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We’re proud to announce that Choice of the Cat, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for Steam, iOS, and Android. It’s 30% off until October 5th!

Knock things over. Take a nap. Enslave humanity. Power, fame, and catnip are yours for the licking!

Choice of the Cat is a hilarious 600,000-word interactive novel by Jordan Reyne, 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.

It’s the biggest text-based cat simulator ever written; play it many times as different kinds of cat! As a rescue cat, looking for a family to love and obey you forever, you find yourself sharing a home with a family on the brink of divorce. You’ll learn to manipulate your owners, their neighbors, and even their other pets to get what you want. (The humans think they’re in charge! Aren’t they cute?)

Show your new family the meaning of unconditional love, rule by fear alone, or play them against one another for your amusement. Become a YouTube sensation when videos of your lovable antics go viral, or meddle from behind the throne as your owner family begins to take over the government.

Who’s an adorable, tyrannical kitty? YOU ARE. Will you sharpen your claws and mete out feline justice, or melt their hearts with purrs, meows, and cuddles?

• Play as male or female, or dispense with gender constructs
• Enjoy over half a million words covering cat lore, how to rule the planet, and what to do with a dead fish
• Save your owners’ marriage with kindness, or rip them apart with your tiny little claws
• Delve deep into the psyche of man’s second best friend, or become their first best friend, if Bene the dog lets you.
• Take revenge on those who cross you or your allies, or rescue the innocent using clever, quieter tricks
• Become a hero among cats, or pick on humans, and ruthlessly destroy a troubled marriage
• Enjoy luxurious carpets, curtains ripe for shredding, and belly rubs from your owners
• Shred and steal things, mark your territory stinkily, and cause fires
• Mess with vital political phone calls–or opt for clever calming tactics so your humans reach their goals
• Help your owner earn a recording contract from the music mogul next door, with the help of his cat

We hope you enjoy playing Choice of the Cat. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, 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.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

While investigating a murder in a small Scottish town, you’ll find yourself embroiled in a world of secrets, cultists, and abyssal horror. What are you willing to do to solve the case? And what will you do when you don’t like the answer? It’s 25% off until October 5th!

Highlands, Deep Waters is a 340,000 word interactive horror novel by Fernando B Neves and Lucas Zaper, 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 an insightful Detective, a resourceful Criminal or a mysterious Scholar.
• Gather and interpret clues with the Deduction system. Will you solve the case?
• Face the hidden truths that derange your mind with the Sanity system.
• A carefully crafted town including hand-drawn maps, unique history and peculiar inhabitants.
• Play as a male, female, gay or straight. The Abyssal Ones treat everyone just the same.

Fernando B Neves and Lucas Zaper 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.

Knock things over. Take a nap. Enslave humanity. Power, fame, and catnip are yours for the licking! Choice of the Cat is a hilarious 600,000-word interactive novel, the biggest text-based cat simulator ever written; you’ll play it many times as different kinds of cat! As a rescue cat, looking for a family to love and obey you forever, you find yourself sharing a home with a family on the brink of divorce. You’ll learn to manipulate your owners, their neighbors, and even their other pets to get what you want. (The humans think they’re in charge! Aren’t they cute?) I sat down with author Jordan Reyne to talk cats, dogs, and the world of this game. Choice of the Cat releases Thursday, September 28th. 

Choice of the Cat is absolutely inspired, and it is our longest ChoiceScript game. Since I edited it, I know that it’s also pretty efficiently coded, so that’s really 600,000 plus words of unique text. Tell me how it is you came to write such an opus?

An exact single cause would be hard to name. I spend as much time as I can with animals, and one of the things that always makes me laugh is their looks of total confusion when human actions take them by surprise. It’s clear when you have pets that loads of our behaviours must seem puzzling or even ludicrous to them. Human beings are pretty absurd when you think about it too. We do so many things out of habit, social pressure, or internalized cultural “norms.” In western culture we also imagine we are the completely the masters of our own destiny, and of the results of them too. Whether pets see this as weird (or see it at all) is hard to know, but what they do seem to do is revel in the small things: day-to-day events like walks, or snow, or some stranger bending down to pat them. Such random things have a huge influence on their lives, and in the end we are no different. We are all part of a massive web of interconnected activity, systems and events. The cat, because it isn’t a human, can and probably does see things differently. The PC being a cat is a way to explore both these ideas: the absurdity of human behavior and the fact of small things sometimes having big results–or conversely big things having none. I was tempted to call it “feline chaos theory,” but that would just give away the fact that I have forgotten what chaos theory is actually about.

What world are we in? I had actually thought the game was set in the UK, but it’s really more a mitteleuropean nowhere, yes?

