allaboutcarloans-blog1

[hiddenschools]

Wait, when does that happen? A Craft Sequence timeline

Being published out of chronological order has confused the hell out of many Craft Sequence readers, myself included. So I went through the series and figured out an approximate timeline and all the main characters ages YOU'RE WELCOME.

...and then I found an official version in the inside cover of the German translation but shhh mine's better

[interact-if]

Hi, hello! Do you have IF recommendations where the MC is dealing with trauma? I've read and like Fallen Hero, The Exile and I, The Forgotten One. Thanks in advance!

Hi Anon! Here’s a long list of games fitting your request. If anyone else has further suggestions of IFs with this genre, feel free to reply below where we will add those that fit in the list.

Completed:

77 Oleander Avenue: Ghost House Investigation (VN) by @invocative

Deathless: City’s Thirst by Max Gladstone

The Fog Knows Your Name by Yeonsoo Julian Kim

Demos:

A Tale of Crowns by @ataleofcrowns

Advenio by @adveniogame

Aeterna: Rubra Plena (VN) by @quantumvelvet

An Angel's Song by @melkstudio

Better Off by @oscarwrites 

Defiled Hearts: The Barbarian by @defiledheartsblog

Exiled from Court by @beeanca-writing

Greenwarden by @fiddles-ifs

Hollowed Minds by @shai-manahan ​ 

I, The Forgotten One by bacondoneright

Invoker by @tomawrites

Larkin by @larkin-if

Ouroboros by @honeypeabrain

Prodigy by @prodigy-if

Respice Finem by @rf-interactive

Sinners and Saints by @sinnersandsaints-linwrites

Siren’s Call by @the-siren-call

The Archivist and the Revolution by @cyberpunklesbian

The Bastard of Camelot by @llamagirl28

The Exile by @exilethegame

The King's Hound by @the-kingshound​​​

The Numbers Game by @thenumbersgameif

The Spirited: Origins by @yuveim

The Watchwood by @compassroseproductions ​

Trails Lead Home by @trailshome

Throne of Ashes by @13leaguestories

Vespertines by @mondaysandwich​​​​​​

No Demo:

Haunt The Bodies by @hauntthebodies

Rehab by @rehabifiction

[hpowellsmith]

my brother in law and i have made our ways through all of your available cog stories (you have become a household name); i wanted to ask if there are any choice of games or other interactive fiction you recommend? i saw you answered in 2020, but wanted to see if there's any more on your radar since then!

I have a bunch of links and recommendations over here including my top ChoiceScript games ever. And I am here to recommend lots more!

Please note that I have the time and energy to play very few games and a vanishingly small number of WIPs. This only a tiny snapshot of the amazing interactive fiction out there. Do check out IFDB, sub-Q, the IF Comp and Spring Thing archives, the Narrascope and AdventureX speakers and exhibitors, and the interactive fiction tag on itch.io.

More below because there are A LOT:

Here is a big bunch of ChoiceScript games that I had a great time with!

Choice of Broadsides by Adam Strong-Morse, Heather Albano, and Dan Fabulich

Choice of Romance by Heather Albano and Adam Strong-Morse (note that it is not romantic and is not a dating sim!)

A Crown of Sorcery and Steel by Joshua LaBelle

Blood Moon by @barbwritesstuff

Deathless: the City's Thirst by Max Gladstone

The Dragon and the Djinn by @atharfi

The Eagle's Heir by Jo Graham and Amy Griswold

Fine Felines by Felicity Banks

Hollywood Visionary by Aaron Reed

Nikola Tesla: War of the Currents by Dora Klindžić

An Odyssey: Shadows of War by Natalia Theodoridou

The Play's the Thing by Jo Graham and Amy Griswold

Rent-a-Vice by Natalia Theodoridou

Siege of Treboulain by Jed Herne

Stronghold by Jo Graham and Amy Griswold

Their Majesties' Pleasure by Leia Talon

Thieves Gambit: Curse of the Black Cat by Dana Duffield

Tower Behind the Moon by Kyle Marquis

Turncoat Chronicle by @zincalloygames

Weyrwood by Isabella Shaw

Visual novels:

