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Duel your greatest rival to win back your honor—or spark a revolution! It’s a tournament of steel, strategy, sabotage, or forbidden magic, in a fantasy world inspired by the Silk Road.

Games of the Monarch’s Eye is a 238,000-word interactive “silk and sorcery” fantasy novel by Saffron Kuo. I sat down with Saffron to talk about their game and experience writing in ChoiceScript.

Games of the Monarch’s Eye releases this Thursday, August 14th. You can play the first three chapters today, for free!

This is your first time writing interactive fiction with Choice of Games, tell me a little about your interest in ChoiceScript style IF.

I was a 90s kid, so I was raised on a steady diet of video games and books, including choose your own adventure books. The branching and role playing in video games is always fun, but there is something really nostalgic and special for me in a text only medium, where the reader can become a co-creator of the experience. I always loved Choice of Games’ way of putting it: ‘fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.’

What did you find most surprising about the writing process?

Managing all of the choices and stats was a handful, particularly as a first time interactive fiction writer. I’ve done some light coding elsewhere, which I was thankful for. I am also extremely grateful to my editor, Rebecca Slitt, for always helping me stay on track narratively. So many cliffs I faced. So many cliffs I stepped away from. Choice of Games encourages a lot of very intentional design to keep the work as a whole from getting too unwieldy. It would be possible to create a web so vast that a writer could never resolve half of the plotlines. However what surprised me most was the range of end results possible within this framework. Players can have vastly different experiences within this one universe, and that is really cool. It’s something I didn’t quite appreciate the scale of until I finished writing a game myself.

Who was your favorite NPC to write?

I have affection for everyone in this game, which I’m sure every author says. But, cracking Casiola’s shell as I was writing him/them/her was very fulfilling. While the player will control the depth of that relationship, and how much teasing he/they/she must endure, the long history between characters is an opportunity for peak yearning.

What inspired the setting and what influenced your work in this kind of fantasy genre?

When I started fleshing out the details of the Games and each round of the tournament, I was simultaneously thinking about the Silk Road. I became fixated on what our Westernized extractive narrative around it might have looked like with no Marco Polo main character syndrome. Those who lived on these actual historical trade routes had a very different view, of course. However, as I’m Chinese American, this definitely maintains a Western (and probably USian) lens in many ways.

The Game structure defined the acts, and the city structure led me to making the road itself the city, a series of outposts. Citizens would travel from outpost to outpost regularly. Each one could have its own customs while maintaining a larger Varzian culture. These two concepts melded into a traveling competition, where instead of hosting the Games in one city, each act would take place in a different outpost.

I stumbled on the double entendre of fortune (from the stars and fate; in your coin purse). Combined with the undertone of trade in this world, the two factions, the Merchants and Artisans, emerged quickly thereafter.

This was definitely a fun exercise of mixing and ‘using the elements you have’ in regards to worldbuilding.

Do you have some IF or text-based games you love that you’d want to share with our readers?

I have a deep affection for Harris Powell Smith’s Noblesse Oblige, part of the “Crème de la Crème” series. I enjoyed the first game, of course. Something about a drafty gothic house story with scowling love interests absolutely harpoons my interest, though. I’ve also just downloaded Stewart C. Baker’s Spire, Surge, and Sea and I’m eager to dig into that when life slows down a bit.

What are you working on next?

It’s been an unexpectedly busy summer, so I am trying to get my life back in order and prioritize reading for fun again. I have a few small narrative game ideas cooking (like a pedometer based story! and some solo TTRPGs, perhaps). It’s hard to stay away from longform, though, so I’m sure I will start dreaming up another IF work soon.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

You are an android. Almost a thousand years of age, you’ve seen more wars and fought more battles than any human ever could. Your experience will soon be called upon, as you battle an ancient monster and fight to preserve the Solar System…or whatever else you hold dear.

Saturnine is 33% off until August 14th!

Saturnine is an interactive novel by Jon Matthieu where your choices control the story. It’s almost entirely text-based, with 700,000 words and hundreds of choices, fueled by the vast power of your imagination.

It is the year 990 AC. Earth is dead, forever claimed by the Calamity. Stars are unreachable, forever denied to human ambition. Only in the vastness of the Solar System humanity still survives, spiting the sentient machines that once tried to destroy it. Artificial Intelligence, a tool once used to shape space itself to human liking, is now an object of fear and a target of ceaseless hunts on every moon of every planet. You are a dying breed, though you’re determined to survive all the same.

