Be! Heroic! B-E heroic! When villainy rules the streets of New York, it’s up to you to grab your pompoms, lead the cheer squad, and climb to the top of the pyramid to save the city!

Cheerleader’s Choice: New York Spirit is an interactive novel by former cheerleader Charli Battersby. Your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based, 280,000 words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, fueled by the vast unstoppable power of your imagination. You’ll cheer and you’ll lead, in a game that you read! I sat down with Charli to talk about choices and cheers.

Cheerleader’s Choice: New York Spirit releases Thursday, December 11th! You can wishlist the game on Steam today.

This is is your return to COG and this time: it’s personal. Tell our readers about your life as a cheerleader.

I became a cheerleader as an adult, just like the playable character in the game. I was a nerd in high school, and didn’t even dream that I could ever be a cheerleader. When I tried out for the team, I was riddled with self-doubt. And, even after making it onto the team, I still had impostor syndrome. This is a core theme in Cheerleader’s Choice, which, I assure you IS a comedy. All of this is played for laughs, with a lot of satire and slapstick as your make your way in the bizarre world of adult cheerleading.

And yes, there really are adult cheer teams, similar to the fictional “New York Spirit” in my game. These are mostly non-profit organizations that raise money for charities, and are primarily made up of ex-cheerleaders in their 30’s. In the game, your character can be a total newbie, or an experienced former cheerleader. And you can be young or old. I was no sorority girl when I stared cheering, so the middle-aged, clueless newbie, options in the game are very close to my own path.

In Cheerleader’s Choice I depict cheerleading as realistically as I can, based on my experiences doing stunts, marching in parades, doing charity work and, of course cheering!

I try to show the behind the scenes training that goes into those amazing performances. You don’t start the game as a naturally gifted cheerleader who effortlessly becomes the world’s greatest cheerleader. There’s lot of work just to make it onto the squad. And it only gets harder from there.

The game also depicts what it feels like when a stunt goes wrong, and how dangerous cheerleading is. I know what it’s like to walk around with a black eye because a double down dismount went wrong and I got a flyer’s elbow in my face. And I had to explain people that a little blond girl gave me a black eye at cheer practice…

For most of the game your character has some sort of injury healing up. Which is played for laughs as you accumulate a series of increasingly embarrassing bruises over the course of the story. I think cheerleaders will sympathize.

The fictional cheer team in Cheerleader’s Choice is a lot like the real adult teams. Real cheer teams don’t fight crime or solve mysteries, but they do have just as much drama, scandal, and lunacy as New York Spirit. I’m writing a memoir about all of the real stuff that didn’t make it into the game. Yes, there really are women and men in their 30’s who act exactly like cliques of junior-high girls.

Despite the team drama, I got to participate in a lot of amazing experiences during my time as a cheerleader; I marched in the Thanksgiving parade with 400 other cheerleaders, which was one of those things that I could never, ever, even dream about doing when I was a kid.

And I gotta admit, there is a certain status that comes with the uniform and pompoms. I really started to feel that haughty sense of mean girl superiority while walking around with my girl squad after a cheer performance.

There couldn’t be a better time to publish a game about New York City politics. I love the overlap with this game.

Overlap? Nay! This is pure PROPHESY! A flash of insight straight from the primeval forces of the universe!

It might seem like my game was “ripped from the headlines” but the earliest outline I sent Choice of Games was back in 2020. All of the madness, chaos, and terror in New York politics for the last five years was predicted in my outline!

I foresaw how Governor Cuomo would resign! Curtis Sliwa would run for Mayor! The Adams’ indictment! Bill de Blasio murdering Staten Island Chuck on Groundhog’s Day, and the cover-up that followed!

Future Me is beaming thoughts back in time to 2020 me. That’s the only way to explain it. And don’t blame me if a grizzly bear escapes the Central Park Zoo the day after Mamdani is inaugurated! Or if Governor Kathy Hochul is proven to be a serial killer. I tried to warn you!

I wanted to avoid making either political party the default punching bag of the game’s satire, so your teammates on New York Spirit have a variety of political views. Instead of saying Republican/Democrat, I use a stat called Liberty VS Justice. The New York State flag has icons of Liberty and Justice, so this fits with the “newyorkiness” of the game.

People who talk about “liberty” often mean that they don’t want to be inconvenienced by excessive laws, but they are “tough on crime” when it comes to other people breaking the law. Meanwhile, a lot of people who talk about “justice” only mean justice for criminals, but never getting justice for the victims.

Near the end of the game, my characters discus real political scandals, some of which are more absurd than anything I could make up. When conservatives say that New York is run by America-hating drag queens, remember that NY Governor William Tryon really tried to assassinate George Washington during the Revolutionary War. And before that, Governor Lord Cornbury, allegedly, posed for a portrait while dressed like Queen Anne. And we all remember the time Rudy Giuliani dressed up like Marilyn Monroe back in 2000 (Yes, really).

I’ve worked hard to see to it that people can enjoy the game from different political perspectives (A lot of PR teams say stuff like that, but I hope it’s true with this game). If you think New York is a degenerate cesspool populated entirely with Communist drug addicts, then you’ll probably enjoy the grim satire about politics.

