This is a story where you do something more terrifying than entering a haunted house, more dangerous than assaulting an alien horde, and more important than ruling a fantasy kingdom. You, and you alone, must turn your newborn baby into a functional adult. Will you be a tiger mom or a helicopter dad? Can you raise a child through eighteen years of humor and heartache with nothing on your side except a little patience and a lot of love? It’s a fun and unique experience designed for potential parents of all ages!
The Parenting Simulator is a lighthearted 189,000 word interactive slice-of-life novel by Matt Simpson, 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.
Experience over 60 scenes designed to touch on events both major and minor in your digital offspring’s life.
Overcome potty training, bullies, and the dreaded driving test!
Live the wild emotional rollercoaster of raising a child as you go from birth to high school graduation.
Be the main role model in their life, as every little thing you do can have consequences that reverberate through the years.
Maintain relationships with friends and family or burn your bridges to spare you and your little one further heartache.
Watch your child grow and change from the choices you make.
Find out who they become through numerous possible endings!
In partnership with World of Darkness and Paradox Interactive, Choice of Games is proud to announce three upcoming games based on Vampire: The Masquerade and set in the World of Darkness shared story universe!
In these games, your choices control the story. They’re entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
Steam Wishlists Really Help
When we launch these games, they’ll be available on all of our usual platforms (iOS, Android, web, and Steam), but on Steam, each wishlist gives us extra visibility. So, even if you don’t normally purchase our games on Steam, we’d really appreciate it if you would login to Steam and click the “Wishlist” button there for all three of these games.
The elders have entrusted you, an elite vampire courier, to deliver their secrets. Can you outrun the hunters, the other drivers, and the rising sun?
It’s a new Dark Age for the dead. When the Second Inquisition’s vampire hunters hacked phone lines and computer networks to expose and destroy vampires all over the world, the elders turned to undead couriers like you.
Race across the desert to deliver secrets, promises, and threats. Unleash the powers of your blood in ancient Disciplines to change form, vanish from sight, or dominate the minds of your enemies—or just run them off the road and keep driving.
Death is a hard road. You drive it every night. Coming soon, summer 2020. Wishlist it here.
Gather your allies to hunt the vampires that terrorize your town! Study their ways and exploit their rivalries, or you’ll become a vampire yourself.
Take on the role of a vampire hunter to save your town from the influence of Chastain, a vampire more than a century old. When a group of young thin-blood vampires start a war with Chastain, will you choose sides, or hunt them all?
Gather your forces and sharpen your stake to take back the night! Coming in spring 2021. Wishlist it here.
Dominate undead politics through cunning and violence! Will a missing Prince give you the opening you need to seize power and take control of the city?
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? 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? Coming in fall 2021. Wishlist it here.
To sign up to be notified when these games are released, wishlist the games on Steam, or email subscribe@choiceofgames.com to sign up for the announcement mailing list.
About Choice of Games
Choice of Games LLC is dedicated to producing high-quality, text-based, multiple-choice games. Since 2009 they have produced over one hundred titles in-house, including Choice of the Dragon and Choice of Robots, and three of their recent titles have been nominated for the Nebula Award for Game Writing. They have also developed a simple scripting language for writing text-based games, ChoiceScript, which they make available to others for use in their projects, and they host games produced by other designers using ChoiceScript on their website. All of their games are available on the web at choiceofgames.com and on Steam. They also produce mobile versions of their games that can be played on iPhones, Android phones, and other smartphones.
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 and is publishing Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 on PC and consoles in 2020.
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.
We’re proud to announce that Mask of the Plague Doctor, 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 April 30!
Stop a deadly plague in a medieval fantasy tale of swords and surgery!
Mask of the Plague Doctor is a 410,000-word interactive novel by Peter Parrish, 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 town of Thornback Hollow is under quarantine. Its people are unable to sleep, tormented by a disease known as the Waking Death, and the infection is spreading. The Crown has commanded you and two other plague doctors to end the plague, even if that means destroying the town.
In your quest for knowledge, will you try to ease the fear and paranoia of the citizenry, or fan the flames of political unrest? Will your fellow plague doctors become your rivals, allies, or lovers? Will you grasp the true power that watches over the town?
• Play as male, female, or non-binary; gay, straight, bisexual, or aromantic.
• Select from a range of mask designs, or opt for one of your own.
• Specialize in surgery, medical theory, or uncanny mysticism.