Mitteleuropa is about right. This is set in a small European country with an electoral system that has some form of proportional representation. That is important because of Claire’s character and possibilities. Under the UK and US systems, someone like Claire wouldn’t stand a chance. She part of a small political party with maybe 5% appeal. In places like Germany, the Netherlands or Sweden, these parties have some real influence and are part of the parliament or bundestag, etc, but this is not in the UK or the States. It gives parties like the Greens a voice and an effect. Fortunately, having lived in Germany for many years, and toured around Europe a bit, I have some material to call on for my cobbled-together country that does not exist.

Is it true you’re actually more of a dog person?

Yes, for all the usual and possibly anthropomorphic reasons. They are caring, loyal, and long for walks in the forest even more than I do. The bond they have with you is unconditional, and in a world where many people don’t get that stable, reliable, caring at home, dogs can keep you sane.

Perhaps Choice of the Cat was a way to remind myself I do love cats as well. A while back, my partner brought home a cat, because we weren’t allowed a dog in our flat in London. I spent several weeks resenting her for not being a dog, and even named her “Potwor” which means “monster” in Polish. She has duly reminded me of how awesome cats are, and gave me so much inspiration for the story. She is hilarious, and dogs will always be my favorite but I’m pretty much an all-round animal lover.

Tell me about your background. You’re primarily a musician, right?

Narrative has always held a fascination for me, and yes, I used to do story-telling through music because songs are a great way of adding atmosphere to tales. Many of my releases are album-length narratives, or a collection of tales done in a sort of bloodthirsty folk-rock style. I retired though, at the time I started writing this game! I was glad to. A lot of people (including me) think that being a musician is all about music, but it’s far from the truth. The industry itself is very toxic and values a lot of unhealthy things, whilst simultaneously not valuing musicians. I was lucky to have some very supportive and awesome listeners, without whom I would not have managed to release the 10 albums I have. They really got the lyric/ narrative side of things too, and the music itself, so I will still write music for them, and occasionally do gigs for them too. In the end though, I’m happy that I can switch to straight-out narrative as full-time work.

What did you find most challenging about writing the game?

Remembering what words I have already used, and not using them again too many times! E.g., saying “you think Maddox is scary because he is scary,” is a pretty crummy sentence. In straight prose it’s very easy to avoid using the same word twice in a paragraph, but when one half of a sentence or paragraph is constructed from numerous possible states or function calls, I have to check all of them to ensure I haven’t repeated things. Maintaining style and nice-to-read prose can become difficult too, with the sheer volume you have to write to make things work. I spent almost ten years writing my first book, and it was 80,000 words. I had to manage 600,000 in around a year and a half for this project, which was pretty intense!

Are you ready to write Choice of the Dog?

That would be telling! I have choice of-ideas that I will be pitching around!

Short answer, Bernard Pivot-style:

Favorite color?
Green.

Favorite word?
Abgrund, because of the way it is made. The german prefix “ab” means to take something away. The word “grund” means several things including reason and foundation. The word itself means “abyss,” and is the taking away of reason, foundation and ground. It seems really poetic and descriptive to me.

Profession you would most like to attempt?
Furniture maker (woodworker).

Profession you would never like to attempt?
Telemarketer.

“Kitty” or “mog”? 
Doggy 😉

We’re proud to announce that Grand Academy for Future Villains, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for Steam, iOS, and Android. It’s 30% off until September 21st!

Congratulations! We are delighted to welcome you to the Grand Academy for Future Villains, the world’s finest evil preparatory school, where unimaginable power begins with a world-class education!

Grand Academy for Future Villains is a hilarious 200,000-word interactive novel by Katherine Nehring, 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.

Looking for a career as an evil overlord? A mad scientist? A megavillain, a wicked witch, a final boss? You’re not going to get there without hard work, dedication, and thorough education. In the space between worlds, between genres, beyond time and space itself, the Grand Academy for Future Villains trains the bad guys that every good story needs.

You, our hero–or our villain, rather–will arrive at the Academy ready to learn, but you’ll quickly discover that there’s so much more to villain school than getting good grades. As you navigate the school year, you’ll have the opportunity to:

• Secure an internship with a prestigious heartless corporation or megalomaniacal dictator
• Seduce a hero to the dark side (Attention students: do NOT allow yourself to be seduced by the forces of good!)
• Put in the extra hours at the lab to become an actual monster.
• Pledge your family’s secret society and become worthy of–or defy–the grand destiny your family has mapped out for you.
• Pay off your student loans (in the blood of your enemies, if necessary).
• Find true love, deadly rivalry, or both at the same time with your fellow students.
• Save your alma mater, take it over, betray it, or drop out in a blaze of glory.

