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This is Part 3 of a 3-part series of posts about the Hosted Game First Year Demons. In the first part, I talked about games in education, and why ChoiceScript games can be a good method for teaching about culture. In the second part, I talked about our process for developing the setting and story for First Year Demons. In this part, I’ll talk about the differences in design and story between the two versions of the game. Educational Game vs. Story Game An educational game – at least, this particular variety of educational game – is written with the

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This is Part 2 of a 3-part series of posts about First Year Demons. In the first part, I talked about games in education, and why ChoiceScript games can be a good method for teaching about culture. In this part, I’ll talk about how we decided on the setting and story for First Year Demons. Choosing a Culture and Story The people who would be playing these games to learn the information contained in them would primarily be university students in the US and Canada. Therefore, we took North American culture as our “home” culture. We decided that the contrast

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This is the first in a series of blog posts about the Hosted Game First Year Demons, which was released on April 8, 2016. In this first post, I’ll talk about why and how IF can be used as a teaching tool, especially its combination of immersive first-person perspective and concrete dynamic feedback. In the second post, I’ll talk about the process of developing the story, particularly why we chose to set it in China, and how I approached the process of writing a game whose characters inhabit a culture that isn’t my own. In the third post, I’ll talk

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by Ben Serviss, author of The Last Monster Master; this article originally appeared on his blog at dashjump.com. Writing is hard. Writing interactive, multiple-choice games is harder. Good at turning a phrase? Excellent – now turn seven of them, all equally-well written, that make sense in four different contexts, as said by three different characters.

The finalists in 2012’s XYZZY awards have been announced! The XYZZY Awards are given for the best works of interactive fiction released the previous year in a variety of categories (Best Writing, Best Puzzles, and so on). Now it’s time to vote for the winners! Anyone can vote for the winner in every category, even those who did not vote in the previous round, but please play all four games before voting for Best Game. Voting ends March 2. The nominees for Best Game are: Cryptozookeeper (Robb Sherwin) Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis (Adam Thornton) Six (Wade Clarke) Zombie Exodus (Jim Dattilo)

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The annual XYZZY Awards are here! The XYZZY Awards are given for the best works of interactive fiction released the previous year in a variety of categories (Best Writing, Best Puzzles, and so on). Anyone can vote in the XYZZY awards; in this round, all games released in 2011 are eligible to become finalists. In the next round of voting, starting in February, the winners will be selected from the most popular finalists in each category. This year, there are a number of fantastic ChoiceScript games on the list! (Here they are in alphabetical order.) Dead Already? Dilemma The Land

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