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May 23

2024

New Heart’s Choice Game! Love Undying: A Kiss Before Dawn

Posted by: K L | Comments (31)

Love Undying: A Kiss Before Dawn

We’re proud to announce that Love Undying: A Kiss Before Dawn, the latest in our “Heart’s Choice” line of multiple-choice interactive romance novels, is now available for iOS and Android in the “Heart’s Choice” app. You can also download it on Steam, or enjoy it on our website.

It’s 33% off until May 30th!

Hunt your prey as a vampire on windswept Victorian moors! Who will capture your unbeating heart?

Love Undying: A Kiss Before Dawn is a 190,000-word interactive romance novel by Lauren O’Donoghue. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

After an angry mob forced you from your European home, you fled to England in search of a fresh start. The Cornish village of Boscawen is bleak and beautiful, quiet enough to hide in—or so it seems. Danger lurks everywhere on these clifftops, from the vampire hunter who has followed you across continents to the local coven of vampires to the suspicious local nobles. When a young village man is murdered, tensions rise even higher and allegations begin to fly: if you are not careful, you may be accused of the crime yourself.

And yet even here, you may find potential friends—or perhaps someone closer. For a century you have walked the earth alone, but now your solitude may come to an end. Who will capture your immortal heart?

Will it be your familiar, Adrian Florescu, who has attended you for years? He is slender, chestnut-haired, bespectacled, intellectual and loyal and unfailingly polite. Feeding upon someone is an intimate act—will you deepen that intimacy even further? Or perhaps silver-haired Father Alvarez, the village priest with dark determined eyes, dedicated to improving the lives of those in his care. A vampire and a priest: can such a match ever succeed? Then there is Jowanet Reed, with flaming red curls and a lush figure. She is the leader of the local coven, with more than a hundred vampires at her command. What would it feel like to submit to someone even more powerful than yourself? Or Nathalie Sylvain, bold and dangerous, small and proud, with close-cropped hair and strong arms. She is a vampire hunter whose family has pursued you for generations—will the heat of your rivalry kindle a different kind of spark?

From elegant society soirées to humble village meetings, you must navigate your new environment, choose sides in simmering feuds, and define your future. Will you try to blend in peacefully with your mortal neighbors, or conspire with your fellow vampires to overthrow the established order and rule openly as creatures of the night? Do you wish to atone for a century’s worth of vampiric deeds, or will you revel in the hunt for the rest of your long unlife? Your actions will decide whether you have found a place of safety, or merely another viper’s nest.

  • Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, bi, or asexual.
  • Romance your devoted familiar, an altruistic priest, a powerful vampire leader, or even your sworn enemy.
  • Exercise self-restraint, or give in to your vampiric urges and go on a bloodthirsty rampage.
  • Renovate your new home, investing in a library, game room, or an occult chamber full of magical equipment.
  • Solve a murder—or try to frame one of your enemies for the crime.
  • Create new vampires to join you in eternal unlife; or spend the rest of your days trying to escape the creature that you have become.

Find passion that will last an eternity!

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

How will you find your happily ever after?

May 20

2024

Heart’s Choice Author Interview—Lauren O’Donoghue, Love Undying

Posted by: K L | Comments (3)

Love Undying: A Kiss Before Dawn

Hunt your prey as a vampire on windswept Victorian moors! Who will capture your unbeating heart? 

Love Undying: A Kiss Before Dawn is an interactive romance novel by Lauren O’Donoghue. It’s entirely text-based—190,000 words and hundreds of choices—without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination. We sat down with Lauren to talk about her work and her process.

Love Undying: A Kiss Before Dawn releases this Thursday, May 23rd. You can play the first two chapters for free today!

You came to ChoiceScript having written your own interactive fiction in the past. Tell me about your interest and experience in the form.

I first became interested in interactive fiction more than a decade ago now, around the time that the first version of Twine (open-source IF software) was released. I’d always had an interest in writing games, but until then it didn’t seem like an accessible pursuit for me—seeing the things that DIY writer/designers like Christine Love, Anna Anthropy and Porpentine were doing with text-based games opened my eyes to the possibilities of the form. I played around with different IF tools and ideas back then, but it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I developed my first full-length game (Ataraxia). I wasn’t expecting how many doors it would open for me—since then I’ve developed text-based games for clients including the University of Leeds and Barnsley Museums, and have given a number of talks to students and industry professionals about writing interactive fiction. The flexibility of the form is so appealing to me—you can do just about anything you set your mind to, unrestrained by traditional notions of linearity and structure. Increasingly, too, with so many open-source tools geared at non-coders available, just about anyone can—and should!—be making their own interactive fiction.

