Summary
Choose your own adventure books were one of the first media to become gamified in the computer era, and [Jeremy Ngai] wanted to bridge the experience further with an e-paper handheld adventure game. With a 2.9″ e-paper screen, rotary encoder, and RGB LED that can provide mood lighting for the story, it can provide an estimated 20 hours of entertainment per charge, which is a lot better than the Game Gear this author had as a child. As with many projects we see these days, a custom PCB and 3D printed enclosure give the build a professional polish. Upon the first boot, you setup the WiFi like on other ESP32 devices through a captive portal. Once connected to the internet, the device contacts Gemini for a generated choose-your-own-adventure story. We think it would be interesting to modify the code to connect to a library of human-written stories, perhaps a port of Zork? Everything you’d need to build your own is on GitHub. If you want to play games that are easy on the eyes, how about an EInk Gameboy or another one with a separate screen and controller. 🩶