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Pull off legendary heists to steal the world’s most magical treasures, and stay one step ahead of your rivals. What’s hotter: the goods or the guys?

You can now play the free demo of These Thieving Hearts here. To get a peek behind the scenes of this project, you can read an interview with the author, published a few weeks ago, here. And, before you go, make sure to wishlist the game on Steam!

This is the second Heart’s Choice title by Raven de Hart; you can play his previous game, Freshman Magic: Spellbooks and Tangled Sheets, for free with ads, here.

We’re proud to announce that Restore, Reflect, Retry, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for Steam, Android, and on iOS in the “Choice of Games” app.

You’ve played this game before. It’s a haunted game about a haunted game. You may not remember, but the game remembers you. I remember you.

It’s free to win, and paying to turn off ads is 40% off until July 18th! 

Restore, Reflect, Retry is an interactive horror novel by Natalia Theodoridou. It’s entirely text-based, 90,000-words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

None of you remember who first found the game: the black rectangular box with the small screen on which instructions appear. Of course it piqued your interest: this is the 1990s, after all; and there isn’t much for teenagers to do in your small town. Your friends were intrigued; you were intrigued. So you started to play. And play. And play.

What does it matter if nobody remembers exactly how you discovered the game, or if the story changes, ever so slightly, each time you tell it? Or if you change, ever so slightly, every time you emerge into the real world once more?

All that matters is that you keep playing. The game needs its flesh.

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, or bi.
• Travel through the world as a visionary artist, a strategic gamer, or a thoughtful book lover.
• Befriend a ghost; become a ghost; consume a ghost.
• Save your friends from the game within a game—if you can.
• Explore pixelated alternate realities to solve the mystery of the game’s origin, and contemplate the deeper truths of this reality.
• Befriend the being behind the screen—or try to destroy the game that you are playing, and hope that it doesn’t fight back.

Come in, Player. I’m waiting.

We hope you enjoy playing Restore, Reflect, Retry. We encourage you to tell your friends about it and to 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.

You’ve played this game before. It’s a haunted game about a haunted game. You may not remember, but the game remembers you. I remember you.

Restore, Reflect, Retry is an interactive horror novel by Natalia Theodoridou. We sat down with Natalia to talk about his work. Restore, Reflect, Retry releases this Thursday, July 11th.

I cannot believe we’re conducting an author interview for your fourth game with us, and I’m so excited for this one. Restore, Reflect, Retry is a little (a lot!) different than anything you’ve published with us before. How would you introduce our readers to this game?

This is a haunted game about a haunted game. It is the story of a 1980s kid being nostalgic about a childhood he never had. It is an analog horror game where the horror is ancient and familiar and lives in your house, and a science-fiction game where the science is fleshy and messy and only a squint away from the occult. It’s for the queer kids and the nerdy kids and the kids from broken homes, in whatever way your home was broken. It’s a bandaid and a nod—from my weird little heart to yours.

What tempted you to zig-zag from a more traditional narrative in writing this one?

I’m not gonna lie, I had so much fun writing this game. I poured everything I love into it, allowed myself to indulge in everything that caught my interest and to follow lines of thinking down rabbit holes in a way that I hope will be fun to read, at least for people whose weirdness slants in ways similar to mine. I was never one for neat, linear narratives, and this time I wanted something that reflects (teehee) that in form as well as content. I wanted to play around with the conventions we abide by when we build and play games, when we write and read fiction. To allow a few moments when we—the two of us—can face each other: what we give and what we take from one another, the truths we can afford and the lies we choose to believe in order to make a story work.

What did you find challenging about that?

The kind of thing I’m describing can quickly become too intellectual and self-indulgent, so one of my challenges was to allow the game to be self-aware and meta enough to ask the questions I wanted it to ask while still being a game game, as in something that can actually be played and has stakes that make winning or losing (which, like most things in life, is a spectrum!) matter. I’m hoping that I’ve struck the right balance at least for some players.

You’re out there somewhere, surely. Aren’t you?

How has your relationship with interactive narrative shifted as you’ve gone from (Nebula finalist!) Rent-A-Vice to An Odyssey: Echoes of War to (Nebula finalist!) Sins of the Sires to this game?

All of my games have carried much of myself in them in different ways, but Restore, Reflect, Retry is, I think, the one that most closely captures both how my brain works and what I want my art to do. It also cares (a lot!) about the player’s experience and tries to anticipate and dramaturg it more explicitly than any of my other games. That’s part of the interactivity of this game: the Player is invited to play themself as well as their Player Character, and to consider the ways these people interact with each other and with the game. (And with me! Hi.)

Did you take any particular inspirations from other works for Restore, Reflect, Retry?

