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Defy nature’s laws and avenge your slain pantheon! Humanity once feared and hated you, but now, awakened from a thousand-year slumber, you are their only hope. Will you liberate them from the tyrants who now rule over them, or let the world burn? God of Chaos is a 325,000-word interactive dark fantasy novel by Brennan Gilpatrick. It releases next Thursday, September 3rd, and you can wishlist it on Steam today! We sat down with Brennan to discuss the game.

You’re coming to Choice of Games with a lot of videogame-writing experience, most notably for the first-person shooter Payday 2. What was it like writing for an established franchise? How did you approach writing within the boundaries of an already-created property?

Payday 2 will always have a special place in my heart. My friends and I played that game to stay connected during the pandemic, so joining that narrative team not long after was incredibly exciting. It was also a big responsibility. The Payday franchise has a devoted and vocal fanbase; they’ll let you know if you get something wrong.

When writing for an established franchise, my first priority is to understand the characters. I study their personalities, histories, relationships, et cetera. Through this, I receive crucial insights about the storyworld. Personalities show me the story’s tone. Histories reveal the rules and mechanics of the setting. Relationships teach me what behaviors are “believable”. Characters are the first aspect of a story that audiences connect with, and Payday 2’s ensemble cast is particularly beloved. Once I felt I could write those characters, everything else came together.

In God of Chaos, you’ve created the potential for a massively powerful PC, which had to be a lot of fun! How—if at all!—did you constrain the PC’s power? And conversely, what’s your favorite wacky thing that the PC does with their power?

Writing the PC in God of Chaos was a blast! Whenever I read about different mythologies, the trickster deities always seem to have the most fun. I really wanted to capture that free-spirited mayhem here.

However, I knew the PC’s power couldn’t go totally unchecked. The stakes would feel nonexistent. My solution was not to nerf the PC, but to raise the danger of the world around them. Early in the story, an Alchemist faction develops an arcane crystal that can, among other things, kill a deity. When they conquer the land, the Alchemists integrate this crystal into their weapons, their machines, everything. The one thing that can harm the PC becomes woven into the very fabric of civilization. Boom! Stakes galore.

My favorite flex of the PC’s power happens near the middle of the story. During a ballroom fight scene, the player receives the opportunity to: A) present themself as a massive cosmic entity, B) take command of the gruesome undead soldiers present, or C) hypnotize the Alchemists into a group dance Beetlejuice-style. Each of these scenarios was so much fun to write, and I think this moment really captures the PC’s versatility. You can be epic, horrifying, and downright absurd; all are equally valid to the character.

There’s some fascinating worldbuilding in God of Chaos: you’ve got Fey creatures and divine magic on the one hand, and railroads and flying ships on the other. What’s the dynamic between magic and technology in this world?

The dynamic is combative to say the least. In the beginning of the story, Vildmara is a land of gods, monsters, and everything in between. The human race grows desperate for some sense of control, and they use technology to achieve it. In classic human fashion, they overstep. Vildmara becomes the Iron Shelter, an empire of machines and industry.

Technology in this world seeks to eradicate magic, and vice versa. As the last living god, the PC has a chance to decide how things play out. They can favor chaotic magic above all else, or embrace technology and the control it represents. Or, they can strive for balance. Or ignore the struggle entirely and just wing it. It’s up to them!

In addition to your extensive game-writing career, you’re also a novelist! Your debut novel Battery Life is set in a sci-fi dystopia–a very different world from the one in God of Chaos. Where did the seed of that story come from?

It’s so funny you bring this up! I was recently comparing Battery Life to God of Chaos, and while the settings are very different, I noticed some thematic overlap. Both stories concern the painful transformation of a world. In Battery Life, it’s our Earth plunging into a neon-soaked dystopia. In God of Chaos, it’s a fantasy world forced into an industrial revolution. I must have dramatic, world-shifting cataclysms on the mind. Wonder what that’s about!

I wrote Battery Life from a story that I outlined with my best friend since high school. It’s an amalgamation of all our favorite sci-fi concepts from books, movies and video games. It’s also a meditation on the unreliability of mentor figures; something I was working through while writing. The story involves a young woman whose remote space station crashes back to war-torn Earth, landing her in the path of a charismatic and untrustworthy scavenger. It’s a love letter to post-apocalyptic roadtrips. If people like God of Chaos, they should check it out!

What are you working on next?

