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Mad science raised you from the dead! Pursue justice or vengeance, love or secrets, as you save or destroy the world with forbidden eldritch power. One dark and stormy night in a remote castle in the mountains, you awake anew, resurrected by the brilliant Dr. Holofernes. But even a mad scientist can’t keep you alive forever. As the procedure reverses itself over time, you will begin to die again. You must fight to stay alive long enough hunt down your killers, avenge yourself, and protect the ones you love. The Mysteries of Baroque is a 200,000-word interactive Gothic horror novel by William Brown. I sat down with William to talk about horror and the fabulous world in his game The Mysteries of Baroque, which releases this Thursday, September 20th.

Tell me how you conceived of the world of Baroque. What are the influences on this game?

I wanted to write a game set in a dark, strange world, one filled with all kinds of Gothic mysteries and weird tales. I pictured the PC as a vengeance-seeking revenant moving through the shadows of this world, learning secrets, making friends and enemies, and gathering allies and resources. As such, one big influence is the Gothic tradition that began with authors like Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, Anne Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, E.T.A. Hoffmann and the Brontë sisters. One of the things I love about Gothic is that it’s just weird in ways that go beyond having ghosts or vampires or werewolves or whatever. The plots go off on these strange, hallucinatory tangents or spooky side-stories, the characters are generally in this constant state of operatic, overwrought intensity. I wanted to capture some of that feeling with Baroque, a sense that weird horror somehow operates an almost gravitational pull on this city that nobody can escape.

Among more recent influences, I’d mention the TV show Penny Dreadful and, of course, Failbetter Game’s brilliant, mesmerising game Fallen London.

Who is the PC in this game? Are they Frankenstein’s monster or the Phantom of the Opera, or is that really only incidental to the plot? 

There’s definitely elements of both characters to the PC’s backstory but it’s up to the individual player how much they want to play to that. The PC can definitely have a Frankenstein’s monster-like dysfunctional relationship with Holofernes in the game and play as a troubled outcast, or they can appoint themselves as a Phantom-like mysterious guardian and custodian of the Grand Guignol Theater or they can take a completely different direction. They could play as a dark champion of the people, or a Moriarty-like supervillain and spymaster, or an avenging angel like the Bride from Kill Bill.

This is a world filled with violence and madness, evil forces, even eldritch horrors. Fun to write?

Oh yes! Baroque may have all kinds of horror, cruelty, insanity, and tragedy but it’s also meant to be an inviting, exciting world in its own weird way, a place with lots of things to explore and all sorts of secrets to learn, mysteries to solve and dark adventure to be had.

I think the only section that did bother me was Chapter 3, the Asylum chapter. I found the idea of mind-control and extreme psychological abuse being carried out on helpless people, as portrayed in that chapter, very disturbing (it probably didn’t help that I was had the flu and was running quite a high fever at the time I started writing that chapter!). Dr. Tausk was based on the serial killer H.H. Holmes, and his machine was based on the imaginary mind-controlling “Air Loom” described by the nineteenth-century paranoid schizophrenic James Tilly Matthews—I found myself quite haunted by the vivid, detailed way Matthews describes the Machine and its operators.

This is your first interactive fiction project, yes? What did you find most challenging about the form?

It can be hard at times to keep the flow of a narrative going while providing a range of different options. It can feel like you’re constantly stopping and starting at times, which can make it difficult to work towards a conventional emotional climax.

Has your writing or thinking changed as a result?

I think so. I find it easier to visualize what will or won’t work in a piece of interactive fiction. You can introduce a surprising amount of variety by adding even just a few tweaks to personalize the game for each player, to allow them to feel ownership of the story. I love that idea–that Baroque will be a bit different for everyone who plays it, that some people will see it as the story of how they took a terrible revenge on Vincent and others will see it as a love story featuring Nicholas (or whoever), that some people will be most interested in the eldritch horror storyline and some people will just want to hang out with their friends at the Grand Guignol. Maybe some people will get very invested in the political espionage storyline and others won’t even be aware that it was happening at all. I think some people might want to replay the game several times to see all the possible stories, see what changes if they hang out with different characters or pursue different objectives, but for others, their first play-through and the choices they made then will always be ‘their’ story. I like both approaches!

What are you working on next? 

I’m considering a few different ideas but I think my favorite is a homage to adventure serials and pulp fiction, plus the media that they’ve inspired. Thrilling, two-fisted action-adventure in a crazy Art Deco fantasy version of the 1930s, with every chapter ending in a cliff-hanger and every sentence ending with an exclamation mark.