• Unearth a cure for the Waking Death, apply traditional medicines, or explore more experimental methods.
• Respect the local deity, or throw your support behind a banished sect.
• Work with the Crown’s appointed mayor, aid a revolt, or do your best to avoid political intrigue altogether.
• Find time for romance with one of your fellow plague doctors, or a dashing mercenary.
• Recruit others to your medical cause and perhaps leave a lasting legacy.
• Seek induction into the Fellowship of Royal Physicians, or be happy just to escape with your life.
Thornback Hollow is in peril. Can your healing hands soothe the Waking Death to slumber? Or will the town perish to fire and disease?
We hope you enjoy playing Mask of the Plague Doctor. 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.
Stop a deadly plague in a medieval fantasy tale of swords and surgery! The town of Thornback Hollow is under quarantine. Its people are unable to sleep, tormented by a disease known as the Waking Death, and the infection is spreading. The Crown has commanded you and two other plague doctors to end the plague, even if that means destroying the town.
Mask of the Plague Doctor is a 410,000-word interactive novel by Peter Parrish. I sat down with Peter to discuss fantasy plagues in the current midst of the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
It feels very strange that this game is being published during the coronavirus pandemic, but we’ve of course been working on it since the summer of 2018. And interestingly, sales of the table top game, Pandemic, have soared since this began. I wonder if being able to role play in similar scenarios can help people to cope with the stress of the real thing.
It’s been quite surreal to watch most of the world enter into varying states of quarantine across the past couple of months, and to be subject to a moderate one myself here in Washington State. When I started writing this game, the 2018 World Cup had just finished. That kind of international, communal event has just ceased to exist for the near-to-mid future – with good reason, of course.
I think you’re right that the renewed interest in plague and pandemic related materials comes from people trying to deal with, and understand, their present circumstances. There’s a level of control, especially with games, that you simply don’t have over the real life. They let you act out and explore anxieties in a more abstract way. Games won’t feed you or pay the rent, but they can at least provide a good distraction while you’re stuck indoors.
I hope Mask of the Plague Doctor can entertain people in the same manner. But I’m sure for some this is the last topic they want to think about, and I completely understand that feeling too.
That said, this is a total fantasy setting with a medieval-fantasy tone. And the disease is far deadlier. Tell me a little about the world of Thornback Hollow.
Thornback Hollow is just one town within a wider realm, but for the player and protagonist it is pretty much their whole world for the game’s duration. It’s loosely 13th-14th Century European in character, so the main industries are timber, a tannery, and (outside the walls) agriculture. The inhabitants find themselves afflicted by a strange and terrifying sickness that prevents the infected from sleeping. If you’ve ever gone without sleep for 24 hours, suffered from insomnia, or more severe sleep disorders, you’ll have an idea how rapidly that takes a toll on body and mind.
The town also has the (mis)fortune to lay on the main trade route to the ocean, so the Crown authorities are especially keen to find a cure – and willing, if necessary, to take far more drastic measures to clear the way and get the economy going again. That’s where you and your plague doctor companions come in.
In MotPD‘s world, the history of medicine and surgery has progressed rather differently from our own. It’s at a 13th Century level in many ways, but there was no Four Humors theory developed here, nor any astrological tables to consult. But Thornback Hollow’s realm does have its own deities, and those who practice medicine by communing with them (as well as many who prefer more grounded methods).
The feudal period provides a lot of clear-cut themes of class and power too, which are topics close to my heart. As a plague doctor you carry a certain amount of authority, but you ultimately answer to a ruling class whose interests may not align with your own.
Can you say a bit about what informed your initial conception for the game. Why a plague doctor tale?
It seems a bit funny to be saying this now that the game is over 400,000 words long, but I wanted to keep things tight and on a manageable scale! Before this, I’ve only ever written short fiction, so a story where the player would literally be stuck behind town walls seemed like a good way to keep the tale somewhat confined. I took a fair bit of inspiration from Albert Camus’ The Plague, which has a similar premise (albeit in the 1940s).
For MotPD, I wanted a fantasy-medieval theme because medicine in that 13th Century era is such a fascinating collision of techniques. There are some that still have contemporary relevance, there’s some well-meaning guesswork, and then there’s a whole lot of absolutely wild nonsense. You have doctors disinfecting wounds with alcohol and applying honey as a sort of early antibiotic, but others trying to treat gout by saying “well, wait until the next solstice, then decapitate an owl…” It provides a lot of reference material for real medical methods, and a lot of flexibility for inventing weird things of my own.
