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. Choice of Games editor Mary Duffy sat down with Abigail to talk about her writing process, dragons, and ghostly protagonists.

Specters of the Deep releases on Thursday, September 25th. You can play the first four chapters for free right now and wishlist the game on Steam!

Specters of the Deep is, like Stars Arisen, somewhere in the neighborhood of a million words. How are you putting out half a million words a year? Literally how.

Sheer love of the game. Games.

But actually, the primary thing is that I am both a person for whom writing every day works well as a strategy and a person who usually has the time in my schedule to do so. I’m always wary of giving universal writing advice because I don’t expect that what works for me will work for everyone, but that’s essentially what I do. I don’t always write the same amount, and if I’m busy it’s often barely anything at all, but I do at least a bit of something every day, whether that’s actually writing the game, making notes about future plans, or editing. There’s also a lot of outlining. With the development of the initial game pitch, there’s a comprehensive outline laying out the specifics of the story, characters, and plot, and then I tend to make smaller outlines along the way about the events of individual chapters. Not necessarily in a ton of detail, but laying out the general options for the PC and some approximations of how the mechanics will work. That’s very helpful in keeping things focused and figuring out what I need to approach next, even if I don’t stick to those outlines entirely.

I can also tell you that according to a spreadsheet I have, between April 2023 and July 2025, I wrote an average of 1628 words per day. But some of those days are single-digit numbers.

Tell us everything we ought to know about this world.

This is an interesting question to answer, because the characters in the game are also learning quite a lot of new things about the world as the story unfolds. For one thing, until shortly before the main storyline begins, they didn’t know there were ghosts. Well, most of them didn’t.

The story takes place in a country called Galdrin, on an island a short distance away from a much larger continent called Haberna. We end up seeing Galdrin at a couple of different points in history, because (spoiler alert) (not really) (it happens a few pages into the game and there’s a ghost on the cover art) the PC dies. The PC is Galdrin’s national hero, a near-mythological figure even during their lifetime, and in one of their many glorious battles, they die. Then, centuries later, they rise up as a ghost from their own grave, and are immediately called upon to save Galdrin in its hour of need once again. So part of what we’re learning about the world has to do with the ways it’s changed since their death and the ways it hasn’t. They’re coming back at a time of great innovation, witnessing new kinds of scientific and magical advancement, but also at a time when Galdrin is being very literally haunted by its past. Mostly by the ghosts that are swarming up out of the ocean.

Exactly what’s up with the ghosts—and, for that matter, the ocean—is something you’ll have to discover.

There’s dragons in this game. We love a dragon at Choice of Games.

I was a dragon kid. Dragons are my associated animal that people turn to when they aren’t sure what present to get for me. I have been wearing a necklace with a dragon on it almost every day since seventh grade. At a glance I can see three decorative dragons from my desk, and there are more upstairs. Last week, I was playing with sidewalk chalk with my nieces, and drew a dragon in the style that I have been drawing dragons since I was not much older than they are. When my brother came outside, he looked at our artwork and said, “Oh, it’s that dragon you draw.”

I could go on.

It is kind of weird that neither of my previous games had dragons in them. People in my life, on learning I was writing games, have asked me how many dragons were in them, and I had to say “none” until now. It’s less confusing for everyone that they’re here now. I hope you like them.

Why was the idea of a PC who is a ghost so compelling to you?

Stars Arisen featured a ghost, Vivian, as one of the main characters. I had a great time writing him, figuring out when his ghostly abilities would be an asset and when they’d be a problem. His storyline also involved reacting and adjusting to the reputation he’d acquired after his death. When I started thinking about new game ideas, I found that was something I wanted to explore more, and making the PC the ghost this time was the easiest way to do that. (Though I shouldn’t say “the” ghost—there are definitely others!)

My games also tend to involve reckoning with the history of the setting in various ways, and playing a PC who’s a crucial figure in that history was a particularly interesting way to approach that. (Of course, the PC in Heroes of Myth is also a rather important figure in the very recent history of the setting, but we’re looking a little farther back here.)

Also, I wouldn’t say that “strict adherence to the laws of physics” has ever been a defining characteristic of my writing, but it’s been refreshing to have a reason to ignore them even more. A lot of this game takes place underwater, and ghosts have a lot less to worry about down there than living people do. (Or do they?)

As you’ve grown and evolved as a writer with COG, what lessons have your previous games, Heroes of Myth and Stars Arisen, taught you that you’re bringing to Specters of the Deep?

Well, not how to make things shorter. I was convinced going in (and for almost all of the writing process) that Specters of the Deep would be shorter than Stars Arisen, which wound up not being the case. But the experience I have is something else that allows me to write as much and as quickly as I do. I know the tools and building blocks I’m working with very well by now, and that makes it much easier to figure out how to arrange them into something cool.

As I mentioned, you’re putting out a lot of words every year, but you’re also managing a number of projects as an editor. What upcoming games of yours are you particularly hype to tell our readers about?

There are quite a few, so that’s a very tricky question! I do want to encourage people to check out a few work-in-progress threads on our forum:

• The Earth Has Teeth by Harris Powell-Smith: A different world from the Crème de la Crème series, and one I’m really excited about! More fantasy, more storms, more tigers, same incredible writing and characters.
• To Reign in Hell by Stuart Martyn: Play an archdevil and seize the throne of hell! (Or help someone else do it. Or just spread chaos throughout the afterlife.) The WIP thread went up pretty recently, and I encourage everyone to take a look.
• Of Love and Honor by Raven de Hart: Raven de Hart’s third game, though they’re all new settings, so you can start with any of them! You can romance a dragon in this one. (Also, fight with blades and magic in a tournament for the future of your nation, but I think you know what I’m about.)

Off-forum thus far, I’ll mention The Bone Dancer’s Bane, a fantasy epic I expect to match or exceed Specters of the Deep in length, about fighting to keep a dying world alive in the midst of an ongoing ice zombie apocalypse. Also, not upcoming but just released, I do want to shout out Star Crystal Warriors Go!

What are you working on next? And how long of a break will you take before you begin it?

No idea! Due to production schedule reasons, there was a much longer gap between the end of beta testing and the release for Stars Arisen than there will be for Specters of the Deep. It had been a few months and I’d already started working on Specters by the time Stars Arisen came out, but as I’m writing this, the Specters beta wrapped up less than two weeks ago, and I’m still very much still in break mode. I never really know exactly when I’m going to have an idea for a new project, but I tend to need some time to recharge first. So stay tuned!