Analogue: A Hate Story by Christine Love

Dream Daddy by Game Grumps (writers: Vernon Shaw and Leighton Gray)

EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER by Heather Flowers

Ladykiller in a Bind by Christine Love

Other IF-adjacent games with visuals that I have loved:

80 Days by inkle (writers: Jon Ingold and Meghna Jayanth)

Fallen London by Failbetter Games

Overboard! by inkle (writer: Jon Ingold)

Over the Alps by Stave Studios

Twines:

There are so many more that I've enjoyed but these were what popped into my head right now - this is one where it's essential to check out itch.io:

Anything by porpentine charity heartscape especially With Those We Love Alive and Vesp

16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds by Abigail Corfman

Cactus Blue Motel by Astrid Dalmady

Detritus by Maz Hamilton (published as Mary Hamilton)

Faith by @kithj

Invasion by Cat Manning

Human Errors by Katherine Morayati

If I Die, Consume Me by @fiddles-ifs

Mama Possum by Kevin Snow

Nine Months Out by @nellplays

Salvage by @atharfi

Tangaroa Deep by Astrid Dalmady

To Spring Open by Yoon Ha Lee and Peter Berman (as Two-Bit Chip)

Parser games:

The Boot-Scraper by Caleb Wilson

The Compass Rose by Yoon Ha Lee (note that I didn't finish this one because I am bad at puzzles)

Galatea by Emily Short

Gun Mute by C. E. J. Pacian (as above)

Laid Off From The Synesthesia Factory by Katherine Morayati

Lime Ergot by Caleb Wilson

Midnight. Swordfight. by Chandler Groover

Take by Katherine Morayati

Games made with other tools:

Cape by Bruno Dias (Raconteur)

Honeysuckle by Cat Manning (Texture)

Prospero by Bruno Dias (Raconteur)

I play such a vanishingly small number of WIPs that it's ridiculous but I did really enjoy what I played of these two and am looking forward to more:

Body Count (@bodycountgame) by @nellplays (Twine)

Chop Shop by Becky @losergames (Twine)

Fervency (@fervency-if ) by Niko Charos (ChoiceScript)

[choiceofgames]

Deathless: The City's Thirst

"Deathless: The City's Thirst." Negotiate water rights from scorpion gods in this necromantic legal thriller! Discredit your boss, solve murders, and reanimate your own corpse to keep your city from drying out.

https://www.choiceofgames.com/deathless-the-citys-thirst/

You won the God Wars, killing the rain god and taking over his desert city. But now the city needs water, and it’s your job to make it rain. As a rising associate at a god-killing public service conglomerate, you can monopolize your city’s public utilities, or fight to keep water affordable for everyone. Build alliances with powerful necromancers, or help local farmers hold onto their land. Find love, or betray your friends. Overcome the trauma you suffered in the God Wars. Prevent murders, or commit them.

"Deathless: The City's Thirst" is an interactive fantasy novel by Max Gladstone, where your choices control the story. It's entirely text-based—150,000 words and hundreds of choices long, without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

[honourablejester]

Based on your dead gods in the Astral Sea post (which I *love*), I’m wondering if you’ve read Max Gladstone’s work in the Craft Sequence? Not set in space, but the premise is that magicians and gods fought a war and magicians largely won, and harvesting dead gods for power and/or being a priest trying to nourish your badly wounded god are very much possibilities. The books are great, but if you want to dive into the world straight away, there are two interactive fiction games, Choice of the Deathless and Deathless: City’s Thirst, written by the same author for that universe. Would highly recommend!

I haven't! Thank you for the rec!

