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“Vampire: The Masquerade — Out for Blood” price will increase soon!

Though we still don’t have a release date, we are nearing the completion of the “True Faith” patch for Out for Blood. This will be a free update to everyone that owns the game, allowing new playstyles and new ways to vanquish the vampires of Jericho Heights.

The price of Out for Blood will be increasing to $11.99 on July 1st. Buy it now—including the upcoming “True Faith” patch—before the price change.

Hosted Games has two new games for you to play!

You are a recent member of The White Company, a mercenary guild on the far side of the law. Your job consists of hunting artifacts and roaming ruins that the Church has forbidden to mention. One of your expeditions, however, leads you down a path that is much deeper than you ever anticipated.

It’s 30% off until June 9th!

The Golden Rose: Book One is a thrilling 1.2-million-word interactive fantasy novel by Ana Ventura, 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.

Juggle friendships, new alliances, and flames of romance in this epic adventure that will take you to a Europe where History took a different turn.

• Play as male or female; straight, gay, or bisexual.
• Find romance, friendship, or rivalry with a cast of colorful characters.
• Hunt down the thief that stole your forbidden maps!
• Fight against bandits and city guards while trying to stray away from the all-seeing Eyes of the Church.
• Explore ancient ruins and the cobble-stoned streets of the medieval city of Tarragona. Step into a grand cathedral, a sprawling market, a multicolored harbor, the dark gates of the city, or an aqueduct that no one dares to come close to.
• Bond with a stubborn old horse.
• Choose to ally with a street urchin or the feral captain of the Guard.
• Uncover what is true in a world where denial reigns supreme.
• Start to unravel your own mysterious past.
• Immerse yourself in a world rich with characters, story, and lore.
Do you believe in Destiny?

Next up:

The drums beat, horns blow. It is time for you to dance a warrior’s dance. You were born in poverty and raised by ambition. Now is your chance to write your own legend, will it be a tragedy or a triumph?

It’s 33% off until June 9th!

Travel across oceans and through burning forests. Camp under the stars and find love. Be immersed in a land embellished in religion and customs, but scarred with fire and fury.

Be a scout, an assassin and a warrior. Through wit and muscle become a hero. Debate with chieftains, duel with champions and watch as the gods make their judgment on your people.

By Crom is a 75,000 word historical-fantasy interactive fiction by Fionn Graham, where your choices control the story. It is text based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast unstoppable power of your imagination.

• Play as male or female; trans or cis; bi, straight, gay or asexual.
• Find romance with a combat trainer, an advisor and a member of clan royalty.
• Discover betrayals and affairs, find lost family members.
• Devise battle plans, take part in prison escapes, battle storms on the high seas and ride like the wind through forest and hills.
• Accept bribes and be part of deadly conspiracies, assassinations and coverups.
• Be a hero of innocents, or laugh as the world around you burns.

Ana and Fionn developed their games 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 Freshman Magic: Spellbooks and Tangled Sheets, 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 33% off until June 2nd!

A magical murder mystery brimming with gay sex! At this college, you’ll work up a sweat in dueling club, in the library, in the shower, and in your dorm.

Freshman Magic: Spellbooks and Tangled Sheets] is a 263,000-word interactive gay romance novel by Raven de Hart. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

A magical dueling scholarship won you a spot at the prestigious Briarthorn University, one of the top magic colleges in North America. You expected a hard workload and even harder dueling practice sessions…you weren’t expecting your classmates to be so distracting!

You’ll have your pick when it comes to romance. Caleb’s a redheaded jock in the dueling club with you. Halim is a sexy rich boy with flowing black hair, an enchantment major who works in the college library. Raimundo is a nerdy tutor, quick to blush behind his large, round glasses. Or will you prefer Alistair, the bad-boy demon summoner in tight jeans? With all the sexual energy floating around campus, you’re even seeing your best friend, Noel, in a slightly different light.

But everything is not as it seems at Briarthorn. When students start disappearing from campus, it will be up to you to figure out what happened to them, who will be next, and how to save the school, and your own tail!

