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We’re proud to announce that a new special set of Dawnfall “Bonus Stories” are now available for iOS and Android in our “Heart’s Choice” app. These new stories are a special non-interactive set of short pieces in the world of the game, and are for sale for $0.99!

Soar through space and get back into the rhythm of the universe in these all-new prequel stories for Dawnfall by RoAnna Sylver! With five non-interactive short stories, totaling over 25,000 words, you’ll be able to spend lots of time revisiting this dazzling universe. Journey between distant planets, and see the stunning events that joined your favorite characters’ destinies and turned them into the people that you fell in love with.

• In “Welcome to Eclipse,” Averis tries to prove himself in his very first Navigation Circle – which includes the prickly Vyranix – and encounters alien worlds and a mysterious spacecraft that is definitely more than it seems.
• Superstar Zenith is at the top of xir career when a power outage halts a concert and painful reminders of xir past start to surface. What will Zenith do with the memories that make xir feel “Real”?
• It’s “Aeon’s First Day” as Administrator – which means that when one strange phenomenon after another affects Zephyria, she’s the one who needs to deal with them.
• Devoted friends Rune and Gwen will support each other through everything, whether it’s joyful experiments to see how far their mystical powers will take them, or just finding “A Fair Trade” in a market on Zephyria.
• As a Starless Acolyte, Oz has dedicated himself to the neutral guardianship of others’ memories – but he will learn that some things among the “Stars” are so wondrous that even he cannot hold himself apart from them.

Since 2009, the team behind Choice of Games has created high-quality interactive novels in all genres. Now, our new Heart’s Choice label puts romance at the center of the story, and you at the center of the romance. Heart’s Choice games contain no graphics or sound effects, so we can focus on the story. Every game is filled with vivid, fully-developed characters and complex narratives that respond to your choices.

How will you find your happily ever after?

In partnership with World of Darkness and Paradox Interactive, Choice of Games is proud to announce the fourth in its collection of games based on “Vampire: The Masquerade” and set in the World of Darkness shared story universe!

Vampire: The Masquerade—Sins of the Sires by Natalia Theodoridou will be released in Spring 2022.

In this elegy of blood, Athens is burning!

Vampire: The Masquerade—Sins of the Sires is an interactive novel by Natalia Theodoridou. It’s entirely text-based, 300,000 words, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Athens, Greece: a city with an ancient past now thrust into the modern age. A city torn between the Camarilla establishment and the Anarchs, where everyone owes your boss a favor, and that makes you an untouchable vampire in this nocturnal society where you and your fellow Kindred must conceal yourselves from mortal eyes–the Masquerade of the Kindred.

Rumors spread of an ancient vampire, Aristovoros, intent on bringing about a new world for the Kindred, an end to the Masquerade. Why hide from mortals when you can reign over them as gods?

Who will you use, who will you help, and who will you prey on? Will you topple the old Prince Peisistratos? Will you betray your boss when your lost sire returns? What miseries will you inflict to fight for a fairer, more humane world?

• Become Clan Tremere, Ventrue, Malkavian, Banu Haqim, or thin-blooded.
• Play as a man, a woman, or a non-binary person, femme, masc, or androgynous, and as gay, straight, bisexual, queer, or ace.
• Outlast a dark tale of corruption, power hunger, betrayal, and yearning for what you once were.
• Rise within the ranks of the Camarilla, stand with the Anarchs, or forge your own lonely way ahead.
• Unmask your true sire. Is it the Prince Peisistratos? One of the city’s Primogen? Is it Aristovoros himself?

Which part will you play in this game of masks?

About the Author
Natalia Theodoridou has published over a hundred short stories, most of them dark and queer, in magazines such as Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Uncanny, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Nightmare, and F&SF, among others. He won the 2018 World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction and was a finalist for the Nebula Award for Game Writing with his first Choice of Games project, Rent-a-Vice. Natalia holds a PhD in Media from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and is a Clarion West graduate. Originally from Greece, with roots in Russia, Georgia, and Turkey, he now splits his time between his hometown and the UK.

Find out more at www.natalia-theodoridou.com or follow @natalia_theodor on Twitter.

About Paradox Interactive
The Paradox Interactive group includes development, publishing, and licensing of games and brands, consisting of a portfolio of more than 100 titles created both internally and by independent studios. Paradox owns an array of award-winning and top-selling brands including Cities: Skylines, Stellaris, Crusader Kings, Age of Wonders, and many more games available on PC and console platforms. Paradox is the owner of the World of Darkness IPs.