You’ve spent almost a thousand years on the run, an android among humans, a machine among creatures of flesh. You’ve recently found a safe haven, perhaps even a family, on a nigh-forgotten Saturnian station. During a heist launched on behalf of your group, you encounter a group of meta-humans who pose great danger to you and your friends…but also present a unique opportunity.

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary—or abandon silly human notions of sex and gender.
• Travel around Saturn and its various moons, in a setting where every location is based on an existing astronomical object.
• Fight superhuman foes with your advanced weaponry, powerful fists, silver tongue, or the lightning dancing between your fingers.
• Romance one of your robotic friends—or perhaps one of your quasi-human pursuers.
• Determine your place, goals, and values in the bizarre world 1207 years into our future.
• Reconcile with humanity and forgive past wrongs…or embrace your hatred as part of you.

Just what kind of android will you be?

Jon developed this game using ChoiceScript, a simple programming language for writing multiple-choice interactive novels like these. Writing games with ChoiceScript is easy and fun, even for authors with no programming experience. Write your own game and Hosted Games will publish it for you, giving you a share of the revenue your game produces.

We’re proud to announce that Spire, Surge, and Sea, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for Steam, Android, and on iOS in the “Choice of Games” app. It’s 30% off until August 7th!

The King lies. The gods live. In humanity’s last city, floating in a worldwide seascape, will you tear it all down to protect your own memories?

Spire, Surge, and Sea is an interactive post-apocalyptic science fantasy novel by Nebula finalist Stewart C. Baker, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based, 380,000 words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Amid the turbulent waves of the Worldsea stands Gigantea, the walled island city. It is the last haven of humanity, and the last remnant of the days before: before the gods grew jealous of humanity’s overreaching; before the king’s ancestors took up their burden of rule; before the gods sent the curse of the Rot to corrupt and destroy all of the rest of civilization. Only the king’s magic can sustain the fortifications that hold back the Rot.

(This is all a lie, as I’ve told you before. The king has the power to erase people’s memories with the power of his voice. He imprisons spirits and drains their magic to fuel his ambitions. Focus! You must remember this time!)

At the top of the city stand the lofty Spires, housing alchemy labs and bustling high-tech manufactories that can instantly produce everything from food to tools to clothing. You stand on the brink of adulthood, training for the career that will shape the rest of your life.

But now the rebellious Surge clamors against the rigid hierarchy of Gigantea’s society, striving for equality and threatening to overturn the only order you have ever known. Will you stand with the stalwart Spireguard to uphold the monarchy and maintain the integrity of Gigantea, join the anarchist rebels and bring about radical change, or speak for the spirits and taste their magic? Or, will you try to rise as high as the Spire itself to rule the city in your own right?

Explore the forbidden places: the long-abandoned Shallows, where ambient magic has transformed sea creatures into vicious beasts; the archives where secret documents record ancient injustices waiting to be set right. Or, you might even venture out into the ocean to discover whether the stories that have sustained you for generations are really true.

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; cis- or transgender; gay, straight, bi, asexual; monogamous or polyamorous.
• Choose your path through a post-apocalyptic society: master the mystical art of spirit magic, the high-tech craft of masonry, or meld science and the supernatural with alchemical potions.
• Communicate through speech or signing; and live in a society where all body shapes, sizes, disabilities, skin tones, and identities are treated equally
• Revel in a jubilant night-market festival full of delicious food; and play entertaining mini-games.
• Dungeon-crawl through the Shallows, fighting magically transformed beasts – or try to heal them from the corruption of the Rot, and find refuge for yourself as well.
• Defend the monarchy, upholding the established order and elevating the King to a god! Or cast your lot with the rebels of the Surge, and overthrow everything.
• Venture out into the rot-cursed Worldsea to explore the world beyond Gigantea – if it still exists.

When the Surge rises up, can the Spire continue to stand?