Plus, I think almost everybody agrees that plague doctor masks are eerie and cool. There’s that duality of purpose where they’re worn by those who could save your life, but their appearance in town symbolizes tragedy, decay, and death. That appeals to my inner goth, I suppose. Catherine Joo’s cover art really helps convey that feeling, I love how she depicted my characters.
Funnily enough, although most people associate plague doctors and their masks with the medieval Black Death, the popular beaked aesthetic comes from far, far later in the 17th Century. I’m afraid MotPD is perpetuating this myth. Sorry, historians.
What I have found so compelling about the current pandemic is that there are obvious parallels to what happens in the game, which I guess speaks to the nature of public health management in general, whether it’s real or fictional.
I think in a situation like this, where despite what we do know about SARS-CoV-2 there is no current vaccine or cure, we fall back on these older, tested techniques. We know this is a virus, not some vague “miasma,” but the idea of reducing spread by reducing proximity is the same. Without any reliable form of treatment, the best prevention is to not catch it in the first place.
I’m really intrigued to see how people respond to the game now that most will have experienced some degree of quarantine. Will it influence the sorts of choices they make? Are there measures they would like to implement that I’ve not accounted for? For a while I worried that I’d written my ruling authorities as a bit too self-interested and cruel, but reality has since convinced me otherwise.
You come from a background in games journalism, but I believe this is your first foray into writing interactive fiction? Tell me a little about your other work.
This is my first work of interactive fiction, yes. Also my first work of published fiction longer than about 5,000 words.
For about ten years I primarily wrote for a site called IncGamers (now PC Invasion), doing reviews, interviews, and the like. Archiving procedures might have messed with things, but I think most of my work is still hosted some fashion. Anyway, I’ve always loved reactive RPGs that respond and acknowledge your choices with significant narrative branches – games like Fallout: New Vegas or (especially!) Alpha Protocol. Long before that I’d play extremely frustrating text adventures on the ZX Spectrum, where you had to pretty much know the exact verb the designer was thinking of when they wrote the puzzle in order to solve it. I’d read a lot of Fighting Fantasy books as a child, too. I’ve still got the Sorcery! set on my shelves somewhere.
So I guess all of that background, plus my dabbling in short stories, made interactive fiction a natural fit.
I’ll be on the receiving end of reviews for once, instead of writing them. That should be…interesting.
What are you working on next?
Given how this has played out, I should probably write something utopian and hope that comes true as well.
Honestly, I’ve really enjoyed writing interactive fiction. If Mask of the Plague Doctor is well received, perhaps you’ll see another Choice of Games title under my name.
We’re proud to announce that Never Date Werewolves, the latest in our “Heart’s Choice” line of multiple-choice interactive romance novels, is now available for iOS and Android in our “Heart’s Choice” app. You can also download it on Steam, or enjoy it online on our website.
It’s free to play through the end of the game, and 25% off to disable ads and delay breaks until April 24th!
Raise your litter of six baby werewolves while hunting for your true love! Dating a werewolf means you’ve been left with a litter of kids. Six kids. Kids who turn into cubs when they get upset. You’ve gotten the silver out of the house, and stocked meat in the fridge – but unlike their father, you can’t turn into a wolf to lay down the law!
There’s hair all over the couch, endless howling (literally) in the night, and no dates. But maybe, despite the mayhem, you’ll manage to invite the cute neighbor next door out for coffee…
Never Date Werewolves is a 104,000-word interactive supernatural romance novel by Rebecca Zahabi. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
You’re busy rushing around Lyon, the French city of lights, zooming between your job at a store downtown and the summer school where your children attend. But you’ll be damned if you can’t do this single parent thing. You’ll show your ex – and the world! – that you can be a caring mum and still land a date.
If you’re looking for a human and a bit of normality, there is the new neighbor next door. But if they believe all werewolves are monsters, then it might be difficult to introduce them to the pups. Or there’s the teacher who manages the summer school, always smiling, full of energy and ideas for the kids to try out. Although there might be more to them than meets the eye…After all, everyone has their secrets, and they’ve managed never to be overwhelmed by your brood of werewolves.
One thing is certain: the full moon is coming up, and even if you’re not a wolf, you’ll have the kids ready, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, for the most important hunt of their young lives.
