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You and your shattered werewolf pack must save the living Earth with Rage and spirit! In this interactive novel with hundreds of choices, can you defeat a Wyrm Spirit who manifests as a lie that you want to believe?

We’re proud to announce that Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names, in partnership with World of Darkness and Paradox AB, is now available for Steam, Android, and on iOS in the “Choice of Games” app.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names is 25% off until May 2nd! As a special offer, if you purchase Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names by 11:59pm PDT on April 26th, we’ll give you the Wardens and Furies DLC, featuring the options to play as a member of the Black Fury tribe or the Hart Warden tribe, for free.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names is an interactive novel by Kyle Marquis set in the World of Darkness. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Shapeshifter. Mystic. Hero. Monster. You are a werewolf, and you are all these things. Werewolves are the living earth’s last guardians, created by Gaia, given the gift of shifting between human and wolf forms, and called to stop humanity from destroying the world.

But you have failed.

Three years ago, packs of werewolves worked together as a Sept in Broad Brook, Massachusetts, battling the Wyrm, the enemy of Gaia. While other Septs fell to the Wyrm or tore themselves apart with fratricidal Rage, Broad Brook thrived. Some said they would be the ones to stop the Apocalypse.

But in one night, a Wyrm Spirit called “the Answering Tiger” destroyed the Broad Brook Sept and defiled its caern. In fact, Broad Brook had never been thriving at all. The Tiger had deceived their senses, disordered their thoughts, and turned them against one another. Where the different tribes saw trust, in truth there was resentment and growing Rage. Where the different packs saw safety, there were security flaws that could be exploited. Where they saw the Wyrm, there were innocents that they massacred, before reporting to other Septs about another glorious victory.

Their cruel pride allowed the Wyrm Spirit to deceive them, and they mostly destroyed themselves. The Answering Tiger had servants, too, monstrous Banes and fomori, and even werewolves sworn to the Wyrm. But they were only there to pick off whoever was left.

Now, the Stormcat, once the Patron Spirit of the Broad Brook Sept, has called upon you to rebuild a pack from the survivors and fight back against the Answering Tiger. In the savage woods and decaying towns of New England, you will forge your own legend.

Build Your Pack. Human and werewolf survivors haunt the woods and hide in the cities: find them to learn what happened and to rebuild the werewolf nation. But not all werewolves can be trusted: shun those wolves consumed by Rage, and pity those who have lost the Wolf and become empty shells.

Survive the Wilds. A desperate exile, shunned by those of your old pack who have abandoned their oaths to Gaia, you’ll have to survive by your wits. A winter night can kill as surely as any monster: find shelter, seek allies among spirits and humans, and learn how far you’ll go to survive.

Unleash Your Rage. You are one of Gaia’s monsters, a living weapon, herald of horror and death. Now the Apocalypse is here: wield your Rage with savage cunning and keen discretion, or it will swallow you whole.

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; befriend or romance werewolves and humans of all genders.
• Shapeshift among five forms to slaughter your enemies, or outwit them to take what you need.
• Choose your auspice (moon-sign) and your werewolf tribe to learn what sort of monster you are. Play as a Bone Gnawer, Child of Gaia, Glass Walker, Shadow Lord, or Silver Fang.
• Claim your territory and heal the spirits there to unlock Gifts that let you summon animals, see into the past, or enter the spirit world.

If you purchase Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names by 11:59pm PDT on April 26th, we’ll give away the “Wardens and Furies” DLC, featuring the options to play as a member of the Black Fury tribe or the Hart Warden tribe, for free.

Here’s how to access your free DLC.

• Steam: On the Steam Store page, there’s a link to buy the DLC for $0 for a limited time.
• The “Werewolf: Book of Hungry Names” app:
  • On iPhone/iPad: The app itself costs $14.99 to download; when you download it, you’ll see an option to “buy” the DLC for $0. (The price will increase on April 27.)
  • On Android: The app is free to download. When you open the app, you’ll be prompted to buy the full game for $14.99. When you buy it, you’ll be prompted to login to choiceofgames.com. Logging in will give you access to the “Wardens and Furies” DLC at no additional charge.
• The “Choice of Games” app: When you buy the game, you’ll be prompted to login to choiceofgames.com. Logging in will give you access to the “Wardens and Furies” DLC at no additional charge.
• Our website: If you buy the game on our website at choiceofgames.com before the deadline, you’ll automatically unlock the “Wardens and Furies” DLC at no additional charge.