• Choose a magical subject to major in: alchemy, enchantment, magical theory, summoning demons, or combat magic
• Stay on the straight and narrow on the dueling pitch, or catch opponents off-guard with dirty tactics
• Decide exactly how far to go with a cast of lovers
• It’s college! Party hard with your magical peers, or keep a low profile
• Study diligently in the library, or slip into the back room with the sexy librarian
• Find the best hookup spots on campus
• Relax with a friend to wind down after a tough practice — or heat things up in the shower instead
• Lose your heart to your chosen lover, but don’t lose your life as your classmates vanish around you!

Be gay, do magic!

We hope you enjoy playing Freshman Magic: Spellbooks and Tangled Sheets. 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.

A magical murder mystery brimming with gay sex! At this college, you’ll work up a sweat in dueling club, in the library, in the shower, and in your dorm. Freshman Magic: Spellbooks and Tangled Sheets is a 263,000-word interactive gay romance novel by Raven de Hart. I sat down with him to discuss his work, the novelty of interactive romance, and more. Freshman Magic releases this Thursday, May 26th. You can play the first few chapters for free, here.

You’re an author of M/M romance and erotica, but this is your first foray into interactive fiction, I think? Tell me about yourself and your work.

It’s not quite my first time out, but everything I did in interactive fiction was many years and two houses ago, so I’m basically fresh to the scene. I’ve been writing M/M romance for…a decade this year? I think it’s a decade this year. Longer than that, if you count my teenage fan fiction years, but I don’t have a lick of any of that still around, and no one ever paid me for it, obviously. I’ve lived in Eastern Washington state (Nope, no mountains and trees and rain here. This is a desert.) my whole life. I currently live in a rural manufacturing/agricultural town with my roommate and five Golden Retrievers. They take up…honestly most of my non-writing time. Not one of them is under fifty pounds, and they’re all lap dogs. But when I do manage to extricate myself from the big furry dog pile, I write mostly paranormal and fantasy romance, although with a smattering of contemporary as well. I’ve always loved speculative fiction, so that wends and weaves through all my work. In non-writing, I love classical trombone, and before I turned to writing, I was full-bore on culinary arts as a career path. So I have lots of opinions on food, cooking, etc, and I love to get in the kitchen and get my hands dirty (And then wash them, of course, because I’m not about that salmonella life.). I’ve also got a passing interest in geology and gemology, modern art, political science…I’m interested in a lot of things. Jack of all trades, master of none, better than a master of one, right? But I’m mostly a very boring Snake Person gay who stays at home and sits at his laptop all day.

What did you find most enticing about writing in this new format?

So, I’m not one of those authors who struggles and scrabbles for ideas. I have a ton of ideas. Writing Freshman Magic was a really good opportunity to throw a lot of ideas on the table. I’m used to telling one story from front to back, but with this, I was able to tell many stories in one project. A friends to lovers romance? Yep. A mystery? You betcha. A geek/jock romance? Absolutely. Urban fantasy? Of course! It was, in a lot of ways, the ultimate sand box where I got to play around. Plus, like, who in my generation didn’t at least sort of want to make a game at some point? I know I did. And now I actually made a game. Certainly not alone, but I made one. I got to tell five romance stories with nigh-endless variations available to them. I’m super into the whole idea of it. And then, to top it all off, there are just things that you can’t do in a mainstream, standard novel. There was a lot of room to play, pun intended, with this game.

And what was most challenging for you?

I did not fully expect how much there was to this. I work IT on the side, and I have some level of proficiency in coding. So that was a learning curve, but I wasn’t starting at the bottom of that particular mountain. But the sheer volume of words I had to put on the page was completely unexpected. I’m used to writing, at the most, 90K-100K words on a project, and I think this one ended up right around 260K words, counting all the pieces of code involved. So that took some adjustment. I also never spend this much devoted time to a single project. It took about three times as long as I would with a standard book. It really pushed against my endurance, but in a good way. It’s nice to push yourself. Obviously trying to make sure everything stayed functional and was well-balanced, and that continuity didn’t break, was a different set of challenges, and I had to adjust to them. But the biggest struggle was just the dedicated focus and the simple size of the project that really made me stretch and grow.