From the company’s start in 2004, Paradox has published its games worldwide, with top markets including the USA, UK, China, Germany, France, and Russia. Today, over four million gamers play a Paradox game each month with a global community reaching over ten million registered Paradox users.

Paradox Interactive AB (publ)’s shares are listed on Nasdaq Stockholm First North Premier under ticker PDX. FNCA Sweden AB is the company’s Certified Adviser. For more information, please visit www.paradoxinteractive.com.

About World of Darkness
World of Darkness is a transmedia entertainment brand encompassing a number of modern fantasy horror franchises, including Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and more. Through tabletop roleplaying games, video games, board games, literature, comic books, and more, these franchises tell mature stories in a dark supernatural fantasy layered over our modern world. Since 1991, World of Darkness has defined monster-perspective entertainment for a generation of fans. For more information visit www.worldofdarkness.com.

Hosted Games has two new games for you to play!

Raiders of the Icepeak Mountains by Adrao

The orc tribes of Icepeak Mountains are threatening human settlements. Do you have the courage and determination to defeat their clans? Try to survive deadly dungeons and level up as an adventurer.

It’s 25% off until November 18th!

Raiders of the Icepeak Mountains is a 120,000 word interactive gamebook by Adrao, where a combination of your choices and the roll of dice will determine your destiny. The game is text-based, with artwork allowing you the chance to actually see the exotic locations and dungeons you will visit on your journey.

You will start as a novice adventurer, either a fighter, cleric, wizard or rogue, and level up through a series of quests, either those related to the main story of the game, or other side adventures. The dungeons you will visit have some element of randomness to them, ensuring that even if you play multiple times you will still discover some new secret rooms and monsters. You will have to carefully choose between the abilities and spells at your disposal, and manage well the treasure you loot to buy a variety of objects that can help you in your quests.

• A gamebook similar to those written in the 1980s and 1990s.
• A dice-based RPG with Roguelike elements. No two games will be the same.
• Detailed branching narrative system.
• Play as male, female, or non-binary. However, do note that there is no romance to be found here.
• Four character classes to choose from: fighter, wizard, cleric or rogue.
• Over 30 different spells to choose from. Will you use a vampiric ray to absorb the energy of your enemies and heal yourself, or the invisibility spell to pass by them without being noticed? 
• Multiple types of melee attacks and abilities to use. Cripple your enemies with powerful blows, or adopt a defence stance.
• Dozens of magic objects to use, from magic weapons to potions or scrolls.
• Hordes of enemies to fight, each with their own characteristics and weak points. Will you manage to defeat orc warlords, overcome powerful elementals, and slay mighty dragons?
• Several illustrations to enhance your experience.
• Try several different difficulty settings. Play as a mighty invincible hero, or struggle to defeat the game on the harder modes. What is the maximum score you can reach?

Temple of Endless Night by Dariel Ivalyen

Use your voice to charm the people around you, or focus on the power of magic to destroy your enemies! Start a servant rebellion, or use poison to solve your problems! Do what your patron deity tells you to, or abandon their teachings! Stay loyal to the Pharaoh, or betray him and join the forces of darkness to change the face of Egypt forever!

It’s 40% off until November 18th!

Temple of Endless Night is a thrilling 200,000 word interactive fantasy novel by Dariel Ivalyen, where your choices fully control the story. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

When a strange man stops you on the streets of your hometown and sends you to an ancient temple that no one seems to know anything about, you grow both curious and worried. As the caravan gets closer to the mysterious place, you realize that the world around you isn’t exactly what it seems. You see things that are not there, and you can tell something is deeply wrong. Something is trying to influence your mind.

When you find yourself surrounded by nightmares and illusions, will you use the light to cast them out, or will you help them become reality?

• Choose your gender (male, female, nonbinary).
• Play as gay, straight, bisexual and asexual.
• Romance one of four unique characters: a charming mercenary, a sensible and caring servant, a calculative High Priest, or a forgotten Pharaoh!
• Choose your town, class and god. Work on your relationship with your patron!
• React to situations differently based on your sanity level.
• Experience many different endings, including bad ones.
• Enjoy the beauty of Ancient Egypt.

Will you serve the light, or give in to darkness?

Adrao and Dariel 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.

