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Choice of Games is pleased to announce the release of Dead Already?, our third title by Kie Brooks! Play it on the web, or download the iPhone version or the Android version. Life is not fair, neither is this game. Another short murder mystery for you to solve following the ChoiceScript multiple-choice text-based format. The murderer is randomly selected at the beginning of each game for a greater challenge. We hope you enjoy playing “Dead Already?” 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

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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.

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”

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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!