Give Yourself Goosebumps



The Choose Your Own Adventure spin-off of R.L. Stine's popular Goosebumps series.

For '90s kids, this series was the first (and perhaps only, save for the Animorphs Alternamorphs books) exposure they've had to the CYOA genre. Like other books in the genre, you, the reader, are required to make potentially dangerous choices to escape whatever dire circumstances you find yourself involved in. Depending on the book, this may involve fleeing a haunted house, a deceptive genie or escaping a carnival of horrors (i.e., the book pictured to the right). And of course, lots and lots of grisly deaths.

Most of the books follow a format which splits the adventure into two separate paths. The primary one follows the book's advertised premise more closely. The secondary one usually follows the aforementioned premise as well, but focus on a different aspect of the quest. For example, the first book, Escape From the Carnival of Horrors, has you either going through the carnival's games or the carnival's rides to make your escape. Other books have two different storylines only tangibly connected to each other. Zapped in Space (#23), for example, has you choosing between the advertised virtual reality space adventure or another virtual reality game, which involves a trek through a snowy tundra to hunt down an Abominable Snow Woman. Few books, like Checkout Time at the Dead End Hotel (#27), go so far as to focus entirely on one central quest.

In terms of overall design, Give Yourself Goosebumps doesn't deviate much from its spiritual CYOA predecessors, other than including references to other Goosebumps books. Usually, this involves a quiz question of some sort, though Return To Terror Tower and Revenge of the Body Squeezers actually continue where the original books left off (i.e., Night at Terror Tower and series 2000's Invasion of the Body Squeezers).

Because publishing company Scholastic forced R.L. Stine to write many volumes of Goosebumps in a short period of time - including the main series - it's likely that several ghost writers wrote some GYG installments. As a result, the novels really vary in quality. Demian's Gamebook Web Page, despite the obvious bias reflected by him and other reviewers, does a decent job showcasing the erratic nature of the series. In contrast, a livejournal blog by MJN SEIFER gives more detail and compassion for the series, but it's not quite complete (as of September 14th, 2011, it's only on book #35). Nevertheless, most GYG books are worth reading at least once, though some feel more tightly constructed and exhibit better gameplay than others.

Give Yourself Goosebumps lasted long enough to even have several Special Edition books. These eight CYOA novels emphasize inventory management and more complex gameplay gimmicks not present in the other books. Into the Jaws of Doom is the most notable example. With its split sections and chance encounters requiring dice rolls, it's the closest thing the series has to an actual gamebook. The other Special Edition books aren't as boldly ambitious, but they have other ways to surprise readers.

The other wiki also listed the entire catalogue of Give Yourself Goosebumps novels.


