Manage a team of aspiring heroes while being an aspiring hero yourself and compete to graduate from Sage Academy as a full-fledged crime-fighter! Attend classes, fight supervillains, go on wacky adventures and, of course, befriend or romance one of your fellow students!
Oh, but do make sure the world does not end, okay?
Balance of Superpowers 2: Tricentennial is a 730,000-word interactive superhero romance novel by Rustem Khafizov. It is entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination!
You can continue Rio’s story or create your own colorful hero!
Play as male, female, or non-binary.
20 romanceable characters! 12 options for Rio and 9 for the new character! Will you romance a mysterious vigilante or a supervillain on parole? Will you date a humanoid dinosaur or a girl who speaks in rhyme?
Each love interest offers their own unique adventure and each of their quests varies in tone from light-hearted and campy to dark and disturbing!
Over 50 colorful character portraits drawn by amazing artists!
Customize your character’s appearance, personality, and heroic outfit!
12 thrilling chapters which differ immensely depending on the protagonist chosen!
Many heroes to meet, many villains to fight, and many places to see!
Compete for the ultimate right to become a crime-fighting hero!
You can also abandon the heroic path altogether and choose to become an
anti-hero or even a supervillain!
Will you save the world or doom it forever?
Rustem 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.
This epic reimagining of Arthurian legend takes you from humble life as an English squire with an attitude problem to a mythical dreamscape of possibilities, meeting many familiar (and not-so-familiar) faces along the way. It’s 33% off until January 12th!
Arthur: A Retelling is a 30,000-word medieval adventure that allows you to play as as Arthur themself (the gender is up to you) as you discover your own path to greatness and decide what you want to be. Embark on a quest of self-discovery with thrilling action and plenty of romance along the way—pick from straight, gay, or even more options.
Young Arthur is an unremarkable page apprenticed to Sir Kay in the Early Middle Ages in England. Their world gets turned upside down by the arrival of the eccentric magician Merlin, who takes the youth under his wing and sets them on a path to greatness. But there are other figures seeking to influence this child of prophecy…
From the loyal Bedivere to the lovely Guinevere to the enigmatic Rience, Arthur’s interactions with this expansive cast determine their ultimate destiny. Will they rule Britain as prophesied? Abandon morality entirely? Or take another option, entirely unforeseen? Only you can decide. Along the way, you can:
Transform into an assortment of creatures
Undergo rigorous magical trials
Romance classic characters from myth
Discover unexpected kung fu skills
Find your destiny as the one and only Arthur!
What are you waiting for? Camelot beckons…
Isabel 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.
All of our games are on sale as part of the 2022 Steam Winter Sale, with discounts up to 40% off. The sale ends January 5th.
On or around January 5th, we plan to raise prices on most of our games on all platforms. (It’s been years and years since we’ve done a general price increase, but inflation has finally caught up to us.)
That means that if you buy our games on Steam during the Winter Sale, you’ll receive the lowest possible price. We’ll never offer a deal this good again!
We’d especially like to invite you to buy our “Every game” bundles, where we offer our entire library of games at an additional 15% off.
Do you like monsters? Do you think they are the best part of their respective movies, books, and shows? Then you have to play The Passenger. It’s 30% off until January 5th!
The Passenger is a 380,000-word interactive cosmic horror novel by Jime Rolón. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
When your eldritch existence is threatened by another unthinkable creature, you find yourself jumping dimensions to escape your ghastly fate. Safe for now, your moment of respite is short-lived as you realize you’re stuck on Earth, trapped inside a dumb human larva, and with no clue of how much energy you’ll need to leave this horrible place behind.
Twenty-six years later you’re still stranded on an absurd planet, you have a mom and a sister, and a job delivering baked goods. Not only that, but the creature that almost ate you all those years ago never really stopped looking for you. However, there’s no way it will pinpoint your actual location… right?
Play as male, female, or nonbinary
You can be trans, cis, gay, straight, bi, ace, partnering aro, or choose to stay single.
Pursue romance with a headstrong waitress, a moody store clerk, a mystifying newcomer, or an unconventional cult leader.
Four monogamous routes, and one polyamorous route.
Will you break free from your prison of flesh?
Jime 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.
Year 2031, Earth. After 20 years of war with the Zenos, a ruthless alien species, humanity has barely survived. Born with the greatest magic potential in all of humanity, it’s up to you to turn the tide! It’s 33% off until January 5th!