What do you hope your novel readers will enjoy about Freshman Magic?

So, romance readers tend to be particularly voracious, myself included. We can chew through books at lightning speed. So I think Freshman Magic is a good chance to provide a lot of stories in one fell swoop. No waiting for a whole series to come out. No trying to decide which book to read. No scouring for the rest of an author’s catalog. You play Freshman Magic and you get all the stories you need, at least for a little while. Plus I really focused heavily on some of my personal favorite tropes. I’ve mentioned geek/jock and friends to lovers, but I also wanted to play around with some bad boy and wealthy hero romance tropes. Plus one thing I’ve always, always done in my books is include a lot that wasn’t directly involved in the romance. Every now and then, I rattle off a straightforward romance book. But for the most part, whether it’s a civil war or a missing persons case or, as here, academic achievements and a mystery storyline, I always have something else going on alongside the romance. In fact, in my most recent book, it was very polarizing. Some people loved how much I focused on food and cooking, and it obviously bored some people to tears. But it’s always been a part of my particular writing style. I don’t just tell love stories. I tell stories about people falling in love while other things are happening. So hopefully, that’ll appeal to people in the game as much as it does in the books.

Is writing in a fantasy/magic world a departure for you?

Far, far from it. I grew up reading fantasy novels, and before I started writing romance at all, I was writing and publishing fantasy. It’s honestly harder for me not to write with some tinge of the unreal to it. My brain just puts the weird and off-kilter and fantastical into everything that I write. If I’m going to escape into a piece of fiction, why not make sure that piece of fiction has dragons and magic? That seems like an obvious next step to me. So no, certainly not a departure for me.

What are you working on next?

I’ve got a few things in the pipeline at this point. I just had the aforementioned cooking romance, A Teaspoon of Desire, come out about a week ago. I’m partway through drafting a new urban fantasy romance about Norse demigods, plus I’ll be releasing a small shifter romance some time this summer, which I unfortunately can’t talk about too much until more details are made public. But Dachshund shifter – who can say no to that, right? And then, if the planets align properly, I might be able to get out another secret urban fantasy project that’s recently captured my attention, dealing with a magical fish and game department. I could keep going – like I said, I always have so many ideas – but that’s what’s currently most pressingly on the table for me.

We’re proud to announce that Nikola Tesla: War of the Currents, 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 30% off until May 19th!

At the dawn of the electrical age, can you outsmart Thomas Edison and electrify the world? Rewrite history with worldwide wireless power, alien contact, death rays and sapient machines!

Nikola Tesla: War of the Currents is a 225,000-word interactive science-fiction novel by Dora Klindžić. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

The man who invented the 20th century was a queer immigrant from Serbia. Nikola Tesla dreamed of distributing free energy to all of mankind but passed away in a New York hotel room alone and forgotten. What if it had gone differently?

In the year 1886, you join the eccentric Tesla as his laboratory apprentice. Notoriously bad at monetizing his inventions, but nonetheless ingenious at building them, Tesla needs your help with making a living wage as much as your help in the lab.

Fend off Edison’s spies, Wall Street bankers, electrical industry magnates and other unsavory types as you navigate real historical adventures involving electrocuted elephants, the Niagara Falls electric plant, pigeons, and that time Mark Twain had the mishap of soiling his trousers in Tesla’s lab.

Develop your own science skills, your social life, or opt to be more business-minded. Manage your mentor’s fragile mental state while balancing your laboratory’s checkbook. Love your work, your pigeon, or pursue a risqué romance with Edison’s daughter. Will you manage to maintain enough funding and influence to prevent the destruction of Wardenclyffe tower and perform the most esoteric of experiments? Bring free power to all, contact the aliens, or accidentally flatten a city. The history of the last great independent inventor, as well as the future of society, are in your hands.