 * Adults Are Useless: The few times grownups are present, they don't do much besides punish you for acting panicked, lying about your unbelievable adventure, or sneaking off.
 * Amusement Park of Doom: Escape From The Carnival Of Horrors and its sequel, Return To The Carnival Of Horrors.
 * And I Must Scream: Most books have at least one ending describing you getting permanently frozen into an immobilized state or morphing into an inanimate object. This includes (but not limited to): being turned into a statue, being turned into an art museum painting, being turned into a computer chip for a virtual reality game, etc. For obvious reasons, these tend to be the creepiest endings for each book.
 * Animate Inanimate Object: Mobile statues, mannequins, and six foot displays coming to life aren't an uncommon occurrence in several books. Toy Terror: Batteries Included takes this trope to the extreme.
 * Babysitter From Hell: One of the premises for Attack of the Beastly Babysitter.
 * Baleful Polymorph: Deep in the Jungle of Doom, Trapped in Bat Wing Hall stand out,
 * Be Careful What You Wish For: On Scream of the Evil Genie, your wishes often don't work the way you hoped. Sometimes, it causes minor difficulties, but you're able to correct them without much difficulty. Often though, your less thoughtful wishes spark off some really bad things happening, including being stranded on a desert island, transporting a monster to your own house, or worst of all, being trapped in a painting.
 * Bittersweet Ending: Not all of the non-good endings turn out to be awful. For example, in The Deadly Experiments of Dr. Eek (book #4), you get turned into a dog, but you managed to return home safely, and live as the new family pet. In Zapped In Space, you get trapped in your gaming partner's body, but both of you at least escaped the game intact. BothIt's Only a Nightmare and All Day Nightmare have endings where not only is your adventure in the book revealed to be just a dream, but so is your entire human life, and you're really an animal. It sounds like a bad ending at first, until you realize that you are happy with your "new" life (mostly because it's your REAL life).
 * The Blank: In Welcome to the Wicked Wax Museum, one of the possible endings was that your face gets stolen, and the front of your head only has smooth, blank wax where it used to be.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: Invoked pretty often in the series, though usually when readers choose obviously foolish decisions (e.g., like eating blue eggs in Escape From Camp Run-For-Your-Life). See You Bastard
 * Choose Your Own Adventure
 * Covers Always Lie: A fair assessment for 60% of the books.
 * Crapsack World: Oh, you'll be exploring plenty of these throughout the course of the series...
 * Crap Saccharine World: ...and these as well.
 * Circus of Fear: Special edition book #3, Trapped in the Circus of Fear.
 * Cutting Off the Branches: Return to the Carnival of Horrors assumes one of the good endings from its prequel, despite there having been several--and it's actually a plot point, since one of the first things you do on one story path is try to find the same ride you escaped in the first time.
 * Did Not Do the Research: With The Curse of the Cave Creatures, R.L. Stine (or the ghost writer using his name) incorrectly referred to a tarantula and a scorpion as insects instead of arachnids.
 * Earn Your Happy Ending: There are at least two or three of these present in every book. Only Into the Jaws of Doom and A Night in Payne House (special edition books #1 and 4) explicitly states that there's only one good ending.
 * Explosive Decompression: One bad ending on Tick Tock, You're Dead! Oh, does the ending live up to this trope.
 * Failure Is the Only Option: Make too many unwise choices, and you might run into a pair of choices that ends badly, no matter which one you choose. For readers who didn't acquire certain items earlier in the adventure, when it comes time to use something to save yourself, you won't be able to do so. Sometimes, the books conceal the page number to make sure you actually ran into the item or piece of essential info instead of cheating and/or punish you for trying to cheat.
 * Into the Jaws of Doom does this trope very deviously for people who accidentally run into the giant magnet. To escape it, you need to discard almost every item you've acquired at that point. Only the boomerang gets a pass, but by that point of the game, you don't need it at all. This sets up an endless loop of bad endings, as the adventure's impossible to finish without the items you've left behind.
 * In Trapped in Bat Wing Hall, there's a side quest within the Blue Team storyline that has you wandering an underground cave to become a human again. What makes this example devious is that the lengthy sidequest ends badly, no matter what you do. The best ending? You get trapped in a library owned by monsters, who threaten to eat you, unless you read every book inside. Ouch.
 * In The Curse of the Creeping Coffin, you can get chased by a civil war-era ghost, which will lead you to fall from a bridge with a 50-50 chance to survive the fall. If you die, you become a ghost who does henious acts like crossing out the page numbers of the very same book you're reading. If you survive, the ghost hears your groaning and goes finish you off. The author then clarifies that you had a chance to survive the fall, not the book.
 * Fantastic Racism: A subtle example is used on Revenge of the Body Squeezers. A friend tries to convince you that the green aliens was in on the plan to use the squeeze bomb (proving this with, as it later turns out, fabricated evidence), while you try to convince her that you watched the blue aliens declare this plan in front of your own eyes when you snuck into their spaceship. Going with your gut turned out to be the better decision, as agreeing with your friend's "skin color doesn't matter" philosophy ended with both of you vandalizing Leonard Nimoy's cemented star with pick axes, and get you two thrown in jail, accomplishing nothing. As it turns out, this was part of your friend's plan, as she was a double agent for the blue aliens.
