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Choice of Games is pleased to announce the release of Mobile Armored Marine, by Steve Cave! Play it on the web, or download the iPhone version or the Android version. Make sure to keep track of your saved games, as Steve plans to produce several sequels.

Blast into action as an Imperial Mobile Armored Marine! Decide when to use stealth, diplomacy, or your armor’s incredible power as you explore a silent colony world. Gain glory, and command a squad of troopers as your choices determine how the story unfolds. Can you uncover the dark secret of Far Hope?

We hope you enjoy playing “Mobile Armored Marine” and we encourage you to play it, tell your friends, and to recommend it on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our App Store ranking. Basically, the more times you download in the first week, the better “Mobile Armored Marine: Mission to Far Hope” will rank.

Finally, a shameless plug: “Mobile Armored Marine” is another game available as part of our hosted games plan. If you’d like to write a multiple-choice game of your own, give it a try! If you host our game with us, we’ll share a portion of the revenue that the game produces with you.

Choice of Games is pleased to announce the release of Zebulon, by Matt Slaybaugh. Play it on the web, or download the iPhone version or the Android version. Zebulon was originally created and released for the JayisGames Casual Game Design Competition #9, where it earned fourth place.

Journey through Space and uncover the secrets of the asteroid Zebulon! Pilot a spacecraft with two loyal sidekicks and your pet goldfish Henry. Travel to the Moon, meet some interesting characters, and then blast off to the Asteroid Belt. Along the way make the right choices to discover the secrets of Zebulon and your own past. If Douglas Adams had written a multiple-choice gamebook, it might not be entirely unlike this!

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

Finally, a shameless plug: “Zebulon” is another game available as part of our hosted games plan. If you’d like to write a multiple-choice game of your own, give it a try! If you host our game with us, we’ll share a portion of the revenue that the game produces with you.

Choice of Games is pleased to announce the release of Zombie Exodus, by Jim Dattilo! Play it now on the web, or download the iPhone version or the Android version.

Build your character and fight your way out of a zombie-filled city to save your sister in this interactive horror fiction story. Gather supplies and weapons while avoiding the military, bandits, and living dead. Your choices alone control the story. Can you survive the zombie apocalypse?

We hope you enjoy playing “Zombie Exodus” and we encourage you to play it, tell your friends, and to recommend it on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our App Store ranking. Basically, the more times you download in the first week, the better “Zombie Exodus” will rank.

Finally, a shameless plug: “Zombie Exodus” is another game available as part of our hosted games plan. If you’d like to write a multiple-choice game of your own, give it a try! If you host our game with us, we’ll share a portion of the revenue that the game produces with you.

Jim worked very closely with others on our Choice of Games forum, polishing this game until it shines. Thanks to everyone who helped make this game what it is today!

Choice of Games is pleased to announce the release of Dilemma, by Matt Pirrodi! Play it now on the web, or download the iPhone version or the Android version.

In “Dilemma”, you make difficult moral decisions in a modern drama. You take the role of Alex, an average guy having a not so average day. Juggle relations with your friends while you puzzle over choices of right and wrong. Explore what it means to be a good person. Determine if the law is always right. Choose between yourself and your friends. Decide between romance or friendship. And ultimately hold the life of another in your hands. One day can be packed with enough drama, tension, and death to change your life forever. But at the end of that day you’re faced with the question: are you a good person?

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

Finally, a shameless plug: “Dilemma” is another game available as part of our hosted games plan. If you’d like to write a multiple-choice game of your own, give it a try! If you host our game with us, we’ll share a portion of the revenue your game produces.

For a variety of reasons (mostly legal and technical reasons) our hosted games releases have been on hiatus for quite a while. But now we’re ready to pump these games out almost as fast as you can submit them to us. Expect half a dozen games or more over the next month or two!

(Artwork is used under a Creative Commons license, courtesy of Alex Proimos.)

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.

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!

Choice of Games writer Heather Albano has branched out into non-interactive fiction! Her first novel, Timepiece, is available for download at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and will shortly be available on a variety of other platforms and formats.

Timepiece is a steampunk time-travel adventure – the story of girl, a pocket watch, Frankenstein’s monster, the Battle of Waterloo, and giant clockwork robots taking over London. (No, really.) If you like Heather’s games, you’ll love her book… come on over and check it out!

As we discussed in an earlier article, if you want to write a long interactive novel that doesn’t suck, you’ll need to make to make heavy use of numeric scores or “stats.”

Indeed, if you merge branches aggressively as we recommend, the entire game will be about the stats; every decision will update the stats and test earlier stats to make earlier decisions meaningful.

In this article, we discuss a few techniques for designing great stats.
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Traditional gamebooks tend to be pretty short. The average story in a 110-page book in the most popular “choose a path” series is only six pages long.

It’s not hard to see why. If each page of a choose-a-path book allows the reader to choose between just two options, a seven-page story requires 128 pages of text. If you want eight pages, the author has to deliver twice as much text, 256 pages. And if you want to write a twenty-page short story, you need a book more than a million pages long. You’d never finish writing a “short story” of that magnitude!

It’s hard to tell a great story in fewer than eight pages. (You can tell children’s stories, which is perhaps why choose-a-path has traditionally appealed to kids.) You’ll have to write longer stories if you want grown-ups to read them.

But how?
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The IntroComp 2011 winners have been announced. There were thirteen entries this year, all introductions to games not yet finished. Five entries were in ChoiceScript, including two of the top three entries!

1st Place: Choice of Zombies by Heather Albano
2nd Place: Speculative Fiction by Dianne Christoforo and Thomas Mack
3rd Place: Choice of the Petal Throne by Danielle Goudeau

Everyone who entered has the chance to win a prize in the Honorable category; the first non-placing entry to complete their game will receive the $25 Honorable prize.

Congratulations to the winners and everyone who entered!

Amazon is running a sale on its interactive fiction titles for Kindle, ending July 24th. You can get all of our games (including our newest title, Affairs of the Court, which includes “Choice of Romance” and “Choice of Intrigues“) for 50% off.

Share and Enjoy!