Great question! I’m currently doing narrative design for an RPG project in its early stages. I can’t say too much about that yet, but the team is very talented, and I think we’ll have something cool to share soon!

Regarding personal projects: I have a few ideas for a new interactive fiction game, and I’m about to DM again for the first time in ages. I also have an outline for a dark romance horror novel, inspired by my strange late-night drives while living in LA. I’m very excited about all of these concepts; I just need to decide what to tackle next. Stay tuned!

Today, we are thrilled to release a major, free expansion to House of the Golden Mask, the interactive fantasy novel by Ran Eastwood.

Today’s update to House of the Golden Mask is available at no additional charge. To celebrate, we’re putting the entire game on sale for 30% off.

Awaken your magic and break an ancient curse at this secret school of sorcery! What mysteries will you uncover at the crossroads between realms?

• Romances and friendships are more developed
• There’s more to uncover about the House’s various mysteries
• The game’s difficulty has been adjusted to encourage exploration and discovery

There’s never been a better time to explore the House!

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Navigate unknown waters, deadly politics, and ancient magic to save your clan!

Diaspora is 33% off until August 13th!

Diaspora is a one-million-word interactive novel by Vincent Cunningham and JJ Laurier. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Forced out of your ancestral home, your people must sail to the south, where only your vanished father has ever been. But even after you’ve found a place to live, your problems are far from over. A mighty empire controls the nearby coastal city, and the local raiders want it back. You’ll need to find your place in the conflict, seal an alliance, track down an ancient artifact, and fight for your right to belong. 

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, bi, or asexual.
• Lead your refugee people to a new home.
• Command your crew in deadly sea battles and land raids.
• Fight an ancient sea monster to find a lost island.
• Navigate a storm in search of ancient magic.
• Forge an alliance with a mighty empire or magical, seafaring raiders.
• Find companionship or love among your closest companions, old and new.
• Shape the values and destiny of your clan as you sail into a new age.

Will you hold fast to your clan’s traditions, or will you plunge headfirst into a new future?

Vincent and JJ 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 excited to announce that the free demo for our upcoming game Hunter: The Reckoning — Day for Night is available now on Steam!

These monsters aren’t just in the movies! Will you hunt the vampires, werewolves and others stalking Hollywood, or will you become a monster instead?

Hunter: The Reckoning — Day for Night is an interactive novel by Josh Labelle set in the World of Darkness. It’s entirely text-based, 1,000,000 words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Hunter: The Reckoning — Day for Night will be available September 17th. If you enjoy playing the demo, we encourage you wishlist it today on Steam and tell your friends about it. (The more wishlists we get before release day, the more Steam will feature us.)

Hollywood is full of monsters. From the greedy studio heads to the desperate hopefuls out for their big break, nobody gets out without sin. Once, you were one of those hopefuls, barely scraping by trying to make your dreams come true—scrambling to land auditions or hustling to get your screenplay read.

Then a chance encounter with the supernatural showed you that Hollywood is ruled by another kind of monster. You’ve dedicated yourself to hunting down the beasts who stalk the back alleys of Los Angeles, and doing everything in your power to stop the ones who rule the boardrooms.

It’s been a blockbuster summer for the supernatural, full of inexplicable phenomena and monstrous incidents. There are fires in the hills, ghosts in the theaters, and a beast threatening pets in Beverly Hills that is definitely not a coyote. Could it have something to do with EVRLST, the hottest new self-help and wellness cult run by a washed up ‘80s superstar? Is it true what they say about him never being seen in the daylight and not having aged a day in the last three decades? And what about the woman they call the Baron of Hollywood? What kind of power does she have—and can it possibly compare to the studio execs?

Fortunately, you’re not alone. Others have seen the truth in the shadows, including a retired special-effects wizard, a mortician to the stars, a theater manager, and more. You’ll need all the allies you can get as you drive through the seedy supernatural underbelly of Tinseltown, where chaos reigns, and blood and money flow. There’s no telling who will get top billing, and who will end up slashed on the cutting room floor.

Or will you shirk your hunting duties to pursue your Hollywood dream? Make connections, land jobs on movies, or even make a deal with the devil to get cast in a major blockbuster. Maybe the best way to defeat the bloodsucking monsters is to join them. Or is that Hollywood’s biggest lie, the lie you tell yourself?

