We’re proud to announce that Unsupervised, 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.
You and your friends were teenage sidekicks of the world’s greatest heroes. But now, the heroes are missing. It’s your turn to kick ass and save the world!
It’s 40% off until June 20th!
Unsupervised is a 660,000-word interactive superpower novel by Lucas Zaper and Morton Newberry, 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. Which is not as cool as an actual superpower, but you get the idea.
The Omega Responders were the mightiest heroes in the world, defending Earth with their powers—time manipulation, elemental mastery, teleportation, and more. You and your friends were their sidekicks, their best and brightest. Then the Omega Responders left to face a mysterious anomaly in outer space—and never returned.
Without your mentors to guide you, it’s up to you and your fellow sidekicks to decide what kind of heroes you’ll be. You’re not old enough to have a beer, but you sure as hell are old enough to save the world… and have your first kiss. Or your first kill. Puberty just hits different when you have superpowers.
Lead your team, travel the world gathering allies, navigate the ups and downs of public opinion, and confront villains at every turn. Will you smash and fight until there’s nobody left standing? Will you help the villains talk about their feelings to understand how they went astray? Or will you turn to villainy yourself?
Meanwhile, government regulation of people with powers grows more intense every day. How will you deal with PARENTS: the Paramilitary Agency Responding to Extraordinary Non-compliant Threats and Supervillains? One of your former sidekicks is already working for the government. Will you join them?
And what will you do when the truth about the Omega Responders’ last mission starts to emerge?
• Choose your powers: super speed, exceptional strength, heightened senses, elemental mastery, or time manipulation! • Romance any of several fellow heroes, including an idealistic teleporter, an ambitious rapper, a half-ghost, or a sidekick-turned-government agent! • Deal with hero regulatory agencies: fight the power, find loopholes, turn their agents to your side, or work for them yourself. • Name and design your secret lair high in the Himalayas. • Follow a heroic legacy, or dive deep into villainy! • Teleport around the world, confronting villains and uncovering conspiracies from New York to Paris! • Customize your supersuit, choose your team name, and manage your fellow heroes’ strengths to make them into the best team they can be!
Every teenager wants to change the world. But only you can save it.
We hope you enjoy playing Unsupervised. We encourage you to tell your friends about it and to 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.
You and your friends were teenage sidekicks of the world’s greatest heroes. But now, the heroes are missing. It’s your turn to kick ass and save the world!
Unsupervised is an interactive superpower novel by Lucas Zaper and Morton Newberry. We sat down with Lucas and Morton to talk about their work. Unsupervised releases this Thursday, June 13th. You can play the first three chapters for free today.
One of the really fun and distinctive aspects of your game is the idea that all of these heroes have left the hero-ing biz and all have day jobs. How did you go about building that world, where superpowers are both woven into society and closely regulated?
Lucas: You have all these sidekicks who suddenly found themselves without the guidance and protection of their mentors and have to face a worldwide escalation in supercriminal activity, increased scrutiny from regulatory agencies, and the mercurial nature of public opinion. All this while going through puberty.
So, some of them decided to use their powers for personal gain. Ghostling became a YouTuber specializing in haunted places, forging footage of the dead to make a living. Lil Biggie, now that he doesn’t have to answer to anyone, is following his dreams of becoming a rapper. And Multidude… well, I don’t want to give any spoilers, but he’s doing a lot.
Then there’s Flit, who’s trying to keep that Silver Age morality in an ever more cynical world, and the MC, who can be trying to do the same, acting more like a vigilante or being a downright villain. Or even, in perhaps the most evil choice of them all, become a politician.
We tried to make a world that feels real and self-consistent. There’s a timeline in the game that explains how the emergence of metahumans affected everything, from geopolitics to the cultural zeitgeist. Still, two clear examples that we can give are that we had a “cape race” instead of a “space race” during the Cold War, and that superhero comic books are a dying genre. Why read fictional stories on paper when you can watch the real thing live on TV?
