Well, it’s that day we’ve all been waiting for with bated breath: the latest issue of ChoiceBeat is ready for you to read!
If you’re a Paul Wang fan (and let’s be real, is anyone not a Paul Wang fan?), you’ll want to read an extensive interview where he talks about his prolific career writing games for CoG and HC, what he’s working on now, and how his study of history informs his work, no matter how fantastical or futuristic the setting. And if you really aren’t a Paul Wang fan yet, you might appreciate my review of his Fledgling Realms series, along with a pair of coupons you can use if you’d like to hang out with a hero in Kendrickstone or consort with cryptkeepers in Hallowford.
If you’re a regular reader of ChoiceBeat, you’ve probably noticed there is usually at least one review of a game that sounds like something dreamed up by those idea-generating manatees from that one South Park episode, but with the manatees tripping on acid. In this issue, we are blessed with several such games. There’s Laugh Track, in which you’re employed by an eldritch hivemind to write a teen sitcom. There’s Cat President, in which you are a campaign manager for a cat who is running for president. (I wonder if the developers have ever played Congresswolf?) And then there’s Dirk the Dictionary, a game with a premise so exciting that I immediately clicked over to itch.io to play it: it’s a game about a pair of gay anthropomorphic animals who fall in love while editing terrible ad copy. You play by helping them find errors. Bad puns abound. Be still my heart.
There’s also a news item about Consider the Consequences, the first known gamebook (now in the public domain) being published in German (as Consider the Choices). There are a couple of bracketed asides in which my editor sums up some infodumping I did about the publishing industry.
Plus, there’s a flowchart. Flowcharts are cool.
Especially the Paul interview, but the whole thing is good.