5 Books That Would Make Great Video Games

CD Projekt Red scored a hugely successful franchise off the back of Andrej Sapkowski’s Witcher novels, with J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien and Dmitry Glukhovsky (author of Metro 2033) all having their works adapted into some magnificent games over the years too.

The world of literature, like the world of movies, is chock full of inspiration for new ideas, with its influence being seen everywhere. Mario Puzo’s The Godfather clearly helped shape the Mafia games, and it’s hard to play Bloodborne without thinking of H.P. Lovecraft.

But what about going a step beyond influence?

Some of the best games around are rightly praised for careful world-building, fascinating narratives and in-depth lore. By airlifting these straight from some of the world’s greatest stories, video games give themselves a strong foundation to build mechanics on. Some offer huge scopes for RPGs spanning hundreds of hours, others could offer new multiplayer ventures.

With such huge libraries of literature available to adapt, we take a look five books best suited to becoming the gaming world’s next big thing.

Both book and film are so crammed with gaming references, it doesn’t seem to be huge leap to imagine a game based on Ernest Cline’s nerdtastic novel would be anything less than a Delorean-full of fun. Essentially a Ready Player One game would be all the best parts of every game tossed in a blender and poured out into a wonderful geek milkshake.

While licensing issues would occur from the likes of the coin-ops featured in the book and Lara Croft and Tracer’s appearances in the movie, there are easy workarounds.

The movie already switched the visually stale arcade duel with an high octane race, and similar adjustments could be made to the game.

Indeed, instead of following Parzival’s plot at all, the game could be set inside the OASIS itself. This would free players to explore their every gaming fantasy in one neat package. Ambitious though it may be, Ready Player One could be an FPS, a hack and slash, a racing sim and a sandbox all at once, depending on a player’s approach.

Surely the only thing better than reading though Cline’s nostalgia inducing references is to play through and discover them yourself?