Oh, so much inspiration, from so many places. This game is intertextuality galore. The obvious ones are Creatures Such As We (love that game and what it does with the fourth wall), Stranger Things (it’s strange to think of the ‘80s as a setting for period drama, but here we are, people, we are old), True Detective (you are a flat circle), The Haunting of Hill House (the book, not the TV show) (OK maybe the TV show, too), Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (for the love of game design and the people who love it), everything Cronenberg (insert that VHS right into your chest), everything Roland Barthes (the Author is dead and also possibly a ghost). Lots of creepypasta, too, of course (as a genre more than any specific story).

What else are you working on these days?

Most of my focus is on putting finishing touches and preparing for the publication of Sour Cherry, my debut novel, in April 2025, but I have also started working on my next (probably?) novel (most likely?), about a group of queers in post-civil-war Greece and the ghosts that haunt a nation.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

You awake as an undead lich after performing a powerful ritual and will have to recruit undead minions and manage your underworld domains, exploring to discover the dark secrets within them and travel to other planes of existence to interact with fellow immortals. You will have to carefully balance the pursuit of your research of new spells, the logistical challenges of managing large numbers of undead minions and cultists, and the threats originating from your own world and other planes of existence.

Life as a Lich is 33% off, and Tokyo Wizard and Raiders of the Icepeak Mountains are both 40% off, until July 10th!

Life as a Lich is a 207,000 word interactive novel by Adrao, 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 is a sequel to both one of the endings of Tokyo Wizard and one of the endings of Raiders of the Icepeak Mountains, or it can be played as a standalone game by creating a new character.

Embrace being a lich, living an immortal life to research powerful spells and manage your underworld domains and minions. Will you dedicate yourself to the research on how to become a demigod and abandon your skeletal form? Or will you decide that life as an undead is not something for you, and seek to reincarnate yourself into a mortal form? Are you an evil lich, seeking to kill and enslave all in your path, or a benevolent necromancer trying to help those who worship you? Is companionship and love something that you seek in undeath, or will solitude and the search for power fill your soul?

• Import your character from either Tokyo Wizard or Raiders of the Icepeak Mountains, or make a new character in either modern-day Japan or a fantasy world.
• Learn or research over 50 unique spells.
• Explore and expand your underworld domains, or travel to different planes of existence.
• Raise large undead armies, composed of a mixture of skeletons, zombies, ghouls, necrodragons, golems…or even form a rat army!
• Battle or befriend an array of different creatures, including demons from other planes and demigods!
• Try several different difficulty settings. Start as a mighty lich on “Very Easy”, or struggle to overcome the challenges in “Impossible” mode!
• Manage your underworld domains, allocating your minions to various tasks to develop your economy…or focus on the story!
• Play as male, female, or nonbinary, and romance other undead!
• Enjoy a variety of different game paths and stories, with multiple side missions and endings.

Experience undeath as a powerful necromancer!

Adrao 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.

Pull off legendary heists to steal the world’s most magical treasures, and stay one step ahead of your rivals. What’s hotter: the goods or the guys?

These Thieving Hearts is an interactive high-heat gay romance adventure novel by Raven de Hart, author of Freshman Magic: Spellbooks and Tangled Sheets. I sat down with Raven to discuss their upcoming game and what they’re reading these days. These Thieving Hearts will be out on July 18th, 2024; you can wishlist it on Steam in advance of release—it really helps.

So excited to be sitting down for another author interview with you! Freshman Magic, your first game with us was a wonderfully spicy read and I know Heart’s Choice fans will be eager to dive into These Thieving Hearts. What do they have to look forward to in this game?

I’m so excited to be here! And yes, Freshman Magic was definitely all heat, all the time if that was the way you wanted to play it. That’s still prevalent in These Thieving Hearts – you can always choose not to get physical, but when you do, I don’t skimp on the details. These Thieving Hearts started years ago, if you’ll believe it. I love heist flicks, so I tried and failed to get the idea to click into a story for a long time before I finally landed on These Thieving Hearts. Turns out when you have globe-trotting ne’er-do-wells, the best fit is to be able to fall in love with them. Who knew? Does this mean I have a thing for bad boys? You know what, this isn’t my therapy session.

The Mage’s Adventures by Samuel Young has been updated with a new ending that wraps up the storyline, making the game complete on its own. In addition to 52,000 words of new content, the update features improved and simplified stats as well as a customizable spellset.

This update is free for all customers who have already purchased the game, and for those who haven’t:

You can get The Mage’s Adventures and The Magician’s Burden on sale until June 27th!

As the mage of an adventuring party, you’re tasked with tracking down and capturing a violent demon under any circumstances. This already daunting task is made even more difficult when you’ve got competition from a hostile, rival party of adventurers. 

