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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!

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

You get fired from your job. Then your car breaks down. On the walk home, you nearly get hit by a meteor. You discover a spirit possessing a skull shaped microphone inside. He wants to make you a rich, famous metal musician.

Meteoric is 40% off for a week starting today!

Meteoric is a chilling 125,000 word interactive horror novel by Samwise Harry Young, where your choices control the story. It’s text-based, with occasional visual art, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination. 

Mysterious magic quickly proves effective in gaining fame and fortune in the death metal music industry, but you soon discover that you must pay a tribute of blood. And when your meteoric rise inevitably creates a rival with a violent vendetta, are you prepared to face the consequences? 

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; romance men, women, both, or no one at all.  
• Romance a charismatic bassist, a tough guitarist, a thoughtful guitarist, or a mysterious drummer. 
• Reap all the benefits the influence of a magical microphone can conjure, and suffer the consequences, or try to resist the temptation. 
• Read approximately 45k words per playthrough!

What and who will you sacrifice to achieve fame, fortune, love, and revenge? 

Sam 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 Star Crystal Warriors Go!, 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 9/4!

It’s tough fighting evil by moonlight and being an ordinary kid by daylight! Can you save your city’s dreams from monsters, halt a magical plague in its tracks, and still help your new club prepare for the best school festival ever?

Star Crystal Warriors Go! is an interactive magical girl anime novel by Holly McMasters, with additional content by Brian Rushton. It’s entirely text-based, 250,000 words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

You were just an ordinary teenager at Northside High School—going to classes, hanging out with your friends, spending time with your dad, occasionally staying up too late watching your favorite TV show.

Then a talking animal unlocked your magical powers.

Now, thanks to the Star Crystal in your heart, you can transform into a Stellaria, a magical warrior tuned to the light of the constellations. You’re one of the very few with the power to defeat the terrifying monsters that you call Nightmares. It’s just in time, too, because Nightmares are creeping into your city, corrupting people’s dreams to weaken the veil between the Dream Kingdom and the waking world and spreading a terrible sleeping plague. If the veil falls, the Dream Kingdom will engulf reality and the Nightmares – ruled by the terrifying Empress Nyx—will take over your world.

Fortunately, you’re not alone. Your friends in the waking world will always stand by your side, and there are other Stellaria out there fighting against the Nightmares—some of whom might be closer than you think! How will you push the Nightmares out of your city? Will you strike them down with your magic, use your wits to turn them against each other, or heal the darkness in their hearts with the shining compassion in yours?

As you learn the truth behind the Stellaria and the Nightmares, you’ll also learn the truth about your own past: your own dreams are filled with visions of a crystal castle and a love that feels like a memory. But even with the very fabric of reality at stake, you still have to go to classes, keep your grades up, and plan the school festival. How will you balance it all?

• Play as male, female, or non-binary; gay, straight, bi, or asexual.
• Customize your outfit, weapon, and the color of your magic for a truly spectacular transformation into a Stellaria!
• Wield the power of dreams! Fling sparkling colored light, animate objects, bend reality, and more!
  Romance your loyal compassionate best friend, the new kid at school with a mysterious secret, or even a dangerously beautiful Nightmare!
• Bond with your talking animal companion.
• Uncover the mysterious past of the Dream Kingdom, cure a magical plague, and withstand the temptations of the Nightmares.
• Plan the best spring festival that your school has ever seen—if you can negotiate with the Student Council!

Will you keep your heart’s Star Crystal full of hope and defeat the Nightmares, or will you fall to despair and join the darkness?

We hope you enjoy playing Star Crystal Warriors Go!. 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.

Coming Thursday, our latest Choice of Games title Star Crystal Warriors Go!, a 251,000-word interactive magical girl anime novel by Holly McMasters, with additional content by Brian Rushton. You can now play the first three chapters for free, and check out the author interview here. Wishlist it on Steam as well; whether you plan to purchase it there or not, it really helps.

Star Crystal Warriors Go! releases this Thursday, August 28th.

It’s tough fighting evil by moonlight and being an ordinary 90s kid by daylight! Can you save your city’s dreams from monsters, halt a magical plague in its tracks, and still help your new club prepare for the best school festival ever?

Star Crystal Warriors Go! is a 250,000-word interactive retro magical girl anime novel by Holly McMasters, with additional content by Brian Rushton. It releases next Thursday, August 28th, and you can wishlist it on Steam today. (Even if you don’t plan to buy it on Steam, wishlisting really helps!)

You’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Choice of Games, including having played every game in our catalog (at least up through 2021). Can you share a little about that process and whether you’ve continued to play every release?

I’ve been a heavy reader my whole life, and I enjoy diving into new genres and reading the best they have to offer. Before I worked with Choice of Games, I reviewed hundreds of interactive fiction games, from 80’s parser games to Porpentine’s Twine games and everything in-between.

I played a few early Choicescript games and got hooked. Choice of Robots and Slammed! were my early favorites. I was really taken with the way Choice of Robots lets you take such divergent paths (I’ve replayed it many times!) and I thought the twists and choices in Slammed! were really gripping, especially with the main NPCs.

