Diabolical — Rule the world as a criminal mastermind!

We’re proud to announce that Diabolical, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for Steam, iOS, and Android. It’s 25% off until November 13th.

Start practicing your evil laugh! As the world’s greatest criminal mastermind, choose a lair, hire a minion, and steal the world’s largest ball of aluminum foil! (Or, destroy the world. FINE.)

“Diabolical” is a 130,000-word interactive novel by Nick Aires, 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.

Famous, feared, or filthy rich–why not all three? You’ve got the money and the motives to build an evil empire worthy of the most ruthless villain the world has ever seen. Crush the good guys and terrorize the populace! Stamp a big red “FAIL” on your enemies’ foreheads! Plunder your way to world domination–or sit back and pet your kitty while your henchmen do it for you.

Will you be a high-tech daredevil, a ruthless military soldier, or an apparition terrifying to behold? What calling card will you leave at the scene of your crimes? Whatever your choices, the results will be diabolical.

  • Play a villainous story of scheming, grandstanding, and laughing evilly.
  • Interview and hire the best possible (or best available) minion.
  • Decide when to use trickery, when to use force, and when to hide behind henchmen.
  • Choose the ultimate, guaranteed-to-be-infamous nickname.
  • Play as male or female, with straight, gay, and bisexual romance options.
  • Destroy the world!

We need your support to continue delivering our games on Steam. Our goal is to release our entire catalog of interactive novels on Steam. Based on the extraordinary performance of Choice of Robots and Champion of the Gods, both which made it onto Steam’s front page this year, Valve has allowed us to ship a handful of additional games. We’ll need to continue to deliver outstanding results to prove that interactive fiction can be successful on Steam.

We’re asking all of our fans to follow us on Steam. Even if you don’t use Steam that much, it will be a big help if you sign up to follow us there, because the more followers we get, the better visibility we get on Steam’s curator list. (Our goal is to hit 3,000 followers for our Steam curation page; we’re about 80% of the way there as I write this!)

When you follow us, you’ll see our games and our recommended games right on your Steam home page. It’s free, and it’s a big help to us, so follow us today!

We hope you enjoy playing Diabolical. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, 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.

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Wow guys I loved this game!, very much so.
It was everything a COG should be. You got a 5 star review from me on appstore!

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I bought my copy on Android, gave it a 5 star rating, and shared it on Google +.

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Destroyed the world! :grin: Good game.

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The fact that you can turn a corn maze into popcorn sums up my feelings about this game perfectly.

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Played the demo, loved it! I was planning on being a Doctor Doom like style villain but looks like Doctor Actrious beat me to you so I went for a Scarecrow style bad guy. Liked the parallels with HYDRA and Maria Hill with Minotaur and the Deputy Director especially. So I’ll likely grab the full game and try this out.

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My biggest regret?

I wish a person was able to resurrect both the Countess and Steelheart at the end, not just one.

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What a glorious day this is! I have been waiting for a supervillain cog game to be made and its finally happened!

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Yes, the world shall known the evil power behind the name… Mister Doctor…

Hahaha ha!
Hahaha ha ha!
Hahaha-cough

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Daaaaamnnnnn! This was such a great game and I gave it a 5 star rating on Google Play and will definitely share this game with my friends! A solid 5/5
MWHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA the world shall me mine…ALL MINE!!!( Yes I did practice that laugh for 2 hours straight. No shade) :grin:

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So… I like that you can choose how murderous you are, from zero to eleven. I like the concept and the style, but having played only the demo hasn’t really shown me much about how much your choices actually matter. I changed a bunch of stats, but other than that my choices only seemed to change the news report about the initial bank robbery. The description mentions minions as if they’re a major feature, but in the demo they are mostly just there as window dressing for the combat character. Do you ever get to go more in depth with them?

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Am I the only one who was put off my the whole all of sudden I have a space station and me and the Count (though it seems like a lot of you got Countess) are super close for some reason? I was like whhaaaat? And felt robbed because up till then the game had been really fun. Not perfect but fun.

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Yeah, that was a bit weird for me as well. However the writing is delightful therefore I do not mind.

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I couldn’t get over it x/, but I guess that’s just my burden to bear.

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My favorite part is when you get to cover the gold with chocolate and left it for the Minotuar guys. It’s just so funny to me idk why. I imagine my character leaving them a note that say ‘Well, it seems like you guys are chocoLATE’.

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That was amazing. I was as theatrical as possible, nothing like burying the bad guy under mountains of popcorn, or projecting comedy films onto the moon. Bittersweet ending though, sadface.

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So are all these cool things things you can do or things you have to do through the course of the game?

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It’s basically responses to different situations. So say you get confronted by a do-gooder, you can do something practical like shoot them immediately, try and be clever and manipulate them or go dastardly whiplash and leap out the window to the 1812 overture cursing ‘meddling kids.’

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Well, I got it on Steam. I’m a bit disappointed. It felt like most of the choices you made had only superficial consequences, assuming there was any difference at all, and the few that were longer lasting still were untimately not all that significant. On the other hand it was well written and entertaining, and cheap. Pretty worthwhile on a single playthrough, but the lack of replayability is a shame for such a short game.

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Oh, I loved some of the more whimsical options! At one point I laughed so hard I spit Pepsi all over my keyboard. So yes, the game was great fun.

I wish there had been an epilogue, but that was probably a time constraint issue. Would love to read more from this writer.

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