• Play as male, female, or non-binary; gay, straight, bi, or asexual/aromantic.
• Achieve fame through spectacular inventions, people skills or cunning business.
• Change historic events such as the invention of the electric chair, the Chicago World Fair, the social unrest at the turn of the 20th century, and more.
• Monetize your inventions or uphold Tesla’s ideals of working for the betterment of mankind.
• Uncover secret societies lurking in the background of early-capitalist New York.
• Meet a cast of historic characters such as Thomas Edison and his family, George Westinghouse, Mark Twain, J.P. Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, Lewis Latimer, Charles Steinmetz, Lord Kelvin and many more.

The world awaits in darkness, ready for your electric light.

We hope you enjoy playing Nikola Tesla: War of the Currents. 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.

At the dawn of the electrical age, can you outsmart Thomas Edison and electrify the world? Rewrite history with worldwide wireless power, alien contact, death rays and sapient machines!

Nikola Tesla: War of the Currents is a 225,000-word interactive science-fiction novel by Dora Klindžić. I sat down to talk with Dora about rewriting history and what makes Tesla and this period such a fantastic setting for a Choice of Games title. Nikola Tesla: War of the Currents releases this Thursday, May 12th. You can try the first three chapters for free, today.

This is your first piece of interactive fiction, I think? But your background as a writer is in sci-fi/speculative fiction. Tell me more about how you became interested in writing about Nikola Tesla, I’m sure the fact that he is a countryman of yours must have come into it.

Part of my fascination with Nikola Tesla comes from our shared Serbo-Croatian identity, as he’s been elevated to the status of folk hero in the Balkan consciousness. But his significance in my life peaked when I started my studies as a physicist. During times of hardship in my undergrad years, when I wasn’t sure why I went into science or whether I was capable enough to graduate, reading Tesla’s biographies restored the magic of invention in my mind and inspired me to keep working at the dream. In the later years of my studies, I got a job as a student curator at Zagreb’s Nikola Tesla Museum, where I learned even more about his personal life, and had the privilege to share the wonder of his inventions with the world. There is a veil of romance and legend surrounding his character, a mythology he had partially cultivated himself, which made me wish I could have traveled back in time to visit his laboratory just for a day. This interactive novel is the embodiment of that lifelong dream.

What were the most fun parts of being able to write (and rewrite) Tesla’s story?

There was a definite aspect of self-indulgence in writing the camaraderie between Tesla and the player’s character! I have always wished to know more about the intimate sphere of Nikola’s life, like the quality of his friendship, the quiet moments of daily cohabitation in the laboratory, or sharing in the intellectual pleasure of a philosophical battle of wits. Writing Nikola Tesla: War of the Currents gave me the opportunity to imagine and explore what it would have been like to have truly known Nikola Tesla, using the inevitably domestic nature of the inventor-assistant relationship. By placing the player into the role of an interpreter between Tesla and the world, I could show Tesla for who he was — queer, misfit, neurodivergent — as well as how the cut-throat world of budding American capitalism responded to his many idiosyncrasies, and let the player decide on how to resolve this perpetual conflict between the poet-inventor’s soul and the cold hard market of electrical engineering. It was deeply satisfying to offer the possibility of resolution which departs from the true historic outcome of Nikola Tesla dying alone in his hotel room, penniless. Who hasn’t, upon reading a biography of Tesla, wondered how differently it might have gone if Tesla had actually succeeded in his big dreams? And then it was also fun to get a little playful with the weird science, to write about robots, aliens, death rays and all the other surprises…

Did writing historical fiction present any unique challenges to you?