Mage Elite is a thrilling 40,000-word interactive science fantasy novel by Teemu Salminen, 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.
Choose your gender.
Play as the strongest mage, leading humanity to victory!
Witness an alternative Earth ravaged by decades of existential war.
Explore various locations within this similar, yet different version of Earth.
Cast powerful magic spells to annihilate your enemies.
Interact with your closest allies during perilous missions as well as relaxed break periods.
Develop your personality and social bonds throughout your journey, with both having effects on your combat results!
Can you protect your allies and also reach your goals?
Experience various possible endings – all based on the choices you made during the story.
Decide the fate of all life on Earth with your own actions!
Teemu 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 the Viking, 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.
It’s 25% off until Dec 22nd!
Forge your legacy in Iceland as it never was, a land of gods, giants, elves, trolls, and walking corpses! A game of politics and romance, battle and honor.
Choice of the Viking is a 310,000 word interactive historical fantasy novel by Declan Taggart, 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.
The year is 910. Countless Viking longships cross the icy oceans of northern Europe, seeking fortune, glory, trade, and land. Your ship, chartered by the King of Norway, has brought settlers to Iceland, where you and your clan have a chance to build something new out of the rugged land.
There are challenges at every turn. Defend your farm from a draugr, one of the walking dead, and then from the other would-be chieftains, just as hungry for glory as you. New faiths and old vie for the souls of the Icelanders, and for the political power that each religion can carry. The long dark winter bears down upon you, threatening hunger, disease, and more draugr.
Wield your magic to blast obstacles from your path and gain the spirits’ blessing. Earn honor and wealth through raiding, careful tending of the land, or savvy merchant trading. If you fail, the royal might of Norway will claim your land for their own – but if you succeed, you will find eternal glory.
• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, bi, or aromantic
• Attend the great assembly of the Althing and shape Iceland’s politics for generations to come.
• Use the songs of the spirits to perform stunning feats of magic.
• Dedicate your land to the Christian church or honor the old Norse gods.
• Carve out your domain and lead your people to specialize in farming, trading, scholarship, or raiding.
• Grapple with the threat of the walking dead – perhaps even your own father!
• Walk with giants, negotiate with elves, and come face to face with mighty Thor!
• Negotiate with your neighboring chieftains to win their friendship – or become embroiled in deadly feuds.
• Rule your land as an autocrat, or guide Iceland towards democracy.
How will the sagas sing of your deeds?
We hope you enjoy playing Choice of the Viking. 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.
Forge your legacy in Iceland as it never was, a land of gods, giants, elves, trolls, and walking corpses! A game of politics and romance, battle and honor.
Choice of the Viking is a 310,000 word interactive historical fantasy novel by Declan Taggart. I sat down with Declan to talk about his background and knowledge of Vikings, and his experiences in turning that into a ChoiceScript game. Choice of the Viking releases this Thursday, December 15th. You can play the first three chapters today for free.
You’re basically a medievalist and scholar of Norse culture, correct?
Yup, it’s true. By day, I’m a researcher of Old Norse religion and literature. I finished a PhD on the myths of Thor at the University of Aberdeen in 2015 and I’ve worked at universities in Sweden, Cork, and Reykjavík since then, mostly focusing on how the religion actually functioned. I studied English Literature before that, but there was something about the imagery and characters of Old Norse myth and legend that grabbed me in a way that, say, Romantic poetry never managed. The construction of the world out of the body and blood of a giant, a serpent so enormous that it winds around the world and keeps it squeezed together, a wrestling match with Old Age herself… I love the sense of scale.
While it’s clear why you’re drawn to this subject matter, what made you want to write a piece of interactive fiction?
There are a bunch of reasons, really. The first one is that I love interactive fiction. I was a pretty stereotypical nerd-reader kid and adventure books were a big part of my diet—although they were a bit difficult to source in the Northern Irish countryside, pre-internet era. The one that stands out most for some reason is a Sonic adventure gamebook. It feels like it comes from a fever dream and couldn’t possibly have existed, but I hope I didn’t just imagine it. I used to love it. Discovering as an adult that people are making these kinds of stories as interactive fiction was a revelation. I played a lot of the modern classics—some of the CoG titles, 80 Days, Queers in Love at the End of the World, anything by Emily Short—and ended up wanting to give it a go myself because, second reason, I really enjoy writing fiction.
