BOOKSOLE v0.5 — It Finally Feels Like a Real Thing
For a while, BOOKSOLE could load interactive books, parse them, and let you navigate choices, but it still felt like a tool. Functional, but not something with an identity.
This update was about changing that.
The biggest addition is the new library system. Instead of dropping straight into a book, you now land in a cartridge-style library where every story lives on a shelf. You can browse covers, check metadata, see your progress, and launch a book like you’re pulling a game off an old console rack.
That shift sounds small, but it completely changed how the project feels.
The other thing I spent an unreasonable amount of time on was the intro sequence.
I could have gone with a simple splash screen, but instead I ended up building a fully animated pixel-art opening scene from scratch. Every character, prop, and background element is drawn procedurally on a canvas. Max, Victor, the mysterious cartridge, the old CRT aesthetic—it’s all there.
Was it necessary?
Absolutely not.
But it was fun, and BOOKSOLE is the kind of project where atmosphere matters.
After the intro, the application now boots like a retro console. There’s a fake startup sequence, loading messages, scanlines, pulsing graphics, and all the little details that make it feel like you’re powering on a strange forgotten machine rather than opening a web app.
I also added a proper book details screen. Books now have their own dedicated page with cover art, author information, descriptions, tags, and progress statistics. It makes imported stories feel more like collectibles and less like files sitting in a folder.
On the gameplay side, save slots finally arrived.
This was something I wanted from the beginning because gamebooks are all about experimentation. Sometimes you want to make the reckless choice just to see what happens. Multiple save slots make that possible without destroying a perfectly good run.
To support replayability even more, I built an ending discovery system. BOOKSOLE now keeps track of endings you’ve found and visualizes them through a simple ending map. Good endings, bad endings, weird endings—you can slowly fill out your collection as you explore different routes.
There’s also a lightweight achievement system now. Nothing too serious, just a way to track things like choices made, pages visited, endings discovered, and total runs. It’s a small thing, but it reinforces the idea that reading these books is closer to playing a game than reading a novel.
Another feature I’m surprisingly happy with is the journal.
While testing branching stories, I kept finding myself taking notes elsewhere. So now BOOKSOLE has a built-in journal where players can leave thoughts, theories, and route notes while they play. It feels especially useful for mystery stories or books with hidden paths.
A few quality-of-life improvements made it in too:
- Search across story pages
- Adjustable font sizes
- Backtracking through visited pages
- Import/export support for saves and progress
- Better organization of runs and statistics
Looking at the project now, it finally feels like the original vision is starting to come together.
The idea was never to build another ebook reader.
The idea was to build a fictional retro console dedicated entirely to interactive fiction.
A place where opening a book feels like inserting a cartridge.
Version 0.5 is probably the first release where that idea actually comes across.
Next up, I’m focusing on better EPUB support, smarter metadata extraction, richer achievement systems, and generally making the stories themselves feel more alive inside the platform.
But for now, I’m pretty happy with where BOOKSOLE is.
It’s weird.
It’s overly nostalgic.
And it’s finally starting to feel like its own thing.