Our alumni have gone on to dominate worlds, conquer galaxies, break hearts, and succumb to the creeping darkness in their souls. The choices that you make at our school will determine whether you join their illustrious company.

Enroll today!

We hope you enjoy playing Grand Academy for Future Villains. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, 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.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Travel through different books in a quest to find your uncle! You will travel through a number of stories, seek to understand why they are falling apart, and trying to solve the mystery of your uncle’s bookshop.

Lost in the Pages is a 125,000 word interactive novel by a collection of authors, 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.

There are over a half a dozen stories to choose from, from fantasy and science fiction, to horror or mystery. Can you rescue your uncle and restore order to the stories, or will you be consumed by the menace hanging over him?

• Play as male, female, or non-binary, with any orientation.
• Travel the seas as a mermaid, ride a dragon, explore futuristic worlds or become a detective. The choice is yours!
• Stick to tropes, or break them!
• Save not one world, but many!

Felicity Banks, Adrao, Cecilia Rosewood, and Sashira 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.

Can you not wait for the next installment in the Heroes Rise universe? Do you just need to read another story featuring your favorite characters from The Hero Project? Well now you can purchase the The YouPower Project, already available everywhere The Hero Project: Redemption Season is sold!

The YouPower Project is a short story developed by Zachary Sergi and written by Michael Alan Nelson. It's set in the months following The Hero Project: Redemption Season, but is entirely separate, with no spoilers for the main story.

The YouPower Project was originally developed in partnership with Serial Box. Serial Box brings everything that’s awesome about TV (easily digestible episodes, team written, new content every week) to what was already cool about books (well-crafted stories, talented authors, enjoyable anywhere).

Looking for a career as an evil overlord? A mad scientist? A megavillain, a wicked witch, a final boss? You’re not going to get there without hard work, dedication, and thorough education. In the space between worlds, between genres, beyond time and space itself, the Grand Academy for Future Villains trains the bad guys that every good story needs. I sat down with Katherine Nehring, author of Choice of Games’ latest release to talk about what influenced her writing. Grand Academy for Future Villains releases Thursday, September 14th. 

Tell me about what influenced your world creation for Grand Academy. What kind of a world is this set in?

The Grand Academy inverts that order: to be in-universe at the Academy is to be outside the universe of any particular story.  This is a world where the laws of narrative are far more important than the laws of physics–a world where it’s taken for granted that concepts can be prohibited (and confiscated, and smuggled), where acting too much like a protagonist means heroic things start happening to you, and where doing something memorably can be just as effective as doing it competently.

You and I both attended St. John’s College for undergrad, and Jason Hill did a graduate degree there. I see a few parallels between the Grand Academy and SJC. Were you drawing on anything of personal significance in your writing?

I’d never thought of this before, but both the Academy and St. John’s are worlds of books – adhering to this overarching meta-order, living by the rules of narrative (surely one can call SJC’s pared-down arc of Western thought a narrative!) And of course, that’s always in tension with the ‘real world’, with history and particularity and the need to go out and find a job at some point.

The Grand Academy has elements of every one of the schools I attended, going right back to high school (the arbitrary nature of the class schedule is a less-than-fond memory of trying to decipher when lunch hour was). DarkBoard is an only slightly more vivid version of the class management software I used in grad school; Professor Ulik’s brisk, career-oriented Evil Architecture class was definitely influenced by community college classes I took. But St. John’s, with its intensity, eccentricity, and constant narrative engagement, was undoubtedly the biggest influence.

There’s a great cast of weird characters here: the PC’s mother, Maedryn, Dr. Cerebrist, and Professor Mortwain were some of my favorites. Did you have a character you enjoyed writing most?

I had a lot of fun with all of them–probably the most with Aurion and Kinistra. Either one of them could be the focus of an interesting story of their own, I think (or several interesting stories; one of the delightful things about writing this as a game rather than a novel is the way their stories can go very differently depending on their relationship to the player character. For Aurion, there’s something that appeals to me about an overachieving underdog at a school for villains–he has all the markers of a protagonist, but he’s determined to rise to greatness in the realm of evil. Kinistra, on the other hand, the player meets in one of the most classic of heroic ways: as someone to be rescued. And the ways in which you and she either thwart those tropes or fulfill them can have a big effect on how your story plays out.

What did you find challenging about the process of writing in ChoiceScript/our game design?