We hope you enjoy playing Spire, Surge, and Sea. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. The more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

Humanity’s last haven stands in a cursed sea: will you defend or overthrow it? Be warned: vanquished gods and spirits watch your every move. Spire, Surge, and Sea is an interactive post-apocalyptic science fantasy novel by Nebula finalist Stewart C Baker. I sat down with Stewart to talk about his work and his varied experiences writing interactive fiction. Spire, Surge, and Sea releases next Thursday, July 31st. You can play the first three chapters for free, today, and wishlist it on Steam!

This is your second game with COG after the incredible and hilarious The Bread Must Rise. What if anything has changed in your approach to writing interactive fiction with ChoiceScript between these two games?

The Bread Must Rise taught me a lot about writing in ChoiceScript, and I felt a lot more comfortable diving in this time around. I had a much better sense of where I was going to get myself stuck by making certain narrative choices and—although I didn’t always avoid those choices—the game felt much less overwhelming as a result.

Spire, Surge, and Sea is simpler than The Bread Must Rise in some ways (because it doesn’t have those cooking contest scenes, which were a bit of a nightmare to code). In other ways, I think it’s more complex (why did I think it was a good idea to let gameplay affect which NPCs are present in some scenes? Why?!).

These are kind of vague answers, so maybe what I’m saying is “I still have no real idea what I’m doing.”

One thing I’ve confirmed is that I’m terrible at sticking to outlines. Both games looked pretty different by the end than they did at the start!

Also, I greatly benefited by exploring the code of other Choice of Games titles, especially Harris Powell-Smith’s. Their work is always fantastic, and I saved myself a lot of time and hassle by exploring how they set up variables for stat increase amounts and test value amounts at the start of the game, rather than typing in a numeric value every single time!

Where do these two insanely different settings and worlds and tones come from in your fevered brain?

There is chiefly one person you can thank for this (or, if you’d rather, one person you can blame): Terry Pratchett.

More seriously, it may seem weird that I could go from zany comedy to atmospheric and slightly depressing science fantasy, but a lot of the books, games, anime and movies I enjoy the most also mix the sad with the surreal.

I read a lot of British SFF as a child (I was born in the UK), especially Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams but also lesser-known (in the US) authors like Tom Holt. And, when I was slightly older, I watched classics like Monty Python and Red Dwarf. I also got into anime and manga in my teens, and that grew into a broader interest in Japanese language, culture, and history while I was in college, including Japanese literature (classical and modern) and fiction, haiku, Zen Buddhism, and so on. And then in graduate school, I focused on medieval English poetry, especially the work of Geoffrey Chaucer.

I am a bit of a nerd, in case that wasn’t clear.

Anyway, something all of these different things tend to do is mix absolutely hilarious, surreal comedy with things that are deeply messed up and upsetting. Sometimes, the upsetting things are played for laughs. Sometimes the comedy is there to make the upsetting things catch you off guard. But often the two different tonalities just coexist, side by side, serving to highlight both the absurdity of life and our ambitions, and how tenuous and transient both of those things are in the end.

Woomph. This answer started with a joke and then suddenly got dark, huh? But that mixture of darkness and light, that brevity and our desire to overcome it, is what makes life so precious. It’s what makes us human.

Terry Pratchett is perhaps the most accessible example.

One of his most memorable characters from Discworld is Death. Literally Death—cowl and scythe and everything. Death’s struggles to understand human nature are hilarious, but they’re also compelling. And Death appears in nearly every novel, because people die and it’s his job to go collect their souls and show them on to their afterlives. (As the intro to A Death in Hyperspace notes: people die all the time.)

Those scenes with Death stick with you. They may be surrounded by jokes and puns—and many times contain jokes and puns in their own right—and they may be short, but they aren’t, themselves, jokes. Even when the character who has died is minor, or really only exists in the book to have been killed, their death is treated sincerely, their afterlife given a weight and a sort of transcendent beauty. (Or, in some cases, we get grim satisfaction by seeing them get what they deserve.)

Murderbot is another great example of this. Although people talk up how relatable Murderbot is as a character, it’s not solely its obsession with media and desire to be left alone that makes the series work. It’s the mix of tragedy and comedy, and how they both play an important part in Murderbot’s struggles to understand what it means to be human—and its difficulty accepting itself as a person.

Anyway, TLDR: I don’t think it’s weird to mix things that are hilarious with things that are sad. I can’t really understand how not to do it, most of the time!

What do you think our readers will find most surprising about Spire, Surge, and Sea?

