Unleash diabolical magic in the time of Napoleon and Robespierre! Can you direct the course of the Revolution, or will you lose your head? Support the republic, save the king, or seize control yourself. How far will you go to get what you want?
Revolution Diabolique is a 400,000+ word interactive novel by Chris Conley, author of Machinations: Fog of War. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
Will you support the monarchy, nobility, peasantry, radical revolutionaries, or only yourself? Can you build a more impressive home than Versailles, lead a political faction to take control of the national government, or conquer your way to victory in the army? Add demonic forces to the Revolutionary Army and bring the Revolution to every corner of Europe, or betray it for your own aims. Found demonology as a new scientific discipline, launch a new cult centered around demons, or simply conduct your experiments in secret.
- Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, bi, ace, or poly.
- Restore the monarchy, defend the republic, or push for even more radical reforms.
- Engage in political machinations, military campaigns, public service, researching demon magic, or prosecuting a personal feud.
- Identify and bind various demons, with different strengths, weaknesses, abilities, and needs.
- With dozens of different endings, there’s always something new to discover.
Through it all, you must decide what you’re willing to sacrifice to secure power and make the changes you want to see in the world: your friends, your reputation, or even your own humanity.
You can catch up on the existing WIP thread here!
Directions for beta testing:
Email us, beta AT choiceofgames for access. (This changed several months ago, so take note if you haven’t beta tested in a while.)
Do not send DMs/PMs through the forum mail system, Discord, text message, carrier pigeon, or any other method than email.
When you send your EMAIL, include:
- the game you want to test in the Subject line of the email.
- your forum-name
- your real name (first and last)
- if your family/surname comes first, please indicate that. I will assume that your given name is listed first unless you tell me otherwise.
Do not email us multiple times about joining a beta. If you don’t email us as soon as we post a beta, you go into a queue. As we post new drafts, we admit more people from the queue. Eventually, we will get to you. When you have been admitted to the beta, we will send you a link, a username, and a password as a reply to your email.
When you have feedback to submit:
- Return feedback to beta@choiceofgames, preferably part of the same email thread/chain, rather than a new one.
- Please send screenshots or copy/pasted quotes as often as you can; it helps us track down whatever observation you’re making. In particular, the author may see things that you don’t, and/or the screenshot may contain more information than you realize.
- If you’re submitting feedback using the Bug/Submit button in the game, make sure you include your handle/name in the body of the email. The Submit button obscures your email address, and I can’t give you credit for feedback if I don’t know who you are.
DO NOT POST ASKING WHAT THE BETA EMAIL ADDRESS IS. The first test to becoming a beta tester is inferring what it is based on the above paragraph.
Lastly, you cannot be testing two games at once. Send feedback on one and you can apply to another.
Tips on How to Give Feedback
I’m looking for “high level” and “low level” feedback. Not mid-level feedback.
Low-level = typos and continuity errors. A continuity error is when a character’s gender flips, or someone comes back from the dead, or you run into a plotline that just doesn’t make sense (because it’s probably a coding error).
For these low-level issues, screenshots are very helpful. If you see a problem, take a screenshot, or copy and paste the text that is in error, and email that.
“High level” feedback has to do with things like plot, pacing, and characters. “Scene A didn’t work for me because x, y, and z,” is useful feedback. “B character was entirely unsympathetic, because u, w, and v,” is also useful feedback.
“Mid-level” feedback describes things like grammar, style, word choice, or the use of commas. As I said above, I do not want mid-level feedback. In particular, DO NOT WRITE TO ME ABOUT COMMAS.
“I had a great time and saw only a few spelling errors,” is not useful feedback. In fact, it’s the sort of thing that results in you not being given access to future betas.
Some examples of useful feedback :
In Choice of the Dragon, you get to choose what type of wings you have: leather or scaled. Someone wrote in and asked about having feathered wings. Great suggestion! Done!
In “The Eagle’s Heir,” someone asked about Eugenie. They said that the romance moved too quickly–because she only appeared in the last third of the game–and wished they could have had an opportunity to meet her earlier. So the authors added an opportunity to meet her and start the romance earlier in the game (in a scene that already existed).
In “Demon Mark: A Russian Saga” several people commented on how the PC’s parents were unsympathetic, so the authors added a choice or two to deepen the relationship with the parents in the first chapter, to help better establish their characters.
Similarly, pointing out a specific choice and saying, “this is who I imagined my character was at this particular moment, and none of these options seemed right for me. I would have liked an option to do X instead,” is also really helpful feedback.
Another useful piece of feedback: if you choose an #option and then the results of that #option don’t make sense. Like, if you thought an #option might test one stat, but it seems to have tested a different one.