New ChoiceBeat!

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for! (Well, some of us have, anyway.) Issue 11 of ChoiceBeat has arrived!

In this issue, I look back to the early days of CoG with a review of their ninth-ever game, To the City of the Clouds. It’s completely free to play, but if you don’t feel like waiting twenty minutes after each chapter, you can purchase the game for 40% off using the included coupon. There’s also an interview with the author, Catherine Bailey, in which she discusses how she used her own experiences as a student of archaeology to bring the game to life.

While I was playing a game set in the world of academia, Matt Griffin (aka @Mifga) was reading an academic text about games, specifically The History and Allure of Interactive Visual Novels, and he has written a detailed review for this issue. And although this issue came very close to not having a flowchart, Matt stepped up at the last minute and created one for us because flowcharts are cool (and so is he).

You can also read about Twine games by Slovakian schoolchildren, gamebooks on DVD, and Michael Crichton’s adaptation of one of his novels as a graphic adventure. Or if you’d rather play a game than read about one, Chest Butlerhome has created an exclusive game for ChoiceBeat readers called Monkey Car, in which you find yourself in a car driven by a monkey - and then things start to get weird.

We all had a great time working on this issue. We hope you’ll check it out!

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This one (Deep Dark Wood) was featured in Spring Thing 2024. Big hint, if you want your stuff to be featured in future issues, please consider submitting to a major comp or jam (IF Comp, Spring Thing etc).

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This was great! I’m adding ComputerFriend, Echoing Sky, To the City of Clouds and The Boy in the Book to my reading list. ComputerFriend in particular sounds like the delightful kind of sci-fi weird that I love.

Monkey Car was certainly a ride! Ending up living in virtual reality thanks to my not-so-fabulous monkey friend was not the worst ending I could have gotten?

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Hooray, thank you for contributing and sharing!

I enjoyed reading The Boy in the Book, and saw a talk from the author some years ago where he talked about how he created the live show and the experiences that led to writing the book.

Going to have a read through the rest when I’ve got a bit more time!

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Computerfriend is really great!! I second the recommendation. Kit’s work is really fun (and confronting) to read. Also the mini-sequel is really neat!

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