The mix of fantasy tropes (gods, spirits, magic) with science fiction elements (nanotechnology) is probably the game’s most unusual thing.

Science fantasy is uncommon, but I do enjoy it! If you enjoy Studio Ghibli movies like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Laputa: Castle in the Sky, you might find some familiar notes in this one. My working title, for instance, was Gigantea: Age of Rot. Those movies, as well as Ursula K. LeGuin’s Hainish stories and novels, are the game’s main influences in terms of tone and tenor.

And maybe it’s not surprising after my previous answer, but despite the overall serious tone of Spire, Surge, and Sea, I still managed to fit in a few zany comedy bits.

This is a solo effort, but you’ve written with a writing partner and as part of a group. I’m fascinated to hear how the writing process differed for you in these different projects.

The development and writing process for The Bread Must Rise, A Death in Hyperspace, and Spire, Surge, and Sea was drastically different in each case.

In The Bread Must Rise, James and I set up weekly video meetings, pretty much from the outlining process all the way through to the day we turned in the final game. We spent a lot of time in those brainstorming, bouncing jokes and ideas off each other, working through bugs and code problems, and generally figuring out what in the hells we were doing.

All that talking made the game a lot stronger and more successful, I think, than if either of us had gone it alone. It was really a collaboration in the purest sense of the word, in that I don’t think there’s much of that game that only a single one of us wrote. We each tweaked and changed and planned pretty much all of it together!

A Death in Hyperspace, which has ten(!) co-authors, was a very different beast. I came up with the frame and concept of the piece myself, and most of the writing was done in a question-and-answer kind of format. I guided the other writers through a character creation process, with a few parameters in place, and then had them describe their character’s backstory and answer a series of questions from the point of view of Pearl, the game’s player character, who is an intelligent spaceship trying to solve a murder mystery. The other writers also wrote some of the ship’s rooms, though, and provided great insights into its mechanics and narrative throughout.

Again, what makes the game so special and interesting is the way all those different people’s perspectives have shaped it. It was a blast to work on, even though I should have been working on Spire, Surge, and Sea when I wrote it. Considering people liked it well enough for it to win a Nebula, I guess I’m not sorry about that constructive slacking off. (But don’t tell Jason I said that! 😉 )

When I’m writing by myself, I’m also a lot more self-indulgent! Usually I try to keep that tamped down, but for Spire, Surge, and Sea, I let myself lean into it a bit. Probably the place that is most obvious is in the prose, which tends to be a bit more flowery and elaborate. Plus I made some minigames, which was fun!

I sometimes struggle to stay motivated and finish solo projects properly, as well. The fact that Choice of Games contracts have deadlines are a big help, but with collaborations I know other people are also invested in a project before it’s completed, so I’m more likely to follow through.

I will say that, with a game the size of a Choice of Games title, there really is no such thing as a completely solo effort. Spire, Surge, and Sea was a giant mess before beta testing. It’s really only thanks to the work of the many folks who tested it that it’s any good. So THANK YOU, beta testers! All the commentary and testing you provided, whether big or small, was immeasurably helpful.

I’d like to give a special shout out to Aletheia Knights, beta tester extraordinaire, without whom chapter 2—and the tension and clarity it brings to the world—would literally not exist. As always, her feedback made this game much, much better! I’d also like to to recognize Choice of Games forum member Mr_DeBlob for finding many bugs and making many excellent suggestions over the course of a number of playthroughs spread across about a month and a half.

You’re a heavy hitter in IF with The Bread Must Rise being a Nebula finalist for games in 2023 and your multi-authored A Death in Hyperspace winning this year’s award just a few weeks ago! Have you realized all your game-writing ambitions yet or what new styles and genres do you think you’ll be taking on next?

I’m proud of the recognition those games have received, but struggle to conceive of myself as any kind of hitter!

To be honest, I think the collaborative aspect of both those games is what makes them shine. I’d love to work on more multi-author games in the future—it’s always exciting to see multiple perspectives combine and shift, and what comes out in the end is always the better for it.

Outside of that, I’ve been interested in trying out games that aren’t just completely text. A Death in Hyperspace takes the first tentative steps towards that, with music and a few very small graphical elements. I’d love to learn Unity or Godot or some other game engine that mixes writing with graphical assets, but I’m not sure I have the time!