Why did you choose to pitch a supernatural romance with Heart’s Choice as your first foray into ChoiceScript?

I first decided to apply to write for Heart’s Choice after seeing Rebecca Slitt’s fantastic talk “Choosing Your Happily Ever After: Choice and Agency in Romance IF” at NarraScope 2022. As a writer I’m really interested in rules—the challenge of creating work within set parameters. Rebecca talked a lot about the tropes of the genre, and what players expect from a romance game (HEA endings, etc.), and it immediately got my mind racing. What kind of stories could I tell within this structure? How could I make them compelling for as wide a variety of players as possible? When I was invited to pitch, I developed a supernatural romance concept because I’d never written anything in that genre before and I was excited to try something new. The idea for Love Undying really clicked when I decided on the Victorian setting—I write a lot of historical fiction, and combining my interest in that genre with a new, supernatural element was really fun for me.

What about the kind of design mechanics we favor did you find interesting, or perhaps struggle with?

The main difference between working in ChoiceScript compared to my previous games (developed mostly in Twine) was getting used to the structure. I had to take a step back and think, okay, how do I bring in variety and replayability when players will (for the most part) be experiencing the same events in the same order? It forced me to think outside the box a bit, which I really enjoyed. The stats-centric mechanics were much more familiar to me, and I think my favourite part of working with ChoiceScript was finding subtle ways to make the static text responsive to player choices—I wanted every playthrough to feel really unique and personal, and things like the ChoiceScript multireplace feature allowed me to create variety and texture in a really elegant, easy-to-implement way.

What other fictional pursuits of yours can you share with our readers?

As well as text-based games I also write short and long form fiction—a lot of my published work is available online for free, and there are links on my website laurenodonoghue.neocities.org (graphic design is not my passion, as you will see!) An upcoming publication I’m really excited about is Lucifers, a novelette about the 1888 Bryant & May matchgirls’ strike, that is being published as a chapbook by Blue Cubicle Press in July.

You’re now at work on a doctorate, I believe? Tell me how that’s going and what you’ll be working on for your dissertation.

I am indeed! I’m doing a PhD in Creative Writing, which is an interesting beast, as the bulk of my thesis is practice-based—in my case, a composite novel about the hillside town where I grew up. Each chapter is set in a different historical period, the stories linking together across time in a shared space. The project is allowing me to explore a lot of ideas and themes that I’m really passionate about—landscapes, social history, labour, belonging. I’m just coming to the end of my first year, and it’s been an absolute pleasure and privilege so far. My supervisors are incredible, and I already feel like I’ve grown so much as a writer. Doing a PhD gives you the freedom to play with ideas, to try things, succeed, fail, explore, interrogate your own practice, to ask yourself not only what you’re writing but how and why.

Any favorite IF you want to share or highlight as inspiration?

Absolutely! The following pieces of interactive fiction have all really inspired me and my work, and they’re all available online for free at the time of writing:

  • Digital: A Love Story – Christine Love (2010)
  • c ya laterrrr – Dan Hett (2017)
  • Tonight Dies The Moon – Tom McHenry (2015)
  • Myriad – Porpentine (2012)
  • Arcadia – Jonas Kyratzes (2012)
  • Lucid – Caliban’s Revenge (2022)
  • Heat From Fire/Fire From Heat (NSFW) – Anna Anthropy (2021)
  • Neurocracy – Joannes Truyens and Matei Stanca (2021)

And I also have to mention a few of my all-time favourite games from Choice of Games and Heart’s Choice:

May 16

2024

33% off Choice of the Vampire

Posted by: K L | Comments (15)

Choice of the Vampire is 33% off until May 23, including its two game-length DLCs, The Fall of Memphis and St. Louis, Unreal City.

Slake your thirst—without becoming a monster! Blessed with the blood-soaked gift of immortality, will you tend the flock of humanity—or twist it to your whims? When a brash young country clashes with a brash young vampire, who will come out ahead?

Choice of the Vampire is an epic interactive novel by Jason Stevan Hill. It’s entirely text-based, 900,000 words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination. 

Announcing St. Louis, Unreal City four years late

If you hadn’t heard about St. Louis, Unreal City, well, you’re not alone. We quietly made it available to the public in 2020, but we’ve never officially announced it until today.

With the turning of the century, St. Louis sits at the navel of the United States. The elite of the city celebrate by throwing the party of all parties—the 1904 World’s Fair. Every vampire who is any vampire will be there!

