Player freedom is perhaps the most important aspect of gaming as a medium. It’s the thing that allows for completely unique experiences between players. It’s long been the dream of gamers to have a game that is truly free, that allows players to make any choice they want, and the game will adapt perfectly in both story and gameplay. Every generation, players see more and more attempts made towards this with adaptive enemies, branching paths, and other aspects.

RELATED Pointless Choices Need To Stay Out Of Video Games

Sadly, no game can offer a truly free experience due to the sheer costs of creating even just a single path. Creating a large number of paths and stories, all with different assets and the same level of writing, is out of the question for most genres. But, through clever mechanics, cost-cutting tricks, and interesting writing, a few games offer a taste of that choose your own adventure experience, and they are all worth your attention.

10 FTL: Faster Than Light

Enemy crew aboard ship in FTL

Not quite a choose your own adventure, but FTL has many of the same appeals while offering a unique gameplay style. This strategy game sees you taking control of one of many ships, racing away from an expanding rebel fleet to deliver information that could win a war, hopping between outposts and planets either to fight or fuel up.

While FTL has more of a focus on gameplay than narrative, it’s still all about choice -- the actions you take at each beacon will decide whether you can get enough gear, if you get into a fight, or if your crew even survives. You’ll have to make dozens of split-second decisions to survive since FTL is brutal and unforgiving, making for an excellent mix of strategy, roguelike elements, and choice.

9 Until Dawn

Character from Until Dawn

Choose your own adventure and branching paths have always been a major selling point for games, even if they can never live up to the promise of “truly unique stories,” and Until Dawn definitely tried to sell itself on that. This take on a horror movie sees you controlling several characters and making choices and QTEs that will decide who lives and who dies.

RELATED Supermassive Looking To Expand Beyond Horror Story Games

The game’s writing does capture a lot of the charm, campiness, and genuine scares of a classic horror movie. Plus, the characters here are actually rather well written, and the game has a really good mystery that it builds up throughout the game. The one thing holding this story back is that the choices aren’t as deep as you’re led to believe, and the game only really ends in one way which is rather disappointing -- even if it’s still a great ending.

8 Tales From The Borderlands

Cast of Tales from the Borderlands

Telltale Games used to be a titan in the choose your own adventure style, and Tales From The Borderlands is easily one of their best adaptations. This game is a side story in the Borderlands universe, following both a Hyperion worker and a small-time thief as their paths cross, and they find themselves as part of a grand conspiracy of vaults, hunters, and dead companies.

The game has wonderful writing, building up surprisingly complex characters with the main cast while offering plenty of laughs along the way. It’s the perfect mix of goofy comedy and sincere heart to make an amazing story. The only thing holding it back is that the Telltale format doesn’t let the choosing be too important, but if you’re fine with that, it’s one heck of a story.

7 The Walking Dead Season 1

Lee and Clementine

Another classic from Telltale and perhaps their best work, the Walking Dead is a landmark title for the choose your own adventure format. The game is an adaptation of the comic and TV show, offering a new story in the zombie apocalypse. This story follows Lee, a convict, who finds himself trying to survive and protect a little girl named Clementine as they make their way across the country.

The game has been praised numerous times for the excellent character writing, dark and suffocating atmosphere, and the unique way it puts the player in the shoes of someone in that apocalypse to show just how horrifying it would be. While it has the same issue as all Telltale games, The Walking Dead easily stands even just as a linear story and is a must-play.

6 Citizen Sleeper

Citizen-Sleeper Cover

For a game that really lets you sink into its world and characters, Citizen Sleeper is unmatched. This game sees you taking control of a Sleeper, an artificial human made to break down and be owned, escaping to a strange space station at the edge of the galaxy. You have to use your resources each day in the form of dice to explore, work, and eventually find a way to shake off pursuit and be truly free.

The game offers a good level of choice with several areas to explore and ways to escape the space station through different characters, though sadly you don’t have all that much choice in the actual paths. But, the tense experience of barely scraping by to afford medicine, getting to know the lovable characters, and just enjoying the unique sense of wonder more than makes up for it.

5 Bad End Theater

Bad End Theater Cover

A lesser known game, Bad End Theater is a unique mix of choose your own adventure, puzzle, and pure misery. Bad End Theater sees you take control of Tragedy’s theater to play through a classic story of a knight, maiden, monsters, and villain over and over. You’ll change how each of the four characters act and play through each of their perspectives to find each tragedy.

Bad End Theater manages to turn the branching paths of choose your own adventure into a fascinating puzzle as you’ll be thinking over what choices you’ve already made to see every last scene. Not to mention the game has lots of charm with wondrous art and simple but lovable characters to break under everything you put them through. A very short game, but a lovely one.

4 The Henry Stickmin Collection

Henry Stickmin Collection Cover

Making branching paths is hard due to the sheer amount of content that comes with games, making more than a handful is impossible. So, how are you supposed to do it? Henry Stickmin gives the simple answer of “just don’t make a game.” The Henry Stickmin collection is a remastering of 5 flash games plus a new sixth one to tie up the series, each following Henry Stickmin’s escapades to steal things and escape places.

Now, this is less of a game and more just an interactive movie where you select choices and see how it succeeds or hilariously fails. This collection stands mostly on its comedy, and thankfully it is more than enough to carry! This lack of gameplay also allows for hundreds of choices and dozens of paths to choose from, giving the experience of an old choose your own adventure book.

3 Not For Broadcast

Not For Broadcast Cover

Full Motion Video games are a trend that has never really caught on, but they still hold some interesting promise, and Not For Broadcast taps into some of that. Not For Broadcast sees you taking control of a national news show during a time of unrest and change. You have to balance both offering a competent show and influencing your country.

Where most games that tried to use it were held back by the video, Not For Broadcast shines with offering phenomenal acting and story while also having gameplay that makes the player give that story their full attention to make correct edits. The player choice offered here is excellent in making sure the game is actually replayable by showing an insane amount of new content for the smallest of choices. Definitely a unique game to try out.

2 Disco Elysium

Main Characters from Disco-Elysium

Disco Elysium is one of the best stories ever told through a video game, managing to use the strengths of the medium perfectly to tell it. This game follows you as a drunk, washed up excuse of a cop, having gotten amnesia from drinking too much. You’ll have to piece together who you are, what world you’re living in, the case you’ve been assigned, and what you’re going to do with yourself.

Disco is a game with an incredible level of depth in its writing. Every single character has lots of nuance and delivers so much emotion as you get to know this world first-hand and find your place. While the game is mostly linear, the choose your own adventure aspect shines bright in the fact that all of your actions, dialogue, and everything you do come together to decide who you are going to be within your story of failure, and it is so special in that regard.

1 The Life And Suffering Of Sir Brante

Life and Suffering of Sir Brante

While this game got swept cleanly under the radar, The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante is easily the best choose your own adventure games ever made. The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante sees you following the life of one Sir Brante in a strange medieval world, and you are left to guide him through and decide how he shall affect history itself.

Sir Brante builds up a fascinating world and cast of characters to explore, all of it being excellent to learn about and then see shift and change as you make choices. The game makes your choices feel like they truly matter, opening up doors and changing the stories you’ll see in future chapters entirely. Choices you make at the very start will still be having consequences at the very end, making you feel like you truly matter in this world, which is really what choose your own adventure dream is about.

NEXT 10 Best Beginner-Friendly RPGs, Ranked