Project Aon

Kai Grand Sentinel

Academic Papers

In the past few years, gamebooks have undergone something of a renaissance, and Project Aon has certainly been involved in that! It appears that our efforts have also inspired other fans of Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf series to put pen to paper and write about their interest.

Step forward Anders Österberg, a contributor to Project Aon who a few years ago was instrumental in helping us contact Cyril “Cee Jay” Julien, illustrator of the graphic novel The Skull of Agarash. This Stockholm University alumni recently wrote a paper entitled The Rise and Fall of the Gamebook and was kind enough to send Project Aon a copy. The paper is in the form of an appraisal contrasting two leading gamebook series from the 1980s/90s, one of which being Lone Wolf.

We were so impressed with it that we wanted to make this available to a larger audience. As it falls outside the remit of Project Aon–we don’t host fan-created content on the site–we requested and received Anders’ permission to host the file on the website of a Project Aon contributor with a view to blogging about it and making it available to other gamebook fans who might be interested.

The PDF can be downloaded here. Feel free to post any messages to the author via the comments button.

For Sommerlund and the Kai!

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Interview on the Lone Wolf DS developer

Interview of the Lone Wolf DS developer, Frédéric

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Blog Spam

I found an amusing spam blog that mentioned Joe Dever and Lone Wolf. Far be it from me to actually link to the spam blog, so here’s a screenshot of it with the relevant bit highlighted.

Because I’m curious, I had to find out where the text came from: Wikipedia of course. It’s a strange kind of notoriety that gets your name included in spam.

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Lone Wolf Spectrum Games

Way back in 1984, the first two Lone Wolf gamebooks—Flight from the Dark and Fire on the Water—were adapted for computer play. The games are a combination of text adventure and ‘combat simulator’.

Project Aon has decided to make these games available, since they are part of the history of Lone Wolf. Each of the two games is available in a perfect TZX file, which can be loaded into a Spectrum 48k emulator. Also included are text files of the instructions for each game. They are available here. Here’s a lovely SCREEN$ of the title pic:

We have already done a great deal of work in collecting together previews, reviews, solutions, adverts, and competitions relating to these games in the Lone Wolf Software Articles PDF file, which was recently updated with some new materials. If you happen to know of anything we’ve missed, please let us know!

(Currently, we are not making the game Lone Wolf—The Mirror of Death available for download. We are in contact with the rights holder for that game, and we are still in discussion. More news as we receive it.)

We are indebted to Martijn van der Heide and all who have contributed to the wonderful World of Spectrum website for these games and the relevant magazine articles. For information on emulating the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, this is probably the best resource on the Internet.

We hope these games are more than mere curiosities, but will appeal to any fans with nostalgia for computer emulation, and perhaps even a new generation of fans of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K. So grab your sword and prepare for combat–just be careful not to damage your rubber keyboard!

For Sommerlund and the Kai! (And for PEEKers and POKErs everywhere!)


Simon Osborne
Project Aon

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Freeway Warrior Action Chart

To help you enjoy our newly published edition of Highway Holocaust, we’ve released the Freeway Warrior Action Chart.

This is a release candidate, so please report any problems that you have so that we can improve it.

For Sommerlund and the Kai!

Jonathan Blake
Project Aon

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Project Aon Cited in Intuite

Project Aon has merited a mention in a rather in depth and serious entry at Intute which seems to be a web directory. Personally, I find it interesting to see how Project Aon is perceived.

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Highway Holocaust Published

You are Cal Phoenix, the Freeway Warrior, champion and protector of Dallas Colony One. A murderous gang of HAVOC clansmen, led by the psychotic Mad Dog Michigan, are bent on destroying your fragile colony as it crosses the wastelands of Texas on the first stage of a life-or-death exodus to the California coast. These bike-riding clansmen are a formidable enemy: armed, cunning, and extremely dangerous, capable of launching a lightning raid at any time, day or night. You will need all your wits about you if you are to defend your people and reach your destination intact!

Keeping the momentum going, we’ve published the first of the Freeway Warrior series, Highway Holocaust. I understand that this series holds a special place in Joe Dever’s heart, and if you haven’t experienced it before, I think you’ll like it. The storytelling and gameplay are very similar to Lone Wolf, but the story is set in a post-apocalyptic America.

This is the first book with full Unicode and PNG support which will make things look more polished, but if you experience any problems, let us know.

Once you’ve completed the adventure, also make sure to check out our latest creation (that’s actually been lurking in the background for years), the Flowchart, a diagram of all the paths through the book.

As always, enjoy!


Jonathan Blake
Project Aon

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Fire on the Water for DS

Some more press for the DS project, this time about Fire on the Water.

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Freeway Warrior Interview

The generous gamebook fans at the Italian-language Librogame’s Land site have graciously allowed us to host an English-language interview they conducted with Joe Dever regarding his four-book Freeway Warrior series. This is particularly timely in view of Project Aon’s imminent release of the first of these books–Highway Holocaust.

The interview covers the origins of the series through to Dever’s thoughts on how it reflects current fears. Although the interview does contain some spoilers for those who may not have read all or any of the series, these are clearly highlighted, allowing fans to read the bulk of the interview without having their enjoyment spoiled.

To download the interview, visit the Project Aon website. It can be accessed via the Books page as with all of our downloads. This link will take you straight to the download page.

We hope it will whet the appetites of those who have read the books before, and those who are entirely new to this less well-known gamebook series.

For Cal Phoenix and Dallas Colony 1!


Simon Osborne
Project Aon

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And the Title Is…

We’ve just received word from Joe Dever that the title for the forthcoming 29th Lone Wolf gamebook will be The Storms of Chai. That’s all we know so far. I’m guessing that this means things are progressing. 🙂

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