Gaming chair and controller at the ready! You are about to be swept into the wonderful world of Thomas Flintham’s PRESS START like you’ve never been before - in PRESS START! SUPER GAME BOOK!
We have been delighted to witness Thomas Flintham’s Press Start series go stratospheric! Thomas is an incredibly talented world creator who, with his passion for computer games and animation has created this incredibly successful illustrated fiction series. With its comic page layouts and vibrant illustrations and hero, Super Rabbit Boy, it's captured the imaginations of a generation of emerging readers and avid gamers.
With 13 books already in the series this latest edition steps into a different realm inviting readers to determine Super Rabbit Boy's destiny by selecting different options within the story. Thomas even tested this super challenge on young readers to make sure it really works, even giving them some top-secret cryptic clues. Tom spent over 2 decades concocting this book, but it all starts with page one…
SO now It's YOUR turn to play the video game and defeat meanie King Viking in this choose-your-own-adventure-style special edition.
Can Super Rabbit Boy rescue his kidnapped animal friends from meanie King Viking? It's up to YOU to try to save the day - all you must do is press START! In this 144-page, full-colour special edition, each page presents the reader with several options for the next page turn. Readers will see their choices make the story unfold in fun and exciting ways! But be careful - if the wrong choice is made, it might be GAME OVER! In this unique Press Start adventure, it's up to you to beat the game!
Thomas is an avid doodler and works digitally with a Wacom tablet and we love his bold lines and clever pixilated characterisation. These books have an immediate jump off the shelf appeal with their vibrant colour palette, clever animation-style and fast paced story arcs. Thomas created a fun and engaging Instagram campaign to celebrate the launch of this title which invited his followers to choose various adventure options for the following day, showcasing 20 spreads from the book which generated a real buzz around the brand. Some of his followers became increasingly excited choosing every possible variant until they cracked the code, some even asked for tips!
We got to spend some time with Thomas to find out a little bit more behind the creation of this latest Super Rabbit Boy adventure…
“I’ve always loved puzzles and games, so this was really an idea that grabbed my attention, I think the concept of choosing a character’s destiny is a really great way to get kids engaged in reading. My favourite thing is the ability to hide inside the book and there is a little bonus world, with three different things which are increasingly hard to find with lots of character references to the previous books which are there for familiarity. The way it’s formatted is really fun in that you can hide things in a way you can’t with a normal fiction book."
“I came up with the idea of writing a 'choose your own adventure' book over 20 years ago, I’d been thinking about how it might work, and the things you could do, eventually I started with the first page and thought what could happen from there? There’s a little tutorial section which teaches people how to navigate the story, so I simply started with 'do you take the character left or right?' I wrote it quite organically with branching routes out from each page, but I only really had a vague idea of a plan. I ended up playing with writing as much as creating a game. I tried to incorporate as many options as possible, some fun and some not so fun. (*scratches chin cunningly) - There are 3 different endings, a good one, a great one and a really hard to find AMAZING ending but watch out... there are LOADS of dead ends! Funnily enough my editor picked up a glitch just as the book was going to print which made us realise just how complex and more difficult these books are to write."
"Now I’m working on Press Start 15! It’s about Mega Mole Girl, I can’t wait for you to meet her, and then after that we are moving on to Super Rabbit Boy and the BIGGEST robot EVER. And I can’t wait!"
The PRESS START! series is published by Nosy Crow in the UK and Scholastic Inc in the US and is also about to hit the small screen as an NBC Peacock original series!
You can find Thomas on Instagram, or view his online portfolio here.
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