The Steam Halloween sale has begun! A bunch of our Halloweeniest games are now on sale:

• Blood Money
• Choice of the Deathless
• Choice of the Vampire
• Choice of the Vampire: The Fall of Memphis
• Choice of the Vampire: St. Louis, Unreal City
• Choice of Zombies
• Congresswolf
• Death Collector
• Deathless: The City’s Thirst
• For Rent: Haunted House
• Heart of the House
• Neighborhood Necromancer
• NOLA is Burning
• The Fog Knows Your Name
• The Luminous Underground
• The Mysteries of Baroque
• Vampire: The Masquerade—Out for Blood
• Vampire: The Masquerade—Night Road
• Werewolves: Haven Rising
• Werewolves 2: Pack Mentality

AND

as a congrats for its win of several XYZZY Awards, Jolly Good: Cakes and Ale is also on sale!

In partnership with World of Darkness and Paradox Interactive, Choice of Games is proud to announce the release of Vampire: The Masquerade — Parliament of Knives now available on Steam, iOS, and Android.

It’s 20% off until November 4th!

Dominate undead politics through cunning and violence! Will a missing Prince give you the opening to betray your sire and seize power? Or will you remain loyal?

Vampire: The Masquerade — Parliament of Knives is a 600,000-word interactive horror novel by Jeffrey Dean, based on “Vampire: The Masquerade” and set in the World of Darkness shared story universe. 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 undead Prince of Canada’s capital city has disappeared, and his second-in-command, Eden Corliss, wants you to find out why. You’ve been loyal to Corliss since she Embraced you and made you a vampire, but this could be your chance to take her place. Will you defend your sire from the accusations flying, or join forces with her rivals to bring her down?

Ottawa’s court of immortals is tight-knit and merciless, with tensions between clans that go back centuries. The Prince has been missing for four days, and old alliances are starting to crumble. How will you leverage the political chaos to your advantage? The authorities are already on high alert against a new group of Anarchs in the city, who have been breaching the Masquerade by revealing their true nature. You’ll have to gather evidence to demonstrate which suspects deserve punishment, and you can’t afford to guess wrong. One careless word could get you stabbed in the back—staked through the heart, and left to burn in the sun.

Who will you save when the knives are out?

• Choose from three clans, each with different gifts.

• Flaunt your coercive dominance as a Ventrue, your dark stealth as a Nosferatu, or your heightened senses as a Toreador.

• Master the social scene and ensnare the weak in your thrall.

• Command your own manservant and ghoul.

• Attack the Anarchs in the city, or help them take over.

• Uncover the lies at the heart of Ottawa’s immortal court.

• Romance a sheriff or a seer.

• Feast on the blood dolls of your charismatic ally.

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, or bi.

We hope you enjoy playing Vampire: The Masquerade — Parliament of Knives. 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.

The undead Prince of Canada’s capital city has disappeared, and his second-in-command, Eden Corliss, wants you to find out why. You’ve been loyal to Corliss since she Embraced you and made you a vampire, but this could be your chance to take her place. Vampire: The Masquerade — Parliament of Knives is a 600,000-word interactive horror novel by Jeffrey Dean, based on “Vampire: The Masquerade” and set in the World of Darkness shared story universe.

I sat down to chat with Jeffrey about the project and his familiarity with the property. Vampire: The Masquerade — Parliament of Knives releases next Thursday, October 28th. You can play the first three chapters or wishlist it on Steam now!

This is the third World of Darkness universe game Choice of Games has published, and what I love about it is how it differs so dramatically from both Night Road and Out for Blood. Can you talk a little about why this was the Vampire: The Masquerade story you wanted to tell?

I’m absolutely fascinated by vampire politics and the nature of these creatures hidden in the dark, controlling the world’s economies and politics while fighting each other as much through social slights as physical attacks. When we were discussing pitches, I immediately gravitated to ideas more focused on a high-born vampire who would be brought low by a series of events and be given the choice of how to shape the future of the city’s Camarilla.

My past work for Choice of Games, the “Werewolves” series, is generally pretty story-heavy with less focus on stats, and I wanted to continue that style here. Because of that, Vampire: The Masquerade — Parliament of Knives differs from the other two games not only in subject matter, but in game design as well. I cut the stats to the essential 9 attributes in an effort to lean into the medium’s strengths as a story-teller while still allowing for fully customizable characters. My goal was to keep readers’ eyes on the text and not worrying about checking their character sheet before every choice for a more organic experience.

What’s your personal history with “Vampire: The Masquerade?”