I found the research into the early electrical industry surprisingly invigorating, and have fallen down many a rabbit hole involving mad inventors and Gilded Age era social intrigue. There were simply so many fascinating historic events unfolding in those three decades, from Thomas Edison electrocuting elephants to Mark Twain soiling his pants in Tesla’s lab, that the greatest issue was keeping the story in scope. The major recurring characters in the game are all fascinating figures, like Marion Edison, Thomas’ firstborn daughter, Bertha Lamme, the first female electrical engineer, and Lewis Latimer, the black inventor who perfected the light bulb. It might take the players several playthroughs to get to know each of their personal stories within the wider historical context of the Edison-Tesla electrical race. Even the smaller side-characters like Charles Steinmetz or Stanford White have rich historic backstories which beg to be written. I feel like I could have collected two more novels’ worth of stories about these people, but I suppose I will have to leave the joy of continuing that research to the readers.

Did you have a favorite NPC?

That’s a really tough call, as there was something about each of the characters that I found magnetic! Even the ones who only make miniature cameos, like Eugene Debs or Emma Goldman, were a thrill to include. But I’d have to say I have a special sense of achievement with my version of Mark Twain, who initially seemed the most daunting voice to write for the sake of the levity he brings, and whom I ended up making a little more, ahem, politically radical…

What was your experience with text-based games or TTRPGs prior to writing this?

I’ve enjoyed interactive fiction from the first choose-your-own-adventure books I read as a child, and in recent years through beautiful videogame narrative experiences like Kentucky Route Zero or the inspiring collection over at sub-Q magazine. Choice of Games really opened my eyes to what the genre of text-based games can be in the modern world, with immersive novels which felt lived-in rather than merely witnessed, achieving complexity in their branching structure that some triple-A game titles can only dream of.

What are you working on next?

I’m extremely proud to say I’ve joined the writing team at ZA/UM studio, the makers of Disco Elysium, and could not be happier about what the future has in store!

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Have you ever wanted to be the captain of a faster-than-light starship? You will live a full life starting as a young child of the future.

It’s 33% off until May 12th!

Play as human, various species of alien, or even a robot. With the help of your friends and your loyal, upgradable robo-pet, you will go to school to learn skills of your own choosing before taking a position as a lowly cadet.

You’ll choose which department to join and rise within as the Solar System trembles in fear when a powerful foe threatens its very existence.
Will you master the psionic arts or use technology to enhance yourself with cybernetics? Will you follow the rules or will you do whatever is necessary? The choice is yours in Life of a Space Force Captain!

• A new look at the Lucidverse. After the Lost Heir, Life of a Wizard, and the Last Wizard, there was New Daria (home of Life of a Mobster and Paradox Factor.) This story takes place a few hundred years after that.
• 6 Friends with full back stories, character arcs, and possible romances, if you wish.
• Cybernetic Implants vs Psionic Skills
• An upgradeable faithful robo-pet companion.
• 5 distinct departments to join (Engineering, Medical, Science, Navigation, and Security)
• 7 Traits: Strength, Agility, Endurance, Perception, Willpower, Charm, and Intelligence.
• 9 Skills: Combat, Computers, Ranged Weapons, Leadership, Mechanics, Medicine, Pilot, Science, Streetwise
• 6 Fully Playable Species: Aurellian (beautiful bio-luminescent alien), Linnera (giant cockroach with hive mind), Orrok (strong four-armed alien), Reticulan (traditional bald, grey-skinned, black-eyed alien), Solarian (human), Synthetic Humanoid (robot)
• 21 exciting and unique endings.

Life of a Space Force Captain author Mike Walter’s classic Hosted Game, Paradox Factor is back— and we’ve released it on Steam for the very first time! Now with new art and a new option to play as nonbinary, you can enjoy Paradox Factor for 50% off until May 12th!

Mike Walter developed these games 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.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Embark on a deadly journey for survival. Your ordinary school life quickly turns around when an unknown outbreak turns humanity into flesh eating monsters. The hungry creatures ravage every corner of your home island, forcing you to quickly adapt to the new, hostile environment, and learn the ropes of survival if you wish to remain alive.

It’s 33% off until April 28th!

Fight to stay alive by any means you choose through the streets filled with chaos, towards the rumored last safe evacuation point. Forge friendships or make enemies on this epic, deadly adventure. Manage your ammunition through your adventure, because the dead are not the only enemy. Uncover the mysteries surrounding the outbreak as you work your way through the hordes of gray-eyed death.