The other angle is related to work: I do a lot of research on Old Norse religion that has a very small audience—just people like me, working in universities or doing independent research, who will go on to do more research for that same small audience. Occasionally, other people will read my work—especially members of the Ásatrú community—but the number is still very modest. So what impact does our work have? Less than we’d like, really.
A lot of academics will do public lectures or write articles for magazines. Some will do something more creative. I know at least one colleague in a black metal band inspired by Old Norse literature (Árstíðir Lífsins, and they’re pretty good too), and another makes a webcomic (@RealMundiRiki—also definitely worth checking out). For me, the best thing I can do to reach a wider audience is write. So, for my last research project, I adapted a poem called Vǫluspá into interactive fiction (Choose your own end to the viking world, free on itch.io), and for my current project at the University of Iceland, I’m writing a book of poems and short stories for children that plays at filling in some of the gaps in Old Norse myth. I’m doing that with my partner Irene García Losquiño—also a writer and a researcher of the viking diaspora.
I guess the goal is to get cutting edge research out to a wider public, whether it’s my own research or by a colleague, and maybe also to spread interest in researching Old Norse literature more broadly. New perspectives bring new ideas, and academia runs on ideas.
Tell me something the average person doesn’t know about Vikings and I’ll share that because I have Irish ancestry, my DNA “reads” as approximately 20% Scandinavian! That’s from the Vikings settling in what is present-day Ireland right?
Something the average person doesn’t know? Hmm… I suppose that a lot of people will have heard of Valhalla (Valhǫll in Old Norse) and know it is a place of the dead for warriors related to the god Odin. Probably fewer will have heard of Fólkvangr, which is a field ruled by the god Freyja where dead warriors also end up. It’s not mentioned very often but one poem called Grímnismál says that Freyja chooses half the dead every day and Odin gets the rest.
Because Fólkvangr is mentioned so rarely, it would have been really easy to lose our knowledge of it and to think that warriors could only go where Odin wanted them. It just shows how precarious our understanding of the Viking Age is. We know of a few other places of the dead—such as Hel, which is ruled over by a queen of the same name—but it’s very rare that we have much information about any of them except Valhalla. Who knows how many other similar beliefs we’ve lost?
DNA is not an area I’ve properly researched before, but it is fascinating. Deep down, most people want to know who they are, and a part of that is and always has been where their family comes from. At the same time, genetics is a bit tricky because it can lead to very creative interpretations of identity, so I know that the researchers who do look at it tend to approach it with caution. Medieval Scandinavians were themselves a genetically diverse bunch. There was no viking ethnic group or anything like that, and they mixed with people from all sorts of backgrounds, especially in the early trading hotspots. A war band travelling abroad might absorb people from a range of backgrounds too.
It’s a pretty famous case, but the math of genetics means that everyone with European ancestry is related to Charlemagne. There’s a point around the year 1000 CE at which all Europeans are related. Go back far enough (not that far really), and every human in the world is related to every other.
Maybe I’m just more of a hippy than I realized, but I actually think that is pretty cool. We’re all cousins, and we all have links to someone who did something truly great at some point in history—and a lot of us are probably related to a viking or two as well.
What was the most surprising part of developing a ChoiceScript game?
I suppose the most surprising part was how relatively easy it was for someone like me with no real coding experience. I’d only dabbled with other interactive fiction engines before (and BASIC way back when I was a kid), but early on in the writing process I already found I was able to accomplish more or less what I wanted. I’d recommend ChoiceScript to someone who was in my shoes. I did have to use a flow chart for a while because I just couldn’t keep all the different routes in my head at the same time, but I’d stopped using that by the time I was finished writing.
Actually, tied into this was my favorite bit of developing a ChoiceScript game: coming up with choices for the main character—choices that would help them feel empowered, that would feel like the choices someone in a saga might have, hopefully that would have fun consequences. Trying to ensure the choices achieved all those things was what led to all the different routes that I had to somehow keep in my head.
Did you have a particular NPC you enjoyed writing most?
Flies (a.k.a. Who Is Like the Lord of Flies) was one hundred percent my favorite. She started out as a toilet demon, which is a creature that does appear in one Old Norse short story called The Tale of Thorstein Shiver. (Honestly.) But she morphed into something else from there. Even though Flies is a character that will only appear in about half of the game’s playthroughs, I still ended up putting a lot of time into her. It’s just fun to write someone who is, fundamentally, terrible, cartoonish, and only out for themselves.