If you run into trouble, you can email us your purchase receipt at support-hungrynames@choiceofgames.com and we’ll help you sort it out.

We’re putting six of our games on sale today, each one dripping with magic! Play as an illusionist, an infernalist, an archmage, or an apprentice, and watch your power grow—but what will you do with it? Sale ends April 25!

• Choice of Magics. Your magic can change the world, but at what cost? Battle dragons, skyships, and Inquisitors. Protect your homeland, conquer it, or destroy it forever!

• Heroes of Myth. Everyone thinks you saved the world, but it was all a lie! You faked a “prophecy” with magical illusions. But now, your prophecy is coming true.

• Battlemage: Magic by Mail. Will you defend your kingdom with forbidden magic, or backstab the crown? Win tournaments, kiss a prince/princess, or just seize power for yourself!

• Révolution Diabolique. Summon demons to win the French Revolution! Will you uphold the Republic, restore the monarchy, rule France yourself, or lose your head?

• Tower Behind the Moon. You are already an archmage–can you become an immortal? Use magic and cunning to thwart rivals, fight demons, and outwit gods so you can join their ranks.

• The Magician’s Workshop. When your master is murdered, you must uncover the magical secrets of Renaissance Italy, before your rival apprentices expose them first!

Over the past few weeks, we’ve posted dozens of art pieces to our @choiceofgames Instagram profile. We’d love to connect with you there!

This week, we’re posting preview images of the characters you’ll meet in Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names when we release it on April 25th.

We’re building up our Instagram as we transition away from posting on Twitter, in an effort to meet new people who haven’t tried our games before.

It would be a huge help if you’d follow us, like our posts, and comment on them, to help Instagram’s algorithm see that people appreciate us.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Daria: A Kingdom Simulator is 40% off until April 11th!

Step into a richly detailed world where your dreams of ruling a thriving kingdom become a reality. This captivating resource management game seamlessly blends storytelling with strategic gameplay. Begin your journey with no more than a vision and gradually shape the destiny of a nation. 

Daria: A Kingdom Simulator is an epic 125,000-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 kingdom doesn’t exist in isolation. You’ll navigate a dynamic world with rival kingdoms, diplomatic intricacies, and the ever-present possibility of warfare or subjugation as you strive to craft a lasting legacy.  The heart of the game lies in its complex yet accessible battle system. 

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary.
• Return to the Lucidverse and be a part of the history of Daria.
• Play in Easy, Normal, or Hard modes, where each difficulty affects many aspects of play.
• Make use of a fully-functioning encyclopedia of game concepts to aid you.
• Enjoy an endless arena-style, tournament mode for you and your heroes to train in battle.
• Specialize as a virtuous or malevolent cleric, a formidable fighter, or a spell-casting wizard.
• Create noble offices, embark on grand building projects, and manage your subjects to help your nation grow.
• Use battle strategy and troop composition to defeat other nations—or negotiate with them using your diplomatic skills.
• Equip your ruler with the most recently acquired weapons and armor.
• Find and collect ten heroes to join you, including an elven huntress, a dwarven prince, a halfling weapons-master, the Archmage of the Academy of Wizards, the Bishop of the Holy Four, and many others.

Are you ready to take the throne and shape the fate of Daria?

Mike 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 excited to announce that Volume 1 of the graphic novel Breaks, cowritten by Malin Rydén, author of the popular Hosted Games Fallen Hero: Rebirth and Fallen Hero: Retribution, and Emma Vieceli, is back in print and available to buy! To celebrate, we’re putting Malin’s games on sale until April 4th!

Breaks Volume 1

Before Heartstopper, there was Breaks…the enemies-to-lovers queer comic book sensation. Cortland Hunt has made some dangerous mistakes. Now he’s waiting quietly for those mistakes to catch up with him. Ian Tanner coasts through life denying the spark of anger beneath his laid back exterior. When school politics and personal lives become a battleground, the pair find that what they share may just be their only safe haven. Breaks is the story of two young men discovering who they were, who they are, and who they will become.

Buy Breaks Volume 1 today! And don’t forget to pick up Fallen Hero: Rebirth for 30% off and Fallen Hero: Retribution for 33% off before April 4th!