(We took that idea from Watchmen, where pirates have replaced superheroes in comic books. In our case, it’s medieval fantasy.)
You’re both veteran ChoiceScript authors, with successful Hosted Games titles under your belts. What new challenges did you take on for this game?
Lucas: Having professionals giving feedback throughout the whole process is great. We had a rough start because we were so used to doing things our way–which meant an almost unreadable code for anyone that isn’t us–but I think we got the grip of it after the first couple of chapters. I want to thank everybody from CoG for their patience and for helping us get here.
Morton: The word count was a challenge in itself—Unsupervised is larger than any other story I’ve worked on. It’s bigger than Highlands, Deep Waters, The Vampire Regent, and Ghost Simulator. Also, as we wrote the scenes, the project changed substantially from the original outline. Looking back, I believe this deviation was a good thing, although it required a lot of flexibility and rewriting. And time.
How did you manage the co-writing process? What were the biggest difficulties? Did each of you gravitate towards a particular character or storyline?
Morton: We’ve been co-writing stories since 2016, and it’s been a challenging journey. I feel that our process has improved, but it invariably involves numerous rounds of feedback. And I guess it only works because we’re open and honest with each other. We don’t hesitate to say, “Man, what you wrote is really bad.” And then we throw it away and start again.
Our approach is to agree on main plotlines and story milestones, and then decide who’s going to write which scene. Then we write each scene individually and they go through rounds of feedback until we both find them acceptable. And this can take a while.
I think it’s natural that we gravitate towards particular characters and end up writing most of their scenes. That’s particularly true for ROs.
You’re both very active on our Forum and with fan engagement. How did fan reactions affect the development of the story?
Lucas: Comics taught me how to read; I’ve been reading them for over twenty-five years. I feel like I have a decent grasp on what superhero fans want from a game because I’m a fan myself, and I think when people read Unsupervised, they recognize that it is both a love letter to the genre and a hatemail to some of the industry’s practices.
If you ever got frustrated because a character wasn’t acting like they should, because of inconsistent power levels, or because a reboot or retcon invalidated something you held dear, you know what I’m talking about. But, by the end of the day, we fans only care so much about these characters and stories because we love them. And Unsupervised is, above all, a work of love.
So, my point here is that the story itself didn’t change much because we had a clear goal in mind: representing as many comic book tropes as possible and letting the players go wild. You can be Homelander if you want to, but you can also be All-Star Superman. We subvert some tropes, yes, but we also honor them.
Now, that doesn’t mean fans haven’t been essential in shaping the game. I can’t stress enough how much their feedback helped us with customization, balance, and bugfixing. In fact, I’d like to give a special shoutout to Denzil_Melgior_Nagel and Webtoonien, who probably have read the game more times than I have. There are others, too, but these two were relentless.
You’ve both talked openly about the process of finding bugs and bloopers during development. What was the funniest – or most frustrating – bug in Unsupervised?
Lucas: The game has a robust system for customizing your character’s superhero costume, allowing you to pick an item for each slot. I made various headgear, upper body gear, handwear, footwear, and capes, each with unique colors and the possibility of adding symbols.
But when we first made the demo public, I forgot to add lower-body gear. So it was like one of those recurrent nightmares where you suddenly find yourself wearing no pants in public. I always laugh when I remember it.
Morton: It isn’t a bug, but one scene in Vera City took at least four rewriting sessions to reach its final version. Oh, man.
Of course we have to ask: if you could have any of the superpowers mentioned in your game, which one would it be?
Lucas: People will always argue about which power is the strongest, and I’ve seen all kinds of different opinions on this. My favorite in the game is Enhanced Senses because you get so much new information and unique descriptions. But in real life, it would have to be Time Manipulation. There are just too many creative ways you can use it.
Morton: I love Miss Fortune’s power, Probability Manipulation. I used to play Mage: The Awakening with friends when I was younger, and I played an Acanthus character who could manipulate time and fate. I felt that this power would fit well in a superhero story like this one.
