We’re proud to announce that Asteroid Run: No Questions Asked, 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 33% off until June 27th!
Captain! You have limited resources, a desperate crew, strange cargo and a company man is aboard to spy on you. Will you deliver your secret cargo to the Asteroid Belt on time? You and your crew will get rich or die trying!
Asteroid Run: No Questions Asked is a 325,000-word interactive science-fiction novel by Fay Ikin, 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.
Cargo runs between Earth, Mars and the Asteroid Belt are commonplace, but deadly. You’re the captain of a merchant vessel, but this time, your contract has a twist: don’t open the cargo, don’t get in the way of its handler, and don’t ask questions. Deliver to Vesta Station.
What kind of captain will you be? Will you get your hands dirty in the engine, be an aspiring scientist, or a master negotiator? Will you focus on the health of your crew or the state of your ship? Will you put your crew in danger to protect the mysterious cargo, or will you join forces with vicious anarchists to fight against corporate wealth and corruption?
• Play as non-binary, female, or male, and find romance—asexual or otherwise—with people of all genders.
• Discover your crew’s secrets, or secure their well-being: their lives are in your hands.
• Abandon your position to join forces with the anarchists and their charismatic leader, and even turn double agent.
• Balance your ship’s resources, delivering the cargo on time, and your influence with groups in the solar system.
• Get rich being a bootlicker for the law-bringers or the megacorporations, or use their own corruption against them.
Whatever alliances you make, the Big Black is vast and unforgiving, and your corporate guest is watching for any mistakes. You’ve got six months to Vesta Station: make them count.
We hope you enjoy playing Asteroid Run: No Questions Asked. 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.
Captain! You have limited resources, a desperate crew, strange cargo and a company man is aboard to spy on you. Will you deliver your secret cargo to the Asteroid Belt on time? You and your crew will get rich or die trying! Cargo runs between Earth, Mars and the Asteroid Belt are commonplace, but deadly. You’re the captain of a merchant vessel, but this time, your contract has a twist: don’t open the cargo, don’t get in the way of its handler, and don’t ask questions. Deliver to Vesta Station. Asteroid Run: No Questions Asked is a 325,000-word interactive science-fiction novel by Fay Ikin. I sat down with Fay to talk about her first time writing IF, and the challenges thereof.
Asteroid Run is your first foray into interactive fiction, but you’re a fiction writer otherwise?
Despite being a scientist, I’ve always loved creative writing too. I’ve completed several novels–I’d love to get them out into the wider world one day–and I co-wrote mods for for the videogame Baldur’s Gate II with my now-wife (the author of Blood Money). When Hannah started writing her game, seeing behind the scenes of writing interactive fiction was just too tempting, so I had to join her!
What were some of the bigger challenges of writing the game?
From a personal perspective, it’s the challenge of balancing writing this huge, complex game with real life! We have a young child at home, and I also work full-time (as a teacher, and then in education management) so getting enough brainpower to be both creative enough to write, and alert enough to code properly, has sometimes been tough. I’ve also discovered I’m a little too ambitious for my own good: I’ve had to be ever-vigilant about branching too wide or too early, as when the game got too unwieldy it was tricky to pull things back together.
Have you read a fair amount of IF? What games did you enjoy or draw from in writing Asteroid Run?
The first IF I ever read was Choice of Romance back in 2013, and I’ve been a fan of CoG ever since. I actually find that if I’m in the middle of a project, reading fiction (interactive or otherwise) in similar genres gives me a little too much awe and interference, so there are a bunch of sci-fi CoG games that I am champing at the bit to play now Asteroid Run is finished: Rent-a-Vice, I, Cyborg and the Martian Job, here I come!
Outside of COG games, one of my biggest inspirations was actually Failbetter Games’ Sunless Sea. The intimidating emptiness around your ship, the feelings of isolation pushing you to keep your crew close: delicious! I asked myself, “This game, but in space? Let’s run with that.” And yes, I’ve greatly been enjoying Sunless Skies too!
Are you a fan of hard sci-fi? What other genres interest you?
