The new issue of ChoiceBeat is out! As always, it’s full of news, reviews, and articles about interactive fiction and visual novels, but this issue should prove especially exciting for CoG fans, with two author interviews! I interviewed Aaron Reed, author of Hollywood Visionary, and @Mifga interviewed Joey Jones, author of Lies Under Ice. If the interviews inspire you to check out the games, there’s a generous coupon included for each!
Plus, there’s a flowchart. Flowcharts are cool.
Just so you know: The hyperlink to the Alice Cooper quiz is currently leading nowhere because a “z” is missing at the end. I’m only mentioning it because, for a second, I was distraught over the thought that it was already gone.
Amazing, thank you for sharing!
I loved reading the review of and interview with Aaron Reed about Hollywood Visionary, which was one of the first CoG games I played when I got back into playing them. I liked this quote:
I think one constant you do see in the book [50 Years of Text Games] is that the games that end up becoming beloved and canonical are written by people who got passionate about telling a quirky little interactive story and didn’t care how big the audience for it was going to be. […] write what you love, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, people who love it back will find it.
So lovely to hear from Joey about Lies Under Ice too, and all the rest! I always enjoy reading ChoiceBeat because it does deep dives into things I know I like - like work from from Hanako Games - as well as things I just didn’t know I wanted to read about. I think I’m going to chill out and reread a bunch of back issues!
This time we do have things that I hope the CoG community will be familiar with, and those that will hopefully get them to explore what’s outside of it, and the general IF community:
What I’m predicting for Q2 2024:
Thank you and Keep up the good work!
I can’t call myself a veteran yet, after only one year since my very first post, but I hope this will inspire and encourage others to follow in their, and in my, footsteps.
I’m so excited about this issue, and even though I contributed the @jojo interview (so have a vested interest) you can trust me because I’m also a ChoiceBeat superfan, and have read most of the issues cover to cover. Because there is consistently strange and interesting stuff to discover here in each issue!
Also, in true ChoiceScript fashion, the interview with Joey Jones originally weighed in originally as a 18k wordcount monster, with thousands of words just on Sub Rosa as well (a brilliant parser IF gem). We had so much fun we are now creating an extended (like 12kwc?) fully interactive version … as a ChoiceScript project “full of very strange and unexpected things,” for SpringThing 2024. So there shall be at least two choicescript projects! If anything to remind people how awesome choicescript is, and what approaches to storytelling it enables.
(And ours also teaches how / cheerleads you to write choicescript games, has a different more conversational flow than the zine article, and a bunch of design/structural discussions/best practices. So, a lot of the actual audience for this is right here in this forum!)
If this sounds remotely interesting, please pester me into living up to this public commitment to delivering our odd odd interactive experience. if anything so you can all experience the full interview with Joey’s insights from tackling interactive fiction in Inform 7, ChoiceScript, Twine, Tracery (for the twitter art bots), and more! I learned a lot from this discussion and want to share it on!
It’s exciting to see our conversation about Lies Under Ice appear in digital print, and I really enjoyed the Hollywood Visionary interview (I’ve mentioned before here that it was a sort of structural inspiration for LUI- taking on a big project with different ways of doing it).
I played quite a bit of one of the Pixel Pulp games (I think it was Mothmen 1966) at a previous AdventureX. They make for an interesting model of commercial narrative games: focusing on more frequent shorter experiences with a strong visual style.
Yeah, I was disappointed that I had to cut the “Joey’s inspirations” section which has lovely things to say about Hollywood Visionary. That is back in the “full” version.
Please do, it sounds like loads of fun!
Yes, do, I want to see the bits about Hollywood Visionary!
Aaron Reed’s Hollywood Visionary is one of the games that I often reread; there are many arcs within that inspire, the characters are developed throughout the story and the intersection of history, Hollywood myth and iconic references always satisfy.
Thank you for bringing this interview to us, @AletheiaKnights!
your message was passed on (by @AletheiaKnights ) and fixed! try again, though you likely already used your fix to get the quiz 