Take control of a troubled young climate activist as you sabotage climate criminals and attempt to join the mysterious EXODUS activist group. A socially conscious coming of age action thriller where you will have the chance to express your strong beliefs on climate change.
EXODUS: Climate Activist is a 36,000-word interactive novel by Daniel Stephenson. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
Attend real life protests in London and influence how much trouble you will cause.
Navigate the end of your high school years as you enter adulthood.
Explore the wilderness as you attempt to locate the Exodus camp, and meet various activist groups on your travels.
Infiltrate high security climate criminal energy companies and attempt to sabotage their operations.
Enter the workplace and attempt to impress your boss.
Meet the partner of your dreams.
Make the right choices throughout the game in order to impress and join the EXODUS Group.
Daniel 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 Love Undying: A Kiss Before Dawn, the latest in our “Heart’s Choice” line of multiple-choice interactive romance novels, is now available for iOS and Android in the “Heart’s Choice” app. You can also download it on Steam, or enjoy it on our website.
It’s 33% off until May 30th!
Hunt your prey as a vampire on windswept Victorian moors! Who will capture your unbeating heart?
Love Undying: A Kiss Before Dawn is a 190,000-word interactive romance novel by Lauren O’Donoghue. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
After an angry mob forced you from your European home, you fled to England in search of a fresh start. The Cornish village of Boscawen is bleak and beautiful, quiet enough to hide in—or so it seems. Danger lurks everywhere on these clifftops, from the vampire hunter who has followed you across continents to the local coven of vampires to the suspicious local nobles. When a young village man is murdered, tensions rise even higher and allegations begin to fly: if you are not careful, you may be accused of the crime yourself.
And yet even here, you may find potential friends—or perhaps someone closer. For a century you have walked the earth alone, but now your solitude may come to an end. Who will capture your immortal heart?
Will it be your familiar, Adrian Florescu, who has attended you for years? He is slender, chestnut-haired, bespectacled, intellectual and loyal and unfailingly polite. Feeding upon someone is an intimate act—will you deepen that intimacy even further? Or perhaps silver-haired Father Alvarez, the village priest with dark determined eyes, dedicated to improving the lives of those in his care. A vampire and a priest: can such a match ever succeed? Then there is Jowanet Reed, with flaming red curls and a lush figure. She is the leader of the local coven, with more than a hundred vampires at her command. What would it feel like to submit to someone even more powerful than yourself? Or Nathalie Sylvain, bold and dangerous, small and proud, with close-cropped hair and strong arms. She is a vampire hunter whose family has pursued you for generations—will the heat of your rivalry kindle a different kind of spark?
From elegant society soirées to humble village meetings, you must navigate your new environment, choose sides in simmering feuds, and define your future. Will you try to blend in peacefully with your mortal neighbors, or conspire with your fellow vampires to overthrow the established order and rule openly as creatures of the night? Do you wish to atone for a century’s worth of vampiric deeds, or will you revel in the hunt for the rest of your long unlife? Your actions will decide whether you have found a place of safety, or merely another viper’s nest.
Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, bi, or asexual.
Romance your devoted familiar, an altruistic priest, a powerful vampire leader, or even your sworn enemy.
Exercise self-restraint, or give in to your vampiric urges and go on a bloodthirsty rampage.
Renovate your new home, investing in a library, game room, or an occult chamber full of magical equipment.
Solve a murder—or try to frame one of your enemies for the crime.
Create new vampires to join you in eternal unlife; or spend the rest of your days trying to escape the creature that you have become.
Find passion that will last an eternity!
Since 2009, the team behind Choice of Games has created high-quality interactive novels in all genres. Now, our new Heart’s Choice label puts romance at the center of the story, and you at the center of the romance. Heart’s Choice games contain no graphics or sound effects, so we can focus on the story. Every game is filled with vivid, fully developed characters and complex narratives that respond to your choices.
Hunt your prey as a vampire on windswept Victorian moors! Who will capture your unbeating heart?