• Play as male, female, nonbinary; gay, straight, bi, asexual, or poly.
• Choose your weapon to blast through supernatural threats, and upgrade it for even greater firepower; and visit your local garage to find your perfect getaway vehicle.
• Stop a hot new celebrity from literally sucking the life out of their fans—or succumb to their charms and plunge into a romance.
• Solve a decades-old murder and set an unquiet soul to rest—or drive out the ghost with arcane force!
• Uncover the secrets behind a cult that preys on young vulnerable actors, and stop the monster behind it!

Redeem lost souls in the city of angels—or lose your own soul trying.

Try it now!

Unlock the secrets of Gigantea! Today, we are thrilled to release a major, free expansion to Spire, Surge, and Sea, the Nebula Award Finalist post-apocalyptic science fantasy novel by Stewart C. Baker.

Today’s update to Spire, Surge, and Sea is available at no additional charge. To celebrate, both of Stewart’s Nebula Finalist games are on sale for 40% off until July 30!

• Spire, Surge, and Sea (40% off): 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?
• The Bread Must Rise (40% off): In this magical baking contest, you’ll team up with the Queen Undying to bake your rivals into an early grave—or out of the grave, with necromancy!

Whether you are a returning voyager or braving the Worldsea for the very first time, there has never been a better time to play Spire, Surge, and Sea.

What’s New in the Free Update?

• New Minigames in Chapter Five: Try your hand at one of four brand-new minigames to get closer to the game’s NPCs and discover what life is really like on Gigantea.
• A Frozen Expedition in Chapter Six: Set sail to a mysterious island in the far, frozen reaches of the Worldsea. Uncover tantalizing clues about the King’s former life and secure critical help for your final confrontation.
• In-Game Hint System: Worried about making a wrong move at a crucial moment? Toggle the new hint system to see exactly which stat is tested in each choice—or take out the guesswork entirely and view the exact score you need to succeed.
• More Immersive Roleplay: We’ve expanded action and choice outcomes throughout the entire book for a more reactive, deeply personal player experience.

We’re excited to announce the release date for our upcoming game Hunter: The Reckoning — Day for Night on September 17th. Wishlist it now on Steam!

These monsters aren’t just in the movies! Will you hunt the vampires, werewolves and others stalking Hollywood, or will you become a monster instead?

Hunter: The Reckoning — Day for Night is an interactive novel by Josh Labelle set in the World of Darkness. It’s entirely text-based, 900,000 words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Hollywood is full of monsters. From the greedy studio heads to the desperate hopefuls out for their big break, nobody gets out without sin. Once, you were one of those hopefuls, barely scraping by trying to make your dreams come true—scrambling to land auditions or hustling to get your screenplay read.

Then a chance encounter with the supernatural showed you that Hollywood is ruled by another kind of monster. You’ve dedicated yourself to hunting down the beasts who stalk the back alleys of Los Angeles, and doing everything in your power to stop the ones who rule the boardrooms.

It’s been a blockbuster summer for the supernatural, full of inexplicable phenomena and monstrous incidents. There are fires in the hills, ghosts in the theaters, and a beast threatening pets in Beverly Hills that is definitely not a coyote. Could it have something to do with EVRLST, the hottest new self-help and wellness cult run by a washed up ‘80s superstar? Is it true what they say about him never being seen in the daylight and not having aged a day in the last three decades? And what about the woman they call the Baron of Hollywood? What kind of power does she have—and can it possibly compare to the studio execs?

Fortunately, you’re not alone. Others have seen the truth in the shadows, including a retired special-effects wizard, a mortician to the stars, a theater manager, and more. You’ll need all the allies you can get as you drive through the seedy supernatural underbelly of Tinseltown, where chaos reigns, and blood and money flow. There’s no telling who will get top billing, and who will end up slashed on the cutting room floor.

Or will you shirk your hunting duties to pursue your Hollywood dream? Make connections, land jobs on movies, or even make a deal with the devil to get cast in a major blockbuster. Maybe the best way to defeat the bloodsucking monsters is to join them. Or is that Hollywood’s biggest lie, the lie you tell yourself?

• Play as male, female, nonbinary; gay, straight, bi, asexual, or poly.
• Choose your weapon to blast through supernatural threats, and upgrade it for even greater firepower; and visit your local garage to find your perfect getaway vehicle.
• Stop a hot new celebrity from literally sucking the life out of their fans—or succumb to their charms and plunge into a romance.
• Solve a decades-old murder and set an unquiet soul to rest—or drive out the ghost with arcane force!
• Uncover the secrets behind a cult that preys on young vulnerable actors, and stop the monster behind it!

