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PRESS RELEASE SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 22, 2010: Lovers of interactive fiction, rejoice! Choice of Games, a quirky independent games company, has just released their first two interactive fiction titles for Amazon Kindle. Both games are available now in the Amazon Kindle Store. In their first game, “Choice of the Dragon,” you play as a dragon who kidnaps princesses and sleeps on gold for fun. You’ll dominate the local kingdom, loot and pillage, and inspire terror in the hearts of your enemies. Their second game, “Choice of Broadsides,” is a swashbuckling naval adventure, in the spirit of C. S. Forester’s Hornblower

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The Independent Games Festival (IGF), the prestigious GDC-held video game industry event highlighting and awarding the talents of independent game developers, has announced the finalists and honorable mentions for the 2011 Nuovo Award, which honors “abstract, short-form, and unconventional game development.” Our swashbuckling naval adventure Choice of Broadsides earned an honorable mention from this year’s jury! Stay tuned for a big announcement about Dragon and Broadsides in the next day or so. 😉

Four of our games are now available for Palm webOS! Download them from the Palm App Catalog on Palm Pre or Palm Pixi: Choice of the Dragon: Play as a dragon who sleeps on gold and kidnaps princesses for fun! Choice of Broadsides: A swashbuckling naval adventure, in the spirit of C. S. Forester’s Hornblower or Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin books, with a dash of Jane Austen. Choice of Romance: As a young courtier who has caught the monarch’s eye, will you gain a crown or lose your head? Choice of the Vampire: Begin your two hundred year journey in New

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“Villeneuve is way cooler than any of the boring boys at the dance! We made such a good team.” Quoth my friend Becky, explaining her surprise that it was not (at that time) possible to pursue a same-sex relationship with Villeneuve. A common sentiment, as it turned out. “I think there’s such an interest in this aspect of the story,” wrote Spider in a comment to an earlier blog post, “because Villeneuve is the best-fleshed-out character. You don’t have the same level of interaction with the three marriage interests, and relationships with them feel rushed…” And Spider is quite right

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Authorial intent is a slippery concept at the best of times, but it becomes even more so in the context of interactive fiction (IF), whether multiple-choice games like Choice of Games makes or text adventures with a parser.  In a standard book (or a legal document, which is the context in which I’ve had most of my interactions with the concept of authorial intent), it’s usually pretty clear who the author is.  The difficult questions are how do you determine what the author’s intent is and does it matter?  When J.K. Rowling says that a prominent character in the Harry

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Choice of Broadsides is now available as an iPhone app! We hope you enjoy the app, and we hope that you tell all of your friends about it! Our initial download rate determines our App Store ranking. Basically, the more times you download in the first week, the better we’ll rank. Share and enjoy!

… and books are not RPGs. (By the way—hi there! I’m Heather. I joined Choice of Games as writer #3 just as Broadsides development was starting. It’s nice to meet you, too!) This post started as a comment to the “Help Us Switch Gender” thread, but I decided not to post it at the time, both because it got way too long and because I couldn’t make my points without risking spoilers. Now I think I can reasonably assume anyone reading this has played the game (but I put the spoilers under a cut anyway.) The core concept for Broadsides

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Choice of Games is pleased to announce the release of Choice of Broadsides!  The web version is now live, as is the Android version.  The iPhone version is currently under review at Apple and will presumably be available soon. Choice of Broadsides is a multiple-choice swashbuckling naval adventure, in the spirit of C. S. Forester’s Hornblower or Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin books, with a dash of Jane Austen. We hope you enjoy playing Choice of Broadsides as much as we enjoyed writing it, and we encourage you to play it, tell your friends, and to recommend it on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter,

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As I mentioned in my last post, we’re working on finishing up our next game, Choice of Broadsides, a game set in a fictionalized version of the Napoleonic Wars.   Of course, the real-world Royal Navy was an (essentially) all-male institution at the time.  We wanted to avoid embracing the sexism of both history and of the source materials we draw on, but at the same time, we concluded that having a mixed-sexed Royal Navy would be both too complicated to implement and would also make the Jane Austen inspired bits of the game very strange.  So instead, we let the

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Many of you have asked whether we have other games besides Choice of the Dragon.  We’re pleased to announce that our next game, Choice of Broadsides, will be debuting by the end of March.  Choice of Broadsides is a swashbuckling naval adventure, in the spirit of C.S. Forester’s Hornblower or Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin books, with a dash of Jane Austen as well.  Will you become the hero of Albion, defending its shipping from the dastardly Gauls?  Or will you end up marooned on a desert island by mutineers?  Only your choices can determine the answer. As with Choice of the

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