What are you working on next?
Next, I should probably take a bit of a break. I’m a huge fan of a healthy work-life balance, and I think everyone should have one. But even as I say that, I know I’m very excited about the collection of Old Norse stories for kids that I mentioned before, so I think we’ll be working on that over December and January instead. We can’t say who’ll be publishing it as the deal isn’t finalized, but we should be signing a contract with a publisher in London in January. I’m also writing an adaptation of the saga of Bard, the god of Snæfell, which is my favorite saga. As far as interactive fiction goes, I’ve nothing in mind right now—but I’m sure I’ll produce something related to whatever my next research project brings along.
We’re proud to announce that Professor of Magical Studies, 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.
It’s 33% off until December 15th!
Research magic that probably won’t destroy the world! Plus, if you do have to save the world, that’ll look great when you’re up for tenure.
Professor of Magical Studies is a 500,000-word interactive fantasy novel by Stephen Granade. 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.
You are a practitioner of pattern magic: an arcane art that allows you to reshape the very nature of reality, with an extra advantage thanks to your synesthesia, which enables you to see patterns more clearly. With a few strokes of a pen on paper, you can draw magical energy from the space between universes to do everything from levitating objects to preserving memories that you can walk through later to creating pocket dimensions.
You’ve just been hired for your first faculty position at Winfield Phillips, the seemingly normal New England college that happens to have a secret magic department. It’s a great first job, or would be except for Darcy Bozeman. Your former school friend used magic to cheat you out of a coveted fellowship, almost derailing your academic career before it began. Now Darcy’s a fellow professor at Winfield Phillips, and is still working to undermine you.
Armed with a cutting-edge knowledge of magic and untried political skills, you’ll have to juggle your work and navigate the demands of being a new faculty member. You have to get your magical research started with the help of a not-very-skilled student. You’ve got classes to teach to students who are supremely uninterested in what you’re trying to teach them. The college president assigned you a mathematician as a faculty peer, which will only take time away from your actual work. The town council is angry at the college, and you’ve been volunteered to be the liaison between the college and the council. And don’t even get started over the arguments about who’s going to clean the stockroom.
And those mysterious issues plaguing magic? The ones growing worse? Those are a sign of something ominous, threatening reality as we know it. You can handle that, too, can’t you?
* Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, asexual, aromantic, or poly.
* Create new and irresponsibly dangerous magical patterns.
* Improve your student advisee’s skills and confidence, or terrorize them to boost your own research.
* Deal with petty university politics, if you want to have any hope of getting tenure.
* Romance a brilliant algebraic geometrist who doesn’t know about magic, the city councilperson assigned to work with Winfield Phillips, the CEO of a magical company, the friend who betrayed you, or even the extra-dimensional being who comes to live in your head.
* Uncover what really happened to the professor who vanished, leading to you being hired.
* Save the world from an extra-dimensional threat—or use the threat to become leader of the survivors.
If only someone had warned you before you applied to grad school that you’ll have to stop an otherworldly threat from ending the universe!
We hope you enjoy playing Professor of Magical Studies. 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.
Research magic that probably won’t destroy the world! Plus, if you do have to save the world, that’ll look great when you’re up for tenure. Professor of Magical Studies is a 500,000-word interactive fantasy novel by Stephen Granade. I sat down with Stephen to talk about the genesis of this game, and some of the surprises of writing a long Choice of Games title. Professor of Magical Studies releases this Thursday, Dec 8th.
You’re a special author for me for a lot of reasons, but one is: unlike most of my authors, you and I have met in person! A few times now! How did this game come about?
I had a chance to talk with you and Jason Stevan Hill at the Nebula Conference. Jason knew me from the old interactive fiction community and had talked to me about pitching a COG game. I made polite noises but said that I wasn’t sure I had any game ideas, so of course my brain went to work and came up with several over the course of the conference weekend.
I first pitched a science fiction space shipping game only to learn that you had Fay Ikin’s excellent Asteroid Run already coming out. The other idea I was excited about grew out of a YA novel about a magic school that I wrote years ago before settling it gently in a trunk when no one was really interested in it. I liked some of its core ideas, especially its system of magic, but I wasn’t interested in focusing on what it might be like to attend a magic school. That’s when I thought, what if you were a professor instead? Academia’s something I know well thanks to my dad being a college professor and my own trip through PhD-land before I yeeted myself out of the academy. That change unlocked the game story for me, and I was so glad when y’all were excited about it, too.