My very first experience with “Vampire: the Masquerade” was during my freshman year in university. It was a very intense LARP that threw me in the deep end of a politics-heavy Camarilla campaign full of intrigue, action, and back-stabbing. It was pretty intimidating, to be honest, but they hooked me up with a core book and within a few nights I was forming alliances and backstabbing Council members like I’d been doing it my entire unlife. After that I was hopelessly hooked. In the years since, I’ve played in campaigns where I was able, and when it wasn’t, I still kept up with the material the same way one might with a favorite book series.

What surprised you most about working on a licensed property in the sense of a world you were bringing your writing to, rather than inventing yourself?

I’m not sure I’d use the word surprised, but the biggest adjustment was the additional oversight and the amount of research I ended up doing. I tend to write very off the cuff; I’m what some authors would call a ‘pantser.’ I’ve often joked that my characters tell me what they want to do and I roll with it, so I had to rein them in a little bit with this one. Canon World of Darkness material for Ottawa (and Canada in general) is pretty sparse, but it still needed to be accounted for, so I designed my characters’ back history with that in mind.

Which of the NPCs in Vampire: The Masquerade — Parliament of Knives did you most enjoy writing?

I was surprised by this one, but the Nosferatu Primogen, Michel Bouchard, was a joy to write. He’s a vulgar, irascible monster who has no hang ups about killing whoever he needs to as long as it gets him what he wants. But if you ally with him, you’ll find in the latter half of the story that he’s a more complicated and vulnerable creature than he lets on. For whatever reason, he just sprung onto the page whenever I was writing him like he knew what he was doing before I typed it.

You’re an American living in Canada, and I know Ottawa gets a bad rep even amongst Canadians as being boring, but I actually think it’s a beautiful city. What of your knowledge of the place informed the writing in the game?

Ottawa is beautiful! I don’t think I’ve heard many people up here call it boring; usually that’s reserved for Oshawa, which I’ll admit sounds pretty similar. (Sorry, Oshawa readers!) I spent a week in Ottawa with my partner not long before writing my pitch and I fell in love with it, so when I was encouraged to pick a Canadian city for my setting, I decided pretty quickly. I used a combination of my experience walking through the city, my pictures, research, and street-view for my descriptions. I used several real-world buildings, streets, parks, and suburbs for my scenes, many of which should be recognizable in real life. I also used my home city of Kitchener in one of the endings as well, which was fun to add in.

What are you working on next?

Next up is to get my butt moving on Werewolves 3: Evolution’s End, before my readers start camping outside my house with pitchforks! But seriously, I’m looking forward to delving into the werewolf side of the supernatural spectrum again!

Hosted Games has two new games for you to play!

The country of Panwestia has conquered half the globe–and they’re not stopping. Backed by terrible interstellar weapons, the leaders are preparing to pull the trigger on the other half. Information exists that can bring the hegemon down, but to retrieve it? You’ll need to shoot for the stars.

It’s 40% off until October 14th!

Interstellar Airgap is a thrilling 220,000-word interactive science fiction novel by John Lance, 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, or non-binary; gay, straight, bi, pan, or asexual.
• Pilot a nimble ship through the infinite darkness of space.
• Mastermind a brazen escape from an asteroid prison.
• Work alongside those looking to dismantle the power structure–or crush their resistance beneath your heel.
• Find romance with a reformed cop, a revolutionary firebrand, a forthright rocket pilot, a pacifist with a troubled past, or one of the most brilliant minds of their generation.
• Experience more than a dozen unique endings, all with unique twists based on your companion and/or romantic partner.
• Run away from a very scary bear!

Stay one step ahead on a galaxy-spanning heist!

The Horror Behind the Walls by Alex Ryan

The sun had set across the mountain tops, save for a single flicker that still glistened from a single peak. The locals know not to investigate. Not only because the German government has forbidden it, but also because those who do never return the same, if at all. The few known survivors, in-between their lapses of madness, speak of great stone walls that uphold a structure more imposing than any known today. Little does the world know, however, that these walls no longer serve their intended purpose of keeping intruders out, but rather, to now keep something in.

It’s 33% off until October 14th!

The Horror Behind the Walls is an immersive 34,000-word interactive horror novel intended to provide phenomenal imagery in every scene. From the author of The Aether: Life as a God, Alex Ryan, 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.

All you know is that someone, or something, has been calling to you. With hundreds of cases solved and thousands of spirits laid to rest, your name has become synonymous with the paranormal. Renowned as one of the world’s greatest private investigators, you are about to uncover a secret far more disturbing than any case you’ve worked on in the past. Night after night, nightmares have been sent across the world to plague your dreams. Something that’s been hidden away from a time long forgotten now beckons to be remembered. 

