For those of you who know of -- or grew up with -- Joe Dever's Lone Wolf series of game books, an interesting, nostalgic video on the subject... including mention of the video game, which I hope one day will make it to GOG.

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R9RTAro0O4

and just for reference...

video game trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1GFUuPJyJk

A classmate of mine had those books, and I borrowed some of them for a short time iirc.
I remember there were dead-ends where you couldn't survive, because you had missed some item much earlier. A bit like those horrible old Sierra adventures, lol.
Still a pretty cool idea though.

You can read and play through the books via the web, even with a JS client to help keep track of inventory etc.

https://www.projectaon.org

In some cases bringing an item you earned in a much earlier book would result in your death. IIRC they were kinda obvious looking back at it though - eg if you’re going up against Vashna you probably shouldn’t bring Vashna’s Dagger with you. Leave it in your vault Kai.

I found the videogame not really good, tbh. More of a poor handheld console adaptation.
However, if you want to inmerse in Lone Wolf's universe, Project Aon is a great place to start with.

Very interesting.

I have one of those novels in paperback, but not read it yet.

Thanks for the info folks.

Thanks for sharing the video. "Lone Wolf" is surely the most famous series of gamebooks of all time, together with "Fighting Fantasy" and (on a much simpler level) "Choose Your Own Adventure" - and arguably one of the best. Such books were a staple of school libraries in the late '80s - I still remember stumbling upon them back then, and reading/playing some. I've been collecting gamebooks for a few years and nowadays I own the complete Lone Wolf series in its early Italian incarnation, along with many others. But today I rarely read them because they tend to be time-consuming and quite difficult sometimes, at least if you don't like to cheat...
BTW I've always liked the illustrations by Gary Chalk.

Speaking of videogames: there's a similar videogame adaptation for Steve Jackson's "Sorcery!"; you can find it on... "that" store. One might also remember a couple of old games for the C64: "Seas of Blood" and "Falcon: The Renegade Lord". Likely there have been others.

There's also a first person videogame adaptation of the first Fighting Fantasy book (I believe it's the first) for the Nintendo DS. It has bugs (if your answers at the start put you as a magic-oriented character, you don't get MP at level up), balance issues (especially on New Game +), and isn't the fanciest game, but it works. There's even one thing that this game does better than Morrowind; if you fail to hit because of a bad attack roll (as opposed to lack of collision), the enemy will actually show a blocking animation. (Then again, if you curse the enemy first, you can guarantee hits.) Reminds me of a certain weapon you get in book 2, which is overpowered for most of the series, but could cause issues in book 12.

...and Deathtrap Dungeon, of course! How could I forget... well, judging by the reviews, it's only loosely based on Ian Livingstone's book, and not a terribly good game in itself. The book, however, is another matter: a genuine classic, and fully worthy of its reputation, although I couldn't exactly point to a specific reason. It's very simple in conception, nothing is tremendously original, there's no real plot to speak of etc. it just works. Great atmosphere for dungeon crawling at its simple best. And the illustrations by Iain McCaig are (in my humble opinion) some of the best ever seen in gamebooks.