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We’re proud to announce that Showdown at Willow Creek, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, and, via the Chrome Web Store, Windows, OS X, and Linux.

Saddle up and defend the town of Willow Creek from nefarious outlaws and city slickers! It all starts when a rancher’s daughter goes missing, and it ends at the showdown at Willow Creek, where greed, lust, science, and Mother Nature will face off at high noon.

“Showdown at Willow Creek” is the interactive western mystery novel by Alana Joli Abbott where your choices control the story. The game is entirely text-based–without graphics or sound effects–and driven by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Gamble, seduce, brawl, or shoot your way through Willow Creek, where gunslingers make the laws and everybody has secrets. Will you romance the gambler or the soiled dove (or both)? Will you side with the scientists bringing electricity to the Old West, or with a tribe of Native American Utes? Will you unravel the conspiracy that threatens to tear the town apart, or will you light the fuse to blow it all sky high?

Note: With “Showdown,” we’re experimenting with “try before you buy” on iOS, where the first three chapters are available for free. Android and Chrome users can try the first three chapters for free on the web. You can buy the rest of the game for $1.99–the same price on iOS, Android, and Chrome.

We hope you enjoy playing Showdown at Willow Creek. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. Basically, the more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

Have you ever wanted to write an interactive novel? November is National Novel Writing Month or “NaNoWriMo” for short. This year, thousands of authors will write 50,000 words of fiction between November 1st and November 30th.

Of course, most NaNoWriMo authors will write traditional linear novels this year, but we’d like to invite you use ChoiceScript to write an interactive NaNoWriMo novel. ChoiceScript is a simple programming language for writing multiple-choice games (MCGs) like ours. Writing games with ChoiceScript is easy and fun, even for authors with no programming experience.

And you won’t be alone! A number of authors on our forum are going to work on their novels this month together, reporting their progress and encouraging each other to finish.

When you’re finished, you can even submit your finished ChoiceScript game to us; we’ll host it for you publicly and give you a share of the revenue your game produces.

Choice of Games wishes all participants of NaNoWriMo the best of luck. Happy writing!

We’re proud to announce that The ORPHEUS Ruse, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, and, via the Chrome Web Store, Windows, OS X, and Linux.

Infiltrate the enemy as a psychic spy, leaping from body to body by touch! But when your own body is stolen, you’ll race against time to find it before your mind disintegrates.

“The ORPHEUS Ruse” is the thrilling interactive spy novel by Paul Gresty, where your choices determine how the story proceeds. The game is entirely text-based–without graphics or sound effects–but driven by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

What secrets have your mentors been keeping from you? Can you trust your friends when you don’t know whose face they’re wearing? What will you sacrifice to hide your powers from the world?

We hope you enjoy playing The ORPHEUS Ruse. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. Basically, the more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

Choice of Games is proud to announce three new games as part of our Hosted Games program!

1) Paradox Factor, by Mike Walter. If you could travel through time, what changes would you make? Alter your past and future in this edgy, thought-provoking time travel game. Are you willing to live with the effects that your changes may cause?

“Paradox Factor” is one of our most unusual “Hosted” games yet, allowing you to travel freely from past to future and back again. You’ll need to use your memories of the future to solve puzzles in the past, before the probability of a paradox reaches 100%. TouchArcade called it a “thrilling story that mixes science and science fiction nicely.”

Paradox Factor has been available on iOS and Android for a while already, but only today is it available on the Chrome Web Store, making it available to all of our players on Windows, OS X, and Linux.

2) Way Walkers: University 2, by J. Leigh. The Way Walkers: University epic continues in the second part of the Tar’citadel trilogy!

Picking up right where you left off in part one, the city and school are still in shock from the mysterious attacks, and the question on everyone’s mind is…who was behind them, and why? Choose for yourself: will you be drawn into the hunt to discover the truth, or simply try to have a normal life in this city of Talents?

Will you excel in your Ability classes, and survive the complex hallways and their many magical surprises? Can you piece together the clues, and begin to discover the truth behind Illyan Giesi? Will you be able to balance your relationships between Jun and Sem, or will friendships crumble while rivalries deepen to hatred? Can you win the fight for a friend’s soul, or risk losing them forever?

Finally, can you face what might be your greatest challenge of all in Tar’citadel…dating?