Will you reach your goal, and find peace when danger lurks around every corner?

Grey Eyes of Death is a thrilling 300,000 word interactive fantasy horror novel by Norbert Mohos, 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.

• Play as male, female; gay, straight, or asexual in this story-driven thrill filled adventure
• Meet new, unique survivors and decide whom you will trust, or form closer bond with
• Shape humanity’s future, including yours and those you interact with along the way
• Choose between life or death in challenging, emotional situations
• Explore abandoned areas and survivor camps throughout the island country
• Discover what the aftermath has to offer, and uncover the source of the outbreak
• Fight against and escape from the flesh eating creatures behind gray eyes

Norbert 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 Siege of Treboulain 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 April 21st!

Defend your magical city from an invading army! Use swords, spells, and strategy to save your people, lead them to glory, and build a legacy for the ages.

Siege of Treboulain  is a 280,000-word interactive epic fantasy novel by Jed Herne. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Treboulain rests on the power of arborturgy, the magic that governs plants and all growing things. With the recent death of your mother, the Queen, you now sit on the Throne of Thorns, the nightmarish chair of royalty that extracts blood from whoever dares to sit upon it.

When a ruthless army of horse warriors besieges the towering walls of Treboulain, will you take to the walls yourself, inspiring the soldiers with your own martial might and stirring speeches? Will you command the defense from a distance, using your sharp tactical mind? Or will you draw upon the vast powers of nature itself, strangling your enemies with barbed vines?

Should you fill the moat with traps, train elite magicians, or recruit mercenaries for a surprise attack? How will you manage your dwindling resources? And what will you do when deadly conspiracies begin to come to light, threatening to shake your reign–and your city–to its very core?

• Play as male, female, or non-binary; gay, straight, bi, or asexual.
• Choose from three distinct backstories – magician, warrior, or scholar – and lend your skills to the defense of your city.
• Command soldiers, plan tactics, and fight in everything from one-on-one duels to massive, history-shaking battles.
• Wield the magic of plants through the art of arborturgy.
• Manage the city’s politics, balancing the conflicting needs of priests, merchants, and commoners against those of the military.
• Uncover the secrets of the past through flashbacks to learn more about your city and your foe.
• Find love or friendship with a brave warrior, a wise priestess, a cunning merchant, or a talented artist.

Let the legends say that this was Treboulain’s bravest hour!

We hope you enjoy playing Siege of Treboulain.  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.

Defend your magical city from an invading army! Use swords, spells, and strategy to save your people, lead them to glory, and build a legacy for the ages. Siege of Treboulain is a 280,000-word interactive epic fantasy novel by Jed Herne. I sat down with Jed to discuss his work. Siege of Treboulain releases this Thursday, April 14th. You can play the first three chapters for free, today.

This is your first work of interactive fiction, I believe. Tell me all about your other work.

It certainly is! Outside of Siege of Treboulain, I’ve written three epic fantasy books, along with a few short stories.

Fires of the Dead follows a group of sorcerers and thieves who venture into a haunted forest to find a dead magician’s skull. But as people start dying, the magician might not be so dead after all.

In Across the Broken Stars, a cowardly war deserter tries to redeem himself by helping a young fugitive search for a mythical safe haven. Following a trail of ancient riddles, they set off across a realm where people live on discs that float in space, pursued by a ruthless inquisitor.

And, lastly, The Thunder Heist follows a swashbuckling pirate who’s trying to steal a priceless artifact from a city of ships that floats on a monster-infested sea.

What surprised you about writing an interactive story?

The main thing was how back-and-forth the writing process was. When I write novels, it’s (usually) straightforward. Outline the story. Start at the start. Work through until you reach the end.

Writing an interactive story was more scattered. Within each chapter, I’d often jump around from piece to piece. For example, sometimes I’d leap ahead to write a devilishly difficult choice; then I’d backfill by inserting other scenes to let players to reach this point.