We’re proud to announce that Choice of Broadsides: HMS Foraker, 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 Omnibus app. It’s 40% off until September 13th!

Command a royal warship and destroy your enemies at sea! As a veteran navy captain in the world of Choice of Broadsides, you’ll fend off (smugglers, slavers, and) foes of the crown to seize your place in history.

Choice of Broadsides: HMS Foraker is an 85,000 word interactive novel by Paul Wang, 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’s 1813, and you’re a key sailor in the naval war between Columbia and Albion, where aggression is rewarded and cowardice can get you killed. If you seize enough treasure, you could be set for life – but hesitate against the enemy and you could end up facing the firing squad.

Board enemy ships and force them to surrender, or use your connections to stay out of the fray. Will you steer your crew to glory, or go down in infamous defeat? What mercy will you show your prisoners? Can you control your composure while fighting a war? Revenge yourself on old rivals and reward your allies for their devotion. And whatever you do…

Don’t give up the ship!

• Serve the queen or the king, with an all-male or all-female crew.
• Captain the powerful warship HMS Foraker.
• Train your crew for combat, with kindness or cruelty.
• Parley with smugglers, slavers, and other unsavoury characters for tactical advantage or personal gain.
• Inspire devotion from your crew, or sway your superiors back home.
• Confront storms, accidents, and other maritime disasters.
• Master the balance between bravery and cowardice, cunning and folly.
• Win glory, treasure, promotion, a knighthood, or even a noble title.

We hope you enjoy playing Choice of Broadsides: HMS Foraker. 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.

Command a royal warship and destroy your enemies at sea! As a veteran navy captain in the world of Choice of Broadsides, you’ll fend off smugglers, slavers, and foes of the crown to seize your place in history. Choice of Broadsides: HMS Foraker is an 85,000 word interactive novel by Paul Wang. I sat down with Paul to talk about writing it, the nature of fic, and what he’s working on next. Choice of Broadsides: HMS Foraker releases this Thursday, September 6th. 

You’re one of the most prolific Hosted Games and Choice of Games authors in our stable of writers. How did Foraker come about?

Initially, Foraker was supposed to be sort of a palate cleanser before going into Lords of Infinity. There were a few systems I wanted to test out on a smaller scale before I committed to implementing them in a larger project. Likewise, I wanted to get back into the saddle when it came to writing in the particular style of the Dragoon Saga, as opposed to my other work in The Cryptkeepers of Hallowford and Burden of Command. I figured a relatively small self-contained title would be just the sort of thing I needed to shift gears.

I also really, really like Choice of Broadsides, and I’ve been wanting to write a story in its setting for years now.

What drew you to write,  essentially, Choice of Broadsides fic? Is that an unfair characterization of Foraker? If so, why? Show your work. 

“Choice of Broadsides fic” is absolutely how I’d characterise Foraker, and it’s more or less how I’ve always envisioned it. When I started writing, I didn’t really have any pretensions that it would get an official release or be adopted into Broadsides “canon”, so it’s a real honor to be given that official recognition.

If anything, I’d take Foraker being thought of as “Broadsides fic” as a compliment, doubly so if it ends up being thought of as “really good Broadsides fic”.

I think much to the disappointment of many, publishing this was the kind of thing we’d do only with someone like yourself. I.e., I think we have no plans to accept submissions for addendums/sequels/in-world adjuncts to others of our games. But of course, you’re mister alt/low-fantasy historical-ish military genre. So this is your wheelhouse. How fun was it to be inhabiting the world of Broadsides, as a writer?

Choice of Broadsides was the first Choice of Games title I ever played, all the way back in 2011 or so. It’s what more or less convinced me that writing interactive fiction was a thing that I could do, though not necessarily as a day job (that came later). It’s been a huge influence on me as an IF writer. I even originally envisioned Sabres of Infinity as “Sharpe to Broadsides‘ Hornblower”, so actually being able to play around in this setting is a huge thrill.

That being said, I’m highly conscious of the fact that this isn’t my setting. I’ve tried to avoid taking particularly egregious liberties with what’s been established, which is why Foraker is set in one of the “gaps” which Broadsides mostly left empty. Even so, I’ve had a blast filling in that gap in the same “historical roman a clef” style of the original, though I’ve probably gone into quite a bit more detail with my references.