• Play as a male, female, or nonbinary.
• Track down the source of the nightmares that have haunted you.
• Explore an ancient castle and traverse its labyrinth.
• It is up to you to piece together the clues and discover what happened.
• Uncover an ancient secret and determine how the story ends.
• Survive the horrors and find a way to rid them from the world forever.

Uncover the truth and witness The Horrors Behind the Walls.

John and Alex 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.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

In an alternate future where medieval laws coexist with scientific and technological advancements, a revolution is boiling. Personal reasons will force you to be at the forefront of it. Your place in this world is a simple yet powerful role, granted to you thanks to your haunting past and the current political situation in the empire. A long war threatens the autocracy of your ruler and soon you will find your life thrown upside down, engaging in an emotionally fueled conflict you never wished to be part of. As you dig deeper, you will find untold truths.

It’s 33% off until September 30th!

Rain King is a 50,000-word science-fiction interactive novel by Marvin K. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Inside this unique world you will have to deal with a lot of characters, each with their own goals and mentality. They might be part of your plan, or you theirs. Decisions will have to be made. Power or catastrophe might be the consequence. Your true nature will be exposed in this game of philosophy, drama, action, faith, death, family, friendship and love. As you forge your own prism of reality you might watch it shatter to pieces. After all, truth is but a fly caught in a web of lies.

• Play as male or female; as gay, straight, bisexual, or asexual.
• Explore a fantastical world reaching the limits of human advancements but being far from an utopia.
• Make allies that would give their life for you and try to manipulate and win the favor of your acquaintances.
• In retribution change your life and that of the biggest empire on the planet.
• Try not to get deceived. Choose which truths to believe.
• Help and care for others or think about your own life and let them die.
• Choose your arsenal and unleash your inner demon in the action sequences.
• Follow your heart and fall in love or use your admirers’ feelings for your own purposes.
• Open your eyes and find a meaning to it all.

As you forge your own prism of reality, you might watch it shatter to pieces.

Marvin 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 Wraiths of SENTINEL, 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 September 23rd!

Dying made you the perfect spy! Will you use your phantom powers to defend the United States government, or overthrow it?

Wraiths of SENTINEL is a 250,000-word interactive novel by Paul Gresty 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.

You are a phantom being of supernatural energy, working as a covert intelligence operative for SENTINEL, a secretive government agency. Your unrivaled powers of surveillance can safeguard the freedom of the country; your paranormal wraith abilities will make the difference between being hunter and prey.

SENTINEL has tasked you to investigate the No-State Separatists, a ruthless band of domestic terrorists. Can you uncover a link to the extreme-right True Freedom Party? Your investigation will delve into the realm of political corruption, draw you into the spirit world, and bring you to the nexus of all reality itself.

As you’ll soon discover, the true threat to the nation is far closer than you’d ever imagined.

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; straight, gay, bi, or beyond notions of mortal sexuality
• Investigate enemies of the state with two other wraiths, Marly and Zhou, as well as a range of field operatives and high-tech equipment
• Pursue romance with a fellow wraith, a sorcerer, or a medium
• Explore the cause of your own mortal death! What role did MetaHuman Inc. play in your demise?
• Go rogue! Escape detection by the best ghost-hunters in the world
• Return to your mortal, human life—or revel in the abilities you possess as a wraith, forever
• Prevent god-like power from falling into the wrong hands—or pursue that power for yourself!

The fate of the world is in your intangible hands!

We hope you enjoy playing Wraiths of SENTINEL. 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.

Dying made you the perfect spy! Will you use your phantom powers to defend the United States government, or overthrow it? You are a phantom being of supernatural energy, working as a covert intelligence operative for SENTINEL, a secretive government agency. Your unrivaled powers of surveillance can safeguard the freedom of the country; your paranormal wraith abilities will make the difference between being hunter and prey. Wraiths of SENTINEL is a 250,000-word interactive novel by Paul Gresty, author of MetaHuman Inc. and The ORPHEUS Ruse. I sat down with Paul to talk about the evolution of his work for Choice of Games.

Wraiths of SENTINEL releases this Thursday, September 16th. You can play the first three chapters now.

This is your third game for Choice of Games, after The ORPHEUS Ruse and MetaHuman Inc, and we’re absolutely thrilled. Tell me about the world of Wraiths. Does it overlap with the worlds in your other games?