Redeem lost souls in the city of angels—or lose your own soul trying.

Wishlist Hunter: The Reckoning — Day for Night now on Steam!

Oaths & Ashes is a narrative-driven vampire visual novel set in present-night Berlin, after the fall of the city’s Prince left the Camarilla in retreat and the Anarchs fighting over the wreckage. You play two Kindred whose fates collide: Alice, a disciplined Ventrue sent in to keep the city from unifying, and Lenz, a burned-out Thinblood alchemist who survives on the Ashes – a drug refined from the ashes of destroyed Kindred. Their weapons are words, influence, supernatural Disciplines and forbidden Alchemy. Every choice you make will redraw Berlin’s map of power. It is a story about what people are worth when no one is left to hand them a title.

Wishlist it on Steam today!

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

When midnight strikes, public streets turn into racetracks and every turn has a price. In Los Santino, everyone answers to the call of adrenaline pumping speed, including you. Build your legend as a top racer or become another name lost in the huddle.

Velocity: The Race Begins is 30% off until July 9th!

Velocity: The Race Begins is an exciting 300,000-word interactive racing novel by Matt Ryland, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Choose the type of person you will become. Will you fight all for yourself? Or will you stand by family? Rise through an underground scene ruled by ruthless gangs, organized mafias, crooked cops, and other racers who think they own the streets.

• Play as male or female.
• Forge your skills behind the wheel! Work on your abilities to become the best racer in Los Santino! Craft your own style of racing!
• Tune the machine! Upgrade your ride, add Nitros, and blaze the highways in style!
• Challenge other racers to race to prove who’s the best!
• Pick your crew, join a family! Or tackle the underworld alone!
• Investigate the mysteries of Los Santino! Discover the disturbing truths hidden deep within the neon city!
• Try and avoid the heat! Engage in thrilling police chase where it’s you against the law!
• Romance or rival! Find love amidst the chaos!
• Make your name! Climb to the top the circuit and become the champ!
• Contribute to the chaos! Join a gang and love life on the wild side!

 Live your life a quarter mile at a time.

Matt 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.

Happy Pride! Choice of Games is proud to be gender-inclusive and LGBTQ+-affirming all year round, but during the month of June, we’re featuring writers whose work connects especially closely with those themes.

Today we’re sitting down with Harris Powell-Smith, author of five titles for Choice of Games, including the hit Crème de la Crème series.

The Crème de la Crème series plays with a setting that is traditionally single-gender – boarding school – but that in your world is gender-inclusive. Can you talk about that journey and how you arrived at the gender dynamics that you did for your gameworld?

Back when I was first figuring out the game, I considered creating a setting in which the player’s choice of gender affected the wider cultural setting. In an early CoG game, Choice of Broadsides, you can play as a male sea captain fighting while women aren’t involved with warfare, or as a female captain while men remain on shore. So a player’s choice of gender would shift the setting: if they played as a male student going to Gallatin, it would be a boarding school for boys, who were socially expected to conform to passive, decorative etiquette rules.

In the end I decided to go for a different approach because I didn’t feel confident in handling characters outside a male/female gender binary, or other non-cis characters in such a setting. Instead I embraced high social stakes unrelated to gender and orientation.

Once I decided to remove sexism, homophobia, and transphobia from the equation, it was clear to me that societal mores would present differently than they do in our world – so, for example, inheritance of titles, property, and wealth is very important in these societies, but genetic bloodline is less of a concern than ensuring you can trace your family’s title back for at least a couple of centuries. And some cultures in the setting include legal polyamorous marriages while others don’t, and so on.

All of this doesn’t mean the games are free of injustice! Inequality and unfairness of various kinds is rife in the Creme de la Creme universe, and it’s the player’s choice how they want to engage with that, which perspectives they sympathise with, and in what directions they want to shift their surroundings. The game world is a place where queer and non-queer characters alike can have plenty of dark-academia social and romantic drama that’s much more about their place in the world, personality clashes, romantic tastes, and the ever-present looming factors of class, wealth and reputation.

You’ve done a lot of excellent work in community building through your “IF Seal” Q&A column, moderation on the ChoiceScript forum, and fostering an active fan community. What kind of reader interactions are your favorites? Can you talk about a fan interaction that surprised you?