I’ve been a sci-fi nut ever since I sat in front of the TV watching Star Trek: Voyager as a kid! Hard sci-fi has actually been one subgenre it’s taken me longer to get into: books devoted more to the ships than the people is less my thing. I prefer sci-fi that spends time with its characters and setting, and uses technology as the vehicle for plot and characterization, so for me: Star Trek, Farscape, Killjoys, Firefly. I’d be remiss not to mention Asteroid Run‘s biggest inspiration, The Expanse.
I love full-on space operas, and cyberpunk too. Outside of sci-fi, I do enjoy fantasy and urban fantasy, especially in tabletop and computer RPGs! Anyone else hyped for VtM: Bloodlines 2?
Do you have a favorite NPC that you liked writing best?
Ooh, I enjoy so many of them. I particularly liked writing characters where their drives and goals can clash with the MC’s: the sleazy suit, Victor Palladino, has to be one of my favorites. He’s just such a bad dude, but a bit of a silver fox too. I have to say, my favorite moments to write were scenes showcasing your crew’s interpersonal relationships: there’s an option for everyone to give each other holiday presents, and thinking about who would give each other what was such a blast. Found families are the best!
We’re proud to announce that Fool!, 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 30% off until May 30th!
Jest your way from obscurity to royal acclaim as the King’s pet, beloved by all! As a talented young court fool with dreams of fame, scrabble with other young jesters to secure prestigious positions in the courts of Brenton’s nobility. In a royal court humming with intrigue, keep them smiling as spies, assassins, blackmailers, ambitious nobles and a reluctant Heir wait in the wings.
Fool! is a 420,000-word interactive fantasy novel by Ben Rovik. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
Dive-roll into the tightrope world of Brenton’s courtly entertainers, where your jests can see you seated at the right hand of power, or set down to the gallows.
What manner of fool are you: the shrewd knave ever ready with a venomous quip? The renowned artiste at pains to stay above the political fray? The bawdy buffoon known as much for off-stage antics as on-stage mirth? Or the clever counselor whose real audience is the noble ear they whisper into? Face unruly audiences onstage and skulduggerous schemers in the wings! Can you sling keen jests and still evade the whipping-post and assassin’s blade? The kingdom itself will be shaped by your choices!
• Play as male, female, non-binary; gay, straight, bi or ace.
• Evade tossed produce, whippings, assassins and the stocks with your wit and quick feet!
• Battle a lifelong rival for artistic glory within a secret society of writers and gadflys!
• Train your pet ape to master prodigious feats, or at least to stop biting you!
• Mediate between nobles to forge compromise; or stir them up to your own advantage!
• Partner with fellow thespians to win friends, or upstage them to win glory!
• Balance your passion for the limelight with your passion for …passion!
When the Master calls, you’d do well to come running—with bells on!
We hope you enjoy playing Fool!. 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.
Jest your way from obscurity to royal acclaim as the King’s pet, beloved by all! As a talented young court fool with dreams of fame, scrabble with other young jesters to secure prestigious positions in the courts of Brenton’s nobility. In a royal court humming with intrigue, keep them smiling as spies, assassins, blackmailers, ambitious nobles and a reluctant Heir wait in the wings. Fool! is a 420,000-word interactive fantasy novel by Ben Rovik. I sat down with Ben to talk about his setting and why the jester is such an important figure. Fool! releases this Thursday, May 23rd.
This is your first time writing interactive fiction, right? What drew you to this medium?
Yep, first time! As a kid of the 80’s I’ve always had a soft spot for choose-a-path stories, and had it in the back of my head that I’d do that kind of writing some day. But I spent most of my time in and after college focused on playwriting, and had some early success getting ten-minute plays and comedies produced and published. That’s where I lived as a writer for many years.
Then my wife and I stumbled across Choice of Robots one day and found ourselves playing it again and again to see what we could discover. That was when I learned about CoG and ChoiceScript, and that amorphous “maybe someday” vision of writing interactive fiction suddenly looked feasible.
I’ve always loved pushing myself to try new forms. As a lifelong lover of fantasy with a fun side I created and self-published the Mechanized Wizardry series, getting a few novels and novellas under my belt; I’ve also written the libretto for two operas and music/lyrics for eight childrens’ musicals. Interactive fiction was the next big realm to venture into. The ten-minute play and the 400,000+ word interactive novel are about as far apart as written works get, like the teacup poodle and the bull mastiff side by side. It was definitely a shift! But I think having learned to imagine all the angles for how a scene can go will serve me well in everything I write going forward.