Love Undying: A Kiss Before Dawn is an interactive romance novel by Lauren O’Donoghue. It’s entirely text-based—190,000 words and hundreds of choices—without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination. We sat down with Lauren to talk about her work and her process.
You came to ChoiceScript having written your own interactive fiction in the past. Tell me about your interest and experience in the form.
I first became interested in interactive fiction more than a decade ago now, around the time that the first version of Twine (open-source IF software) was released. I’d always had an interest in writing games, but until then it didn’t seem like an accessible pursuit for me—seeing the things that DIY writer/designers like Christine Love, Anna Anthropy and Porpentine were doing with text-based games opened my eyes to the possibilities of the form. I played around with different IF tools and ideas back then, but it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I developed my first full-length game (Ataraxia). I wasn’t expecting how many doors it would open for me—since then I’ve developed text-based games for clients including the University of Leeds and Barnsley Museums, and have given a number of talks to students and industry professionals about writing interactive fiction. The flexibility of the form is so appealing to me—you can do just about anything you set your mind to, unrestrained by traditional notions of linearity and structure. Increasingly, too, with so many open-source tools geared at non-coders available, just about anyone can—and should!—be making their own interactive fiction.
Why did you choose to pitch a supernatural romance with Heart’s Choice as your first foray into ChoiceScript?
I first decided to apply to write for Heart’s Choice after seeing Rebecca Slitt’s fantastic talk “Choosing Your Happily Ever After: Choice and Agency in Romance IF” at NarraScope 2022. As a writer I’m really interested in rules—the challenge of creating work within set parameters. Rebecca talked a lot about the tropes of the genre, and what players expect from a romance game (HEA endings, etc.), and it immediately got my mind racing. What kind of stories could I tell within this structure? How could I make them compelling for as wide a variety of players as possible? When I was invited to pitch, I developed a supernatural romance concept because I’d never written anything in that genre before and I was excited to try something new. The idea for Love Undying really clicked when I decided on the Victorian setting—I write a lot of historical fiction, and combining my interest in that genre with a new, supernatural element was really fun for me.
What about the kind of design mechanics we favor did you find interesting, or perhaps struggle with?
The main difference between working in ChoiceScript compared to my previous games (developed mostly in Twine) was getting used to the structure. I had to take a step back and think, okay, how do I bring in variety and replayability when players will (for the most part) be experiencing the same events in the same order? It forced me to think outside the box a bit, which I really enjoyed. The stats-centric mechanics were much more familiar to me, and I think my favourite part of working with ChoiceScript was finding subtle ways to make the static text responsive to player choices—I wanted every playthrough to feel really unique and personal, and things like the ChoiceScript multireplace feature allowed me to create variety and texture in a really elegant, easy-to-implement way.
What other fictional pursuits of yours can you share with our readers?
As well as text-based games I also write short and long form fiction—a lot of my published work is available online for free, and there are links on my website laurenodonoghue.neocities.org (graphic design is not my passion, as you will see!) An upcoming publication I’m really excited about is Lucifers, a novelette about the 1888 Bryant & May matchgirls’ strike, that is being published as a chapbook by Blue Cubicle Press in July.
You’re now at work on a doctorate, I believe? Tell me how that’s going and what you’ll be working on for your dissertation.
I am indeed! I’m doing a PhD in Creative Writing, which is an interesting beast, as the bulk of my thesis is practice-based—in my case, a composite novel about the hillside town where I grew up. Each chapter is set in a different historical period, the stories linking together across time in a shared space. The project is allowing me to explore a lot of ideas and themes that I’m really passionate about—landscapes, social history, labour, belonging. I’m just coming to the end of my first year, and it’s been an absolute pleasure and privilege so far. My supervisors are incredible, and I already feel like I’ve grown so much as a writer. Doing a PhD gives you the freedom to play with ideas, to try things, succeed, fail, explore, interrogate your own practice, to ask yourself not only what you’re writing but how and why.