As your character concludes their first century of unlife, they must navigate the waters of industrialization and urbanization. But a monster roams the Missouri countryside, hunting vampires. Will the vampire court of St. Louis tear itself apart even before he comes for their heartsblood? And how can this unreal city look to the future when the specters of the past refuse to stay dead?

It took four years to get ready to make this announcement

It took a long, long time to prepare for this announcement, because Choice of the Vampire is one of the most complicated games we’ve ever published, offering an unprecedented variety in the type of vampire you can be.

For example, when you first become a vampire during the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, you can choose from a dozen wildly different human backgrounds. You can be a Choctaw interpreter, a French landowner, a Free Person of Color, an ordained priest, an Irish laborer, a Yankee entrepreneur, and many more.

Your choice of background affects the entire rest of the game, as you live through a hundred years of American history. Each background engages differently with the Civil War, Reconstruction, the liberation of Haiti, the Exodusters, Cuba, lynchings, and vodou. Your character may or may not be literate, may or may not speak English, French, German, Latin, Spanish, or Choctaw.

Furthermore, you might have been turned into a vampire by one of six different vampires, each with their own unique background, and, besides that, you might decide to kill your maker in the first five minutes of the game, or flee New Orleans entirely, playing an alternate version of the first part of the game in the village of St. Charles.

This complexity affects every part of the game; the longer the game gets, the more complex it becomes.

Initially, we thought we’d “soft launch” the St. Louis DLC, fix up any bugs that users reported, and do a a proper announcement a week or two later. Well, here we are, four years later, and we’re finally ready to announce it.

We can’t say that a game like this will ever be truly bug free, but we think it’s ready for you now.

If you’ve never played it, we can’t wait for you to try it. If you’ve played before, we invite you to return to one of the most replayable games we’ve ever made.

May 09

2024

The Butler Did It is now on Steam, and it’s 30% off!

Posted by: K L | Comments (1)

The Butler Did It — A Steampunk Tale of Manners and Mayhem

We are happy to announce that our Hosted Game The Butler Did It, by Daniel Elliot, is now available on Steam for the first time ever!

To celebrate, you can buy The Butler Did It for 30% off until May 16th.

Life in Port Terris is tough. There’s never quite enough to eat, nor quite enough work, and your friends have a nasty habit of being snatched up by the Constables and their bots. When the majordomo of a Great House offers you employment, a warm bed, and all the food you can eat, it’s a tempting offer. Never mind that the alternative is a long stay in the City Dungeons.

The Butler Did It is a 300,000 word interactive novel by Daniel Elliot—and a finalist in the Choice of Games writing contest—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 doesn’t take long to realize that things are a little bit off though, to say the least. At Coburg Manor, you’ll make friends, battle enemies, and uncover a mystery far deeper and stranger than you ever imagined.

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, bisexual, or asexual
• An odyssey in steampunk, with a twist you’ll never predict
• Face foes both human and mechanical with your wits, sword, or skill with steam
• Expose a conspiracy that threatens the very fabric of your society, or choose to keep its secret
• Get to know a diverse cast of characters, and you just might find love
• Maybe end up on a spaceship?

Will you save your home from the strange apocalypse that its people don’t even suspect, or will you fall prey to madness, like so many of your friends?

Daniel 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.

May 09

2024

Now you can save your playthrough of Royal Affairs!

Posted by: K L | Comments (8)

Royal Affairs

In preparation for the upcoming release of Honor Bound, the newest game in the popular Crème de la Crème series, we’ve added the option to save your progress at the end of Royal Affairs.

If you haven’t played Royal Affairs, download it today! If you have the game already, updating it will give you access to the new save feature. And don’t forget to wishlist Honor Bound on Steam!

The author, Harris Powell-Smith, has this to say about their upcoming game:

I’ve been working on Honor Bound for just over a year, and in that time I’ve written over 400,000 words on it! Making Honor Bound has been a wonderful adventure, moving the action away from Westerlin and placing the player character in a totally different role. Teran is a new culture for the Crème de la Crème series—although players of the Royal Affairs epilogue will have had a sneak peek—and it’s been lovely to introduce a new place and new characters while drawing on some familiar themes.

It’s been a lot of fun writing the player character as an adult in their late twenties or older rather than a teenager or younger adult. They’ve recently experienced hardship, and may have made mistakes that cost lives, but are returning to their hometown after a long time away. Throughout the game they can make connections with people from their past, turn towards new bonds on the horizon, or something in between.