What is it about your quasi-Shakespearean setting that you enjoyed writing most?
So I’ve been in the tank for the Bard for ages, since I got painted green as Puck for the seventh-grade production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I was president of the Shakespeare Club in high school and did an apprenticeship at the Folger Shakespeare Library in DC that had a huge impact on me. I toured around as a professional actor for six years after college and Shakespeare was always part of the mix; I got to perform in huge roadhouses, little black boxes, school gyms and even prisons. It’s unbelievable how much of our modern vocabulary is just right out of Shakespeare’s brain; and while some of his plays are definitely clunkers (I was in All’s Well That Ends Well and it took the director a lot of cutting to make it fun) some of the others are so transcendently cool that I’m sure people will keep on with them for another 500 years.
There are some of Shakespeare’s settings where fools fit right in, like Verona and Athens. I wanted the Kingdom of Brenton in Fool! to feel more like the stuffy, serious, slightly on edge world of the Henry IV plays. Brenton’s a place where frowning and fretting come more easily than laughing, so the PC’s often got a big uphill battle in terms of winning over a room or a more intimate audience. In a down-to-earth fantasy like this, where you can have a big impact on the kingdom without ever touching a sword or shooting fire from your eyes, I thought that the most satisfying setting would be on the dour side; that way, if your choices start helping you win people over, you can see your corner of the kingdom start to transform into a more cheerful place.
I had a blast following Shakespearean conventions during this writing process, like having the nobles always speak in verse (except for Prinxe Hail, the heir to the Throne, who like Henry V switches freely between verse and prose). There’s also a lot of herbalism that shows up, which has been an interest of mine since my wife introduced me to the joys of picking wild blackberries and wineberries from the side of the road and I started seeing classifying the plants around me as more than just “weed,” “tree,” “bush,” etc. With the number of times I Googled things like “Toxic foliage Great Britain lethal dose” I’m sure I’m on a police watchlist somewhere. It was great fun to put it all together and hopefully put enough color on the different settings the PC moves between to make them pop in your mind while you read.
Why is the fool a compelling figure in literature?
The fool is the one who not only gets to tell the Emperor he has no clothes, but to point and laugh and mock his personal hygiene in the process. It’s always dramatically satisfying to see someone speak truth to power, and licensed fools play that role all over the place. The inversion of status makes it more exciting too; since fools are mostly commoners who are only allowed to be in court because luck or talent elevated them there, they take their entire careers, livelihoods, or lives in their hands when they dare to speak up to Kings and Queens, and they do it anyway. In stories with mostly noble or royal casts it can be hard for the audience to find someone to relate to on their level; having a fool in the mix makes sure there’s someone for the audience to latch on to.
Shakespeare really understood that moments of lightness and humor in otherwise dark pieces give the audience a little change of pace, and can help them get more enmeshed in the story to boot, since laughter is a social glue that binds groups together. Even the relentlessly dark Macbeth has the drunk porter who gives an extended riff on being Hell’s doorman. These moments add color and shading to the whole experience, and when they’re written best they really deliver a big dramatic payoff.
I thought it’d be fun to explore life as a fool because of my own experiences as a performer, where as soon as you telegraph to an audience “I’m going to be funny for you now,” their deflector shields go up full power. There’s a sense of challenge between audience and performer that can be really intense. It’s easier IMHO to deliver funny lines as a character in a play, where the humor comes at the audience sideways through the story, than it is to go at them straight like stand-up comics do and just be up there saying funny stuff for a whole show’s duration. For a medieval-style fool, dressed in motley and capering around in the court while everyone’s chomping at their meat, I can hardly imagine the stress of having a target like that on your back. People are very good at choosing not to laugh if they’re not in the mood, so it seemed like there could be a lot of mileage in letting PCs be their own kind of fool and come at audiences with a lot of different tactics to win them over and lead the laughter, not become the butt of it.
What did you find most challenging about the writing process?
Stopping! In a play the dramatic throughlines and character arcs you’re trying to get across only happen one way, so even though it can take a lot of tweaking to get them right, once you’ve got them you can step back and watch. For me in Fool!, trying to keep things balanced between different paths meant that every time I expanded this part, it made me want to tweak this other path, which had implications for that moment two chapters later, and on and on until I felt like things were out of balance again.