Any favorite IF you want to share or highlight as inspiration?
Absolutely! The following pieces of interactive fiction have all really inspired me and my work, and they’re all available online for free at the time of writing:
Digital: A Love Story – Christine Love (2010)
c ya laterrrr – Dan Hett (2017)
Tonight Dies The Moon – Tom McHenry (2015)
Myriad – Porpentine (2012)
Arcadia – Jonas Kyratzes (2012)
Lucid – Caliban’s Revenge (2022)
Heat From Fire/Fire From Heat (NSFW) – Anna Anthropy (2021)
Neurocracy – Joannes Truyens and Matei Stanca (2021)
And I also have to mention a few of my all-time favourite games from Choice of Games and Heart’s Choice:
Choice of the Vampire is 33% off until May 23, including its two game-length DLCs, The Fall of Memphis and St. Louis, Unreal City.
Slake your thirst—without becoming a monster! Blessed with the blood-soaked gift of immortality, will you tend the flock of humanity—or twist it to your whims? When a brash young country clashes with a brash young vampire, who will come out ahead?
Choice of the Vampire is an epic interactive novel by Jason Stevan Hill. 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.
Announcing St. Louis, Unreal City four years late
If you hadn’t heard about St. Louis, Unreal City, well, you’re not alone. We quietly made it available to the public in 2020, but we’ve never officially announced it until today.
With the turning of the century, St. Louis sits at the navel of the United States. The elite of the city celebrate by throwing the party of all parties—the 1904 World’s Fair. Every vampire who is any vampire will be there!
As your character concludes their first century of unlife, they must navigate the waters of industrialization and urbanization. But a monster roams the Missouri countryside, hunting vampires. Will the vampire court of St. Louis tear itself apart even before he comes for their heartsblood? And how can this unreal city look to the future when the specters of the past refuse to stay dead?
It took four years to get ready to make this announcement
It took a long, long time to prepare for this announcement, because Choice of the Vampire is one of the most complicated games we’ve ever published, offering an unprecedented variety in the type of vampire you can be.
For example, when you first become a vampire during the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, you can choose from a dozen wildly different human backgrounds. You can be a Choctaw interpreter, a French landowner, a Free Person of Color, an ordained priest, an Irish laborer, a Yankee entrepreneur, and many more.
Your choice of background affects the entire rest of the game, as you live through a hundred years of American history. Each background engages differently with the Civil War, Reconstruction, the liberation of Haiti, the Exodusters, Cuba, lynchings, and vodou. Your character may or may not be literate, may or may not speak English, French, German, Latin, Spanish, or Choctaw.
Furthermore, you might have been turned into a vampire by one of six different vampires, each with their own unique background, and, besides that, you might decide to kill your maker in the first five minutes of the game, or flee New Orleans entirely, playing an alternate version of the first part of the game in the village of St. Charles.
This complexity affects every part of the game; the longer the game gets, the more complex it becomes.
Initially, we thought we’d “soft launch” the St. Louis DLC, fix up any bugs that users reported, and do a a proper announcement a week or two later. Well, here we are, four years later, and we’re finally ready to announce it.
We can’t say that a game like this will ever be truly bug free, but we think it’s ready for you now.
If you’ve never played it, we can’t wait for you to try it. If you’ve played before, we invite you to return to one of the most replayable games we’ve ever made.
Life in Port Terris is tough. There’s never quite enough to eat, nor quite enough work, and your friends have a nasty habit of being snatched up by the Constables and their bots. When the majordomo of a Great House offers you employment, a warm bed, and all the food you can eat, it’s a tempting offer. Never mind that the alternative is a long stay in the City Dungeons.
The Butler Did It is a 300,000 word interactive novel by Daniel Elliot—and a finalist in the Choice of Games writing contest—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.
It doesn’t take long to realize that things are a little bit off though, to say the least. At Coburg Manor, you’ll make friends, battle enemies, and uncover a mystery far deeper and stranger than you ever imagined.
• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, bisexual, or asexual • An odyssey in steampunk, with a twist you’ll never predict • Face foes both human and mechanical with your wits, sword, or skill with steam • Expose a conspiracy that threatens the very fabric of your society, or choose to keep its secret • Get to know a diverse cast of characters, and you just might find love • Maybe end up on a spaceship?
Will you save your home from the strange apocalypse that its people don’t even suspect, or will you fall prey to madness, like so many of your friends?
Daniel 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.
In preparation for the upcoming release of Honor Bound, the newest game in the popular Crème de la Crème series, we’ve added the option to save your progress at the end of Royal Affairs.
If you haven’t played Royal Affairs, download it today! If you have the game already, updating it will give you access to the new save feature. And don’t forget to wishlist Honor Bound on Steam!
The author, Harris Powell-Smith, has this to say about their upcoming game:
I’ve been working on Honor Bound for just over a year, and in that time I’ve written over 400,000 words on it! Making Honor Bound has been a wonderful adventure, moving the action away from Westerlin and placing the player character in a totally different role. Teran is a new culture for the Crème de la Crème series—although players of the Royal Affairs epilogue will have had a sneak peek—and it’s been lovely to introduce a new place and new characters while drawing on some familiar themes.
It’s been a lot of fun writing the player character as an adult in their late twenties or older rather than a teenager or younger adult. They’ve recently experienced hardship, and may have made mistakes that cost lives, but are returning to their hometown after a long time away. Throughout the game they can make connections with people from their past, turn towards new bonds on the horizon, or something in between.
I’ve also been enjoying the different kinds of agency the player character has—unlike in Crème de la Crème or Royal Affairs, they don’t have teachers telling them when to go to bed—along with their added responsibilities. It brings different kinds of stakes, and I love exploring that. Will they stray from the path their commanders want for them, or will they claw back their reputation? That’s for the player to choose.
Right now, I’m in the middle of writing various branches of a dramatic climax. The player’s actions have had consequences all through the game, but here’s where it all comes to a head. They might have made friends, forged intense romances, or alienated their community, made mistakes or kept a shining record…and all those earlier experiences feed into what I’m writing right now. This is my fifth Choice of Games story now, and drawing together so many threads and making earlier choices feel meaningful never gets old.
Rule a mighty city, fight battles, and embark on quests in a steampunk-fantasy land. As the Ardent or Ardessa of Lake Steelthorne, find love, power and a secret which could change the world.
Dragon of Steelthorne is a 140,000-word interactive novel by Vance Chance, weaving together story, city management and combat in a unique take on choice-based Interactive Fiction. It’s entirely text-based—without animation or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
Play as male or female, straight or gay.
Explore a story set in a world with steampunk and fantasy elements.
Find romance from one of five possible love interests. Enjoy a romantic night with them at the Eternal Festival.
Choose from one of five classes, with different effects on story, city management and combat.
Manage a city and train soldiers to fight for you on missions.
Enjoy a three-slot save system which provides the flexibility to try different options without losing progress or having to start over.
Decide the future of your mighty city as its leader and ruler.
Vance 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.
To celebrate, we’re putting all three installments of Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, as well as the first set of stories, on sale until May 9th!
Stories from the Outbreak 2 chronicles events of key characters at various points throughout Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven. These ten stories are noninteractive but focus on characters in the game and provide their backstories and events as they struggle to survive. Each short story ranges from 1,300 to 4,600 words for a total of over 29,000 original words of content.
Note: These stories contain spoilers for those players who have not read through Part 1 and Part 2.
Follow Brody and Madison on their way to Chipper Ridge High School and then exploring the school.
How did the Graves family make it to the train yard on the day of the outbreak?
Read how characters such as Bailey, Jaime, Dante, the twins, and Rachel spent Christmas before the outbreak.
Take part in a romantic adventure with Rachel.
Read daily reports from Otto Goodman, head of the New Army.
And more stories including Jillian, Lyle, Woody, Tommy, Lopez, and Nate Milford.
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