Itch has been so dry lately, and every time I come back here to see all the new updates I think there’s been a dozen new recommendations only to find this 
Can we please keep this on topic?
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Updated:
Anything for the Crown (Chapter 4)
New Demos:
A Body Made for You
The Night Library
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A stranger things WIP came out on Halloween. I think the prologue is very promising.
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Lol sorry about that
@sunny_graves you might like this game .Forever Gold by Dan & LS. I can’t say on story because honestly I’ve only skimmed but design wise it has to be one of the best looking twine games I’ve seen. It reminds me more of a visual novel . It has images , music if not mistaken etc they have only released one episode so far of the game .
Forever Gold is a text-heavy dark fantasy roleplaying game. Assume the life of Duke Quintrell Barghur, a pariah of high birth, and grapple with your unlikely rise to political relevancy as the thriving alliance between Vestur’s three kingdoms comes under strain. Achieve, fail, and despair as you navigate the frustrations of the Tri-Kingdom court and negotiate precarious double-binds.
Halfway between visual novel and interactive fiction, Forever Gold is a unique multimedia experience incorporating artwork and writing with RPG mechanics such as skill systems, dice rolls, and lasting narrative decisions. It is intended for mature audiences.
EDIT : hands down one of the most accessible twine games too most of these games aren’t optimized for mobile . The game lets you change colors,resize text etc.
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Here are some more recs . I didn’t even know you could make games like this in twine. The first is cyoa strategy type game.
1)Seedship
You are the AI controlling a ship filled with 1000 cryogenically-frozen colonists, the last survivors of the human race. Your task is to find a suitable planet to be humanity’s new home.
Push your luck: do you settle on a not-quite-ideal planet, or keep searching and risk your ship being damaged on the journey? The planets you are encounter are randomly generated, and as you travel you encounter random events, so each playthrough is different. See the stories of the colonies you found, and keep trying for a higher score.
2)Zorlock
Zorlok is an interactive fiction game following the bizarre misadventures of a demon with no memories and the nerdy high schooler they’re bound to serve. Uncover mysteries and cause mayhem in this dark comedy about monsters, found family, personal identity, and the line between good and evil.
The setting and story are inspired by campy horror movies, classic murder mysteries, and an old Monster of the Week campaign. The first demo release was on May 13th, 2022. The most recent update was on May 13th, 2025 and included the first part of episode 1. The next update will likely be in August or September.
Edit. I find more I include but twine games seem to have a large rate of abandonment. I see so many that don’t make it past the first chapter .
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Agree for most people (there are exceptions for the more popular games), writing “paid" or “ad supported” is 100% in the category of a hobby with benefits. (Especially HG). You’d earn far more working a minimum wage job. It’s not in the same category as a professional company turning out games, it’s more akin to people writing books to put on Amazon. Making some money out of it helps justify some of the time and resources put into it (it takes me a lot more time to get something published with HG than my completely free itch games), but from a job point of view, it’s not economically viable. Games not on steam don’t get professionally edited, and authors would make a big loss paying to have it done themselves. It basically does come down to read the demo and vote with your wallet.
@Qianyixia386 Have you not read seedship? It’s great and has been around for ages. It was one of the inspirations behind dragon chronicles (one of my WIPs). I’d show that to you but it went down with dashingdons and I haven’t gotten around to putting it back up, so yes, it is possible to make a similar game style in CS (with significant coding fluffing around) as well.
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@Jacic not yet . I just discovered it today on itch while looking around . I’m surprised it’s my first time and that the game was so popular in the app store . I haven’t played it yet . I was just kind of browsed through the game . I continue to be shocked on how developers on itch push the capabilities of twine to its limit . I saw one twine game that literally had narration I struggle to find it and another where the entire game was in comic book format . I feel like one thing that helps twine vs cog games is the games have an individualized look . I played a twine game that had an RPG turn based combat . It was a pokemon game and you used Pikachu to attack. It was a short game and is on itch .
My actual first interactive fiction game was Magium ( r.i.p to the author ).Magium had a set protagonist ( I like this alot better for story based games) and his own personality ( again something I like more for story based games).
Lol I actually discovered choice of games through magium because to be honest this company doesn’t seem to advertise anywhere . For instance I’ve seen ads for magium , torn and other text based games but never for any cog games at all anywhere . The only reason I even discovered the site was Magium . I was looking for a space where ppl were talking about magium and the cog thread popped up. Along with the subreddit .
Curious @Jacic is cog games better than the other interactive companies when it comes to royalties because doing research it feels like I could make more money doing it myself . One thing I see is alot of these companies no matter how big they are don’t seem to have a good model for advertising their games . The advertising is like the only reason I would seek them out and alot of them are terrible at advertising . Also all these companies ignore advertising ion reddit despite so many indie games going viral on reddit . Almost every indie game I know about comes through reddit advertising .
Speaking on magium if anyone here was a fan . Ppl are using the notes the authors mother and brother gave them to continue the game and make a fourth book.
I don’t know how far along they have gotten there is a group doing this in the subreddit for the game .
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“Push the capabilities” is the word here. I mean I did make a seedship-ish game in CS, and it is possible, but it’s not the best format for it. If you were going to make something from scratch and have the coding ability there are better suited coding systems.