The main thing I chose to iterate on from Broadsides was the focus of the story. Broadsides follows an officer from before their examination for Lieutenant all the way up to taking command of a frigate and in my opinion, it ends just as it starts getting good. Frigate command is probably the most storied and exciting part of a naval officer’s career in the age of sail. Beforehand, they may be the Commander of an undergunned sloop or a Lieutenant under another Captain. Afterwards, they’ll command a big lumbering ship of the line, shackled to blockade duty or acting under the constant watchful eye of an admiral. A frigate is fast enough to get into trouble and heavily-armed enough to shoot its way out. Forester first introduced Hornblower as the captain of a frigate. O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey commands the frigate HMS Surprise through most of his series.

Foraker places the player in much the same position they left Broadsides, in command of a frigate on independent duties, far away from the oversight of an admiral or the drudgery of blockade duty. Command of a frigate not only means control of a powerful fleet unit, but also serving as absolute dictator of a community of hundreds, who must maintain discipline and morale. A Captain must also lead that community into life and death struggles against similar floating communities. In that sense, Foraker is the equivalent of appending a chapter onto the end of Broadsides, and expanding that chapter into a whole story.

Still, it wouldn’t feel right to me to write a direct sequel or anything like that, not just because I’d be overriding Broadsides‘ original ending, but also because I’d be muddying the waters if Broadsides‘ original authors ever decide to do a sequel themselves. Which is part of the reason why the story is both geographically and chronologically removed from the original.

Everyone wants to know what you’re working on next.

I’ve still got some work for Burden of Command left, but I’ve been working on the systems and mechanics for Lords of Infinity for the past few months, and I look forward to starting the actual writing work for it soon.

Is it “Damn, the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” or “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

Long Answer: There are something like half a dozen different conflicting accounts by half a dozen witnesses. While the sentiment of the original quote is probably accurate, the actual words have probably been lost to time.

Short Answer: “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!”

We’re proud to announce that DinoKnights, 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 Omnibus app. It’s 40% off until August 30th!

Saddle up to defend the realm on dino-back!

Once a humble farmer’s child, you’ve been accepted into Queen Isobel’s Rangers: brave knights who patrol the kingdom of Pascalia on scaly beasts. But just as you receive your own dino and begin your career as a knight-ranger, you discover evil forces are converging to destroy the Queen, and Pascalia itself.

“DinoKnights” is a 177,000-word interactive fantasy novel by K.T. Bryski, 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.

Enemies and terrifying foes surround you: but whom should you fear most? The Dread Wizard Sargossa, raising an army of un-dead dragons, or an enemy much closer to the court—the Queen’s own sister, Ermessen? And what about your burgeoning talent for magic? Will you hone your powers to save your village and fight Sargossa? With a dinosaur at your side and sword in hand—the realm’s fate rests on you!

• Play as male, female, or non-binary; gay, straight, or ace.
• Choose one of six different dinosaurs as your steed, including allosaurus, triceratops, and velociraptor!
• Foil a palace coup—or join it, instead!
• Hit the training yard with your dino, or spend your time cozying up to nobles and mages.
• Find love with the royal heir, a charming bard, or a powerful mage!
• Discover your secret, magical heritage.
• Fight to save your own home village from destruction.
• Defend the poorest peasants, or win fame in Royal Tournaments.

Evil is waking, and Pascalia needs you. Will you and your dinosaur answer the call?

We hope you enjoy playing DinoKnights. 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.

Saddle up to defend the realm on dino-back! Once a humble farmer’s child, you’ve been accepted into Queen Isobel’s Rangers: brave knights who patrol the kingdom of Pascalia on scaly beasts. But just as you receive your own dino and begin your career as a knight-ranger, you discover evil forces are converging to destroy the Queen, and Pascalia itself. DinoKnights is a 177,000-word interactive novel by KT Bryski. I sat down with KT to learn more about the world DinoKnights is set in, and the challenges of picking up ChoiceScript after a break. DinoKnights releases this Thursday, August 23rd. 

Tell me about the Kingdom of Pascalia where DinoKnights is set. What kind of world is it?

Pascalia is a world of intrigue and shifting alliances, where honor is currency, but ambition runs rampant. It’s a world where deep chivalry and deeper friendships bring peace to far-flung corners, and where dark, ancient magic stirs old betrayals back to life.

It’s a world of golden grasses, rolling mountains, and blistering summers.

It’s also a world of dinosaurs.

Who are the major political power players in Pascalia?

Pascalia is a monarchy, so right at the top, we’ve got Queen Isobel. She’s the authority in the kingdom and also presides over her corps of dinosaur-mounted Rangers.