My plan is to detox after Fool!with much shorter formats again for a while. I got a lot of kind feedback about all the poetry that’s embedded in Fool!at various points, so I’ve been pushing ahead with that and writing sonnets about any and everything: blobfish, hold music, the interrobang, etc. I set up a Fiverr account at https://www.fiverr.com/users/benrovik/ to take mini-commissions for sonnets as a fun quick way to keep my hand in while I decompress from the big push to get Fool!ready.
Who’s your favorite NPC in Fool!?
It was really fun to write the PC’s monkey-companion, who shows up in Act II. Trying to imagine how the little beast would react across a range of situations, helpfully and less so, was really enjoyable.
I think my favorite human NPC is the steward Malodoro, who’s as no-nonsense and imposing as they come (inspired by the similarly party-pooping Malvolio from Twelfth Night). I wrote this book over a span of years which included lots of huge personal transitions; consequently, in a number of cases when I went back to check something in an earlier chapter I’d come across a snatch of dialogue that I had absolutely no memory of writing. That happened several times with the Malodoro scenes, where a one-liner that had slipped my mind would catch me off guard in a good way. I can’t wait to see who readers connect with most!
Your name is Oedipus, Prince of Corinth: And you’ve just discovered your future has been cursed by the gods themselves. Travel back to a time of magic and monsters in ancient Greece. Can you successfully fight to free yourself? Or will you succumb to the fate that was prophesied? It’s 25% off until May 24th!
The Saga of Oedipus Rex is an epic 100,000 word interactive fantasy novel by Jac Colvin, 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 Prince Oedipus, heir to the rulership of Corinth.
• Test your wits against the Sphinx.
• Immerse yourself in ancient Greek life.
• Remain in the country of your birth, or travel afar to Egypt.
• Will you appeal to the gods, challenge their decisions, or let fate run its course?
• With 8 distinct endings: Will you follow the future that has been prophesied or find your own way?
Jac Colvin 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.
Far below the city of Actorius lies the mysterious world of the Deep Tech—creatures and plants both living and mechanical, and powered by unknown forces. Your father harvests the tech to create experimental airships, and the Revolution that fights his every move races to do the same. Your father’s aero, the Empyrean, is governed by Deep Tech dynamics not even he understands.
In a world of trackless jungles, colossal beasts, and cruel pre-human civilizations, you must survive the past if you want to save the future! You were only meant to guard the laboratory, but when a treacherous power cripples Doctor Sabbatine’s time machine, you’re left stranded! Face the savage inhabitants of Silverworld and build your own civilization—or plunder the past and return home unimaginably rich!
You are the greatest magician in the Sublunar World. It is not enough. As a rare Conjunction approaches, immortality is within reach. But the gods have noticed you trying to unlock the doors of heaven. Some demand you ascend–or else–while others plot your destruction. There are only two paths for you now, archmage: immortality or annihilation.
We’re proud to announce that Pon Para and the Great Southern Labyrinth, 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 30% off until May 16th!
Chosen by the gods, you must battle savage monsters, corrupt priests, and mad philosophers to save reality from the dark god of destruction!
Pon Para and the Great Southern Labyrinth is an interactive Bronze Age fantasy novel by Kyle Marquis, the first game in the Pon Para trilogy, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based–430,000 words, without graphics or sound effects–and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
Years ago, in the Behemoth War, the forces of evil tried to destroy the world with Raun, the dark axe of destruction. Your parents united with King Hyras to win the Behemoth War and save the kingdom, becoming legendary heroes.
You have been raised far from the intrigues and corruption of the great cities–and from the plots of the gods. But after twenty years of peace, the pirate king Lord Vankred has found Raun. Under the threat of war, the gods grant you their powers. You must find the mad King Hyras and defeat Vankred before he can assassinate the King and shatter the Three Nations.
But the gods have their own plans for you, and so does the secret master of the Great Southern Labyrinth.
• Play as male, female, or non-binary; gay, straight, bi, or ace.
• Defeat enemies with sword and spell, or make allies with diplomacy, deception, and the miracles of your god.
