New Hosted Game! "Diamant Rose" by Teo Kuusela

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Diamonds are pouring out through the Iron Curtain, but somebody talked – your entire spy ring is either dead or disavowed. Everything ties back to what happened a decade prior in Africa, and you have to find out where it ends. The mission isn’t over.

Diamant Rose is a 87,000 word interactive cold war novel by Teo Kuusela, 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.

• Experience an exciting romp through the deadly world of espionage!
• Play the part of a French intelligence agent.
• Evade enemies, find old friends, manipulate those closest to your targets.
• Shut down a major operation funneling Soviet diamonds past the Iron Curtain.
• Will you focus on revenge, or redemption? Your future depends on your actions.

Teo Kuusela developed this game using ChoiceScript, a simple programming language for writing multiple-choice interactive novels like these. Writing games with ChoiceScript is easy and fun, even for authors with no programming experience. Write your own game and Hosted Games will publish it for you, giving you a share of the revenue your game produces.

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Question: Is this game meant to be on Steam?

The reason I ask is that the HG page shows a Steam Link…but the link doesn’t lead to anywhere.

Looks like that has been corrected. No mention of Steam that I can see.

I am popping my head in to make sure I have a presence in the thread. If you have bought Diamant Rose, prepare to receive your virtual hug from me within 24 hours*.
As always feel free to tag me, ask questions, prod about bugs, all those totally awesome post-release things. Now who’s for some champagne?

*Terms and conditions may apply

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I’m reporting for my hug.

I’m not too far yet, but it might be a good idea to note in the marketing blurb what kind of character you can be. I was a little hesitant at first since I couldn’t tell if this was gender locked (for anyone else, it is not - there are male/female/nb options).

I like the redactions in the stat screen.

I won’t have anything more substantive to say until I get further with it this evening, but I do like the writing and the atmosphere so far.

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I am a bit disappointed that your titles are not on Steam. I’ll still support you as always but it will take me longer. Thank you for your hard work and creative writing as always.

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Well, with this I’m relieved it hasn’t gone up on Steam. I’d say it’s far too short for it. Best of Us is on there and was blasted for being too short and railroady.

Otherwise, well… You might see Lords of Aswick up there eventually.

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I am a bit confused. Was it your choice not to put it on Steam, or that of CoG? And if the latter, was it because it wa too short or was there another reason?

The decision is in the hands of HG and in regards to Steam they have to obviously prioritize titles that will do as well as possible due to limited uploads that valve has for some asinine reason placed on IF… while allowing all kinds of thrash through otherwise.

Had the decision been in my hands, I would not have wanted Diamant Rose on Steam. That crowd calls even some of the longer titles too short or not deep enough, so Diamant Rose would have likely been crucified. That’s just my feeling on the matter though, I have no hard data and this is by no means the official explanation from HG’s part.
I could likely ask if I found the decision abhorrent somehow but to me it’s fairly common sense, so I won’t.

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As a note, I try to not discuss why games do, and do not go up on Steam mostly because I don’t want to pull apart the worst aspects of a game on the authors. I’m happy to talk about it with any author the wants to email me about it, but I know some authors don’t want someone to go back over a game and say “hey, this is why this is all the problems with it and why it will have commercial difficulties” to them.

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I picked this up from the iTunes store the other day when I saw it. Although I’m thoroughly preoccupied by games where I’m disappointing my father while cross-dressing and cavorting with fairies, tossing random things into cauldrons to make other things, getting run over by cars, looting dungeons while dying horribly, guiding robots about, bars, robot unicorns, and trying to get to Earth… that not all the same game, I promise that I’ll give this a play through or two this week.

Oh when it comes to spies, I’m way more of a fan of George Smiley than James Bond thus I will be drinking a rather unassuming cup of tea while you enjoy your champagne.

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Why choose? Bond has been my jam since I was 13, but Le Carre’s more dry and realistic take on spycraft still has a lot to recommend it.

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More of an advanced warning that if there’s anything Bond-style that I feedback negatively, it should be taken with a grain of salt due a dry and realistic preference.

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The story’s about as dry as a martini.

I tried to balance Fleming and Le Carré influences, so I hope you enjoy it despite the fact there’s very few scenes of the MC doing paperwork.

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That’s alright as MC is a field agent thus I expect there to be not a lot of paper work opportunities. I’ve read through Chapter 1 so far, so this is mostly a few fist impressions-

I like that MC is not part of the British secret services as this will just have me (and possibly other people) comparing it unfairly to Fleming, Le Carré, the tv show Spooks/MI-5 and everything else in the British spy genre for better or worse. Leaving the British out removes some of temptation (for me at least) to be making those comparisons.

You clearly had this proof read as I haven’t run into any blatant spelling and grammar issues, which I say as someone who is a chat support representative at their job and a former software tester thus can be hyper aware of these things and finds them distracting. gives you a gold star

If I was to nitpick about anything at the moment, it would be the American having a dossier on MC laying about because even the so-called “friends” shouldn’t be leaving things laying about that you can pick up and know just how much they do know about you. However it doesn’t matter that even James Bond (who I consider the poster child for being a bad spy) wouldn’t do that because maybe the fact that this American does things like leave dossiers laying about then acts all casual about it when MC does look at it is precisely why he is being assigned to work with a low ranking French agent and not someone badass that would eat him alive (figuratively) for it. Yep, I’m dismissing this as a non-issue.

I found stats to be interesting. After seeing the best option come up each time, I redid the first chapter see what would happen if you selected that each time to find that this will result in a 0% in disguises and limit the choice options on gadgets. I’m glad that you cannot be the best at everything. After redoing chapter 1 again to put answers back to what they were originally thus my stats are currently:
Combat 50%, Disguises 80%, Driving 50%, Talking 70%

Unfortunately it’s been a busy night so I don’t have time to go any further, but I have no regrets over buying this.
If the rest of the game is up to par with the first chapter, I’ll definitely be getting Lords of Aswick at some point.

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