Screen-free · Ages 8+ · 400 pages
A video game,
but made of paper.
Patrick and the Magic Spyglass
Four hundred hand-inked pages. Over a hundred items to collect. No dice, no stat sheets, no batteries — you navigate by flipping to the numbers hidden inside the illustrations.
- 830 backers
- $57,662 funded on Kickstarter
- Funded in two days
- 20 years in the making
Not a choose-your-own-adventure
One long story you can hold in your hands.
Most game books give you short branching paths and a dozen abrupt endings. Page Players tells a single continuous story that unfolds over several hours. You still make real choices — where to go, what to take, how to get past what's in your way — but you never restart, and you never lose the thread.
No screens. No dice. No hit points. No timers. Just you, your backpack, and the choices you make.
How you play
The numbers are the controller.
You don't pick from a list of options at the bottom of the page. You look. Every full-page illustration is loaded with detail — and hidden in that detail are numbers.
See a number on a door? Flip to that page and walk through it. A number on a ladder, a cave mouth, a path through the reeds, a trapdoor in a tavern floor — each one is somewhere you can actually go. It works like a maze: you move forward and backward freely, without ever re-reading a wall of text.
Sometimes a door is locked. Sometimes you need a rope, or a key, or something you haven't found yet. So you go look somewhere else — and that's the game.
-
01
Look at the picture
Every page is a hand-inked scene by Paul Nowak — crosshatched in pen, layered with oils on textured paper. Hidden inside are the numbers that tell you where you can go.
-
02
Flip to the number
Chose the trapdoor? Turn to that page. You're there. No re-reading, no rewinding, no "if you did X, turn to Y." The book moves as fast as you do.
-
03
Pick things up
Over 100 collectible items — rope, keys, charts, cutlasses, a paint brush. Some open doors. Some open side quests. Some don't make sense until page 300.
Your inventory
Over 100 things to find, and a bookmark that remembers them.
Weapons and tools, charts and strange artifacts. Some items evolve as you carry them. Some unlock backstories you'd never have found otherwise. You won't always know what a thing is for when you pick it up — that's most of the fun.
Track your backpack in pencil right on the page, or use the Bookpack: a reusable tab-based tracker that lives inside the book as your bookmark. Collect an item, flip the tab open. Use it, flip it closed. No writing, no erasing, no app.
Bookpack — 3 tabs open · try it
The Bookpack is $14.99 — reusable, and it doubles as your bookmark. See it in the shop.
The artwork
Four hundred pages. Every one drawn by hand.
Illustrator Paul Nowak worked in inks and oils on textured paper — no vectors, no filters, no shortcuts. He hand-signed and dated every original. Twenty years later those pages still exist in a flat file.
Twenty years in the making
It started as homework I wasn't supposed to be doing.
Page Players began as a series of hand-drawn game books Brett Miller made in middle school — inspired by The Legend of Zelda, Choose Your Own Adventure books, mazes and puzzles. Friends traded them under desks during class. He made dozens.
In college he went bigger: hired an illustrator and spent nearly three years building a 400-page pirate epic. Then the iPad shipped, everyone said books were finished, and he started turning it into an app. It lost something. The magic of holding a story in your hands just wasn't there.
Almost twenty years later, kids are averaging seven to nine hours a day in front of a screen. It felt like the right moment to put the book back on the table.
“The magic of holding a story in your hands.” Brett Miller · Creator
Get the game
Pick your edition.
Paperback for the shelf. Hardcover for the ones who are going to play it more than once.
What's next
Game 02 is already on the table.
Twenty years of story ideas, and Patrick is the first one out. Get on the list for new games, restocks, and behind-the-scenes pages from the flat file.
No spam. Unsubscribe any time.