• Train your companions in alchemy, infiltration, diplomacy, or the arts of war
• Explore haunted forests, corrupt cities, and jungles littered with the remains of a fallen civilization.
• Find friendship, romance, or rivalry with an immortal nymph, a desert thief, or an ambitious monarch.
• Unlock secret magic techniques forgotten for centuries.
• Survive the wrath of the Emissary Beasts to open the labyrinth’s final door.
The labyrinth holds the key to untold mysteries. Once you know the truth, whose side will you take?
We hope you enjoy playing Pon Para and the Great Southern Labyrinth. 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.
Chosen by the gods, you must battle savage monsters, corrupt priests, and mad philosophers to save reality from the dark god of destruction!
Years ago, in the Behemoth War, the forces of evil tried to destroy the world with Raun, the dark axe of destruction. Your parents united with King Hyras to win the Behemoth War and save the kingdom, becoming legendary heroes. You have been raised far from the intrigues and corruption of the great cities–and from the plots of the gods. But after twenty years of peace, the pirate king Lord Vankred has found Raun. Under the threat of war, the gods grant you their powers. You must find the mad King Hyras and defeat Vankred before he can assassinate the King and shatter the Three Nations.
Pon Para and the Great Southern Labyrinth is an interactive Bronze Age fantasy novel by Kyle Marquis, the first game in the Pon Para trilogy. I sat down with Kyle to talk about heroes and his games. Pon Para releases this Thursday, May 9th.
We’re in entirely new territory in this game. You’ve referred to it as a Bronze Age saga, but what exactly does that mean? When is the Bronze Age, and what do we know about it?
When creating Pon Para, I wanted something different from the typical fantasy world, with its Rome-to-Renaissance mashup of settings and technologies. I wanted a world that felt more raw and new, a place ruled by emotions and vendettas–it needed to feel dangerous and wild, not cozy and familiar. Though Pon Para‘s World That Remains is not our world, I was inspired by a real historical event: over a thousand years before the fall of Rome, a thriving pan-Eurasian civilization suffered a catastrophic failure, an event called the Bronze Age Collapse. No consensus exists about what caused it. Pon Para is a fantastic version of that calamity, and places your character–a Bronze Age hero–in the middle of a disaster whose full extent no one else understands.
This is for sure a story about heroes, and while the PC in Empyrean is a hero in my mind, what is different about writing a heroic story?Easier? Funner?
One advantage of a Bronze Age setting is that you can work with the ambiguity of the word “hero.” Your Pon Para can be an epic fantasy hero, trying to do the right thing in the face of calamity and war, or a hero in the Homeric sense–powerful, capable of victory in war and intrigue, but ruled by all-consuming passions and rages. Or you can try for a more modern hero: someone conflicted, overwhelmed by the challenges ahead, and trying to think their way through the chaos. Pon Para is, at least in part, about deciding what sort of hero you want to be, and I wanted a game with personality traits that would let you shape your own subjective reactions to what’s happening in the world.
What about the hero tropes did you want to subvert?
I could write an entire essay about the subversion of fantasy tropes. In a way, subversion is harder than you think! Games of Thrones changed how people view epic fantasy, but Martin’s jeremiads against chivalry and knighthood already existed in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King (1958). The Lord of the Rings is, itself, a subversion of the heroic quest for power–it’s a story about surrendering power, and an unambiguous rejection of a conventionally heroic narrative of victory-in-arms. All of our favorite fantasies seem to end in the rejection of their own initial assumptions. Before he threw his lightsaber away in The Last Jedi, Luke tossed it aside in Return of the Jedi, refusing the simple role of tyrant-slayer that had been assigned to him.
So, what is subversion in a genre defined by rejecting the imposed narrative? In Pon Para, it’s about the player’s own subjective experience of guiding (or embodying) their hero. Every ChoiceScript game is about what kinds of choices are possible; in Pon Para I wanted to emphasize not just the external choices–Do I travel by boat or on foot? Do I fight or flee?–but your own reactions and feelings.
Pon Para and the Great Southern Labyrinth is also the first in a trilogy. You’ve written three games for us, Empyrean, Silverworld, and Tower Behind the Moon, none of which have a sequel. So what went into planning this longer narrative?