One thing I’d really like to do is write a game that makes it to game consoles one way or the other. Maybe some day. 🙂

What non-game writing work would you like our readers to know about?

If you enjoy Spire, Surge, and Sea, you might enjoy my short story collection The Butterfly Disjunct. It’s a collection of science fiction stories, and while some of them are funny and some of them are sad, the emphasis in all of them is really on the characters. That’s available in print and ebook from various retailers and directly from the publisher, Interstellar Flight Press.

If you’d like to keep up with what I’m doing next and what I’ve been reading or playing lately, you can also sign up for my monthly newsletter. I try to keep the self-promotion to a minimum, so usually it’s me sharing things I’ve enjoyed or diving into interesting topics.

In terms of other people’s work, I’ve been tearing through Victoria Goddard’s Lays of the Hearth Fire series. They’re lovely and engrossing, if quite long! And if you’re into space opera, you’ll enjoy The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa and The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei. Both have memorable settings, tense plots, and great characters.

Do you have a favorite IF you want to encourage folks to play?

Generally speaking, I find myself drawn to games that take chances or do something unusual as well as having solid writing.

On the book-length Choice of Games front, I really enjoyed Natalia Theodoridou’s meta horror game Restore, Reflect, Retry. It’s got a wonderfully creepy voice and plays with one of my favourite tropes: the dissonance between the player and the player character. Plus, it’s got lots of fantastic storytelling even without that.

Slay the Princess is another game I’ve played recently that explores that trope. It’s a visual novel, so maybe not IF strictly speaking, but I think anyone who enjoys strange and twisty games will love it.

(Both of these games were also Nebula finalists this year, by the way!)

Naca Rat’s Teahouse of the Gods is another of my COG favourites. I was really impressed by how it takes the “design your character” mechanic common in a lot of COG titles and turns it into something that genuinely impacts how the characters of the game interact with you—and vice versa. Plus, anyone who enjoyed The Bread Must Rise will appreciate its somewhat unconventional approach to romantic interests!

On the shorter front, I tend to enjoy weird Twine games rather than parser based pieces. Again, it’s probably that preference for the unusual and experimental! (Also, to be honest, I am awful at solving puzzles…)

Queers in Love at the End of the World by Anna Anthropy takes ten seconds to play but sticks with you much longer.

Zoinks! by Elizabeth Smyth is less experimental, but it’s a lot of fun.

I do enjoy Ryan Veeder’s hilarious Castle Balderstone games. They’re parser-based, but super weird, hilarious (worth saying twice), and not too difficult.

That said, I have a soft spot for great characterization as well.

Brendan Patrick Hennessy’s series of IF about Bell Parks (child detective and, eventually, grown-up detective) is charming through and through—and also often hilarious.

We’re proud to announce that the demo of our upcoming Choice of Games title Specters of the Deep is now available to play on Steam and on choiceofgames.com!

In life, you were a legendary hero. Now, you’ll rise from the grave as a ghost to defend your country in its hour of greatest need! Defy dragons, duel the dead, and face the nightmare at the bottom of the sea!

Specters of the Deep is an interactive epic fantasy novel by Abigail C. Trevor, author of Heroes of Myth and Stars Arisen. It’s entirely text-based, 1 million words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

You can play the first four chapters today, for free, either on Steam or on our website, and wishlist it on Steam here! Specters of the Deep will release Thursday, September 25th.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Take the commander’s seat of an American tank. Plunge into the deserts of North Africa. Every decision counts as you battle Nazis, master logistics, and strive to keep your crew—and yourself—alive.

World War II Armored Recon is 33% off until July 10th!

Every gallon of gas matters. Every round might be irreplaceable as your travels take you far from friendly lines and into a storm of secrets and maneuvers unknown to all but a handful of combatants.

World War II Armored Recon is an interactive novel of approximately 900,000 words by Allen Gies, the lead writer for Burden of Command.  It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary, but don’t expect romance in the Army.
• Experience exotic North Africa as a wide-eyed American soldier.
• Fight in historical battles with all the chaos and improbability therein.
• Shoot Nazis.
• The Stuart tank you’ll command can be upgraded in numerous ways.
• Three crewmen to bond with: Gunner, Driver, and Mechanic.
• Personal stats, tank stats, activity stats, and relationship statuses.