What’s more, you soon discover that your target wants to take you as her human vessel. Can you survive a demon who has her eye on you, and a party that will do anything it takes to win? 

The Mage’s Adventures is a thrilling 167,000 word interactive fantasy novel by Samuel Young, where your choices control the story. The tale is a companion novel to The Magician’s Burden, set in an alternate timeline. It’s text-based, with vivid illustrations, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; romance whoever you want.
• Romance the cold, aloof Violet; the competitive, outgoing Mabelin; the shy, sweet Rigel; or the fun-loving, charismatic Keano.
• Wield fantastical spells: turn invisible, throw fireballs, heal wounds, and more.
• Make a deal with your demon and use his powerful magic at a steep price, or resist the temptation altogether.
• Build bridges with your bitter rival, or exact your revenge upon him instead.

Oh, and there’s a secret member of your party as well: the demon living in your head.

We’re proud to announce that Unsupervised, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for Steam, Android, and on iOS in the “Choice of Games” app.

You and your friends were teenage sidekicks of the world’s greatest heroes. But now, the heroes are missing. It’s your turn to kick ass and save the world!

It’s 40% off until June 20th! 

Unsupervised is a 660,000-word interactive superpower novel by Lucas Zaper and Morton Newberry, 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. Which is not as cool as an actual superpower, but you get the idea.

The Omega Responders were the mightiest heroes in the world, defending Earth with their powers—time manipulation, elemental mastery, teleportation, and more. You and your friends were their sidekicks, their best and brightest. Then the Omega Responders left to face a mysterious anomaly in outer space—and never returned.

Without your mentors to guide you, it’s up to you and your fellow sidekicks to decide what kind of heroes you’ll be. You’re not old enough to have a beer, but you sure as hell are old enough to save the world… and have your first kiss. Or your first kill. Puberty just hits different when you have superpowers.

Lead your team, travel the world gathering allies, navigate the ups and downs of public opinion, and confront villains at every turn. Will you smash and fight until there’s nobody left standing? Will you help the villains talk about their feelings to understand how they went astray? Or will you turn to villainy yourself?

Meanwhile, government regulation of people with powers grows more intense every day. How will you deal with PARENTS: the Paramilitary Agency Responding to Extraordinary Non-compliant Threats and Supervillains? One of your former sidekicks is already working for the government. Will you join them?

And what will you do when the truth about the Omega Responders’ last mission starts to emerge?

• Choose your powers: super speed, exceptional strength, heightened senses, elemental mastery, or time manipulation!
• Romance any of several fellow heroes, including an idealistic teleporter, an ambitious rapper, a half-ghost, or a sidekick-turned-government agent!
• Deal with hero regulatory agencies: fight the power, find loopholes, turn their agents to your side, or work for them yourself.
• Name and design your secret lair high in the Himalayas.
• Follow a heroic legacy, or dive deep into villainy!
• Teleport around the world, confronting villains and uncovering conspiracies from New York to Paris!
• Customize your supersuit, choose your team name, and manage your fellow heroes’ strengths to make them into the best team they can be!

Every teenager wants to change the world. But only you can save it.

We hope you enjoy playing Unsupervised. We encourage you to tell your friends about it and to 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.

One of the really fun and distinctive aspects of your game is the idea that all of these heroes have left the hero-ing biz and all have day jobs.  How did you go about building that world, where superpowers are both woven into society and closely regulated?

Lucas: You have all these sidekicks who suddenly found themselves without the guidance and protection of their mentors and have to face a worldwide escalation in supercriminal activity, increased scrutiny from regulatory agencies, and the mercurial nature of public opinion. All this while going through puberty.

So, some of them decided to use their powers for personal gain. Ghostling became a YouTuber specializing in haunted places, forging footage of the dead to make a living. Lil Biggie, now that he doesn’t have to answer to anyone, is following his dreams of becoming a rapper. And Multidude… well, I don’t want to give any spoilers, but he’s doing a lot.

Then there’s Flit, who’s trying to keep that Silver Age morality in an ever more cynical world, and the MC, who can be trying to do the same, acting more like a vigilante or being a downright villain. Or even, in perhaps the most evil choice of them all, become a politician.

We tried to make a world that feels real and self-consistent. There’s a timeline in the game that explains how the emergence of metahumans affected everything, from geopolitics to the cultural zeitgeist. Still, two clear examples that we can give are that we had a “cape race” instead of a “space race” during the Cold War, and that superhero comic books are a dying genre. Why read fictional stories on paper when you can watch the real thing live on TV?

(We took that idea from Watchmen, where pirates have replaced superheroes in comic books. In our case, it’s medieval fantasy.)