Become the greatest telepathic villain Los Diablos has ever known! Once you were famous; soon you will be infamous. That is, unless your old friends in the Rangers stop you first. Juggle different identities and preserve your secrets as you build new alliances and try to forget the friendships you’ve left behind.

Fallen Hero: Rebirth is a 380,000 word interactive novel by Malin Rydén, 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.

• Hone your telepathic talents, possess people and venture into their minds.
• Build your own personalized combat armor: be a terrifying super-strong behemoth, a mysterious speedster or anything inbetween
• Make alliances or enemies in the Los Diablos underworld while you outfight and outthink the heroes set against you.
• Explore relationships as straight, gay, bisexual or aromantic. Romance a mad scientist, your former partner, or both.
• Juggle two bodies and three identities, play as male, female or genderqueer.
• Above all; make sure your past never catches up with you.

How far will you fall down the path of villainy?

We’re proud to announce that On the Run: Rogue Heroes, 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.

On the Run: Rogue Heroes is 33% off until March 28th!

Awaken your powers and save your friends! Uncover the secrets that the military has been hiding about Activated people, about your family, and about you.

On the Run: Rogue Heroes is an interactive teenage-superpower novel by Alyssa N. Vaughn. It’s entirely text-based, 200,000 words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

For decades, everyone with special powers like super-strength or flight has been forced into lifelong conscription in W.I.N.G.S.: the Weaponized Individual National Guardian Services. Most of this military branch’s activities are secret—except for the daring exploits of heroes like Ms. Midnight, Phantom Phaeton, and Sergeant Smash.

You and your older sister grew up living with your grandmother, who cared for you, provided for you, and sheltered you from the truth. She knows what they do at W.I.N.G.S., she knows what happened to your parents, and she knows about the deadly genetic disease that you and your sister both carry.

Now, you and your sister have finally Activated your powers, W.I.N.G.S has arrested and conscripted your sister, and you’ve fled with your grandmother, on the run from psionic government agents with abilities just as powerful as yours.

But you’re not alone! There are people out there trying to fight back against W.I.N.G.S., people who could be your friend—or more than friends. There’s Micah, a long-lost friend with shoulder-length locs and a big secret to protect. Alex, a pickpocket/con-artist has illusion powers and a lot of eye makeup. Then there’s Knockout, a vigilante with a red-brown ponytail and homemade costume, including a mask and cape.

While your scrappy little group races against time to save your sister and yourselves, your own powers are growing stronger every day. Outrun cars on the highway with super-speed, pull down telephone poles with your super-strength, let out supersonic cries that can shatter glass—or just turn invisible and sneak away from it all. You’ll need every bit of your power and your smarts as you uncover secrets that could change the lives of every Activated person on earth.

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, bi, or asexual.
• Choose your portfolio of powers: super-strength, super-speed, heightened senses, supersonic shouts, or invisibility!
• Befriend or romance a childhood sweetheart, a scrappy con-artist runaway, or a powered vigilante with big golden-retriever energy.
• Discover the truth about your family and rebuild your relationship with your long-lost mother—or leave it all behind and seek support only with your friends.
• Fight back against the government’s control of Activated people, join their secret organization and become even more powerful yourself, or make peace between opposing factions.

Who will you trust? Who are your parents? Who will you date?

We hope you enjoy playing On the Run: Rogue Heroes. 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’ve got an extensive list of short-story credits, but this is your first novel-length publication. What were your favorite aspects of moving from short-form to long-form, and what were some of the challenges?

One thing I really enjoyed was getting to develop the world and characters of the story in more depth. With my short stories, I usually have an idea I want to get across and everything takes a backseat to that since I have more limited space. Since I had more room to stretch out, so to speak, I really felt like I had the ability to get more of what was in my mind onto the page–or screen in this case.

As I got further into development for On The Run, I think this ended up being one of the biggest challenges as well. With a short story it’s so easy to say “this is the end”, go through it two or three times, and feel really satisfied with your final draft. With On The Run, I felt like there was always something new I could add, something I could improve, so it was really hard to get to that last deadline and say “it’s finished.”

On the Run offers a darker and grittier take on superheroes: government conspiracies and coverups, exploitation of powered people, and military conscription. What led you to take this approach, and what were some of your media influences and inspirations?

I was a big fan of the X-Men growing up, and I always thought that the political storylines from the various adaptations were the most realistic in the way the government and general public would react to an outbreak of superpowers. Fear. Control. That vicious cycle of giving up rights in return for supposed safety.