At 500,000 words it is a very long game, with a lot of different paths through, and some fantastic romance options. Talk to me about how the complexity grew for you as you were writing it.
Some of the complexity was baked into my original pitch. I love games where you befriend a group of companions who help you save the day, which meant that I wanted you to have many different people to hang out with and potentially date. The game has five people you can spend time with. Creating meaty, individualized scenes for each of them added a lot of work.
I knew that would be the case when I pitched the game. What I didn’t think through, though, was what that meant for the game’s climax. My original summary of the climactic chapter ten was, essentially, “The team saves the day by being awesome.” Actually writing that, though, when you could have between one and three different companions to help you? And to make sure that they had interesting beats? And story arcs that resolved well? Phew. I remember being halfway through chapter ten when I realized that the game had grown a chapter eleven to contain it all. I took a walk outside for a while until I was calm enough to go back to writing.
What was the most surprising thing about developing a ChoiceScript game with COG style mechanics?
Figuring out stats that a player could understand and manipulate to create a character. Writing my first chapter was like wading through waist-high mud because the personality stats I chose didn’t work together. Some overlapped in confusing ways, and others were hard to incorporate in choices. Once I scrapped them and picked ones that were better separated and allowed players to better express the kind of person they were playing, the writing got so much easier.
Over the course of writing this game you developed syntax highlighting/rulesets for ChoiceScript in VSC! Tell me a little about that.
I write a lot of code in my day job, so I’m well used to editors like Visual Studio Code that provide a lot of quality-of-life benefits like automatically completing variables, warning you when your syntax is wrong, and letting you find every place you used a given variable. I’d wanted an excuse to write a VS Code language plugin, and this was a great one. Writing it forced me to learn ChoiceScript deeply. I added new features as I needed them, like reporting the word count in a game file so I knew how much I’d written.
Our beta testers and the other editors on staff were pretty wild about this game and I confess I’ve been anticipating the release as well. Looking back, what do you wish you’d done differently, if anything?
It took me three chapters to fall into a steady routine of writing, testing, tweaking my outline, and then moving forward. If I had a time machine, I’d have gone back and taught myself how to do that from the beginning!
What else are you working on? (Note: you are not required to have another project while writing a game for COG, but shockingly, many of our authors do.)
I took occasional short breaks from my game to write short stories, which I love even though they’re hard to get published and the pay is not very good! My latest one, “Wind Settles in the Bones,” just came out in the online magazine Cast of Wonders.
We’re proud to announce that Scandal Notes, the latest in our “Heart’s Choice” line of multiple-choice interactive romance novels, is now available for iOS and Android in the “Heart’s Choice” app. You can also download it on Steam, or enjoy it on our website.
It’s 25% off until Dec 8th!
Find glamor, glitz, gossip, and love! You and your friends are the talk of the town—but will a malicious journalist turn the tables?
Scandal Notes is a 108,000-word interactive romance novel by Evelyn Pryce, 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.
In the heart of London, flappers flap and the 20s roar! For an ambitious novelist like you, there’s inspiration everywhere. The nights are filled with fabulous parties where champagne flows freely and jazz plays in dance halls and smoky clubs. You and your friends—a group of Bright Young Things known as the King’s Road Crew—are at the center of it all, the talk of the town and the top of every society page.
Of course, love is on the horizon. Will you fall for Sybil Warwick, the fashionable and fun-loving star of the silent screen? Or Errol Sharp, the literary critic whose wit matches his name? Or Baron Sidney Norcross, the aristocratic host of the most fabulous parties in town?
But now, the author of the infamous gossip column “Scandal Notes” is starting to comment on secrets that your friends would rather not see the light of day—and secrets that only someone close to you would know. Can you unmask the traitor? Are all of your friends really what they seem?
• Play as a woman novelist in 1920s London
• Keep your friends together through thick and thin.
• Play matchmaker for a lovelorn jazz singer.
• Become a critical literary sensation or an underground pulp hit.
• Find love with a witty book critic, a glamorous actress, or a suave aristocrat.
• Obey the rules of society or throw caution to the wind
• Search out the villain whose nasty gossip columns threaten your friends
Dance the Charleston until dawn, write a novel for the ages, find true love – and above all, keep your name out of “Scandal Notes”!
We hope you enjoy playing Scandal Notes. 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.
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