Next in line to the throne is her only child: Prince Bartas/Princess Beatris. Besides standing to inherit the crown, the heir also has the Queen’s ear!

The Queen’s sister, Lady Ermessen, wields considerable influence over the court of nobles. The lords and ladies advise Queen Isobel and manage the affairs of their respective regions. Rule the nobles and you may as well rule the kingdom…

And finally, the Mages’ College nurses its own power. Their own affairs concern them most, but their use of magic and rigorous scholarship make them a force to be reckoned with.

Why dinosaurs!?

Why not dinosaurs?!

I’ve always loved fantasy stories with “animal partners,” whether that’s the daemons in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials or the Companions in Mercedes Lackey’s Heralds of Valdemar…or even Pokémon! So I knew that I wanted strong non-human bonds to be a major part of the story.

Why dinosaurs specifically? Before the Royal Ontario Museum underwent extensive renovations in the mid-2000s, their dinosaurs were housed in a shadowy, dark wing full of dioramas. Yes, it’s outdated museum practice, but when I was a kid, it sparked awe and wonder like nothing else. I wanted to recapture some of that magic!

What character was your favorite to write? 

I really enjoyed writing Prince Bartas/Princess Beatris, Queen Isobel’s child and the heir to the throne (for simplicity’s sake, I shall use the heir’s female iteration here!).

When we first meet Princess Beatris, she’s languid, sardonic, and unflappable. Or so it seems. While her flirtatious, aristocratic dialogue was fun to write, it was even more interesting to see more complex layers emerge as the story went on. Turns out that Princess Beatris has a rich inner life, a strong sense of duty to her realm and mother, and a deep wellspring of honor.

It’s so rewarding when characters assert themselves that way, and it certainly earned her a fond spot in my heart!

This isn’t your first rodeo with Choice of Games—you’re also the author of Yeti’s Parole Officer. What’s changed for you about writing interactive fiction between these two games?

I think that interactive fiction has developed more, in every sense. The audience has grown, the genre has become wonderfully sophisticated, and the mechanics allow for even more complexity and nuance in the story. In 2014, I was experiencing the genre for the first time, so there was a lot of trial and error as I learned how it works. This time around, I felt like I had a better handle on what makes great interactive fiction—Choice of Games and its community have worked really hard on the underlying theories!

What did you find most challenging about it this go-around?

“I’ve already written for Choice of Games,” I said. “And I totally remember everything!”

Not…quite true, as it turned out. I went in overly-confident, and quickly discovered a) there’s been a lot of updates over the last four years (“multireplace” became my new best friend) and b) I actually had forgotten quite a bit. Including how many words are spelled differently in American English.

So the unexpected steep learning curve threw me. Fortunately, I had amazing support from Choice of Games to get me back up to speed!

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

You are a magician living a fairly normal life in a small village outside of the Kingdom of Githrad. Deal with bullies, navigate your father’s temper and alcoholism, and work at your various jobs. As well as being a clerk at your parents’ general store, you can also choose between being a guard, a scribe, a farmer, or a thief. It’s 40% off until August 23rd!

You get to have fun, too, like playing in chess tournaments, sparring, reading at the library, exploring necromancer’s caves, exploring the woods, and finding romance with the other villagers.

The Magician’s Burden is a 225,000 word interactive fantasy novel by Samuel Harrison Young, 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.

• Play as male, female, or non-binary; romance men, women, both, or no one at all
• Three different kinds of magic for you to choose from: stealth, light, or dark
• Dozens of stats detailing your skills, knowledge, attributes, relationships, and inventory

Oh, yeah. You’re also hijacked by a demon named Zaleth.

Samuel Harrison Young 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.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Struggle to balance a normal life while you investigate strange creatures, and the malevolent fog that hangs over your city. Take on the roll of a teenager thrown into a chaotic and dangerous struggle. Learn how to fight and use magic while you try not to die to the horrific creatures luring just under the surface of your city. It’s 33% off until August 23rd!

The Haze Under Windbrooke is a 117,200 word interactive fantasy novel by Jesse Freeman, 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.

• Defeat strange creatures with magic, a sword, or your trusty bow.
• Explore a strange other world just beneath your city.
• Learn the secrets of the monsters living just out of humanity’s sight.
• Try to stay alive while living a normal life.

Jesse Freeman 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 Choice of Magics, 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 Omnibus app. It’s 30% off until August 17th!