I’ve also been enjoying the different kinds of agency the player character has—unlike in Crème de la Crème or Royal Affairs, they don’t have teachers telling them when to go to bed—along with their added responsibilities. It brings different kinds of stakes, and I love exploring that. Will they stray from the path their commanders want for them, or will they claw back their reputation? That’s for the player to choose.

Right now, I’m in the middle of writing various branches of a dramatic climax. The player’s actions have had consequences all through the game, but here’s where it all comes to a head. They might have made friends, forged intense romances, or alienated their community, made mistakes or kept a shining record…and all those earlier experiences feed into what I’m writing right now. This is my fifth Choice of Games story now, and drawing together so many threads and making earlier choices feel meaningful never gets old.

May 02

2024

Dragon of Steelthorne—Govern a city in a steampunk-fantasy land.

Posted by: K L | Comments (27)

Dragon of Steelthorne

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Rule a mighty city, fight battles, and embark on quests in a steampunk-fantasy land. As the Ardent or Ardessa of Lake Steelthorne, find love, power and a secret which could change the world.

Dragon of Steelthorne is 40% off until May 9th!

Dragon of Steelthorne is a 140,000-word interactive novel by Vance Chance, weaving together story, city management and combat in a unique take on choice-based Interactive Fiction. It’s entirely text-based—without animation or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

  • Play as male or female, straight or gay.
  • Explore a story set in a world with steampunk and fantasy elements.
  • Find romance from one of five possible love interests. Enjoy a romantic night with them at the Eternal Festival.
  • Choose from one of five classes, with different effects on story, city management and combat.
  • Manage a city and train soldiers to fight for you on missions.
  • Enjoy a three-slot save system which provides the flexibility to try different options without losing progress or having to start over.

Decide the future of your mighty city as its leader and ruler.

Vance 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.

May 02

2024

Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven—Stories from the Outbreak 2

Posted by: K L | Comments (9)

Hosted Games has ten new stories for you to read, set in the universe of Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven by Jim Datillo.

To celebrate, we’re putting all three installments of Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, as well as the first set of stories, on sale until May 9th!

Stories from the Outbreak 2 chronicles events of key characters at various points throughout Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven. These ten stories are noninteractive but focus on characters in the game and provide their backstories and events as they struggle to survive. Each short story ranges from 1,300 to 4,600 words for a total of over 29,000 original words of content.

Note: These stories contain spoilers for those players who have not read through Part 1 and Part 2.

  • Follow Brody and Madison on their way to Chipper Ridge High School and then exploring the school.
  • How did the Graves family make it to the train yard on the day of the outbreak?
  • Read how characters such as Bailey, Jaime, Dante, the twins, and Rachel spent Christmas before the outbreak.
  • Take part in a romantic adventure with Rachel.
  • Read daily reports from Otto Goodman, head of the New Army.
  • And more stories including Jillian, Lyle, Woody, Tommy, Lopez, and Nate Milford.

Apr 25

2024

“Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names”—Unleash Rage and wield spirit to heal the land and rebuild your fallen pack.

Posted by: Jason Stevan Hill | Comments (1,151)


You and your shattered werewolf pack must save the living Earth with Rage and spirit! In this interactive novel with hundreds of choices, can you defeat a Wyrm Spirit who manifests as a lie that you want to believe?

We’re proud to announce that Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names, in partnership with World of Darkness and Paradox AB, is now available for Steam, Android, and on iOS in the “Choice of Games” app.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names is 25% off until May 2nd! As a special offer, if you purchase Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names by 11:59pm PDT on April 26th, we’ll give you the Wardens and Furies DLC, featuring the options to play as a member of the Black Fury tribe or the Hart Warden tribe, for free.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names is an interactive novel by Kyle Marquis set in the World of Darkness. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Shapeshifter. Mystic. Hero. Monster. You are a werewolf, and you are all these things. Werewolves are the living earth’s last guardians, created by Gaia, given the gift of shifting between human and wolf forms, and called to stop humanity from destroying the world.

But you have failed.

Three years ago, packs of werewolves worked together as a Sept in Broad Brook, Massachusetts, battling the Wyrm, the enemy of Gaia. While other Septs fell to the Wyrm or tore themselves apart with fratricidal Rage, Broad Brook thrived. Some said they would be the ones to stop the Apocalypse.

But in one night, a Wyrm Spirit called “the Answering Tiger” destroyed the Broad Brook Sept and defiled its caern. In fact, Broad Brook had never been thriving at all. The Tiger had deceived their senses, disordered their thoughts, and turned them against one another. Where the different tribes saw trust, in truth there was resentment and growing Rage. Where the different packs saw safety, there were security flaws that could be exploited. Where they saw the Wyrm, there were innocents that they massacred, before reporting to other Septs about another glorious victory.