Well, first, I couldn’t blow up the world in any of the endings, unlike in my other games. But I also needed to construct multiple, complete endings. I didn’t want the first game to just “stop,” so much of the challenge in constructing Great Southern Labyrinth was in writing different, equally satisfying conclusions to the first game. ChoiceScript games aren’t static narratives, and finding the sweet spot between letting the player’s choices affect the world and not rendering sequels impossible because there were too many possible states proved an interesting and exciting challenge.
You’re known for your imaginative and shocking world elements: feathered apes, mechanical jungles, need I mention the Volcano Fortress of the Snake People from Silverworld? What’s new and cool in Pon Para?
Oh, the usual: a hell of iron wheels powered by the tortured labor of the accursed dead, remote-controlled assassins with golden arm-blades, moss golems, firebirds birthed from the blood of a murdered sky god, autocannibalizing troll armies, and a mile-long battleship fighting a city.
And of course, what can we expect in installment two of this trilogy?
Pon Para and the Unconquerable Scorpion sends our heroes west to the great city of Shalmek, capital of the Desert Empire. Expect insect cults, shapeshifter wars, more schemes from the Condors of Patabesh (the guild of robbers), the death and resurrection of true philosophy, another chance to cross swords with the dark general Galimar, and one really big, really unconquerable scorpion.
We’re proud to announce that Fog of War: The Battle for Cerberus, 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 May 4th!
Take command of a platoon of Astral Troopers! You’re a recent graduate from the Astral College and strike officer training, you have just been posted to the Astral Corps’ Levantine Regiment, Hoplites troop, and been given command of the Fifth Platoon. You must prove your professional competence to your fellow officers to qualify as a strike officer, while fighting a rebel army and combatting a deadly plague on a hostile planet.
Fog of War: The Battle for Cerberus is a 170,000-word military sci-fi interactive novel by Bennett R. Coles, where your choices control the story, based in the universe of the award-winning Virtues of War novels. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
As a newly-minted sublieutenant, you and your platoon are caught in the middle of fierce combat in the dry, rocky highlands of the planet Cerberus. You know that your forces are up against the rebel leader, Major Zhang: notorious across the galaxy as a formidable enemy. Meanwhile, a deadly plague has broken out on Cerberus and is spreading quickly. The Astral Corps has a vaccine en route from another star system, but the local population has to be convinced to accept the vaccine when it arrives.
Will you be able to put down the rebellion? Will the locals accept your bid to ensure their safety? When you find yourself separated from the rest of the Hoplite platoons and harried by rebel forces, how will you survive in the Cerberan landscape?
• Play as male, female, or non-binary; straight, gay or bi.
• Find romance with your commander, a fellow platoon leader, a Fifth Platoon pilot, or one the troopers in your command.
• Hunt down rebels, infiltrating and destroying their base, or use diplomacy to broker with them peacefully.
• Face the notorious Major Zhang, holding his life and the rebels’ fate in your hands.
• Crush the rebel presence on Cerberus, or join their cause and betray the Astral Corps’ mission.
• Convince the colonists to accept the Astral Corps vaccine, or leave the colonists of Free Lhasa of their fate.
You’re fresh out of battle school with a lot to prove. Will you win hearts and minds, or grind this planet to dust?
We hope you enjoy playing Fog of War: The Battle for Cerberus. 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.
Take command of a platoon of Astral Troopers! You’re a recent graduate from the Astral College and strike officer training, you have just been posted to the Astral Corps’ Levantine Regiment, Hoplites troop, and been given command of the Fifth Platoon. You must prove your professional competence to your fellow officers to qualify as a strike officer, while fighting a rebel army and combatting a deadly plague on a hostile planet.
Fog of War: The Battle for Cerberus is a 170,000-word military sci-fi interactive novel by Bennett R. Coles; I sat down with Bennett to talk about the Virtues of War universe, and the challenges of adapting to writing interactive fiction. Fog of War: The Battle for Cerberus releases this Thursday, April 25th.
Fog of War: The Battle for Cerberus is military sci fi. A genre you know a little about, as you’ve written several books in this world. Tell me about those.
Fog of War is based in the same universe as my first trilogy of books, the Virtues of War series, which I first conceived after I got home from 13 months as a UN military observer in the Middle East. I wanted to explore the human face of soldiers in combat and beyond, but I didn’t want to write a political story (i.e., about the war in Iraq, or about the Israeli-Palestinian situation) so I set my stories in the future and created a background for them.