3) Murder in Berlin, by Alexander Clifford. An interactive detective story set in 1932. Experience Weimar Berlin during the rise of the Nazis, an exciting and dangerous place. Your task? To find the killer of Englishman James Knowles. Your investigation will bring you face to face with a kaleidoscope of characters from German society; Communists and Nazis, bureaucrats and singers. Along the way, you will be faced with some difficult decisions: should you play it by the book or do the ends justify the means? Be warned some of your choices may have unexpected consequences…

We hope you enjoy playing these games. We encourage you to tell your friends about them, and recommend the games on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. Basically, the more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

We’re proud to announce that Heroes Rise: The Hero Project, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for iOS, Android and, via the Chrome Web Store, Windows, OS X, and Linux.

As a contestant on “The Hero Project,” you’ll battle villains and heroes alike with your newly discovered “Infini” powers. Will you vote to eliminate your rivals, or betray your alliance to curry favor with the celebrity judges?

“Heroes Rise: The Hero Project” is the sequel to last year’s hit “Heroes Rise: The Prodigy,” the epic interactive novel by Zachary Sergi, where your choices determine how the story proceeds. The “Heroes Rise” series is entirely text-based–without graphics or sound effects–and driven by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Play as male or female, gay or straight; you can even start a “showmance” with the other contestants. What will you sacrifice to become the nation’s next top hero?

How high will you rise?

We hope you enjoy playing Heroes Rise: The Hero Project. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. Basically, the more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

We’re proud to announce that the third part of the Choice of Romance: Affairs of the Court trilogy, our popular series of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for iOS, Android and, via the Chrome Web Store, Windows, OS X, and Linux.

The third part, titled “‘Til Death Do Us Part,” is the climactic conclusion to the trilogy, a fantasy story of clandestine love affairs, revolution, and betrayal, which started with “Choice of Romance” and continued in “Choice of Intrigues.”

Plunge into court politics and change the course of history, or pursue a love affair that rocks the kingdom to its foundations! It’s the game of romance, deception and court intrigue, where your choices determine how the story proceeds. The game is entirely text-based–without graphics or sound effects–but driven by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Will you play as male or female? Gay or straight? Match wits with the schemers of the court, or play your suitors off each other? Will you find true love? Gain a crown? Lose your head?

We hope you enjoy playing Choice of Romance: Affairs of the Court. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. Basically, the more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

We’re proud to announce that Choice of the Vampire: The Fall of Memphis, the sequel to 2010’s hit Choice of the Vampire, is now available for iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, and, via the Chrome Web Store, Windows, OS X, and Linux.

Feast on the blood of a dying city: Memphis, 1873! Make your national debut in the Society, a conspiracy of vampires who convene in Memphis to elect a new “senator.” The city burns with yellow fever, as the nascent Ku Klux Klan rises.

“Choice of the Vampire” is the epic interactive novel by Jason Stevan Hill where your choices determine how the story proceeds. The game is entirely text-based–without graphics or sound effects–but driven by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

What will you take from Memphis before the city collapses? Will you battle the Klan, or control them from within? Will you rekindle a romance that transcends death? The choice is yours.

We hope you enjoy playing Choice of the Vampire: The Fall of Memphis. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. Basically, the more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

At long last, after a ton of hard work, we’re about to release ‘Til Death Do Us Part, the third part of the Choice of Romance and Choice of Intrigues trilogy.

Intrigues is currently available on the web at no charge. On iOS and Android, Romance is available for free (with a $1.99 in-app purchase to turn off advertisements), but Intrigues costs $0.99.

In order to be able to afford to keep working on games like ‘Til Death Do Us Part, we have to sell our games, not give them away for free. We’ve tried giving away our games and monetizing them through advertisements and in-app purchases, but we simply can’t make enough money that way to keep on making new games.

The impending release of ‘Til Death Do Us Part (we call it Death, for short) forced us to make some hard decisions about how to price the existing parts of the Affairs of the Court trilogy, which is how we now refer to Choice of Romance and its sequels.

Here’s what we plan to do when we release Death.

