Has this been tried before?

Finvega

A "quality" fantasy author working with a game dev team to bring to life an interactive (game) that is a combination of a traditional story interspersed with frequent immersive game play. A combination of the two.... say the background filler part of the story is written/narrated and the action parts and some mood settings are "in game" bits. So you would turn a page and come to a part of the story that was better told through art & action.

frostymug

Sunless Sea is an interesting game with a lot of written narration. 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/304650/

Sunless Sea was derived from Fallen London (http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/ ) which is also very well written for the most part. Fallen London is probably the best browser game I've ever wasted time with.

There's also the Fighting Fantasy line. Written by two of the founders of Games Workshop.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/411000/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/270490/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/324740/



Or I could be misreading your post and wasted a bunch of time posting and digging up links...

kjempff

I can't come up with any, but I am sure there are a few attempts out there..
I think for that to work you have to make the "game-book" for a media where the book part can be enjoyable, because the book should be the carrying part, in my opinion. What I am thinking of is that no-one really reads a book on a pc or console, but a tablet is much more suited for book reading.

Not so long ago, I freelanced on a project that combined traditional comic book with game elements.
The "reader-player" played the characters on and off through the story in a rpg like way and their decisions also had some influx on the story itself. Conceptually that idea was very interesting, and for a comic book + game combo I think it worked really well - If that would also be the case for a book + game combo I can't tell.

There are some really good examples for more simpler types of books that combine book story and game elements, and those are for children books. I think there is a huge potential in the children book market for that kind of thing, and I even tried to get some people around for a project like that. Of course illustrations will weight as much as text and game elements should be more interactive, like a book with illustrations that come alive.