Gamebook Friday: 100 Aker Wood

The ninth ACE Gamebook, 100 Aker Wood, is coming to Kickstarter on Tuesday 12 May 2026.

As you will doubtless be able to tell from the title, 100 Aker Wood is inspired by the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne.

Winnie-the-Pooh was published 100 years ago this year, on 14 October 1926, and the plan is to have 100 Aker Wood ready by 14 October 2026. (Please note, the image to the right is not the final artwork for the cover but merely a placeholder.)

It is unnusual because the story is told through just 100 sections, but will still include everything you would expect from an ACE Gamebook.

It is also an interactive folk horror story, about grief and guilt. To explain much more than that at this stage would be difficult without giving away too many of the book's secrets. But rest assured that 100 Aker Wood will be a more subtle take on the idea than some other recent adaptations*, and will have a pervading atmosphere of creeping dread.

Other influences on the adventure include Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood (which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1985) and Stephen King's Pet Sematary (which the author considers his most disturbing and terrifying novel).

I'm not entirely sure what made me think of merging Winnie-the-Pooh with Pet Sematary, but what clinched it for me was when I considered how Christopher Robin misspelt 'Acre' on his map of Hundred Acre Wood, just as the children of Ludlow, Maine, misspelt 'Cemetery' on the sign they made to mark the resting place of their much-missed family pets.

If all of this has you intrigued, check out the Kickstarter preview page and click the button to be notified when the campaign launches. You could also subscribe to my newsletter.

* And I use the word loosely here.