Thank you so much! IF Seal is on hiatus at the moment, but I hope the archives are useful for people with similar problems coming up. I’m planning to bring it back when things are a little less hectic!

I love hearing what players have to say about my games, and how they feel about their experiences playing. Sometimes it opens my eyes to perspectives I hadn’t considered but once I see it, it feels entirely intuitive.

Something really special is when fans are inspired by my work to write their own stories or games. I absolutely love hearing that and feel really fortunate whenever it happens.

I’ve also been incredibly touched and delighted when I’ve heard that something I wrote helped someone realise an aspect of their identity, or it helped them through a real-life experience. Someone told me that playing Honor Bound helped them while they were recovering from a hospital visit and that absolutely blew me away.

One of the recent posts on your wonderfully informative blog is about writing trans characters. Who are some authors of interactive or noninteractive fiction that you think are doing especially good work in that area?

I could spend days chatting away about trans characters but here is a small selection of authors’ work I’ve enjoyed that show trans characters, queer cultures, and trans people interacting with the setting they’re written in:

• Maya Deane – Wrath Goddess Sing is an excellent queer and trans Trojan War retelling
  
• Isaac Fellman – I’ve greatly enjoyed Dead Collections, an urban fantasy about vampires, and Notes from a Regicide, a science fantasy family saga; the characters feel very grounded both in their transness while the speculative elements tie in with it really well
  
• Athar Fikry – I really enjoy how this author’s worldbuilding interacts with queerness and transness around relationships, bodies, and destiny. In particular An Imp and an Imposter feels like a very queer and trans story to me, with reclamation of physicality and magical power
  
• Rien Gray – a brilliantly evocative writer whose exploration of trans characters in queernormative cultures (the Out of True sapphic Arthuriana series) as well as grimmer settings (The Scales of Seduction, a Medusa retelling; the Fatal Fidelity noir/romantic suspense series) are exemplary
  
• May Peterson – the Sacred Dark fantasy series is a great example of queer and trans characters surviving, thriving, and finding community and connection in repressive settings while having very dramatic fantasy adventures
  
• Malin Rydén – in the Fallen Hero IF series, the journey of the former-superhero clawing for agency and bodily autonomy resonates strongly through a trans lens

We’re asking all of our authors this: How has your representation of LGBTQ+ themes in your writing evolved over the course of your career?

Lately I’m exploring writing LGBTQ+ themes with more specificity. When I first started writing queernormative settings I wanted queer characters and families to feel “unmarked” rather than cis and straight characters being the norm and queer ones being unusual. I still very much enjoy writing in these kinds of settings, but I’ve been exploring in more detail about what it’s like living in them, how it feels to be trans in a non-misogynistic, non-transphobic culture, how healthcare works in such cultures, and so on. So in my recent games – in particular Honor Bound and my fantasy work in progress The Earth Has Teeth – I’ve enjoyed going into more depth with that, and thinking more about how characters’ gender and sexuality affects how they engage with the world.

I’ve also been exploring how LGBTQ+ characters handle living in less welcoming settings. In the past I wanted to write purely escapist settings with no bigotry, but in one project I’m working on, I’m writing in the contemporary world. It felt appropriate there to show some realities of being queer right now, negative and positive, and balancing both elements so that playing as a queer PC felt recognisable without being overshadowed with misery. It’s a very different approach and once that project’s announced I’ll be very interested to see how it lands!

Finally: how are you celebrating Pride this year?

Exploring my city, meeting up with friends, and probably buying more arts and crafts from queer makers than I have room for!

Pride isn’t just for a month! All year, we work to bring you games that offer a diverse and expansive view of love, family, and identity. But we’ll take any excuse to celebrate, and so we’re putting games on sale every week of June that showcase and explore that diversity, and we’re featuring interviews with the authors of those games.

This week, we’re featuring five games by Harris Powell-Smith. Crème de la Crème, Noblesse Oblige, Royal Affairs, Honor Bound, and Blood Money are up to 40% off until June 29th!

• Crème de la Crème — Climb to the top of the class at your exclusive private school for socialites!
• Noblesse Oblige — Find romance amid secrets in a lonely estate! What will you sacrifice for love?
• Royal Affairs — Rule the roost at your exclusive boarding school, or be a royal disaster!
• Honor Bound — Guard students and secrets at an exclusive boarding school!
• Blood Money — By the power of your blood, you and your ghosts will take over the crime family!