rousing good tale of a city in peril from a winged threat they cannot combat, a pair of brothers who bravely venture beyond the city walls to try and stop the menace, and the youngest brother who sets forth to rescue them both and reunite his family. There’s a strong female character assisting our youngest brother, some revelations in the final book that completely change the story you thought you were reading, and a really cool tie in to one of the author’s other series included.
For centuries the city of Weld has been cut off from the rest of the island of Dorn. Created by the great sorcerer Dann to protect the inhabitants from the barbarians who rage across the countryside outside the wall. Yet every year, the skimmers come. Great winged monsters who hunt by night and swarm in such great numbers that they cannot be fought. Only hid from. Escape is impossible, for when the sorcerer Dann constructed Weld he left no way out of the city…or so it was thought. With skimmer attacks on the rise, three doors are discovered beneath the Warden’s palace that lead to the outside and a call for volunteers to venture outside of Weld and find a way to end the skimmer threat goes forth.
Both of Rye’s brothers leave Weld, intent on saving the city. Neither return. Finally, armed only with a Bell tree stick, Rye signs up as a volunteer not to save Weld, but to find his brothers and bring them home. In the chamber of the doors he is presented with three doors; gold, silver and plain banded wood. Though the wooden door calls to him, Rye knows his eldest brother, who left home first, would have chosen the golden door. And so he steps through, onto an island far different from what was always described to him…where a nightmare of a very different kind is unfolding.
Why It Should Be A Game:
This book has some great action in it, although it is not your typical fantasy action. More narrow escapes than sword fights, and more finding ways to swim through serpent infested waters safely to rescue innocent people about to be sacrificed than…well…sword fights. I envision the game built off of these as very Zelda-esque in the action-puzzle sense. At an early point in The Golden Door Rye is given a bag with nine powers in it, but no explanations as to what those powers are or how to go about actually using them. As players in our theoretical game learn to unlock the secrets of the bag, each situation they are presented would have increasingly complex and creative solutions to get past. I imagine this game as having a very Half-Life type element to it in that a majority of the puzzles would have the same basic solution but multiple ways to go about actually doing the solving (only minus the gravity gun because that’s not one of the powers in the bag). And when the revelation from The Third Door comes around? That would be epic in-game.