And people who’ve always wanted to live here can live vicariously through the game, I try to capture the little things that make New York seem like a magical wonderland. And I hope that people who do live here will enjoy my depiction of the hidden treasures around the city. (You can visit the Astor Place 6 train station and poke the terracotta beavers to see if I made up that part about the secret subway station).

The humor in this game is sometimes unexpected and seriously black comedy for our readership. Tell me a little bit about the vibes here.

Yeah, this isn’t the kind of cheerleader game where your squad is preparing for the big cheer competition, or you’re trying to become prom queen. Most cheerleading video games are light-hearted and patronizing, or they’re exploitative dating sims. There’s none of that here.

It’s a dark, satire about the struggle to maintain positivity and hope in a crumbling world. It’s about being the only sane person in the room (…and sometimes you’re not even sure about that). It’s about achieving your dreams, then discovering what happens after you achieve them. And, again, I remind you, it IS a comedy.

It’s heavily inspired by dystopian New York stories like “The Warriors,” “Escape From New York,” and “Watchmen.”

But mostly it’s taken from my own experiences living here. Pretty much everything in Cheerleader’s Choice is based on something I’ve done. The parades, the beauty pageant, the cheer events, the nightclubs and bars, the caper at City Hall.

I’m especially proud of the depiction of NY City Hall. I’m a journalist, and I spend a lot of time there. I knew I just had to write a scene where some mischievous cheerleaders engage in political espionage. The government will take away my press card if they see my highly-detailed descriptions of how to break into City Hall. (Check your local laws before overthrowing the government, kids. Choice of Games does not endorse any form of illegal activity).

One of the reasons this game was so long in development is that I had trouble writing satire that was more bizarre than the real New York. I thought it would be funny to have a scene where the new mayor brags about how the number of dismembered bodies found around the city was down when compared to the previous year. Then Mayor Adams began his tenure with a press conference about all the dismembered body parts found around the city. And a year later, there was another dismembering incident…

I’m glad it took this long to finish the game, because I feel like I have free reign to poke fun at the government. If this had come out in 2019, people would have seen it as far too cynical. But in 2025, no one is going to claim that the fictional government conspiracy in my game is impossible. No one is going to say, “But the real government would never do something like THAT!”

Cheerleader’s Choice also deals with bullying. Again, this is part of the dark humor. I have a skill in the game for bullying, BUT players will be penalized for using it in most situations. The bully dialog is often funny, but it makes the world a worse place when you’re mean. There is also a Spirit! stat that helps you win tough challenges if you’ve been nice to people earlier in the game. Game Designers say that it’s bad for a game to have a dominant strategy but I want my cheerleading game to reward players for being cheerful and inspiring.

Why so many Brittanies?

I tried to avoid cheerleader stereotypes. But….

The cheer team I was on really did have three Briannas, two Britanies, and two Bryans, all with different spellings. When the gods of comedy offer me a gift like that, how can I spurn such a boon? I just HAD to have a clique of cheerleaders named Bryttanny, Britnee, Britneigh, and Bryan.

What is the dumb luck stat about?

When I was cheerleading I learned that people assume you’re an idiot if you’re wearing a cheer uniform. This is especially true for women; the more glamorous you look, the dumber people think you are.

Dumb Luck and “Blonde Momentum” are your ability to “Play dumb” as well as your option to just blunder your way through difficult situations and hope for the best.

A recurring gag is that, if you build up your Dumb Luck stat there will be lots of missplelings in the text as the game proceeds, and sometime people will speak to you in a patronizing way.

In my own life, if you look at my social media on the day I tried out for the team, then look at me two years later, there’s a definite transformation. Even I have to admit I don’t look like a rocket scientist in my uniform.

Also, it really is hard to spell while you’re trying to do dance choreography!

What’s your favorite part of actual real-life cheerleading?

Definitely cheering for people at events like marathons and walk-a-thons. The moments when I’m cheering for just one person who is at the limits of their endurance. Those are the times when you can see how saying “You can do it!” will make a difference to that one person.

The first chapter of Cheerleader’s Choice is based on moments like these.

And I also like the way that I’ve become a more outgoing, positive person (dystopian satire aside). I was very shy and cynical before becoming a cheer leader, and the experience changed me for the better.

Explain the hierarchy of a squad in 150 words or fewer.

In the real world, teams aren’t run by an autocratic cheer captain like in a teen drama. Or by a strict Texan dominatrix like on reality TV. It’s a team effort.

Most teams are non-profit organizations with Boards of Directors, and designated athletic coaches, choreographers, marketing, membership, and PR teams.

New York Spirit in my game, is a highly simplified version of a real cheerocracy.

What’s next for you, creatively? What else have you been working on?

My cheer team certainly has another adventure left in them! If players enjoy it and want more, then I’m happy to grab my pompoms, tighten my ponytail, and do more.

And a lot of people know me from my work writing Fallout fan projects at Shoddycast. I have always wanted to do my own darkly-comedic post-apocalyptic adventure game. And there are lots of stories that I wanted to write “In the Back When Times” but never got the chance to do. I have an outline for a Choice of Games style post-apocalyptic comedy that I’ve been working on…