You had terrible dreams last night. But that's just the beginning, as you awaken in a creepy old house with no idea of your own name or where you are. Now you must follow three paths that lead to a clash with aliens, werewolves or secret agents.
It was the last Goosebumps book released during the time period covered by Stine's original contract, which ended and was not renewed in early 2000. The next time any new material was released (not counting a line of reprints for the original series with a new cover style) was in 2006, with the first Goosebumps Graphix collection.
All-Day Nightmare provides examples of:
- Alien Abductees Fight Back: In one of the three scenarios, you and your friend Max turns out to be alien abductees, who lose your memories after escaping your alien abductors. However, you can find an alien blaster while trying to regain your memories, at which point you can hijack the alien spaceship and force them to put your memories back together at gunpoint.
- Battle Boomerang: From the werewolf subplot, you encounter a band of werewolf hunters, one who uses a silver boomerang. Which actually proves to be deadlier than their guns and darts, since there's a bad ending where you get killed by the boomerang. (You did manage to bite the boomerang-using hunter and transfer your lycanthropy to him before you die, though...)
- Bittersweet Ending: This book has an ending 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 just a wolf. 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).
- Catapult Nightmare: How you wake up, in the story's very first paragraph, after a lengthy nightmare. And then you realize you're in an empty, abandoned house, and have no memory of whom you are.
- Face–Heel Turn:
- The main choice you make will pit you against enemy secret agents, aliens, or werewolves. If you pick the latter, you can join a band of werewolf hunters, but you can also choose to become a werewolf yourself and hunt them.
- The alien abduction sub-plot have you forcing the aliens to put back your memories using a laser blaster you found. Depending on the choices, you might accidentally choose a wrong memory bank and get the mind of a criminal instead, at which point you decide to embrace being a villain and go on a crime spree with your new laser weapon. You even make a comment that "after all, who's going to suspect a twelve-year-old child to be a bank robber?"
- Failure Is the Only Option: Going with the "werewolf" storyline gives no real good ending: if you survive the book, you'll be a werewolf, a "were-hawk", or a regular wolf.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: You can force the aliens who hijacked your memory to put them back, but unfortunately the aliens turns out to have two extra memory banks, and are unsure which one is yours. You're supposed to choose between either of the two, and if you chose wrongly, you end up switching minds with a bank robber. Note that you actually consider this to be a good ending, because now you're an adult with a kid's body, and nobody will suspect a child as a criminal.
- Ghostwriter: This book is confirmed to have been ghostwritten by Scott Westerfield.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Happens if you choose to shoot your enemy into space. Another character points out that you just killed someone, but you respond that you did what you had to, because this person was extremely dangerous.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Which kicks off the plot of the adventure. You start off an amnesiac and spends the entire story finding out who you really are — may it be secret agents, werewolves, or alien abductees.
- Line-of-Sight Name: The reader wakes up with amnesia, and meets a boy who also has amnesia. Since neither of you remembers his name, you decide to call him Max because of the slogan on his T-shirt. In one ending you get your memories back and find out that Max is indeed his real name.
- Moon Logic Puzzle: In one scenario, you've had your memories erased and have learned that you are a secret agent. You vaguely recall that pressing a button on one of your gadgets will summon paratroopers to help you, but aren't sure which button. The book gives you a choice of two: EMER or PARA. If you go with the obvious choice of PARA, this actually paralyzes you, and the bad guys will get you. (EMER was short for EMERGENCY and is the right choice.)
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Max is technically this, since neither you nor he remembers his real name, so you called him "Max" because of the slogan on his T-shirt. Averted in one ending where you discover that it is his real name.
- Our Werebeasts Are Different: The werewolf plot runs on this trope, where you and your friend Max turns out to be werewolves reverting to human forms, and while avoiding werewolf hunters, you can try seeking a reverse for lycanthropy or use a ritual to transform yourself into a werehawk instead. You might become a wereskunk in another bad ending from the same storyline.
- Quest for Identity: The very premise of this entire adventure. You must find out who you really are, but depending on your choices, the backstory will vary.
- Ring of Fire: One of the recurring imageries in your nightmare is a "wheel of circling flames" that pursues you repeatedly. Depending on your choices, the ring will either turn out to be a malfunctioning teleporter machine, the crescent moon, or the underbelly of an alien spaceship.
- Schrödinger's Gun: The book starts with you and a boy called Max waking up with Amnesiac Protagonist Catalyst in an old creepy house. Depending on your choices, you and Max turn out to be either secret agents who underwent memory erasure, alien abductees, or werewolves.
- Silver Bullet: Comes into play in this book, where anything silver is dangerous to a werewolf.
- Teleporter Accident: Attempting to teleport with the Matter Slammer and you risk a bad ending where one of the Slammer's past subjects - a dog-snake hybrid - jumps into the machine with you. You then get fused with the animal in the process and become a part-human, part-dog, part-snake creature.
- Teleportation Misfire: The Secret Agent storyline have your identity revealed to be government agents investigating a teleportation device called the Matter Slammer, and in your escape attempt you managed to teleport yourself, but not your memory. You can also get rid of the main villain by randomly teleporting her miles into the air to her death.
- Waking Up Elsewhere: The first page have you waking up not in your bedroom, but an abandoned house. And you have zero idea how you got here.
- What Does This Button Do?: Defied in the alien abduction sub-plot. When the aliens told you which button you pressed earlier during your abduction and escape, you can pretend to play along and purposely hit a Big Red Button on a panel ("I think it's... this one!") and force the alien ship to crash. But the aliens actually anticipated you'd do something like that and installed a safety lock on their panel, and by attempting to trick them you have pissed off your alien captors. Cue a really bad ending with the aliens deciding to Kill All Humans because of your actions, while you and Max are Forced to Watch from the sidelines.