Your magic can change the world, but at what cost? Battle dragons, skyships, and evil Inquisitors, as you protect your homeland, conquer it, or destroy it forever.

Choice of Magics is a 550,000-word interactive, post-apocalyptic fantasy novel by Kevin Gold, author of our best-selling game, Choice of Robots. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Thousands of years ago, the ancients destroyed civilization with five schools of magic. Each spell comes at a terrible price. Glamor charms your adversaries, rotting your body from the inside. Divination reveals faraway secrets, exposing your own secrets to others. Automation gives objects the spark of life, destabilizing the climate. Vivomancy can heal or change living things, with bizarre side effects. Blast your enemies with Negation energy, forming permanent clouds of deadly fallout.

As a young scrounger of antiquities, you hope to build your ruined world anew with these rediscovered spells. Now you must decide which of these magics can transform your post-apocalyptic society, and what you’ll risk to bring hope and light to your kinsmen.

• Play as male, female, or non-binary; straight, gay, bi, or ace.
• Design your own pet, hatch a baby dragon, and build your own golems.
• Win a war, win the crown, or win your best friend’s heart.
• Transform an evil Inquisitor into a talking tortoise, out for revenge. (Eventually.)
• Collect magic items: rings of power, an alchemy set, a “light sword” (wink, wink)
• Romance your village’s geeky mayor, a goofy swordfighter, or even the queen.
• Help a stuffed monkey to repaint all of the murals in the Cathedral dungeon.
• Test out the mayor’s new board game.

Can you bring the world back from ruin and shape a new society? Use your magics well, and you could become as a god; use your magics poorly and destroy the world all over again.

We hope you enjoy playing Choice of Magics. 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.

Your magic can change the world, but at what cost? Battle dragons, skyships, and evil Inquisitors, as you protect your homeland, conquer it, or destroy it forever. Choice of Magics is a 550,000-word interactive, post-apocalyptic fantasy novel by Kevin Gold, author of our best-selling game, Choice of Robots. I sat down with Kevin to talk about his latest game and experiences with interactive fiction. Choice of Magics releases this Thursday, August 9th. 

MILD SPOILERS for CHOICE OF MAGICS FOLLOW.

Magics is one of the coolest games we’ve put out in terms of sheer power and ability the PC has to enact different things. Tell me about the five schools of magic.

Let’s see: Vivomancy, the magic of life, lets you do things like design your own critters, similar to the way you could design your robot in Choice of Robots.  But it tends to have unpredictable side effects, like growing permanent feathers in your hair when you grow wings.  Automation lets you build things like golems and airships, but drawing on the lightning you need tends to mess with the environment.  Divination lets you learn something about somebody or something else, but then somebody gets to learn something about you.  Negation blasts things, counters spells, and can be used as a power source, but leaves behind fallout.  And glamor magic sort of gives you super-charisma.

Since this is a post-apocalyptic story with a fantasy twist, the schools of magic all started as fantasy takes on current technologies with drawbacks—bioengineering, mass production, the Internet, nuclear power, and the glitz of mass media.  I thought that might help make the story feel relevant to today.  But over time, they each got their own quirks that don’t have anything to do with their metaphorical origins.

You’re the author of what I believe is our all-time most popular game, Choice of Robots, as well as Choice of Alexandria. Magics is definitely on the scale of Robots, but quite a different fantasy setting. Tell me about how your approach to IF has changed or grown over the years.

Back in 2014, when Choice of Robots was released, its success had been explained to me in a few reductionist ways, like, “Oh, people just like long games,” or “Oh, people just like power fantasies.”  I really didn’t think that was it; I thought people liked the branching and the heartfelt story.  To me, that game was born of two things—a lifelong love of the choose-your-own-adventure, and pure rage at the Department of Defense and my history of interactions with it, directly and indirectly, as an A.I. researcher.  Anyway, with Alexandria, I kind of wanted to see what would happen if I flouted all of that conventional wisdom about long games and power fantasies, and wrote a short game about a period of history that people ought to be more interested in (seeing as how Alexandria was an enlightened empire brought low by corruption and rampant self-interest, hint hint).

