Spring has not yet sprung … but ChoiceBeat is here to help you beat the winter blues. (Or to help you stay cool, if it’s summer in your neck of the woods.) There’s so much ChoiceScript content in this issue that there’s actually a special shoutout to all of us on the second page.
If you’re in the mood to reminisce about your favorite games and perhaps discover some new ones, check out three fans’ personal ChoiceScript game Top Ten Lists. ChoiceBeat editor Andi Hagen, aspiring game writer @Mifga, and I have each written a few lines about the games that we chose and what makes them so special.
If you’d rather plunge right into a good story, check out my review of one of Hosted Games’ bestselling series, Thom Baylay’s Evertree Saga, an ambitious fantasy quest steeped in mystery and phenomenal worldbuilding. There’s even a coupon for the first game in the series, Evertree Inn, if the review whets your appetite for exploration.
And to celebrate the release of the latest installment of Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, I secured an interview with author Jim Dattilo. If you’re wondering what it was like publishing through all three ChoiceScript imprints, what’s he’s working on next, or whom he wants on his side when the zombie apocalypse hits, it’s all here!
And if that’s not enough for you, there’s also a section of short fantasy RPG reviews that made me switch over to Steam in the middle of copyediting to add The Guiding Spirit to my wish list, and what is by far the coolest letter ever to appear in our Mailbag section.
We each had so much fun forming, battling over, and writing about our lists of ChoiceScript interactive novels. It was an impossible challenge to reduce to 10 each — my actual favorites list was 30 long until the the last possible moment. I committed the minor crime of trimming down to Choice of Games imprint only, when I had five Heart’s Choice and five Hosted Games in the final battle. @AletheiaKnights and I talked briefly about doing the same thing next issue, but all Heart’s Choice as well, but our editor in chief might finally remind us that ChoiceBeat loves all forms of narrative games and visual novels …. and we aren’t an all-CSG-all-the-time pub. (I think we both are pitching more CSG interviews/articles next issue anyway.)
I also committed a writerly crime (well, more than one). And Aletheia sums it up nicely here:
Yup, I had these egregious run-on sentences with all of these parentheticals and such for each of my ten …because I really wanted to write capsule interviews of each like I did for the Videotome community in this issue. (And because i don’t have massive choicescript review series like she has here on the forums!) But then the editors started making my 3 sentences-in-name-only-maybe into paragraphs, and our very generous editor-in-chief let me keep a little more for a lot of these entries. (But Aletheia might not forgive me because she iterated her entries down to 3 convincingly non-frankensteined good sentences each.)
But I confess to my crimes, and my crimes are the result of too much love for this amazing creator community here writing in ChoiceScript!
(also, Aletheia’s interview with @JimD is so great!)
Also know im always lurking, we’re still working on wwu3 and am easily summonable via message or @ 