[whileiamdying]

Song of Myself (1892 version)

BY WALT WHITMAN

[…]

42

A call in the midst of the crowd, My own voice, orotund sweeping and final.

Come my children, Come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates, Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass’d his prelude on the reeds within.

Easily written loose-finger’d chords—I feel the thrum of your climax and close.

My head slues round on my neck, Music rolls, but not from the organ, Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine.

Ever the hard unsunk ground, Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever the air and the ceaseless tides, Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real, Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn’d thumb, that breath of itches and thirsts, Ever the vexer’s hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides and bring him forth, Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life, Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death.

Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking, To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning, Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going, Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving, A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming. This is the city and I am one of the citizens,

Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools, The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, stocks, stores, real estate and personal estate.

The little plentiful manikins skipping around in collars and tail’d coats, I am aware who they are, (they are positively not worms or fleas,) I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallowest is deathless with me, What I do and say the same waits for them, Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them.

I know perfectly well my own egotism, Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less, And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.

Not words of routine this song of mine, But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring; This printed and bound book—but the printer and the printing-office boy? The well-taken photographs—but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms? The black ship mail’d with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets—but the pluck of the captain and engineers? In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture—but the host and hostess, and the look out of their eyes? The sky up there—yet here or next door, or across the way? The saints and sages in history—but you yourself? Sermons, creeds, theology—but the fathomless human brain, And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?

[torpublishinggroup]

ICYMI—Max Gladstone revealed the cover of Dead Country, book one of his new Craft Wars trilogy, a series which will determine the fate of the fast-dealing world of ambitious lawyer-necromancers and deposed deities that so many fans have fallen in love with! 

😎 Check it out 😎

Discover the destiny of the Craft in Dead Country, the beginning of the end of Max Gladstone's beloved fantasy epic.

BOOK ONE OF THE CRAFT WARS TRILOGY

Since her village chased her out with pitchforks, Tara Abernathy has resurrected gods, pulled down monsters, averted wars, and saved a city, twice. She thought she'd left her dusty little hometown forever. But that was before her father died.

As she makes her way home to bury him, she finds a girl, as powerful and vulnerable and lost as she once was. Saving her from raiders, twisted by a remnant of the God Wars, who haunt the area, Tara changes the course of the world.

Max Gladstone's world of the Craft is a fantasy setting like no other. When Craftspeople rose up to kill the gods, they built corporate Concerns from their corpses and ushered in a world of rapacious capital. Those who work the Craft wield laws like knives and weave chains from starlight and soulstuff. Dead Country is the first book in the Craft Wars Trilogy, a tight sequence of novels that will bring the sprawling saga of the Craft to its end, and the perfect entry point for this incomparable world.

╔═══════ ❀•°❀°•❀ ══════ ❀•°❀°•❀ ═══════╝

Also Available by Max Gladstone

The Craft Sequence

Three Parts Dead

Two Serpents Rise

Full Fathom Five

Last First Snow

Four Roads Cross

The Ruin of Angels

Interactive Novels

Deathless: The City’s Thirst

Choice of the Deathless

Standalone Novels

Last Exit

Empress of Forever

This is How You Lose the Time War (with Amal El-Mohtar)

[probablylostrightnow]

You've given up on sleep. You've made too many mistakes, and your memory's too good—you keep making them again every time you close your eyes. Your hands don't shake, at least, and you're still strong. Your will won't let you weaken. The Wars took your sleep? Fine. They'll take your calm? Good. You're tougher than that. You're tougher than anything. 

[fooltofancy]

Can I ask you about like how IF works? I see you reblog a lot of them, and feel like I could get into them with some steering. But one thing I notice is that a lot of them are unfinished or at the demo stage, and I'd like to play something complete. Is there like a storefront or central hub to start to look to find them?

did they take away the option to answer asks privately or am i more blind than i thought i was? extremely possible. ANYWAY.

choice of games is/has been sort of the pioneering force/publishing entity for a lot of digital interactive fiction, but i've seen folks branching into itch.io platforms as well recently? itch has seemed, for me at least but very much speaking from a place of not remotely knowing what i'm doing with their platform at all whatsoever - a bit less accessible? but it's also the only platform i'm familiar with for self-published games.

as far as storefronts go cog games are available in most app stores, as well as steam.

