Top 5 Books that Would Make Good Video Games

I’ll be honest – I’m not much of a gamer. I like the idea of being a gamer but the last video game I really mastered was Pokémon. And not Pokémon GO either – the Gameboy version. But I like the idea of playing a video game based on my favorite books. (In case, you’re wondering, yes I did play some of the Harry Potter video games. And I loved them.) So here’s my Top 5 Books that I think would make excellent video games.

1) It by Stephen King

It would make an amazing, epic horror game. Just imagine – you play as one of the characters from the Losers Club and you travel through the town of Derry while confronting the various forms of It. You’d also have to tangle with Henry Bowers and his gang. For weapons you could use slingshots, toy guns, and rocks. Or maybe you would use weapons based on what character you chose to play – like Richie could use his voices or Stan could use his bird book somehow. (Trust me, this all makes sense if you’ve read the book.) And the climax would be a battle with the final, terrifying form of It. OMG, somebody make this game so I can play it!

2) The Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch

The Peter Grant series is a mix of police procedural and urban fantasy so I think it has the potential to be a great video game. (But let’s see a TV version first. Please?) You would play as Peter (obviously) and you’d have to battle various supernatural creatures while trying to solve a case. Your weapons would be your magic spells but, just like in the book, you would have to use your magic carefully – if you don’t, that puts you at risk for a brain aneurysm.

3) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

This is an odd choice because a Hunger Games video game is kind of at odds with the message in the book – that violence for entertainment purposes is wrong. That’s probably the reason they never made one. But if they did make one? I’d play the shit out of it.

Ooh, you know what they could do? In the video game version, they could make it so any senseless violence means you lose the game.  Like if you were a contestant in the Hunger Games and you went all Cato and tried to kill as many people as possible, then you increase your odds of becoming a target and you get killed. But if you play like Katniss, by evading people and use strategy and team up with people and try to keep them alive, then your chances of winning increase. It’d be like the anti-FPS.

4) Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander (J.K. Rowling)

This game would be pretty simple – you play as Newt and you travel the world documenting fantastic beasts. OR maybe you travel the world trying to help them. For example, you rescue a Demiguise from a poacher or you recover stolen Occamy eggs and return them to their nest. There are tons of possibilities with this one.

5) Saga by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples

 Saga is an incredible science fiction/fantasy/space opera comic book series that has the potential to be turned into an absolutely gorgeous and action-packed video game. You’d get to travel to numerous worlds and fight off the people who are trying to capture your baby.

Top 5 Wednesday Goodreads group.