At our superhero academy, you’ll lead a team of teen heroes to battle supervillains! Will you fulfill your heroic legacy or forge your own path? Heroes of Tomorrow: Hidden Potential is a 600,000-word interactive superpower novel by Eloy Lasanta. I sat down with Eloy to talk about his experiences with games and interactive fiction. Heroes of Tomorrow: Hidden Potential releases on Thursday, February 19th. You can wishlist it on Steam today!
This is, I think, your first time writing a ChoiceScript game, but obviously not your first rodeo. Tell our readers a little about your background.
It’s my first time indeed, but Choice of Games fans might have seen my name on a few other projects. I’ve been designing games professionally since 2008 through my company, Third Eye Games, and have
been nominated for and won a few design awards, most notably for Part-Time Gods, The Ninja Crusade,
the Pip System (created for young players and new GMs), and Sins of the Father. I’ve also worked on
several video games, board games, and card games, which eventually led me to teach game design for a few years at Central Michigan University.
Game design is my life. I wake up and want to design. I go to sleep with dreams of design. And I’ve had
the honor of being able to make it my full-time job for over a decade, creating new worlds, designing intricate mechanics, and helping others bring their ideas to life.
It’s literally the dream.
What drew you to writing our particular, text-based interactive fiction flavor of RPG?
I’ve been a fan of interactive experiences since the introduction of the original Choose Your Own Adventure books. They were the catalyst for me to get into roleplaying games, play and run more games than I can count, and eventually publish my own. So, while I’m new to Choice of Games, I’m definitely not new to this genre.
In addition, I view my career in game design as a way to challenge myself creatively. Different types of dice (or even diceless games), taking on narrative design, and priding myself on being able to write almost anything. So, what could be a better challenge than designing a minimalist interactive game/novel using ChoiceScript (which meant learning some simple coding) and telling an amazing story in a way that doesn’t necessarily come naturally? I’m used to dice and character sheets, but bringing a Choice of Games title to life mixes all the best parts of designing TTRPGs and writing a novel. I was excited that many of my existing talents carried over, at least.
What were some of the challenges you encountered with the design or writing?
The biggest challenges were those I created for myself. I set out to build Heroes of Tomorrow as a brand-new world, with enough new lore, intrigue, and adventure to make readers take note. Sure, it’s reminiscent of other super-powered worlds, from The Boys to Invincible or the X-Men, but hard work and a patient editor allowed Heroes of Tomorrow to become its own thing.
I wanted to write a book that the reader couldn’t put down and to deliver an experience you couldn’t
get anywhere else. Each RO is unique in nearly every interaction, and they all approach love differently.
The story’s mystery is revealed through unreliable narrators. The choices you make and the characters
you befriend will have a huge bearing on the story you experience. And the action starts in scene one
and never lets up for one of the most exciting and thrilling games out there (of course, I’m biased).
Lastly, I had a major goal: to make a failed test just as interesting as a successful one. My decision to incorporate all those elements is what led to several unique endings to the story, where you might end up a hero, a villain, or back to being a regular person again. Not to mention that nearly every character you meet has the chance to die along the way. It was a lot to manage in the coding, and ensuring no threads were left loose took extra effort, but I’m so proud of what Heroes of Tomorrow: Hidden Potential became in the end.
What surprised you most about working on this game?
A few major things stick out.
One is the robustness of ChoiceScript. It seemed daunting at first, but once I was a few chapters in, it became second nature to craft plots and scenes using coding and varying outcomes. I found it to be a
powerful engine that allows authors to craft exactly the narrative they have in their head.
The second surprise was how much I fell in love with the characters, including side characters like Stench and Rainbow. The speedster Z and his tale of revenge. Paragon and their love/hate relationship with fame. The sweet stoicism of Conjurer and the mysteries behind the smile. Red Claw and Germ’s unbreakable friendship, and how much fun it was to make them play off each other. Weaving Chameleon’s playful nature and tragic past made them a dream to write, as well. Lastly, I seriously underestimated how many words I’d be writing for this project. I wanted to go all out, but there’s a reason it took a year to finish this book. 600,000 words is no joke! Hahahah!
What other recent work do you want our readers to know about?
I’ve already been working on another ChoiceScript book, a dark fantasy romance, as well as pitches to expand the Heroes of Tomorrow world even further. There are so many more stories to be told in Evos Academy, Morgana City, or one of the dozens of other ideas I have.
In other news, new books for several of Third Eye Games’ most popular game lines are currently in the works. I’ve been developing a new TTRPG system with Renegade Studios for an upcoming game that I can’t talk about yet. And keep an eye out for a wonderful, culturally-relevant, and educational card game I co-designed for CMU Press later this year.
Honestly, this is going to be a great year for anyone who enjoys my games and designs. Thank you to Choice of Games for starting 2026 off right!
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