Virtues of War led the charge, and it was an exploration of what really happens to young men and women when they see combat for the first time. How are they changed? And how do decisions that they make, in the heat of the moment on the ground, have real and lasting impacts on the world around them? Virtues is definitely the most “high-powered” novel in the trilogy, with lots of ground and space combat scenes to keep the heart pumping. It’s mostly a story of desperate survival for our heroes, with no time to even consider the wider political game in which they’re being used.
Ghosts of War is the second book, but it’s actually the original seed of my idea. It explores what really happens to young men and women when they come home from war. PTSD is a big piece of this story, but also the relationships our heroes try to rebuild with their families across a gulf of incomprehension. The larger political scene starts to creep into this book, and there is a lot of time put into exploring revenge and the causes of terrorism. Ghosts is what you might call the most “thoughtful” novel in the trilogy, as our heroes fight battles they never anticipated or wanted.
March of War is the finale, bringing together all the best elements of its predecessors. It’s a solid mix of full-throttle action and character-driven choices that demonstrate just how much impact a single soldier can have in what seems like an incomprehensible war. But the stakes are getting ever higher, and each one of our heroes gets to the point where they have to ask hard questions about who they really are. Grander politics definitely wade into this story, but it never stops being about the individual men and women. There are a few surprises in store for the reader who’s ridden this three-book roller-coaster ride to its conclusion.
And your day job as a publisher is at Promontory Press, right?
Yes, I’ve been the publisher at Promontory since 2010. We’re a small press based on the West Coast, dedicated to publishing books that are by or about people who serve society. This can lead to quite an eclectic mix of titles, and we certainly haven’t shied away from challenging books over the years. As an author myself I’ve always tried to manage the press in ways that take care of the authors. Promontory experimented for a few years with a second publishing program in the “hybrid publishing” space, but we’ve since returned exclusively to our traditional roots and are a small but mighty piece of the North American publishing scene. Our most recent major title was Steven Erikson’s Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart.
Having written and published traditional novels, what were some of the challenges for you in writing an interactive novel set in a world you’re already familiar with?
The biggest challenge was keeping my scenes short! My original opening to Fog of War described the descent from orbit in a drop ship, with sparse details of the vessel’s interior and glimpses of the planet below. In a traditional novel this would have taken a page or two and would have been considered standard scene-setting. But in an interactive novel it was waaaaay too long before a choice was offered. I needed to learn how to break up my scenes into bite-sized chunks, and also how to think along parallel paths within the same scene. It was great fun, but it required a very different approach to structuring the story.
I also had to be careful about what world-building elements I explained, left out completely, or just included without comment. Fog of War comes with three books’ worth of lore behind it, but because of the nature of interactive novel writing (bite-sized chunks) it was often a challenge to include a piece of Virtues of War lore without having to spend extra time explaining it. I wanted to capture the flavor of the Virtues series, but still keep it wide open so that even die-hard fans of the novels would be in for surprises in Fog of War. I’d definitely consider Fog of War to be a full-fledged part of the Virtues universe and I hope readers will appreciate the many connections.
What did you find most surprising about the process?
The fact that I can actually use computer code correctly. Learning how to maneuver within the Choice of Games programming system was actually a lot easier than I feared it might be. By the end I felt as fluent in code as I do in the Queen’s English, and for an artsy like me, that’s a pretty big deal.
Tough choice, because they’re all cool in their own way and I poured a lot in to each of them, knowing that each time a reader makes a choice it can bring a different character into the limelight. But if I had to choose a favorite, I’d probably go with Jessica Halliday—she’s the only one I’m reasonably sure couldn’t kill me with a single swipe (all the others are combat troopers, and they’re kind of scary…).
What are you working on now?
I have a new SF series which is just launching with Harper Collins. It’s quite different from the military SF of the Virtues of War series. It’s swashbuckling space adventure, with space pirates… and dinosaurs! The first novel, Winds of Marque, just launched in April 2019, and I’m currently working on the second round of edits for the sequel, due out next spring. It’s great fun to write and it lets me stretch some different parts of my imagination.
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