So I was excited when, after working with Choice of Games, I was offered the opportunity to get review copies of the catalog up to that point. It was fantastic; playing the whole back catalog revealed so many hidden gems. Besides the super-famous games like Creme de la Creme and Choice of Rebels, I really liked games like Heart of the House and The Tower Behind the Moon and even scrappy, unusual games like Treasure Seekers of Lady Luck.

But I think I learned more from the less-popular games than the great ones. The best games make it all seem natural: the stats, the choices, the branches, you barely notice them as you’re engrossed in gameplay. But when a game goes ‘wrong’, it usually has something that sticks out like a sore thumb: tests that are too hard, too many stats, not enough branching, too short of a conclusion. And, playing more games, I saw that a lot of lower-rated games had issues in common, which became the body of the essay I wrote.

I should say, though, that this is all a matter of degrees. Compared to the amateur interactive fiction I usually play, every published Choicescript game is at least 4/5 stars for me. And even ‘bad’ games have their own charm. A good example is Gilded Rails. It’s one of the lowest-rated games, but I think that’s mostly due to how unusual it is, focusing on intense resource management and multiple romances over traditional plot.

I haven’t played every release since then, mostly due to money issues. The early 2020’s were pretty rough for me. I did pick up a lot of games I knew I’d like, though, like several Vampire: The Masquerade games, Stars Arisen (I’m looking forward to that author’s upcoming game!), and Restore, Reflect, Retry. I’m doing a little better financially now, though, and have started going through more games, starting with the cheapest Hosted Games.

Your first game with us was In the Service of Mrs. Claus, which is a really fun romp and a unique take on a Christmas story. What has been your experience coming back to ChoiceScript with SCWG having both written a game yourself in the past, and done this heavy analysis of our games?

Some people say the first book is the hardest, and that’s definitely true for me. I loved the concepts and themes of In the Service of Mrs Claus, but I was pretty overwhelmed while writing it. Due to family circumstances, I had to hurry the writing process, and I also suffered from extreme writer’s anxiety, so much that I’d spend hours just trying to overcome my writer’s block, only to write a few hundred words. The game ended up pretty short.

I also struggled with overall design, and so many of the most egregious examples of ‘stat disease’ and other common author problems in my essay were taken from my own game! Fortunately, editing and beta testing reduced a lot of issues and I’ve really enjoyed the positive responses I’ve gotten for Mrs. Claus over the years. But I definitely felt like I could have done more.

With SCWG, I had a much better grasp on both how to make good games and how to overcome writer’s block. I had just come off of writing a 350K-word parser game called Never Gives Up Her Dead, which I had written in just over a year, and I had a lot more experience with Choicescript games. More importantly, I didn’t have to rush. I came on after 100K words were written in the project, and only contracted to write 50K, but I wanted to do the very best I could to flesh out this game and fulfill the first author’s artistic version. I ended up adding 150K words instead of 50K, and made sure to do frequent check-ins with beta testers while writing and at the end. I especially wanted to avoid stat confusion, and made sure to change stat names to be distinct, allow the game to use the full stat bars and not stay stuck down low, added a ‘stats explanation’ guide and a visible stats mode, and included end of chapter saves. Everything I could think to add to the game mechanically, I did. Every plot thread I could resolve or character I could develop, I did. But, of course, writing isn’t an exact science, so I’ll have to see how readers respond to this game and learn from that response.

What did you find surprising about things this time around, given that you were adding work to another author’s project?

Well, my biggest surprise was finding out how similar my own writing is to Holly McMaster’s! Reading the draft project, I varied between, “this sounds like I could have written it” and “I wish that I had written this!” We both have a love for magic powered by creativity and dreams, with terrifying monster opponents and multiple worlds.

Working with another author was both challenging and rewarding. The biggest benefit, to me, is the original author’s skill at writing character relationships. Many people who’ve played the drafts and the final version have commented on how much they love the character arc of Polaris, your animal companion. It also helps that the first author writes good dialogue, something which I often struggle with and have to refine through multiple drafts and rounds of feedback. On the other hand, I was able to contribute to the fight scenes and spicing up the location descriptions, skills which are important in the parser games I wrote before working for Choice of Games.

The challenges were in working with a pre-existing setting and characters. My biggest goal was to fully realize the original author’s concept and not to replace it with my own plans. If I had written it from scratch, then I probably would have designed it differently, with my own take on the branching and scene structure. But this was someone else’s project first. I loved the initial draft I played (I even made fan art of the characters) so I’ve thought, “How can I make a finished version of this game that others can enjoy?” instead of, “How can I make this my own?”

The most significant additions I made to the author’s vision came from beta testing. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that if multiple beta testers ask for something, you should definitely give it to them, even if it’s not what you originally intended. Comments from beta testers led to more romance scenes and options as well as a deeper exploration of the loss of the main character’s mother.