Wraiths of SENTINEL crosses over with MetaHuman Inc., for sure. That company appears in this game—and it’s still employing dark powers in the service of capitalism. Links to The ORPHEUS Ruse are more subtle, but there’s a tonal connection, for sure—the player’s own Possession ability is not unlike the body-switching metempsychosis of The ORPHEUS Ruse.

I’ll add that’s it’s a great feeling to be publishing my third story for Choice of Games. Thanks to everybody at CoG for their support throughout this process. Writing this game took a long time—like, a bonkers amount of time —and the patience of the CoG team was very much appreciated. Working with you guys is always a fantastic experience.

MetaHuman Inc. is one of the most popular games we’ve ever published, and thematically, I feel like Wraiths is a bit of a spiritual (pun intended!) successor to it. We’ve moved from the corporate world to government. What shifts in theme did you observe as you were writing?

MetaHuman Inc. is probably the piece of work that I’m most proud of having written. Even now, nearly six years after it was released, I still from time to time get messages from readers saying how much they loved it. That kind of thing really gives you a boost.

I think that government, and potential poor governance, is one of the themes of the game because it had been a rising concern in my mind for some time at that point—as it had for many people. Some of the game’s excellent playtesters mentioned that the game included some not-so-subtle parallels to Trump’s government. And I guess it does, but the roots of the game go back further than that. I’m English, and I was planning this game after six years of leadership by David Cameron, one of the more nakedly self-serving prime ministers the United Kingdom has had, and the installation of Theresa May as prime minister, despite a shocking stint as Home Secretary in which she eroded civil liberties and carried out some pretty evil attacks on immigrants. So my frustration with politics and governmental bodies was already running high.

The focus on surveillance, and of the potential for a government agency to overstep its mandate, absolutely stems from the documentary Citizenfour, detailing Edward Snowden’s disclosures concerning the overreach by the NSA, and various governments. It’s a rare example of a documentary that’s being filmed as the story takes place, rather than after the fact, and so you see the strange contrast between the humdrum and the incredible—you have shots, say, of Ed Snowden styling his hair while he’s listening to a radio show about whether or not he should be assassinated. I saw that film in 2015, and it terrified me more than any horror film—because the monsters in this case are real, and they are scrutinizing you. Human eyes might not be reading all your emails, but keyword-scanning bots definitely are, and that data can be made available to a lot of organizations as needed. Ever since I saw Citizenfour, I’ve put aside a budget every year for software and online services that protect and respect data privacy.

So, yes, a theme of the book is the constant anxiety of unseen eyes upon you, and the struggle to escape from that glare.

There’s a ton of things in Wraiths of SENTINEL I think of as “good clean RPG fun”—to me it’s very much a power fantasy in that respect. What kinds of powers and abilities does this PC have?

In Wraiths of SENTINEL the reader takes the role of a ghost, of sorts. And yet I very consciously wanted to sidestep existential questions such as the existence of an afterlife, or of “souls.” I wanted to avoid looking at ghosts from the perspective of any one particular religion or belief set. And so here there’s an almost scientific rationale for the presence of wraiths, and other ‘formerly alive’ beings. Every being that exists possesses a scientifically observable form of energy called “quintessence”; physical beings possess both a tangible form and quintessence, while beings such as wraiths are wholly comprised of this quintessence energy. Most “regular” living humans aren’t capable of perceiving quintessence, and so they can’t see wraiths at all. But once you understand the principles of this energy, it’s possible to calibrate microphones to detect wraith voices, say, or to fabricate special types of glass that will show their reflections.

That said, the player essentially has many of the classic ghost abilities. It’s possible to learn to manifest, so that you can speak to living beings for a short time, or even visually appear before them. You can learn a poltergeist ability to move objects around, or you can possess living people, or you can create havoc with electrical devices. Y’know, all those fun things that ghosts are rumored to do.

What do you think will surprise readers about this game?

I’m really happy with the range of outcomes that are possible in this game. Stylistically, it’s rare to be able to “fail” a Choice of Games title—the objective isn’t to beat the game, it’s more about the journey the player experiences as he or she traverses the story. And in Wraiths of SENTINEL in particular, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to fail to save the day. Some of the most fun parts to write were sections in which the player has to deal with the fallout of any inability to complete all of his or her objectives.

What else have you been working on/what are you working on next?

A few years ago I wrote The Serpent King’s Domain, the seventh book in the Fabled Lands gamebook series originally created by Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson. To my mind, the Fabled Lands books are the most innovative and replayable dead-tree gamebooks ever written, and it’s a joy working on that series. I’m now working on the next Fabled Lands book, The Lone and Level Sands.