Play as genderlocked female; gay, straight, bi or asexual.
Land a date – and maybe more – with the cute broody neighbor or the sunny schoolteacher.
Help your kids choose an alpha for their pack and complete a stunning art project for school.
Assist while the kids hunt down game under the full moon.
Change the worldviews of people around you, and impact how werewolves are perceived.
Keep your pups under control, deal with their babysitter, and impress your boss at work – at the same time!
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.
Raise your litter of six baby werewolves while hunting for your true love! Dating a werewolf means you’ve been left with a litter of kids. Six kids. Kids who turn into cubs when they get upset. You’ve gotten the silver out of the house, and stocked meat in the fridge – but unlike their father, you can’t turn into a wolf to lay down the law! Never Date Werewolves is a 104,000-word interactive romance novel by Rebecca Zahabi. I sat down with Rebecca to talk about wolves and single parenthood, and the pleasures and pitfalls of writing.
Never Date Werewolves has to be one of my favorite game titles we’ve ever published. How did you come up with the concept for this story?
I was reading the comic book series Fables by Bill Willingham (which I highly recommend, by the way) and, at one point in the series, Bigby the werewolf has a litter of babies, and then proceeds to leave his girl (who isn’t a werewolf) with the babies to tend for. This sparked my imagination, and I wondered what was happening to her while she was trying to educate these children, and how I would deal with it if I was in that situation. I then went to read/watch stories with wolf children or badass parents dealing with babies, such as the animated film Wolf Children Ame and Yuki and the comics Saga, and I thought, there’s something really fun here which hasn’t been made into a game yet.
This is your first foray into interactive fiction, but you’re actually a multi-talented writer. Tell me a little about your other work.
I’m interested in exploring lots of different media – I wrote for theatre a lot, especially while I was still living in France, and founded a theatre company there. I also dabbled in oral storytelling and had a Youtube channel about Viking myths. I’ve always loved mythology and legends, where they come from and how they change depending on who’s telling them.
Most recently, I’ve been writing short stories for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, I’ve done a translation for a middle-grade novel from French to English, and I’ve been working on an online comic with my sister. So I keep myself busy!My sister drew this little minicomic for me for Never Date Werewolves.
The PC in this game is a single mum. Did you bring your personal experience to writing this?
I’m afraid not – I’m not a mum, but I’ve looked after children, especially big groups for whom we performed children’s plays and organised activities after the show. And I just really like the idea of parents in fiction. In stories, we often see what happens before the couples meet, then it stops at “they lived happily ever after.” But I’m interested in what happens afterwards, behind the scenes. Did all the Beast’s children come with their own roses and shapeshifting tendencies? Being an immortal vampire is all very fun, but if you’re a teenage vampire, do you stay a teenager forever – with acne and mood swings to boot?
When I was small, I thought my dad was probably a secret werewolf. It’s easy to tap into those childhood memories and put them into a new setting, just teasing out the magical and seeing how it interacts with our everyday lives.
I love a game that mixes modern slice of life with something a bit unusual, like werewolves. What parts of werewolf mythology were brought to bear here?
I find werewolves have an interesting mythology, because they’re based in something we can all relate to – losing control of ourselves in a fit of anger – and because the stories have been around for so long they have lots of variants. There are stories with werewolves who have the fur on the inside, and if you cut them instead of blood it’s wolf fur that pours out. The versions of the werewolf story change across Europe, from the beautiful bride who turns into a monster, to the woman stealing her husband’s clothes so he can never resume his human life.
I wanted to play with these stories, but stay in areas readers would recognise, such as a link to the moon, a fear of silver, and the furious transformations which happen when your emotions overwhelm you, but which don’t necessarily make you a monster. I steered away from a purely “monster shape” and stuck with simply turning into a wolf, because I think there is more to explore with an animal shape with which you can hunt, and love, and make friends, rather than simply a raging beast.
Do you have a favorite Choice of Games or Heart’s Choice title that helped you in writing this?
My all time favourite Choice of Game title is Tally Ho by Kreg Segall. He really masters the genre, and the whole story fits the tone of the household drama in the 1930s, and does what I find interactive fiction does best – giving us a chance to be the main character of the books we love. I hope I’ve managed to pastiche the rom-com genre as well as Kreg Segall nails his.