Overall, my experience with this collaboration has made me want to collaborate again. I’ve even talked to my sister about working on a Hosted Games concept based on a Brazilian Jiu-Jutsu gym as a fun side project for us to write casually over the next few years; she loves Jiu-Jitsu and the stories she tells about the people there could work well in Choicescript format.

What do you think our readers will enjoy most about SCWG?

To me, this game feels like an animated movie you’d watch on a Saturday morning. Some of my favorite Choicescript games are simulationist, where you replay over and over again to test your ideas and maximize your rewards. Other favorite games have characters I feel like I can really get into and roleplay. And others, like Slammed!, have great plot with characters that I end up connecting with and which have left me with a satisfying narrative experience. SCWG is the latter, for me. When I played the first draft, I felt really invested in characters like Kit (your alluring nemesis) and Polaris (your mysterious animal friend) and the ways that my character could influence them and bond with them. Everything I’ve added to the game myself has just been to build on those characters, to help others read about them and get to know them, and to give them a rewarding ending. That’s where a lot of the extra writing went; each of the main characters has around 12 different possibilities for how they can end up and their relationship with you, and each of those branches has some variation of its own.

Do you have any new favorites in the COG, HC, or HG catalog?

Well, in the last year I played Wayhaven, and I finally get why everyone enjoyed it so much. I’m a big mystery fan and I love the variation in the 4 romantic leads. It’s definitely influenced the way that I think about and write romance in games. And Stars Arisen was a lot of fun for me. I like being powerful in games, so being the child of a goddess and using high-level magic was definitely fun.

What advice do you want to offer prospective authors of a ChoiceScript game?

I would offer two pieces of advice:

Get feedback early and get feedback often! If you put off compiling and playing your game or letting others try it until the very end, you have no time to fix anything. And there’s no telling how things will go over until you actually try it. For instance, beta testers and my editor found that Star Crystal Warriors Go had extremely difficult challenges in a lot of places (some with a success rate of less than 5 in 10,000!). With their help, I was able to tone it down. Other testers noted that the game started off rough but really took off around chapters 5 and 6, so I went back and gave a lot of extra care to early chapters. The more feedback you get, the better!

Find a writing rhythm that works for you. In my first game, I shot for writing 1000 words a day. I ended up not being able to reach that, and would feel bad, and do worse the next day. Now, I set really small milestones. If I write 300 words, I get to listen to one podcast or beat one level of a game. Then I write another 300 words. That helped me quadruple my writing rate. Everyone is different, so feel free to experiment and try different styles until you find something that you feel comfortable with!

We’re proud to announce that Games of the Monarch’s Eye, 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 August 21st!

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 an interactive “silk and sorcery” fantasy novel by Saffron Kuo. It’s entirely text-based, 238,000 words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

After a decade in disgrace, you have returned to your home city of Varze to compete for the title of Monarch’s Eye. In this grand tournament, the bravest Varzians compete in games of Intellect, Heart, and Might. The winner becomes the Monarch’s most trusted guard and advisor, gaining wealth, fame, and honor—everything that you have lost. The only catch? The current Eye—and therefore your main competition—is Casiola, once your childhood friend and now your bitterest rival.

While you were gone, the city has grown volatile. Powerful factions vie for dominance and the guilds’ professional differences now spill over into political rivalries. On one side, there’s the idealist Artisans, rumored to practice ancient forbidden magic in their crafts. On the other, the ambitious and pragmatic Merchants, constantly chasing fame and profit. Caught between them is the Monarch, striving for a peaceful revitalization for Varze—if only it can happen before the city tears itself apart with an all-out revolution. And the Games might make the perfect opportunity for the factions to make their first moves.

As you prepare for the Games, you must also navigate this factional strife. How will you forge your path to victory? Will you hone your blades, charm the public with your silver tongue, try to get ahead of your opponents with your careful observation of their strengths and weaknesses, or just cheat your way to the top? Will you dive into politics, currying favor with one faction or the other; or will you try to float aloof above them? Do you dare to seek wisdom in the stars, or from forgotten ancient tomes? Whatever path you take, your old rival is right on your heels—and if you’re not careful, you’ll fall behind and lose your honor once more.

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, bi, pan, or aromantic.
• Push Varze’s culture towards commerce or craft, peace or war, tradition or modernity.
• Compete in high-stakes tournaments to test your wits, strength, and eloquence!
• Regain your lost honor through a performance of stellar integrity—or deceive, and sabotage every single one of your opponents! And what will you do if you find yourself fighting in the ring against your true love?
• Uncover lost tomes of once-forbidden magic, and reveal the secrets of the stars!
• Romance your brooding childhood friend-turned-rival, a passionate glassworker Artisan, a shy and principled archivist, a charming and showy Merchant—or even the formidable Monarch herself.
• Negotiate peace between the warring factions and return the city to stability, or destroy them both—or fan the flames of revolution and let Varze burn!

Will you fight for redemption? Glory? Or to remake the world?

We hope you enjoy playing Games of the Monarch’s Eye. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on Facebook, Instagram, 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.

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.