Choose Your Own Adventure Artist Norm Grock Levels Up With GAMELAD From Oni Press

When Life Turns Into A Game, GameLad Hits Start At Oni Press

Wepa, Crusaders! Grab your snacks, charge your controllers, and tell your responsibilities to hold that thought, because Oni Press is bringing some serious retro chaos to the middle-grade graphic novel scene.

Oni Press has announced GameLad, the debut middle-grade graphic novel from Norm Grock, illustrator of the Choose Your Own Adventure: Fairy House series. Built for fans of Trapped in a Video Game and The Last Kids on Earth, this one is serving pixel-powered adventure, big heart, and enough 8-bit madness to make your old-school gamer soul do a victory dance.

The story follows twelve-year-old Nessa, who moves to Boring, Oregon. Yes, Boring. Already comedy gold. She figures life is about to become exactly what the town name promises, so she retreats into her dad’s retro GameLad console and her favorite video games. But then the screen cracks, and suddenly power-ups, gold coins, pixel critters, and full-blown video game weirdness start popping up all over town.

Now Nessa has to collect the broken pieces, team up with her new friend Dani, wrangle escaped game characters, uncover the truth behind the mysterious console, and stop Boring from becoming a real-life video game forever.

Norm Grock says the book was inspired by the magic of old video game magazines, the kind that showed up in the mail like a cheat code from the universe. That love is baked into GameLad, a story about how the things we love can help us face fear, survive the hard levels, and maybe even save the world.

Editor Grace Scheipeter calls it the kind of story she wishes she had as a kid, and honestly? Same energy over here.

GameLad respawns in stores everywhere on April 14, 2027.

Final boss warning: boredom does not stand a chance.