With respect, that’s debatable. It comes down to exposure. COG has a built in audience and gives exposure to games that would likely never see the light of day otherwise. 100% of very few downloads is still worse than a much smaller percentage of a far higher number of sales. If you have a strong audience already (like a successful patreon) then it may be worth going solo, for most it is not. It is extremely hard and requires a good dose of luck in most cases to “get a game to go viral”. There are no real competitors for HG for publishing paid games at present. (Try getting traction on a game you’re selling on itch and then come back and tell me about how it went.)
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When you say competitors you mean interactive fiction ? You don’t consider choices ,episodes,delight games ,romance club competition for hosted games . Because these are the type of companies I was referring to. I don’t even think them and cog are in the same league audience wise . Three of them have apps with more than 10 million downloads and romance club is like at 50 million .
So I wasn’t even considering cog. My game will have graphics , voice acting and slight animation with cut scenes . I don’t think it’s even in the same style of games it’s very much interactive fiction but games similar to mine I see a ton of them in the steam store very popular versus text only story games .
My game would have more in common with a visual novel but actually have more game play mechanics like a jrpg . I think full text based games definitely have a hard time selling. What I wanted to do is prototype the game mechanics in full text format I was gonna use choice script but twine is so much better for this and apparently I can easily redo it in unity .
My inspiration is more like suzerain, disco Elysium , tell tale games . The final product would have art , and be very cinematic it would not be fully text based. I feel like full text games have a way harder time finding an audience than graphical games out of the companies I listed choices of games is the only one that does full text .
No real competion for people wanting to publish games on a storefront. Not that they’re only company out there publishing IF. From what I’ve heard, you’re likely to do very poorly with episodes as a writer unless you get a breakout hit or are an employee (and that’s if you want to work for a company with that style of monetization and shallow choice structure). Delight games is a private company that I couldn’t write for as I’m not employed by them. I don’t know what romance club is. There’s a big difference between a company earning a lot of money, and individual games by single authors getting any kind of decent exposure/earning potential. Places like episodes contract companies to make games based on big names like “mean girls” and others.
I wish you luck with pubishing. It is possible to do well solo, but most just don’t get the exposure and fall to the bottom of the pile quickly where they go unseen regardless of the coding format used. Doesn’t matter how good your game is if no one sees it, and you can throw a lot of money at advertising that doesn’t stick. What you’re suggesting sounds very expensive to make unless you can do all the writing, coding, editing, art, and sales promotion yourself. (And then you really should factor in your work hours unless this is just a passion project.) COG is sticking to its niche of text games quite deliberately so they are not having to go up against the big guns. (There is a thread where they explained why they’re not going down the telltale/VN route if you search for it… and telltale went out of business so there is that as well.) I suggest asking around intfiction forums for a broader feel on IF and commercial prospects outside of the COG sphere which is what you’re going to find here.
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Hi! I just made an account here but I’ve been lurking for a while because I really like a lot of CoG/HG games. I’m also co-author of an IF that’s on itch ! It’s a WIP of about 103k so far. It’s a science fantasy where you play as the newly elected leader of a fledgling Caribbean-inspired democracy.
Here’s the tumblr masterpost with more info: Play the Demo! (Updated 9/15/2025) (Prologue through Chapter 2) – @pro-patria-mori-if on Tumblr
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Can someone please split the discussion off into it’s own thread? This thread is for recommendations.
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Perhaps my answer is too late, but have you seen parser-based games? They are quite specific, but modern ones have quite interesting and flexible mechanics. Although I personally don’t like them, so I can’t recommend something. 
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I actually played parser games and like them. The only issue is I don’t like how specific the word sets is to move around it makes game play annoying as hell .
I can’t lie my first time playing a parser I exited the screen after typing in my commands multiple times and not getting anywhere. I was so annoyed it didn’t help they don’t really leave any instructions on the old school versions of these games .
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This thread has become very meandering so it’s difficult to split off the posts neatly, but in the interest of keeping the forum tidy and threads on topic please feel free to create a new thread for discussing parser or other varieties of IF (or for indie/mobile game chat, of which there’s a fair bit of overlap, there’s also the general Video Games thread). This thread is for recommendations rather than general discussion/complaints.
Thanks.
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Sorry for late respond, it’s been taken over by Allie the writer of CTOS and merry crisis
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Hey here is a game recommendation by Autumn Chen she seems to have alot of viral games . Her most popular game being Social Democracy : An Alternate History. It’s a political simulator where you play as the social Democrats in Germany and try to stop the NSDAP from taking over . It uses a new game engine called dendry Nexus it was suppose to be a game engine similar to story Nexus so you could create fallen London type games in this engine .
Another more story based game by her
The Archivist and the Revolution (The Archivist and the Revolution by Autumn Chen) it is a slice-of-life/romance/history simulator set in a far-future sealed city that has undergone cycles of destruction and revival. You play as Em, a middle-aged woman who is no longer an archivist, as she struggles with rent payments, chronic illness, and the remnants of past relationships.
Both games are fairly short with around 30 minutes -1 hour tops in length.
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Updated IF list w/ word count (when available), chapter #, & description
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About time