Allen developed this game using ChoiceScript, a simple programming language for writing multiple-choice interactive novels like these. Writing games with ChoiceScript is easy and fun, even for authors with no programming experience. Write your own game and Hosted Games will publish it for you, giving you a share of the revenue your game produces.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

You died young. Sorry about that. But now you’re back! Your wife’s magic yanks you from death’s clutches, but power always comes with a cost. Decide if you can love the heart that doomed you before it’s too late.

To Ashes You Shall Return is free to win, and paying to turn off ads is 33% off until July 10th! 

To Ashes You Shall Return is a 31,000-word interactive novel of sapphic love and loss by Kaitlyn Grube. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Explore the wonders of:

• Queer romance
• Tragedy
• Witchcraft
• A kitty named Tabitha
• An unstoppable tide of existential dread

The dirt claims us all in the end. How will you live in the meantime?

Kaitlyn developed this game using ChoiceScript, a simple programming language for writing multiple-choice interactive novels like these. Writing games with ChoiceScript is easy and fun, even for authors with no programming experience. Write your own game and Hosted Games will publish it for you, giving you a share of the revenue your game produces.

We’re proud to announce that Eternal Affairs, the latest in our “Heart’s Choice” line of multiple-choice interactive romance novels, is now available for iOS and Android in the “Heart’s Choice” app. You can also download it on Steam, or enjoy it on our website.

It’s 40% off until July 3rd!

Recover a stolen artifact and lose your heart as a secret magical agent! Can you uncover an arcane conspiracy before the clock runs out?

Eternal Affairs is an interactive urban fantasy romance novel by Jamie Maurer. It’s entirely text-based, 100,000 words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

After you lost your beloved brother in a magical anomaly, you joined the Bureau of Magic to investigate magical anomalies and prevent the same tragedy from befalling anyone else. Of course, it takes magic to investigate magic: when thieves can use shadow manipulation charms to evade security cameras and hackers can insert necromantic malware into computers, you need to learn some tricks of your own. You can shapeshift, move objects with your mind, teleport, heal the most grievous injuries – or cause them by flinging fireballs. You can even manipulate time itself, gazing into the past or future.

When a dangerous artifact is stolen right out of one of the Bureau’s most secure vaults, you and your partner are tasked with recovering it. But your investigation turns up a web of conspiracies that lead to the highest levels of the Bureau, into other worlds – and even into your own traumatic past.

As the portals spin and the spells fly, your heart is beating with much more than just the thrill of the chase. Maybe you’ll be drawn to rogue mage Charlie, a loose-cannon Bureau consultant with platinum-bleached hair, a whole gallery’s worth of tattoos, fabulously tight leather pants and a cheekily rebellious attitude. Or, there’s Lex, your ride-or-die partner at the Bureau. Loyal, serious, with brown hair and freckles, a stocky build and a soft face that resembles an anxious teddy bear in times of trouble – but had you ever noticed before how all those hours at the gym have built up Lex’s muscles to fill out the Bureau uniform?

When you reach the top of the conspiracy, which of them will be by your side?

• Play as male, female, or non-binary; gay, straight, or bi/pan.
• Choose your magical specialty: matter, energy, time/space, or antimagic.
• Enter the kaleidoscopic magical realm of the Fae to negotiate the delicate balance between their world as yours – or just dance the night away at a fabulous Fae masked ball!
• Play by the book and do your best to keep magic secret – or become a loose cannon and rebel against the Bureau’s restrictive policies, sharing magic with the world
• Navigate the arcane bureaucracy of an arcane Bureau, dealing with your boss, red tape – and worst of all, your smarmy arrogant rival
• Turn to the dark side and defy death!

All magic has a price. What will you pay in pursuit of the truth?

We hope you enjoy playing Eternal Affairs. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on Facebook, Tumblr, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. The more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

Recover a stolen artifact and lose your heart as a secret magical agent! Can you uncover an arcane conspiracy before the clock runs out? After you lost your beloved brother in a magical anomaly, you joined the Bureau of Magic to investigate magical anomalies and prevent the same tragedy from befalling anyone else. Eternal Affairs is an interactive urban fantasy romance novel by Jamie Maurer. I sat down with Jamie to talk about their writing process and inspirations. Eternal Affairs releases this Thursday, June 26th. You can play the first three chapters today for free and wishlist the game on Steam!