[thedivinemissema]

faejilly

 “Last year I was trying to replay Choice of the Deathless to...”

Oh, I screwed up my Ashleigh romance last time, I was so sad. (did you do City's Thirst too? I am fumbling a replay of that atm)

City Thirst never quite grabs me in the same way, I guess mainly cause I just don’t care about the scorpionkind that much. Shrugs. But I have played it through a few times. I wound up with the reporter, Caspar once and that was a little disappointing.

But I am good at Ashleigh’s romance in Deathless. I always play it as a he, and manage to keep him from getting hurt. I live for his snarky comments on my apartment when before I go away with John Smith at the end of the game. 

I think canonically when Wakefield shows up in the books, they’re wearing the mask, but they survive. I forget which book they’re in though -- it’s the second one with Tara Abernathy, the one after Three Parts Dead.

[rockislandadultreads]

Sapphic Dark Fantasy: lesbian main characters & fascinating stories

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard

Fire burns bright and has a long memory…. Quiet, thoughtful princess Thanh was sent away as a hostage to the powerful faraway country of Ephteria as a child. Now she’s returned to her mother’s imperial court, haunted not only by memories of her first romance, but by worrying magical echoes of a fire that devastated Ephteria’s royal palace. Thanh’s new role as a diplomat places her once again in the path of her first love, the powerful and magnetic Eldris of Ephteria, who knows exactly what she wants: romance from Thanh and much more from Thanh’s home. Eldris won’t take no for an answer, on either front. But the fire that burned down one palace is tempting Thanh with the possibility of making her own dangerous decisions. Can Thanh find the freedom to shape her country’s fate—and her own?

Not Good for Maidens by Tori Bovalino

Lou never believed in superstitions or magic--until her teenage aunt Neela is kidnapped to the goblin market. The market is a place Lou has only read about--twisted streets, offerings of sweet fruits and incredible jewels. Everything--from the food and wares, to the goblins themselves--is a haunting temptation for any human who manages to find their way in. Determined to save Neela, Lou learns songs and spells and tricks that will help her navigate this dangerous world and slip past a goblin's defenses--but she only has three days to find Neela before the market disappears and her aunt becomes one of them forever. If she isn't careful, the market might just end up claiming her too.

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters — but is now little more than a decaying ruin. Priya is a maidservant, one among several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, so long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides. But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. The other is a priestess seeking to find her family. Together, they will change the fate of an empire.

Beyond the Ruby Veil by Mara Fitzgerald

Cunning and unapologetic, Emanuela Ragno is a socialite who plays by her own rules. In her most ambitious move yet, she’s about to marry Alessandro Morandi, her childhood best friend and the heir to the wealthiest house in Occhia. Emanuela doesn’t care that she and her groom are both gay, because she doesn’t want a love match. She wants power, and through Ale, she’ll have it all. But Emanuela has a secret that could shatter her plans. In her city of Occhia, the only source of water is the watercrea, a mysterious being who uses magic to make water from blood. When their first bruise-like omen appears on their skin, all Occhians must surrender themselves to the watercrea to be drained of life. Everyone throughout history has obeyed this law for the greater good. Everyone except Emanuela. She’s kept the tiny omen on her hip out of sight for years. When the watercrea exposes Emanuela during her wedding ceremony and takes her to be sacrificed, Emanuela fights back…and kills her. Before everyone in Occhia dies of thirst, Emanuela and Ale must travel through the mysterious, blood-red veil that surrounds their city to uncover the source of the watercrea’s power and save their people—no matter what it takes.