The answer, as it turns out, is that people don’t tend to buy things that are short and about obscure subjects, although they seem to like them fine if they do buy them (last I checked, Alexandria shares Robots‘ 97% approval on Steam but has fewer sales by a factor of 10).  As a game writer, I find it’s more satisfying to be read and played than have a game that I think is good but languishes on the virtual shelves.  So with Choice of Magics, I’m leaning extremely heavily in the opposite direction for those variables that seemed to drive sales—long games, familiar genre, power fantasies, check—but also leaning very heavily on the two things that I thought made Choice of Robots so special, namely the cool branchiness and having something personal to say (Magics is partly about how happiness and hope are possible even in the midst of catastrophe).  The result, I hope, is kind of Richard Rodgers like—I’m trying to be accessible, heartfelt, and high quality all at the same time.

Like Robots, this is an especially long game with some very diverse branching at the end. Tell me a little bit about the structures there.

Many games drive endings with variables, but I drive which climax you get with variables!  Each of the five magic schools has a big disaster associated with it, and each resolution of each disaster leads to a very different ending.   The disasters aren’t entirely decided by your ability scores—it’s more like they’re decided by events that are themselves triggered by your decisions to use magic in particular ways.  For a climax, I can gamble that the player has done a lot of things associated with that school, and therefore cram in a ton of callbacks.  So, for example, if you trigger the Vivomancy climax, your creatures revolt (surprise!), but then I can also say, “Hey, I bet the player has pets because they have high Vivomancy,” and do some callbacks there.  And I can gamble that when the mayor gave you a choice of how to help the town, you chose to do it with Vivomancy, and I can add a potential callback about that.  The callbacks don’t actually trigger unless you really did those things, but it wouldn’t be worth coding all that conditional branching unless I had a good bet some of my references would pay off.

There’s then some orthogonal stuff going on about who wins a war, who’s now on the throne, and so on, plus some changes in tone depending on the player’s personality variables.  Overall, there are five main climaxes (plus the ability to bypass them entirely), at least three approaches to each climax, and the possibility of success or failure for each of those approaches.  There are about 100 different “the end” paragraphs, but some of them are only cosmetically different based on minor things like who’s sitting on the throne.  But you still definitely have at least 30 or so extremely different endings, and then the distinction between “different ending” and not gets hazy between there and the 100 mark.  Almost all of them are at the very end of the game, too; there are very few places to die early.  (But if you charge into a room literally marked “Hell” and decide to fight what’s in there, well, good luck.)

One of my favorite bits in Magics is the Mayor and the PC playing a board game they’ve invented. What are your favorite tabletop games?

I’m a fan of most things made by Vlaada Chvatil, and my favorite of his is the Mage Knight board game, this lavish game that combines exploration of tiles on a hex grid with a Dominion-like deck-building mechanic, where each card can be used in several ways (similar to Gloomhaven, which was released later).  The multiple uses for each card induce Vlaada Chvatil’s signature stare-at-everything-until-your-brain-is-on-fire-yes-what-you-want-is-possible gameplay.  I also have deep respect for Richard Garfield’s King of Tokyo, which I love because it’s an extremely geeky game in its mechanics, but it manages to be super accessible to non-gamer types at the same time.  But maybe the game I feel is most underrated is Castle of the Devil, known affectionately among my friends as “Guys with Stuff,” a 3 on 3 team game where you don’t know who is on your team at first, but you need to infer it from the other players’ behavior, along with who is holding what cards.   You can win at the end by either declaring you know what’s going on and being right, or by declaring that your opponents *don’t* know what’s going on, and being right about that.  Really cool game of observing other people’s behavior closely and trying to figure out why they’re doing what they’re doing.

What other IF sparks your fancy? Do you have any recent favorites from the Choice of Games catalogue?

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

It’s a regular Tuesday evening when you are pulled from the Earth and sent to a place where magic still exists. You are given a wizard’s tower filled with arcane knowledge that you are expected to learn. Thrust into a war between two nations, it’s up to you to save the kingdom where you now live. It’s 40% off until August 10th!

The Last Wizard is a 185,000 word interactive fantasy novel by Mike Walter, 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.

Your choices will influence who rules the land and what happens to the civilians living there. Will you find love or will you strive to return to the life you were forced to leave behind? Will you save the kingdom, or will you betray the people for your own personal gain? The choice is yours!

• Play as male, female, genderfluid, or non-binary; gay, straight, or asexual
• Find romance with a variety of interesting characters.
• Learn and master multiple powerful spells.
• Build a powerful golem, ride a dragon, raise the dead, heal the sick, rain fire upon your enemies, fly, become invisible, summon lightning, enchant magical weapons…
• Acquire powerful magical artifacts.
• Save the kingdom or join the enemy.
• Return home to Earth or live your life in a fantasy world.
• Change the fates of two nations!

Mike Walter 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.