 * Fridge Logic: It doesn't get anymore improbable than Into the Jaws of Doom. Great book as it is, if there really was a murderous super computer in a science museum, you sure as hell wouldn't be fighting alone with a random avatar. Even without that plothole, that doesn't explain the bizarre exhibits in the third floor, like the mirror maze with a spiky pendulum...or the giant magnet...or the germ that can't stop growing...or the ending where you randomly ran into a group of people. And that faulty smoke bomb...that was just cheap.
 * Gold Fever: Treasure hunting is a common sideplot for several books, though Alone in Snakebite Canyon and Lost in Stinkeye Swamp has it for a main storyline.
 * Guide Dang It: Into the Jaws of Doom may be too difficult for some readers to figure out, so R.L. Stine included a guide in the back of Checkout Time at the Dead End Hotel
 * Haunted House: A Night in Payne House and Escape from Horror House. The latter book has you trying to get rid of poltergeists that are making your house haunted.
 * Hell Hotel: Checkout Time at the Dead End Hotel
 * Incredibly Lame Pun: Just like the mothership series, GYG has plenty of these as well.
 * Inventory Management Puzzle: For the books that use inventory, not having enough items, grabbing too many items, or using/acquiring the wrong items can lead to bad things.
 * Into The Jaws of Doom has the most complex inventory system. Not only can you discover numerous items, you can interact with them on multiple circumstances. You can even discard items if you feel like you won't need them anymore. This flexibility comes with a price, of course. Grabbing some items triggers an event, and if you don't have the proper item to counter said event (usually a monster appearance or death trap), you die. Some items aren't designed for multiple circumstances, and using them inappropriately will kill you. One item is completely useless, and if you choose it over a not-so-useless item, you're screwed. If you drop some items too early, you'll die when you'll need them later. If you haven't dropped enough items during one chase scene, the added weight will slow you down too much. No wonder the other novels couldn't replicate this.
 * Return to Terror Tower has you picking three items out of a possible four, and using them at a possibly appropriate time. Pick the wrong item to use during the events, and a humiliating death usually results. One item is useless, as the one time you could use the object, it doesn't help you at all.
 * Trapped in the Circus of Fear and A Night in Payne House makes the reader choose three items out of a possible twelve. The former book doesn't punish you too severely for picking a bad item or two, but for the latter, grabbing even one wrong item will eventually lead you to failure, whether immediate or prolonged.
 * After you choose to be a hunter or spell caster on The Curse Of The Cave Creatures, you have the choice to pick several potential weapons or casting spells. One of the items will always be the default tool, though you can choose three others to aid you. Pick the wrong items or choose the worst time to use them, and you're dead.
 * Trick or...Trapped! has you searching for items throughout your quest and using them for the appropriate time. Unfortunately, the inventory system is so poorly implemented into the book, it doesn't enhance the experience.
 * Shop Til You Drop...Dead!'s scavenger hunt has you going through floors two through six, and acquire as many items as possible before hitting floor seven, the final showdown. Skipping some floors or doing some actions wrong causes you to grab weaker replacement items or not acquiring some items at all, which affects the final confrontation. Also, going through the scavenger hunt in the wrong order may get you killed in other floors, since you need those items to survive
 * You're Plant Food! and Zombie School have scavenger hunts that work similarly, though not quite as good as the one in Shop Till You Drop...Dead!
 * Involuntary Shapeshifting: One book is practically based on this trope, with at least one named character ending up in an animal forme by most endings.
 * Jackass Genie: Jenna on Scream of the Evil Genie. There's only one wish that works out exactly how you expected - and even then, it took an extra wish to correct it - but the other ones turn out to be worse, whether by a little or a lot.
 * Luck-Based Mission: Some books don't follow any real internal logic, which makes winning the book more trial-and-error than good planning/decision making. Some specific offenders:
 * One Night in Payne House. You choose three of twelve items, and if you choose even one wrong item or go one incorrect route, you'll hit a bad ending. It's next to impossible to beat this one without running into nearly every bad ending in the book.
 * Weekend At Poison Lake is this, literally. You pick between four short adventures based on Poison Lake, which comes with their own designated lucky number, and you decide how (or if) to use your lucky number during any perilous moment. Interesting concept, but the problem is that there was no logical way to deduct when to appropriately use your luck, as it could backfire at anytime. Yeah...there's a reason this book wasn't well regarded.
 * Lost at Sea: During the secondary story in Ship of Ghouls, you escape a bombed cruise ship, and must survive out in the ocean for days on end.
 * Monster Clown: Done with Scary Birthday to You!.
 * Moon Logic Puzzle: Done frequently in the series. Some examples:
 * Zapped in Space: You had to get across a planets surface without being cooked by the intense alien suns heat. You're in a greenhouse, with two options - slather yourself with random goo, hoping its sunscreen, or make a hat out of leaves. If you use leaves, the leaves have lenses in them you didn't notice, which cook you.
 * Same book, you're fending off alien lizards, and you can either use a sword, or a gun you have no clue how to operate. If you use the sword, the Lizards unveil their uncanny ability to regain all lost limbs, including their heads. FUUUUUUU-
 * Same book again. When you and your friend reach the Abominable Snowman's cave, there's a table with a box, containing a magnifying glass and a compass, saying "Take one". Logically speaking, since there are two of you, you and your partner can take both items without breaking the rule. Unfortunately, a beam of sunlight bounces off the compass through the magnifying glass, which flash defrosts the cavern and buries you and your friend into an avalanche of snow. What.
 * Into the Jaws of Doom: You're running from a man with no skin who's trying to kill you inside a museum. You need to kill him so you can use the stairs again and get to the third floor. You're in the gift shop along with a chemistry set, as well as a fire extinguisher you found previously. If you try to kill him by exposing him to the extinguishers intense cold, the recoil knocks you out and he strangles you. You make a smoke bomb, it incapacitates you and not him (even though he doesn't have any eyelids). You make a flash grenade, he's still not blinded but you are. You make a stink bomb, you both suffocate. And no, there is no option to just kick him the balls. I tried (I was a very pragmatic preteen). You're supposed to go into a maze, find the right direction without coming across the giant magnet that takes everything away from you permanently, find the lazer gun guarded by the snake (I am not making this up), throw a stinkbomb at the creature that doesn't have a nose, take the laser, find your way out, and shoot the skinless man in the eyes to blind him so he falls down the steps, preumably knocking himself out. Its probably worth noting, the smoke bomb and the flash grenade do absolutely nothing positive and stop you making the stink bomb, making the game unwinnable. It takes you about 7 decisions to find this out.
 * Cheap endings aside (the germ and smoke bomb ones come to mind), Into the Jaws of Doom has more internal consistency than most other books in the series. As for the "Visible Man" stalking you, the book gives you specific instructions on how to beat him if you were paying attention. First, if you were lucky enough to get the hint about needing the fire extinguisher back in the fourth floor, you'll know to keep it for the fire ants when reaching the third floor (and even if you didn't, it's simple to figure out anyway). After snagging the key that was contained in the ant farm and you use it to open up the gift shop, your friend P.D.A. contacts you though a walkie-talkie and specifically tells you that only the Laser will work on the Visible Man, which is located in the giant mirror maze. The noise bomb (this must be what you meant by flash grenade) is useless, but the intro in the book warned you that some items are worthless by design, so no loose logic here. The intro also said that most items are only good to use once, and using them multiple times may do more harm than good (only the fire extinguisher can be successfully used twice...the other times, it's worthless). Lastly, avoiding the giant magnet was easy, assuming you checked your notebook map on floor three and learn not to go north too often (though it's pretty tough to hit the giant magnet). Of course, you could've cheated and lied about not having a compass when entering the maze. It's much easier that way, since there are only three exits (i.e., the exit to the maze, the spiky pendulum, and the Laser), and you avoid the giant magnet. Unlike the death trap filled fourth and second floors, the third one is the easiest and funnest one to explore.
 * Diary of a Mad Mummy: You are in Egypt, being attacked by a crocodile. The book asks you if you are carrying some gummi candy to distract the crocodile. If you don't it kills you. If you do... it kills you, because crocodiles don't eat candy. Why did you even bring it up then, you stupid book?
 * It's not the crocodile doesn't like candy - he does, it's just that he follow you around to get fed more, and you know one day you'll run out, and the croc will have to find something (or someone) else to eat...
 * "The Knight in Screaming Armor": You're being chased up a bell tower by some ghost monks, who want to make you one of them. You reach the bell, and there is a kettle of black liquid, which probably won't even harm ghosts, and when you reach for the bell, the monks cower, which means they obviously fear the bell for some reason, so naturally you next choice is to ring the bell. No! What you're meant to do is pick up the kettle, which is too heavy for you, and then fall over and ring the bell by accident! Pulling the rope to ring the bell causes it to break, giving the monks time to catch up to you...
 * Psst, here's the answer to 99% of the puzzles in the Give Yourself Goosebumps books: It's the page that is closest to the one the puzzle is written on.
 * No Ending: Sometimes, your adventure won't end with a "The End" message. Sometimes, you'll just get thrown into an infinite loop that sends you flipping through the same couple of pages forever. In Escape From the Carnival of Horrors, you may find yourself traveling through a labyrinth with no end in sight until you hear a voice. You turn towards it, travel down another neverending tunnel until you hear another voice...and turn back the way you came.
 * Puzzle Game: You'll see plenty of them within the series. Some puzzles even go so far as to uncover what page you need to go to next (and if you can't figure it out, you'll be directed to a Failure Is the Only Option page as a failure to figure this out).