Talking about urban fantasy, as I’ve said before, I love the meeting of the mundane and the magical in stories such as Neighbourhood Necromancer or the Psy High series – there’s a great potential for humour, I think, and because these games are doing something similar to what I’m trying to achieve, they’re a great source of inspiration.
What are you working on next?
I’ve got my début novel, The Game Weavers, coming out this fall 2020 – it’s very exciting and it’s taking up most of my attention at the moment. But I’m also looking forward to doing another game, now that I’ve got a clearer idea of how interactive fiction works and what I can achieve with it; I feel I’ll be more comfortable and in control with the next story I write, so I’ll be able to explore more avenues and hopefully create more fun content!
We’re proud to announce that Blackstone Academy for the Magical Arts, 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 Omnibus app.
It’s 40% off until April 16th!
Cast spells, pass your exams, and save the world! Blackstone is more than a magic school: you’ll compete for glory in the sky sailing tourney, find love, and steer the fate of magic itself.
Blackstone Academy for the Magical Arts is a fast-paced 188,000-word interactive YA fantasy novel by Alana Joli Abbott, 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.
Blackstone Academy is a secretive magical high school for students with supernatural talents. When you discover you are a Sensor, someone who can feel the presence of magic, you learn that it’s exactly the type of place that will help you develop your ability. Your first year at Blackstone you’ll learn how to sky sail, practice your own magic spells, and discover the secrets the adults are hiding.
But as a magical crisis looms over campus, you must decide how you’ll get involved—and which factions you’ll support in guiding the future of the magical world. What will you prioritize: your academic career, your friends, or uncovering the magical threat? Will you keep the secrets of the magical world, or fight for a future without secrets, sharing magic with everyone?
Play as male, female, or non-binary; gay, straight, bisexual, pansexual, demisexual, asexual and/or aromantic.
Learn magic from your chosen mentor, and make friendships that will last forever.
Encounter and befriend—or annoy—powerful magical beings.
Compete in the sky sailing championships for the glory of your school!
Fight for the rights of supernaturals, or argue for tighter regulations of non-humans.
Earn the respect and admiration of your peers, or work to effect change from the shadows.
Face down a magical threat, and change the course of the magical world’s future.
The fate of magic is in your hands.
We hope you enjoy playing Blackstone Academy for the Magical Arts. 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.
Cast spells, pass your exams, and save the world! Blackstone is more than a magic school: you’ll compete for glory in the sky sailing tourney, find love, and steer the fate of magic itself.
Blackstone Academy for the Magical Arts is a fast-paced 188,000-word interactive YA fantasy novel by Alana Joli Abbott, author of Choice of Kung Fu, Choice of the Pirate, and Showdown at Willow Creek. I sat down with Alana to talk about her history with interactive fiction and world-building.
Blackstone Academy for the Magical Arts is your fourth Choice of Games title. That puts you in a very elite club, with I think only three other authors who have written more than three games for us. Can you talk a little about your evolution as an IF writer?
Oh, goodness, I didn’t realize there were that few of us! It’s an honor to have been involved with Choice of Games for that many projects, and my thinking about interactive fiction has certainly evolved with the Choice of Games audience. With Choice of Kung Fu, I tried to model the game play very closely after the previously published Choice of Games titles structurally, which I think worked well, but meant I didn’t take as many risks. In Showdown at Willow Creek, I drew more deeply on my tabletop role play design experience, and I think it shows; that one feels (to me) more like a tabletop game than any of my other games. Both Choice of the Pirate and Blackstone Academy for the Magical Arts lean into the wide variety of identities you can have as a PC, and I hope that I’ve given players there a broader choice of who and how they can exist within a world, without constraints or judgment. I’ve absolutely learned something new on each game, and tried something different than in previous stories, and I hope that experimentation is successful for players to have a fun experience!
Blackstone is a really fun story, with lots of unexpected twists. What did you most enjoy writing? The fantasy elements around the magic, the school setting, or the way different world mythologies come into it?
I have actually been working on the Thimbleport setting for more than a decade, so the most exciting thing about this project for me is finally breathing life into this place I’ve already invested in so heavily. The Liminals, in particular, are characters I’ve known for a long time, and though you only get a peek at them in the game compared to where they live in my imagination, I am so excited to have them get to exist somewhere outside my brain.
There are a lot of supernatural elements in the game, so it’s not just that magic exists, but vampires and werewolves do as well. Can you tell me a little more about the world?