This is your first time writing for Heart’s Choice but not your first time writing interactive fiction, I think. Tell me a little about your background with IF.

I’ve worked with several different interactive fiction games on mobile platforms. I started out adapting romance novels into an interactive visual novel format, and I later wrote some original content for the platform Storyloom (sadly no longer available). More recently, I wrote several chapters of an original story called Once Upon a Scheme on the platform Dorian.

How does ChoiceScript and our game design style compare for you to the other tools and places you’ve worked on projects?

There’s definitely a learning curve with ChoiceScript, but that complexity also gave me a lot more freedom and control over the types of mechanics I could implement compared to other platforms I’ve worked with.

What surprised you most about the writing of Eternal Affairs?

This was by far my most ambitious game writing project and it required a lot of trial and error. It also came about during a really tumultuous period of my personal life, which was a very interesting time to be writing a romance novel! I found that one of the best ways to maintain my own writing momentum and that of the story’s pacing was to imagine playing a tabletop roleplaying game with myself, where I was both the game master and the player.

Do you have a favorite NPC?

Charlie has sort of a vampy femme fatale quality to their romantic dialogue that was a lot of fun to play with. I also enjoyed writing Moth and the stream-of-consciousness poeticness that many of the Fae characters speak with.

It’s quite an interesting magical world you’ve created in this game. What sources of inspiration did you have in writing this?

Men in Black, The X-Files, and the video game Control were definitely major influences for the basic premise. The book and TV series The Magicians helped inspire the concept of a hidden magical world influenced by modern politics and socioeconomics. The aesthetic of the Fae world was very much inspired by vaporwave artwork and the paintings of Patrick Nagel. I also once worked for a company that did custom printed products, which, weirdly enough, kind of inspired my game’s CMYK-based magic system.

What are you working on next/what else are you working on now?

I’ve been on an extended hiatus from my YouTube channel about queer media and culture, but I’m looking to get back into creating more videos very soon!

We’re proud to announce that The Last Scion, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for Steam, Android, and on iOS in the “Choice of Games” app.

It’s 33% off until June 26th!

Take to the skies! You fell to Earth as the last remnant of a dying world – can you rise as the planet’s greatest hero and triumph as a beacon of justice? Shrug off bullets, smash buildings with your bare hands, and soar through the air as you battle diabolical supervillains!

The Last Scion is an interactive superhero novel by D. G. P. Rector. It’s entirely text-based, 200,000 words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

You are the Scion, sole survivor of the distant planet Utopia. Scientists on your homeworld imbued you with phenomenal powers – flight, speed, intelligence, strength, and resilience beyond the reach of any ordinary human – and sent you to Earth, accompanied only by your AI companion, MENTOR. Your quest: to carry on the legacy of Utopia by embodying its ideals in your new home.

And Beacon City is in desperate need. The Torchbearers, heroic defenders of the city, are all gone: those who weren’t slain by the villainous Silent Order have gone into hiding. Only a few people remain to carry on their legacy, trying to bring justice back to Beacon City – and they want your help.

By day, do your best to blend in as an ordinary human working at the Beacon City Tribune. By night, soar the skies and fight the villains of the Silent Order: reptilian Gorgon, mischievous telepath Poppet, brilliant scientist Vector, and especially the mysterious leader, Conqueror.

Will you fulfill your homeworld’s dream of carrying Utopia’s ideals to the new planet? Or will you turn to villainy, and possibly achieve greater power than anyone on Utopia could ever conceive?

Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, or bi.
Choose a secret identity at the Beacon City Tribune: maintenance worker, IT specialist, or mild-mannered reporter!
Customize your super-suit, including the most crucial question that a hero can answer: capes, or no capes?
Romance a relentless vigilante, a dashing hero, an intrepid reporter, a hard-boiled detective, or a roguish villain!
Work with the Beacon City PD and stay on the right side of the Superhero Investigation Agency – or push them aside, and soar above the law.
Use subtlety and empathy to turn your enemies away from villainy, or fight them head-on with your super-strength – or join them in villainy!

We hope you enjoy playing The Last Scion. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. The more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.