 * Random Events Plot: A frequent criticism of the series. Most of the events don't exactly converge with any kind of internal consistency, which makes many of these books feel quite arbitrary with any quest. There are exceptions, but the bulk of the novels tend to go this route. Weekend At Poison Lake doesn't even hide this, since the trope IS part of the book's premise.
 * Recursion: In Escape From the Carnival Of Horrors. Specifically, it is possible to get to a point where the directions tell you to flip to a particular page - and the directions on that page tell you to flip back to the previous page, which will of course send you back to the second page, and so on. the only way to escape from this infinite loop is to close the book and stop reading. The directions on both page even Lampshades it: "Turn to page (X). Help!"
 * Other less extreme versions are scattered across the entire series where it is possible to find a page with instructions that specifically say "Go [back] to Page 1." This normally doesn't apply, but if you really want to, you can go right back to the page taking you back to Page 1 and repeat the whole experience a third time.
 * Ret-Gone: Tick Tock, You're Dead is based around you trying to help your brother escape from a time-travel experiment before he is erased from time forever.
 * Schrodinger's Gun: Many of the books have a few choices where the two pages lead to completely incompatible scenarios, such as two different endings in which a person turns into two different kinds of monster. The branching points which decide between the two plots could in some cases be considered this too.
 * Shaggy Dog Story: Even when reaching the one good ending in Into the Jaws of Doom, it's debatable how good it really is. Yeah, you defeat the supercomputer, but then your friend P.D.A. - the avatar helping you for much of the adventure - "rewards" your heroic actions by turning you into your favorite action hero (an Indiana Jones Expy) and re-creating events from the movies he stars in. Fun watching it, not so fun running for your life from a stampede, especially after dealing with a supercomputer who nearly killed you mere hours ago. The final words your character utters, "Oh no! Here we go again!", encapsulate the ironic situation.
 * Shout-Out: Readers familiar with the original Goosebumps series (i.e., 95% of them) will see plenty of references to them sprinkled throughout this series, mostly in the form of quiz questions.
 * Spiritual Successor: R.L. Stine previously wrote a CYOA series called Hark. The trademark randomness of the Give Yourself Goosebumps novels was also present on Hark; perhaps even more so. The closest GYG came to reflecting Hark's game design was Into the Jaws of Doom.
 * The Many Deaths of You: Every novel contains 20+ endings, so it's no surprise that several of them won't go so well.
 * This Loser Is You: In Welcome to the Wicked Wax Museum, choosing to not go down a corridor gives you a happy ending, but at the cost of the author Breaking the Fourth Wall to insult your cowardice. For several paragraphs. Of course, this being an R.L. Stine book, going down the corridor gets you . In other books, making a "safe" choice (such as deciding to go into the storm cellar during a hurricane rather than search for your dog) leads you to a swift happy ending on the next page, but with the book pointing out that you didn't get to have any adventures because you are too chicken to take any risks.
 * Time Travel: Done in Tick Tock, You're Dead! and Danger Time. One ending in Revenge of the Body Squeezers has a spaceship accidentally transporting you to the 1960s.
 * Too Dumb to Live: In the one good ending of One Night in Payne House, you and your friend Trevor managed to escape Payne House, but both of you would've died without the help of two trick or treating teens helping you out of the house when you two were dangling from a white sheet. When both of you try to convince them that you survived the worst ordeal, and were bummed out that they didn't believe you, you two dare each other to go back in and get some proof so people will believe you, despite nearly dying that night in so many ways.
 * With Friends Like These...: Sometimes, your friends don't make you feel appreciated in a bad situation. In Scary Birthday To You!, if you volunteer to stay at your house so everyone else can do the scavenger hunt, they leave you behind with Dr. Death with no intentions of coming back. In Ship of Ghouls, when everyone's evacuating the bombed yacht, if you (somewhat foolishly) decide to swim hundreds of yards away to reach your best friend instead of getting into a lifeboat that's much closer, he tells you to go away, because your added weight on the plank he's hanging onto would make both of you sink. Kind of justified in hindsight, though his choice to reject you causes you to drown. "Deep in the Jungle of Doom" has an ending where your friend taunts you about being to scared to go into a cave before her, and when you do  Also the majority of books have at least one bad ending which is caused by your "friend" even if it means ignoring continuity for it to work.
 * You Bastard: The author does a good job making you feel moronic for making some questionable choices. Sometimes, the book will give you another chance for making a sloppy decision, but others will automatically end the book there. Also done for readers who blatantly cheat, like bring more items than they should have (A Night In Payne House and Zapped in Space) or don't attempt to solve the otherwise simple mazes the way they were meant to, and instead only pick and choose the possible page number. Get it wrong, and something bad happens.
 * Zombie Apocalypse: A possible conclusion from Escape From Camp Run-For-Your-Life and Zombie School.

THE END