Blackstone Academy draws on a lot of world mythologies, as well as pop culture incarnations of different creatures. Some of that is just the genre: once you’ve added one part of contemporary fantasy, it’s fun to have the rest of it in your sandbox as well. One of the things I really wanted to make sure of, though, was that an American-set school didn’t just ignore the folklore and tradition native to the area. Several of the characters in the story come from different Native American tribes (federally recognized and not), and the supernatural or spiritual creatures from the legends and folklore of the indigenous peoples of the Americas were always on my mind as I was creating the world. I wanted Blackstone to be a really diverse school, because I think magic isn’t just limited to one group of people, so there are hints at other world mythologies and creatures as well.
The magic itself is broken down into two types: innate (magic you’re born with) and learned (spells and rituals). To me, a lot of talents come that way: you can be naturally good at it, or you can train yourself really hard to learn a skill. I wanted both of those aspects to play a role in how magic worked, too.
If you had your own powers within the world of Blackstone, what would they be?
I think I’d probably be more like Jules, who doesn’t have an innate talent, but does the book learning to keep up. When I was a student myself, I wouldn’t have done at all well in Coach Rogers’s classes, but I think now learning combat skills and sky sailing would be my favorite subjects!
Was your own school experience anything like the Academy? Sans skyboats, of course.
I definitely haven’t gotten to fly in a boat, although I have gotten to take sailing lessons as an adult! My high school was not very much like Blackstone Academy, but I went to college after tenth grade, to this little college nestled in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. Although I stepped back from the college level work to make Blackstone Academy fell like a private school, there are definitely aspects of Simon’s Rock that show up in Blackstone Academy, especially in Mr. Delgado’s classes. Most of the Blackstone Academy teachers are named after teachers I had in either high school or college (or after teachers of my friends).
What are you working on next?
One of my other hats is as an editor, and I’m really excited to be working on editing some anthologies for Outland Entertainment. Where the Veil Is Thin, which I co-edited with Cerece Rennie Murphy, will be published later this year, and APEX: A Dinosaur Anthology, which I am co-editing with Jonathan Thompson, is going to be Kickstarted later this summer. I’m also looking forward to working on a Greek-mythology RPG project with Jonathan. But who knows? Now that Blackstone Academy is in the world, I might have to dig up those drafty old stories about the Liminal Agency and about Vi Cole (and her end-of-the-world playlist) to see if I can breathe some new life into them!
The blight eats the world while humans war for scraps. Will you fight, run, or lead your people to the stars? Or murderously ascend the human throne?
It’s 33% off until April 9th!
The blight eats the world while humans war for scraps. Will you fight, run, or lead your people to the stars? Or murderously ascend the human throne?
Two races clash; humans and turans–human discord versus turan magic. When the turans’ ancestors left the world to walk between stars, wild magic began returning. Now humans war to fill the vacuum, blind to the magical blight that is racing to smother the whole continent. High in their plateaus, the last turans must choose: Fight, follow their ancestors into the stars, or perish. And their fate rests on the life of a human child.
The Aegis Saga is a 280,000-word interactive fantasy novel by Charles Parkes, where your choices affect the story. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
Play as a male or female human, or as an ungendered turan; gay or straight.
Race through a hostile city on the back of a feaclaw.
Betray the trust of a powerful shaman as he teaches you to dance time.
Find love on the shingle beside a peaceful water garden.
Learn about glyf and how your magic can alter or destroy you!
See your personality change with your character development, without being locked into decisions to win stats checks.
Reread a page you missed, or skip ahead during a second read through.
Whether you try to understand the new world of the humans, or focus on the mysteries of the blight, either way, the child holds the key to everything.
Charles 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.
Terror has struck at Franklin High School! On the very day the prom court announcement, the prom queen is kidnapped! You and the rest of the prom committee members soon find yourself trapped in the school, held hostage by the scheming kidnapper. The only way to escape is to solve puzzles, search for clues, and go along with the culprit’s twisted game…but could the villain be closer than you think?
It’s 25% off until April 9th!
The Kidnapped Prom Queen is an exciting 120,000 word interactive novel by Michael Gray, 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 or female.
Enjoy three different pathways, each with a different culprit!
Over twenty different puzzles to solve.
Interact with an interesting cast of high schoolers.
Figure out the meaning of the kidnapper’s clues.
Suspense, mystery and secrets abound as you investigate.
Could one of your friends be working with the culprit?
Michael 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.
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