[notbecauseofvictories]

You know that Cupid and Psyche quote you just shared? To be eaten and to be married? What is up with that? Umm (SPOILERS ahead) if you've read The City We Became, one character thinks that exact same thought and like Harrow the Ninth, Gideon has that same thought. These characters wouldn't mind being quote unquote eaten by their love interests. And I get it and I also don't. Why is it soo horny? Since when did /that/ become an expression of desire? Is it an expression of desire?

“To be eaten and to be married to the god might not be so different.” from Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis

....I mean, there’s literal vorarephillia, but I don’t think that’s what C.S. Lewis was gesturing towards and definitely not what I mean when I throw around that quote. 

In fairness to Clive and I, hunger is a very old and broadly common expression of desire. Desire-as-hunger shows up in poetry from Ancient Egypt and in Emily Dickinson; Plato doesn’t distinguish between the two, saying that all appetites came from the epithumetikon. Desire-as-hunger is used to mock in Catullus 21, demonstrate passion unfulfilled in Swinburne, and Dante’s Inferno tortures the lustful and the gluttonous next to one another, since they are victims of the same urge. Whole theses have been written about food and hunger as literary shorthand for the erotic; hunting down every novel, poem, and song that uses hunger to talk about desire would be an insurmountable task. (Just recently Natalie Diaz crossed my dash: “I confuse instinct for desire---isn’t bite also touch?”). According to legend, desire even served as inspiration for the tortellini and the champagne coupe, as though to turn to the otherwise untouchable object of desire into something that can literally can be consumed. 

(Even Clive himself recognized the parallel, arguing that human cravings like hunger, thirst, and sexual desire seem satiable, why not longing for God?)

However, the specific longing to be consumed---as opposed to general hunger-as-desire---is rarer. More poetic. Closer to what St. Teresa of Avila experienced, with the “pain and glory joined together” of her visions, or what John Donne meant when he begged the three-person’d God to o'erthrow him. What Nietzsche envisioned about artistic sublimation into the Ur-Eine; what Fleabag gestured to when she wanted Hot Priest to tell her how to live and dress and what to like. Hozier, singing about “deathless death” and the power of open flames, his raw and bloody heart at the feet of his angel of the codeine scene.

It’s less literal hunger and more a longing to be overwhelmed and subsumed, consumed---emotionally, spiritually and aesthetically---by the object of your devotion. It gets elided into and twisted up with hunger for the same reason that all other desires do: to call a longing hunger expresses just how immediate and visceral your wanting is.

I don’t think it’s solely or natively Catholic, that’s just the context I’ve encountered it most. And in my experience, Catholicism offers a lot to work with---our primary rite is consumption of a god, in a ceremony where that god is simultaneously ghost, bread, life, water, father, king, unknowable mystery, and bridegroom whose lust "many waters cannot quench." It’s dizzying, the number of longings tangled together in that concept of god. The relationship between gets even weirder you add in early Christianity’s flirtation with Neoplatonism and the whole ecstatic Christian tradition---Teresa, and Hildegard and Catherine of Siena and Bernard of Clairvaux and more adherents to the medieval cult of Mary than you could count, all trying to shed their earthly sins and unite with the divine.  It’s a long tradition of mortification, self-abnegation and transcendence---the struggle to crawl out of your body into something else, and yet the general inability to express that longing outside of our native tongues of hunger, thirst, and desire.

(Like I said, I don’t think longing to be consumed and subsumed is a uniquely Catholic phenomenon, but it might explain why so many of us are Like This.)

Anyway, the result of all this is a literary and philosophical tradition which uses hunger to talk about sex, and sex to talk about god, and the glad oblivion of surrender to talk about love. There’s also a lot of power dynamics involved, so yes, everyone is very horny about all of it.