Like a lot of fans, high-school-aged me dreamed up my own characters to join in on the adventures I loved so much, but I gradually became more interested in the stories of these new heroes.

There was one YA novel I read by Eoin Colfer, The Supernaturalists, which is a science fiction story of teenagers living in a technocratic dystopia, sneaking around rooftops and alleyways trying to do good using their recently acquired supernatural abilities. At the time I read it, I was really taken with this idea of teenagers going out and doing things on their own.

These ideas simmered around in my teenage brain and eventually became, in my sophomore year, the first hundred or so words of an interaction between the PC and Yeni, although those were not their names. Plus a handful of very bad character sketches.

Despite the serious themes, On the Run has a healthy amount of banter and shenanigans among its characters. How did you maintain the humor amid this story’s darkness?

To be honest, I’m not sure that I could write a one-hundred-percent serious story, because even in dark times (maybe especially then) I tend to look for something to laugh at. There were definitely a few moments when writing the story that I really felt somber, but heightened stress, confrontation, filling awkward silences? I go for the funny. At least it relieves some of my tension.

This game also focuses very strongly on the experience of being a teenager: struggling with your identity, growing into independence, learning how to see your parents as flawed humans, and more. What drew you to the decision to have younger protagonists?

One of the parts of the story I really wanted to tell originally (when I myself was a teenager) was this conflict between children and parents. In my high school journals, I would have scenes of the parents aggressively seeking out their children, while the teenage protagonists cleverly outwitted them.

While the adults in On the Run are less antagonistic, I still felt strongly about this idea of having the young protagonist confront the older generation about their actions. I feel like adults, facing the same problems all the time, can get bogged down in their perspectives. A lot of teenagers try to enter conversations in good faith and have so much positive energy and just get shut down. I wanted this game to reflect their genuine experience but also be somewhat cathartic for anyone who’s felt that way.

What other projects are you working on now?

I’m currently working on a fantasy YA novel and hope to participate in some upcoming game jams through itch.io!

We are thrilled to announce that The Bread Must Rise, by Stewart C Baker & James Beamon, is a finalist for the Nebula Game Writing Award, and it’s on sale for 40% off until March 22!

The Bread Must Rise is a 450,000-word interactive comedy/fantasy/baking/eldritch horror novel by James Beamon and Stewart C Baker. In this magical baking contest, you’ll team up with the Queen Undying to bake your rivals into an early grave—or out of the grave, with necromancy!

To celebrate, we are also putting every previous Nebula Finalist game on sale:

Vampire: The Masquerade—Sins of the Sires
The Luminous Underground
The Road to Canterbury
The Magician’s Workshop
Rent-A-Vice
The Martian Job

Check out our Nebula Finalists bundle on Steam for an even bigger discount!

This is the sixth year that there has been a Nebula award for game writing—and the fifth year that Choice of Games authors have been finalists. Past Choice of Games Nebula finalists are: Natalia Theodoridou for Vampire: The Masquerade — Sins of the Sires and Rent-A-Vice, Phoebe Barton for The Luminous Underground, Kate Heartfield for The Road to Canterbury and The Magician’s Workshop, and M. Darusha Wehm for The Martian Job.

We also want to congratulate one of our Hosted Games authors, Baudelaire Welch, who is nominated in the same category for their work on Baldur’s Gate 3. Their Hosted Game, Don’t Wake Me Up, is also on sale this week!

Since 1965, the Nebula Awards have been given annually to the best works of science fiction and fantasy published that year, as voted on by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). The 59th Annual Nebula Awards ceremony will be streamed live during the 2024 Nebula Conference, June 6-9, 2024. Stay tuned for more!

We’re super excited for the release of “Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names” on April 25th!

As a special offer, if you purchase “Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names” by 11:59pm PDT on April 26th, we’ll give you the “Wardens and Furies” DLC, featuring the options to play as a member of the Black Fury tribe or the Hart Warden tribe, for free.

Experience “Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names” as one of the ruthless slayers of the Black Furies or the howling celebrants of the Hart Wardens. Hunt the wilds of New England with Gifts of divine archery, beast-speech, and the dark blessings of long-dead werewolves.

Don’t forget to wishlist it on Steam or preregister on Google Play now! You can also pre-purchase the app on iOS.

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Also: All our games are on sale on Steam this week as part of the Steam Spring Sale!