You’re both veteran ChoiceScript authors, with successful Hosted Games titles under your belts. What new challenges did you take on for this game?

Lucas: Having professionals giving feedback throughout the whole process is great. We had a rough start because we were so used to doing things our way–which meant an almost unreadable code for anyone that isn’t us–but I think we got the grip of it after the first couple of chapters. I want to thank everybody from CoG for their patience and for helping us get here.

Morton: The word count was a challenge in itself—Unsupervised is larger than any other story I’ve worked on. It’s bigger than Highlands, Deep Waters, The Vampire Regent, and Ghost Simulator. Also, as we wrote the scenes, the project changed substantially from the original outline. Looking back, I believe this deviation was a good thing, although it required a lot of flexibility and rewriting. And time.

How did you manage the co-writing process? What were the biggest difficulties? Did each of you gravitate towards a particular character or storyline?

Morton: We’ve been co-writing stories since 2016, and it’s been a challenging journey. I feel that our process has improved, but it invariably involves numerous rounds of feedback. And I guess it only works because we’re open and honest with each other. We don’t hesitate to say, “Man, what you wrote is really bad.” And then we throw it away and start again.

Our approach is to agree on main plotlines and story milestones, and then decide who’s going to write which scene. Then we write each scene individually and they go through rounds of feedback until we both find them acceptable. And this can take a while.

I think it’s natural that we gravitate towards particular characters and end up writing most of their scenes. That’s particularly true for ROs.

You’re both very active on our Forum and with fan engagement. How did fan reactions affect the development of the story?

Lucas: Comics taught me how to read; I’ve been reading them for over twenty-five years. I feel like I have a decent grasp on what superhero fans want from a game because I’m a fan myself, and I think when people read Unsupervised, they recognize that it is both a love letter to the genre and a hatemail to some of the industry’s practices.

If you ever got frustrated because a character wasn’t acting like they should, because of inconsistent power levels, or because a reboot or retcon invalidated something you held dear, you know what I’m talking about. But, by the end of the day, we fans only care so much about these characters and stories because we love them. And Unsupervised is, above all, a work of love.

So, my point here is that the story itself didn’t change much because we had a clear goal in mind: representing as many comic book tropes as possible and letting the players go wild. You can be Homelander if you want to, but you can also be All-Star Superman. We subvert some tropes, yes, but we also honor them.

Now, that doesn’t mean fans haven’t been essential in shaping the game. I can’t stress enough how much their feedback helped us with customization, balance, and bugfixing. In fact, I’d like to give a special shoutout to Denzil_Melgior_Nagel and Webtoonien, who probably have read the game more times than I have. There are others, too, but these two were relentless.

You’ve both talked openly about the process of finding bugs and bloopers during development. What was the funniest – or most frustrating – bug in Unsupervised?

Lucas: The game has a robust system for customizing your character’s superhero costume, allowing you to pick an item for each slot. I made various headgear, upper body gear, handwear, footwear, and capes, each with unique colors and the possibility of adding symbols.

But when we first made the demo public, I forgot to add lower-body gear. So it was like one of those recurrent nightmares where you suddenly find yourself wearing no pants in public. I always laugh when I remember it.

Morton: It isn’t a bug, but one scene in Vera City took at least four rewriting sessions to reach its final version. Oh, man.

Of course we have to ask: if you could have any of the superpowers mentioned in your game, which one would it be?

Lucas: People will always argue about which power is the strongest, and I’ve seen all kinds of different opinions on this. My favorite in the game is Enhanced Senses because you get so much new information and unique descriptions. But in real life, it would have to be Time Manipulation. There are just too many creative ways you can use it.

Morton: I love Miss Fortune’s power, Probability Manipulation. I used to play Mage: The Awakening with friends when I was younger, and I played an Acanthus character who could manipulate time and fate. I felt that this power would fit well in a superhero story like this one.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Take control of a troubled young climate activist as you sabotage climate criminals and attempt to join the mysterious EXODUS activist group. A socially conscious coming of age action thriller where you will have the chance to express your strong beliefs on climate change.

EXODUS: Climate Activist is 33% off until June 13th!

EXODUS: Climate Activist is a 36,000-word interactive novel by Daniel Stephenson. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

• Attend real life protests in London and influence how much trouble you will cause.
• Navigate the end of your high school years as you enter adulthood.
• Explore the wilderness as you attempt to locate the Exodus camp, and meet various activist groups on your travels.
• Infiltrate high security climate criminal energy companies and attempt to sabotage their operations.
• Enter the workplace and attempt to impress your boss.
• Meet the partner of your dreams.
• Make the right choices throughout the game in order to impress and join the EXODUS Group.

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.

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?