I’ll end with this: 

in the 80s, South African philosopher Marthinus Versfeld wrote a cookbook. It has no recipes. Instead, it is a meditation on food---and in one particular chapter, the divinity of eating. (It’s not so far from the burnt offering to the hearth, after all.) Versfeld suggests that eating is another way of knowing: when we turn raw matter into food we give it definition and endow it with meaning, make it a sacrifice or a meal and therefore part of our explicable world. Then we take that piece of the world into ourselves, and are united with it.

By that definition, the desire to be eaten is not just longing to be consumed, but also the longing to be named and known, to join with the beloved in their world. And in that sense, it might not be so different from marriage after all.

[interact-if]

hello! i don't think you've done it yet since i can't seem to find it but IFs with journalist ROs? <3

Hi Anon,

You are in luck, we found quite a few Journalist ROs!

Completed:

Chris from Brimstone Manor by Frances Pauli

Casper Jones from Deathless: The City's Thirst by Max Gladstone

The Hero Unmasked by Christopher Huang

Vicki from 180 Files: The Aegis Project by @scribble-games

Julien from The Eagle's Heir by Jo Graham and Amy Griswold

Demos:

Wesley from Hollowed Minds by @shai-manahan

Finley from Model Citizens Unmasked by Claire R.

Harper from Stars Arisen by Abigail C. Trevor

Calloway from Witches of Ferngroves by @witchesofferngrove

No Demos:

Jack Samson from Monte Rosa by @monterosa-if

Mina from The Harrowed and The Hushed by @lapinlunaire-games

[indielightuk]

Game Review: Choice of the Deathless

So this post, much like the Choice of the Vampire review, should have gone up a long time ago, but for some reason it was just missed and I only noticed when I went to share it with someone and realised it had never gone up. So first of apologies for that, and feel free to check out my interview with Jason Stevan Hill, the co-founder of Choice of Games, the company which published this game.

Choice of the Deathless, as well as it’s 2015 follow up Deathless: The City’s Thirst were both written by Max Gladstone, the Campbell Award-nominated author of the Three Parts Dead, which is itself part of the Craft Sequence. Both games he wrote for Choice of Games, are based in the Craft Sequence universe. If you’d like to learn more about Max, you can check out the link above, but I’m also hoping to interview the author as well so keep an eye out for that.

click here to read more

[shepherds-of-haven]

hi miss lena, do you have any cog wips or games to recomend?

Hi anon! And sure, I can give it a try, though it’s harder for me to recommend without knowing what games you already like! :) Also, I haven’t had much time to read many HG WIPs unfortunately, but I’ll attach another reading list at the bottom of this post that has a ton! 

On my list, ⭐ means I bet you’d like this if you like ShoH!

COG Recommendations:

Creme de la Creme (I have it downloaded but haven’t played yet--but I’m confident in the glowing reviews!)

The Fog Knows Your Name (really captures that IT/Stephen King/Stranger Things small-town vibe that I love)

Choice of Rebels: Uprising (fantastic world-building and complex fantasy, and lovely prose) ⭐

The Eagle’s Heir (loved the characters and the fantastical historical AU setting)

Saga of the North Wind (very epic, lots of choices! I always get a bad ending though lol 🙁)

Choice of the Deathless (and its sequel, Deathless: The City’s Thirst) (this is exactly the kind of fantasy world-building I enjoy and the author’s prose is a big inspiration to me)! ⭐

Choice of the Vampire (and its sequel: CoTV: Fall of Memphis)

Heart’s Choice Recommendations:

A Pirate’s Pleasure (I really enjoyed this one: beware, though, it’s female!MC-genderlocked with male ROs!)

Hosted Games Recommendations:

Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to read many of these in the last year, so my recommendations are the old standbys that I’m sure everyone knows about, like The Wayhaven Chronicles (no spoilers for Book 2 please :’)), Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, Community College Hero, or the Lost Heir. I read The War for the West when it was a WIP and really enjoyed it, and I’m excited to play Fallen Hero: Rebirth but need to be emotionally-ready for it lol!