I also followed less of a strict outline. With my novels, I usually plan every scene ahead of time, and I generally match ~90% of my plan in the first draft. But with this, I’d often enter chapters with only a vague idea of what’s next. For instance: in this chapter, people start getting poisoned. Go!

The spontaneous nature of this approach was the right method. It let the story naturally evolve to follow the most interesting paths available.

The other big revelation had to do with the nature of choice. When it comes down to it, a good narrative-based game should give players impossible choices with no easy answers. Within days of starting the project, it became apparent that one of my main jobs was forcing players into these situations—these crisis moments where you must make a tough decision about what kind of ruler you want to be.

This emphasis on difficult, character-defining choices has always been in my stories. But working in an interactive medium brought this idea to the foreground. I’m glad it did because it helped me grow as a writer, and will improve my future novels.

Did you have a favorite NPC while you were writing the game?

I enjoyed the interactions with the game’s main antagonist. In your backstory, the player chooses what their relationship was like with the antagonist—friend, rival, or even a lover. Throughout the narrative, the story occasionally dips back to your memories with this antagonist. Via these flashbacks, you learn what’s driving them. And you also learn about yourself along the way.

I loved this dynamic. It added more stakes and complexity. That was the aim: I didn’t want a paper-thin ‘evil villain.’ By having the antagonist be someone who helped you become the person you are today—for better or worse—it created a more interesting story.

Apart from the antagonist, I’m also a big fan of Marshal Heartstone, who leads your army. I’m drawn towards characters who make big sacrifices in the cause of duty—and Heartstone certainly fits the bill. Plus, Heartstone has a fun sidequest that explains mysterious aspects of Treboulain’s past, which was a joy to write. And you can have some duelling sessions together as well, to improve your sword-fighting skills.

What was the most challenging part of finishing this game for you?

The complexity of wrangling the various stats and pathways through the game!

Right from the start, I wanted to create a sprawling world with tons of varied routes. There’s four romanceable NPCs, three backstory options, and you can even decide what weapon, armour, and shield you want for certain fights. All of that made for heaps of head-scratching and frantic diagram-drawing. Still, it was worthwhile for the story it creates!

The other big challenge was the sheer scale. Previously, the longest book I wrote was 80,000 words. Siege of Treboulain clocked in at 280,000. It took endurance and patience to make it through. But I’m glad I did, because it’s hugely improved my writing stamina, along with producing a story that feels grand and epic in scope.

What would you like players to know about this game that they might not expect from the title, art, and descriptions?

I’m stoked with the magic system, but it’s hard to describe it in a blurb–so that’s probably the main one. Essentially, you are given the gift of arborturgy: the ability to control plants with your mind. Depending on how you play, it can lead to cool set pieces in the game; swinging from building to building by using vines, enchanting grass to snare your enemies, and even using plant-tendrils to catch arrows mid-air.

I also think the backstory adds a lot to the game. Early on, you choose one of three backgrounds: magician, warrior, or scholar. Each choice creates an entirely different playing experience.

Lastly, if you enjoy epic fantasy for the world building and the immersion, then you’ll love the city of Treboulain. Before writing, I mapped out every street in the city, and there’s a ton of depth, ancient lore, and hidden mysteries all wrapped up in the place. You’d need to play the game a few times before you can fully explore even a fraction of the city.

Plus, it’s not just a static backdrop. The city shapes itself to your decisions. Depending on your actions, it might look totally different by the game’s end…

Tell our readers what else you’re working on.

I’m currently writing my next epic fantasy novel, tentatively titled Kingdom of Dragons. I can’t give away too many details yet, but the title might suggest its subject matter…

My other current project is Wizards, Warriors, & Words. It’s a fantasy writing advice podcast, which I co-host with fellow authors Rob J. Hayes, Michael R. Fletcher, and Dyrk Ashton. We’ve published over 80 episodes so far, with cool guests joining us from time to time. New episodes come out every Monday.

If you want to stay updated with my future works (and read some exclusive, free short stories), you can join my twice-a-month email newsletter.