• On iOS and Android (including Kindle Fire), we’ll make Death available as an in-app purchase for $0.99; Intrigues will still cost $0.99. You’ll be able to buy Death without buying Intrigues, and vice versa. (You also still be able to pay $2.99 to play the game without advertisements.)
• On E-Ink Kindle devices, in-app purchasing is not possible. We currently charge $2.99 for the Affairs of the Court app, which includes Romance plus Intrigues and no ads; when we release Death, we’ll increase the price of Affairs of the Court to $3.99. Everyone who’s already purchased Affairs of the Court will receive Death at no additional charge, in an upgrade to the original app. (Note that this could take a while, while we wait for the upgrade to be approved.)
• We’ll make the entire Affairs of the Court trilogy available for $3.99 on the Chrome Web Store, Mac App Store, and Windows Store (for Windows 8 PCs), without any advertisements or in-app purchases.
• We’ll remove the free version of Intrigues from our web site. When you reach the end of Romance on the web, you’ll be invited to purchase the rest of the game on one of our other platforms.

By removing Intrigues from our web site, we’re effectively raising the price of Intrigues to match the price on iOS/Android, to avoid chiseling our mobile customers. When we release Death for $0.99, it will be possible for mobile players to purchase Death but not Intrigues; if Intrigues is free on the web, we’ll be effectively asking our mobile customers to play Intrigues on the web, switching to mobile only when playing Death. We want our paying customers to be confident that they’re getting the best deal possible, and not force them to jump through annoying hoops to save money.

People Who Can’t Buy the Game

Unfortunately, charging money for Intrigues will mean that some people who can currently enjoy the game will no longer be able to play it at all, especially players who are too young to have a bank account.

We’ve heard your complaints about Chrome Web Store’s Google Wallet, which doesn’t accept payments in all countries. Our hope is that by also making the game available on the Windows Store and the Mac App Store, we’ll be able to reach as many paying customers as possible.

If you have access to a PayPal account but do not have any way to purchase the Affairs of the Court trilogy, please email support-affairs-paypal@choiceofgames.com and we’ll try to help you out by hand. (One day, we’ll build our own online store to accept PayPal payments, but designing a secure online store is a lot of work; since we already support seven different online storefronts, our hope is that we can handle the rest of you via email.)

The Good Old Days When Everything Was Free

Overall, this is yet another step in our evolution from a company that gives games away for free to a company that charges money for games. We began this process immediately after Google banned us from Google AdSense, cutting our advertising revenue substantially. As we’d hoped at the time, being forced to charge money for our games has been good for our profits.

We have to admit that there was another way to unify our prices: we could have made Intrigues available for free on all platforms. As a team, we agreed not to do that. We’ve worked really hard on Death. (Really really hard. This might be the most complex game we’ve ever written.) If we made Intrigues free on iOS and Android, we’d lose the substantial revenue that we continue to get from Intrigues, effectively reducing the revenue we made from Death. We feel that if we made Intrigues available for free, we’d be getting paid less for Death than we deserve.

We know that a lot of you still yearn for the good old days when our games were available online for free. We’ll continue to experiment with techniques that could help our free games earn as much money as our paid games, without using exploitative tricks for which free-to-play games are so notorious.

We want as many people as possible to enjoy our games. If we can find an ethical way to make our games available for free without losing money, we’ll do it.

In the meantime, you’ve still got a week or so to enjoy Intrigues on the web at no charge. (We’ll submit the new version to Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon this week; we’ll release Death once they approve us.)

We’re proud to announce that Choice of the Ninja, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for iOS, Android and, via the Chrome Web Store, Windows, OS X, and Linux.

In the high-stakes game of politics between two feudal lords, you are a ninja village’s chosen warrior. Earn glory for your clan as you battle your enemies, becoming a master of magic, combat, and stealth.

Choice of the Ninja is an epic interactive fantasy novel by Katherine Buffington, where your choices determine how the story proceeds. The game is entirely text-based–without graphics or sound effects–but driven by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Will you bring peace to your village, or return home in shame? Will you serve your daimyo obediently, or defy his orders for the greater good? Or will you use your powers of invisibility for personal gain? The choice is yours.

We hope you enjoy playing Choice of the Ninja. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. Basically, the more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

You can now get SLAMMED! on the Microsoft Windows Store or on the Mac App Store, for $2.99 until July 17th.

The Windows Store is available only for Windows 8 PCs and Windows RT tablets like the MS Surface. If you’re using Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, or Linux, you can still purchase SLAMMED! for your PC on the Chrome Web Store.

Our goal is to make our games available on as many stores as we can. That’s partly because we’ve heard from our users that Google won’t accept payments from countries where you live, but also because stores can help users discover our games.

We hope you enjoy playing SLAMMED! We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the Windows Store (just like the App Store). Basically, the more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.