to be or not to be a chooseable path adventure

Though the premise might at first sound silly, underpinning it is a profound existential insight: The real question isn’t whether “to be or not to be,” but how to be, and that the answer to it is very much a choice - a choice that frames the entire quality of our existence. Self-published and funded on Kickstarter in 2012, the novel set out to raise $20,000 and instead netted $580,905, instantly becoming the most-funded publishing project in the platform’s history by a wide margin. It offers a total of 110 alternative death scenes, illustrated by some of today’s most exciting graphic artists, including Brain Pickings favorite Kate Beaton. That’s precisely the disarming effect of To Be or Not To Be ( public library) by Ryan North, author of the popular webcomic Dinosaur Comics - a choose-your-own-adventure version of Hamlet, in which you can experience the Shakespeare classic through the perspective of various characters and alter the course of their fates. Parodies of Shakespeare - such as the recent Shakespearean rendition of Star Wars - may enrage purists as a perversion of the literary canon’s greatest works, but given the Bard’s very existence, or at the very least “his” authorship, is now being pulled into question, it pays to take such parodic homages in good humor rather than outrage.

To be or not to be a chooseable path adventure