Hosted Games WIP Recommendations:

The Seven Heirs of Ophaesia by @fantasyfawkes (fantasy/court intrigue)

Arcana of the Lost by @arcanaofthelost (dark fantasy)

A Thousand Miles of Sky by @athousandmilesofsky (space-frontier science fiction)

A Crack in the Spyglass by @ignifexgames (high fantasy)

Son of Satan: The Mortal Coil by @dae-kalina (urban modern fantasy/angels and religious mythology)

A Witch’s Curse by @rosemaryandsage (modern fantasy/witches)

God of the Red Mountain by @friendlybowlofsoup (Asian-inspired mythology/fantasy)

Ghost Simulator by Morton Newberry (modern cozy horror/fantasy)

If these aren’t enough for you to comb through, check out the master list of HG Tumblrs I assembled (that anyone can edit and add to of course) some time ago, and this amazing and detailed reading list made and written by the fantastic @feather-x-crown! 

Enjoy! :) 

[hpowellsmith]

what other choice of games titles would you recommend? :)

Disclaimer that there are A LOT that I haven't played! Also these only include published games because my to play list is outrageous already... But these are my top ten. I can do "if you liked X you might like Y" too!

* marks games which were made before all Choice of Games allowed you to play as non-binary or are otherwise gender-restricted

Asteroid Run: No Questions Asked: disclaimer that my wife made this game but I would love it no matter what! You're captain of a space freighter with a lovable hot mess of a crew (they are wonderful seriously) some of whom have Secrets. A sleazy corporate businessman is travelling with you transporting ... something ... and you need to keep your ship intact on a dangerous journey. The romance in this is gorgeous and there's just so much spooky space tension.

A Study in Steampunk*: fantasy Sherlock Holmes, with a boatload of angst and incredible love interests. Such a huge variety of stories, and they interweave amazingly so replaying is so much fun. This one is restricted to a male MC, there is a male love interest though.

Choice of the Deathless*: you are a demon lawyer (are you a lawyer for demons? or a lawyer who is demonic? Answer: yes) and solve cases for demons and gods using wits and creepy magic. Maybe you'll make partner. Maybe you'll get turned into a skeleton. Based in the Craft Sequence world by Max Gladstone, the books in which you should absolutely read.

The City's Thirst*: another Craft Sequence game starring a different demonic lawyer with magic-and-war-related PTSD. This one is tenser and more bleak, wonderfully written and with no right answers.

Stronghold: A Hero's Fate: build a settlement, perform negotiations, and make a life for yourself. It takes place after a big epic fantasy situation, showing what happens after the enemy has been defeated. And you get to romance various disaster friends (you can do polyamorous romances too!)

Cannonfire Concerto: prance across countries as a travelling musician on your grand tour poking into local and national politics and getting in trouble. Gorgeous worldbuilding and excellent bardic absurdity with a serious story at its core.

Heart of the House: playing this is like sinking into a bath scattered with rose petals while a thunderstorm rages outside. It's just beautiful. You're a tormented occultist who's travelled to a mysterious mansion (with your lovely, crushing-on-you business partner) to rescue your vanished uncle and get embroiled into INTENSE SPOOKINESS. The romances are On Point and are on the steamier end of Choice of Games content. Absolutely great.

Tally Ho: if you've somehow played Crème de la Crème and not Tally Ho, do I have a treat for you. You're servant to a bumbling aristocrat ala Jeeves and Wooster and visit their aunt for a summer weekend. Hilarity ensues! This one skips along with giggles on every page. Please play it immediately.

Weyrwood: in a Regency inspired setting, you're heir to a lovely property. Unfortunately, the village in which it's situated is in a sinister pact with the Fae. How are you to make an eligible marriage and attend all the soirées while dealing with fae horrors?

Sixth Grade Detective: to make some extra money, you start a detective agency helping out the other kids at school! This is really cute, with middle grade mystery/adventure vibes and some adorable romance to go with it.