Their cruel pride allowed the Wyrm Spirit to deceive them, and they mostly destroyed themselves. The Answering Tiger had servants, too, monstrous Banes and fomori, and even werewolves sworn to the Wyrm. But they were only there to pick off whoever was left.

Now, the Stormcat, once the Patron Spirit of the Broad Brook Sept, has called upon you to rebuild a pack from the survivors and fight back against the Answering Tiger. In the savage woods and decaying towns of New England, you will forge your own legend.

Build Your Pack. Human and werewolf survivors haunt the woods and hide in the cities: find them to learn what happened and to rebuild the werewolf nation. But not all werewolves can be trusted: shun those wolves consumed by Rage, and pity those who have lost the Wolf and become empty shells.

Survive the Wilds. A desperate exile, shunned by those of your old pack who have abandoned their oaths to Gaia, you’ll have to survive by your wits. A winter night can kill as surely as any monster: find shelter, seek allies among spirits and humans, and learn how far you’ll go to survive.

Unleash Your Rage. You are one of Gaia’s monsters, a living weapon, herald of horror and death. Now the Apocalypse is here: wield your Rage with savage cunning and keen discretion, or it will swallow you whole.

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; befriend or romance werewolves and humans of all genders.
• Shapeshift among five forms to slaughter your enemies, or outwit them to take what you need.
• Choose your auspice (moon-sign) and your werewolf tribe to learn what sort of monster you are. Play as a Bone Gnawer, Child of Gaia, Glass Walker, Shadow Lord, or Silver Fang.
• Claim your territory and heal the spirits there to unlock Gifts that let you summon animals, see into the past, or enter the spirit world.

Apr 25

2024

How to get our free DLC for “Werewolf the Apocalypse: The Book of Hungry Names”

Posted by: Dan Fabulich |

If you purchase Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names by 11:59pm PDT on April 26th, we’ll give away the “Wardens and Furies” DLC, featuring the options to play as a member of the Black Fury tribe or the Hart Warden tribe, for free.

Here’s how to access your free DLC.

  • Steam: On the Steam Store page, there’s a link to buy the DLC for $0 for a limited time.
  • The “Werewolf: Book of Hungry Names” app:
    • On iPhone/iPad: The app itself costs $14.99 to download; when you download it, you’ll see an option to “buy” the DLC for $0. (The price will increase on April 27.)
    • On Android: The app is free to download. When you open the app, you’ll be prompted to buy the full game for $14.99. When you buy it, you’ll be prompted to login to choiceofgames.com. Logging in will give you access to the “Wardens and Furies” DLC at no additional charge.
  • The “Choice of Games” app: When you buy the game, you’ll be prompted to login to choiceofgames.com. Logging in will give you access to the “Wardens and Furies” DLC at no additional charge.
  • Our website: If you buy the game on our website at choiceofgames.com before the deadline, you’ll automatically unlock the “Wardens and Furies” DLC at no additional charge.

If you run into trouble, you can email us your purchase receipt at support-hungrynames@choiceofgames.com and we’ll help you sort it out.

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Apr 18

2024

On sale: Six of our best games for aspiring spellcasters!

Posted by: K L | Comments (7)

We’re putting six of our games on sale today, each one dripping with magic! Play as an illusionist, an infernalist, an archmage, or an apprentice, and watch your power grow—but what will you do with it? Sale ends April 25!

Battlemage: Magic by Mail

Choice of Magics. Your magic can change the world, but at what cost? Battle dragons, skyships, and Inquisitors. Protect your homeland, conquer it, or destroy it forever!

Heroes of Myth. Everyone thinks you saved the world, but it was all a lie! You faked a “prophecy” with magical illusions. But now, your prophecy is coming true.

Battlemage: Magic by Mail. Will you defend your kingdom with forbidden magic, or backstab the crown? Win tournaments, kiss a prince/princess, or just seize power for yourself!

Révolution Diabolique. Summon demons to win the French Revolution! Will you uphold the Republic, restore the monarchy, rule France yourself, or lose your head?

Tower Behind the Moon. You are already an archmage–can you become an immortal? Use magic and cunning to thwart rivals, fight demons, and outwit gods so you can join their ranks.

The Magician’s Workshop. When your master is murdered, you must uncover the magical secrets of Renaissance Italy, before your rival apprentices expose them first!

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