What Is an AudioGame? A Simple Guide

An AudioGame is a story you play by listening. Voice actors, original music and sound design tell the story. At key moments the story stops and asks what you want to do, and your answer changes what happens next and how it ends. Think of it as an audiobook you can steer, or a gamebook rebuilt for your ears.

This guide explains how AudioGames work, how they differ from audiobooks, what you need to play and which stories to try first.

How an AudioGame works

You press play and a narrator sets the scene: a prison cell in a fantasy arena, a Venetian port in 1271, a pit in the woods after a Halloween party. You listen as you would to an audiobook. Then the story reaches a fork and waits for you.

Not every fork is the same. In PlayNook AudioGames you will find:

• Standard choices: two or three options, take your time.
• Timed choices: decide before the clock runs out, or the story decides for you.
• Conditional choices: options that only appear if you have the right item, enough health or made a certain decision earlier.
• Dice rolls: some moments are left to a virtual twenty-sided die, like in a tabletop role-playing game.

Everything you do leaves a trace. The game keeps track of story points, health and other stats, the items in your inventory, the badges you earn and a journal of what you have discovered. That is why two people can play the same AudioGame and tell completely different stories afterwards. If things go badly, checkpoints let you go back to a key moment and try another road.

How is it different from an audiobook?

An audiobook has one path: the author decides everything and you follow. An AudioGame has many paths and several endings, and you choose which one you walk. It also asks more of you: you have to pay attention, because a detail you heard ten minutes ago can open or close an option later. We compare the formats in detail in AudioGames vs audiobooks vs podcasts.

Where AudioGames come from

The idea is older than smartphones. The gamebooks of the late 1970s and 1980s, like the Choose Your Own Adventure series and the Italian librogame, told stories in numbered paragraphs: at the end of each one you picked a number and jumped to it. Text adventures did something similar on early computers. AudioGames keep that structure and move it to sound, so the story no longer needs a page or a screen.

What you need to play

• A phone. PlayNook is free to download on iOS and Android.
• Headphones, if you can. The sound design is made for them, but speakers and car Bluetooth work too.
• Nothing else. You can download stories and play them offline, on a plane or on a train.

You can make choices with a tap or with your voice, and there is a setting that reads descriptions aloud for blind and visually impaired players. We explain it step by step in AudioGames for blind and visually impaired players.

What kind of stories can you play?

The PlayNook catalog has fantasy, horror, sci-fi, thriller, historical adventures, romance, comedy and stories for kids. A few examples:

• Marco Polo Adventures: cross the Silk Road to the court of Kublai Khan, in six chapters.
• Blood's Bane: you wake up in a mass grave after a Halloween party and must find out what happened.
• Dokuganryu: a minor lord in Sengoku Japan, 1584, trying to become a legend.
• Winx Club: the Awakening of Dark Musa: help the Winx save Musa, or side with the shadow.

Every story shows its length, complexity and level of interactivity before you start, so you can choose a ten-minute story for the bus or a long saga for the weekend. Not sure where to begin? Read where to start with choose-your-own-adventure audio stories.

Quick answers

Is an AudioGame a video game?

It is a game, but the story comes first and the sound does the work that graphics do in a video game. There is no reflex or skill required: you win by listening, thinking and choosing.

How long is an AudioGame?

From a few minutes to several hours. The Exploder takes about 16 minutes. Marco Polo Adventures runs about two and a half hours over six chapters.

Can I play without looking at the screen?

Yes. With voice commands, auto progress and audio descriptions you can play a whole story with your eyes closed.

Can I write my own AudioGame?

Yes. Writers, game designers and small studios can create and publish AudioGames with Questly, our creator tool.