There was definitely a steep learning curve with ChoiceScript. It’s very easy to pick up, and can do a great many things once you’ve picked it up, and learning how to make those things engaging for players and manageable as a writer is quite a task! The editors were enormously helpful through this process, as were playing other Choice of Games titles, reading the forums, and going through my own game, over and over, until I could look at it both as a player and an author. By the middle of the editing process I was thinking in ChoiceScript, mapping out my daily activities as *choice and *if and *goto, setting my personal stats higher or lower. I’m not new to writing or to games, but I am to game-writing, and creating a game that worked was a challenging discipline. There was nothing I could fudge, handwave, or leave to the reader’s imagination: every loose end had to be woven in on a technical level or the game couldn’t be played at all, woven in on a narrative level or the game wouldn’t be fun to play.  This process taught me a good deal both about games and about writing!

Would you do it again?

In a heartbeat! Well, not a heartbeat. I need to nap for at least a month.

Short answer, Bernard Pivot-style Questionnaire:

Favorite color? 

Green. (A little-known rule of the universe, stemming from color-coded childhood possessions: all green things belong to me.)

Favorite word? 

Peal, apparently, as I learned in the copy-editing process. (I hadn’t realized I used that word so much!)

What profession other than your own would like you like to attempt? 

Alternate-universe me is an art conservator somewhere.

Which would you not want to attempt? 

I’m glad that electricians and tax lawyers exist; I’m very glad I don’t have to be one!

Personal choice for genre dormitory at the Grand Academy?

I think I’m going to have to go with the player character’s mother and say Science Fiction. “Taking over the galaxy” has a nice ring to it.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Cryptic riddles and perplexing puzzles await you as you solve the Dryad’s Riddle. In a world where wit and wisdom are worth more than silver and gold, you must embark on an adventure of a lifetime. Test your mind to it’s limits and escape the land of dreams. It’s 33% off until August 25th!

The Dryad’s Riddle is a 70,000 word interactive fantasy novel by Avery Moore, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

• Choose your own name and play as a man or woman.
• Explore a world of fantasy and meet a collection of weird and wonderful characters.
• Use special hints and cheats whenever you get stuck.
• Over 50 riddles and puzzles to be solved.
• Three different endings to be discovered depending on how you play.

Avery Moore 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.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Master the art of dancing with a weapon and unearth the secret of the temple, bringing love and carnage to the world. “Survive” an assassination attempt. Learn about the warrior’s honor of the Knights of the Temple. Allow those who tread the line between Light and Darkness show you their beauty. Embark on a night patrol mission with a militia officer that will lead you to the depths where the seeds of doom are growing. Finish your quest with honor and explore what your heart desires before going back to where you belong. It’s 50% off until August 25th!

Knight of the Fellowship is a 50,000 word interactive fantasy novel by Ivailo Daskalov, 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 a man or woman, gay or straight.
• Master the techniques of lightning-quick blows and dodges, heroic leap charges and blade whirlwinds.
• Learn about the honor of the Knight of the Fellowship.
• Allow a dark lady to show you her beautiful side.
• Choose between eight optional romances, or end up alone.

Ivailo Daskalov 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 Trials of the Thief-Taker, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for Steam, iOS, and Android. It’s 25% off until August 17th!

In London, 1729, before they had police, they had you: thief-takers, hunting criminals for cash! Fire a flintlock and sip gin in the age of powdered wigs. Will you grow rich catching smugglers and highwaymen, show mercy, or become a crime boss yourself?

Trials of the Thief-Taker is a 140,000-word interactive historical adventure novel by Joey Jones, 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.

As a thief-taker, paid by the court or hired by the victims of crime to recover property and, for an extra price, bring the culprit to justice, you’ll stalk your prey across the misty commons and narrow rookeries of 18th-century London. Lead a gang of unwashed ruffians (or stalk the streets alone) as you apprehend highwaymen on lonely roads, and root out crooks and counterfeiters in inns and coffeehouses. Through cunning, force, or suspicious connections, you will find your mark.

You may strike a blow for justice, making a name for yourself and bringing good people to your cause. Or you can create the crimes you intend to solve, stealing the goods you’ll be paid to recover, bribing prison guards to let your associates go, building your criminal empire while everyone lauds you as a hero.

Be quick or cautious, proper or disreputable, generous or mercenary…it’s all in a day’s work for a thief-taker.

Load your flintlock! There are thieves to take.

• Play as male, female, or as a woman disguised as a man; gay or straight.
• Make your way through a world ruled by manners, harsh laws, and lurking treachery.
• Run an empire of crime or establish the first police force…or both at the same time!
• Capture, befriend, or romance corrupt officials, escape artists, courtiers, highwaymen, smugglers and grave-robbers.
• Immerse yourself in Georgian lingo: learn the difference between a cove and a swell, a blue pigeon and an ark ruffian.
• Play the high-stakes dice game Hazard in the gaming houses of Covent Garden.
• Make your way with your silver tongue, a good horse, your street smarts or with two fists flying.

We hope you enjoy playing Trials of the Thief-Taker. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, 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.