Announcing: The Ascent of the Gothic Tower

A new StoryBundle launched this morning with a selection of books about video games that I’m sure you will find interesting.

Included in the bundle is a sub-bundle of text adventures by me, Ryan Veeder. Included in that sub-bundle is a brand-new game exclusive to StoryBundle, The Ascent of the Gothic Tower.

That’s only the most exciting part, though. You’ll also receive:

  • a new tutorial game I wrote, So, You’ve Never Played a Text Adventure Before, Huh?
  • lightly updated versions of The Statue Got Me High, Nautilisia, and Wrenlaw
  • an ebook of my collection of extremely scary stories, “MOTORCYCLUS” And Other Extremely Scary Stories
  • several cool books by other people, who are not me

You can pay whatever you want for the whole thing, but if you pay $12 or more you’ll unlock a book about EarthBound that looks really cool.

That link again is STORYBUNDLE DOT COM.

Nice! Purchased.

This looks awesome, and I plan to purchase after this weekend. I’m guessing the text adventures are just part of the bundle, or have they been gimmicked to play on a tablet (like in iFrotz?)

They have not been so gimmicked, sorry. I’m pretty sure iFrotz can’t handle the Glulx-only Gothic Tower anyway.

There’s a nice HTML interface for desktop play though! Well, I like to think it’s nice.

iFrotz might be able to, because it handles vanilla Glulx perfectly.

I am only interested in playing the new games, though, I don’t even care about the books. Please enlighten me - whatever I decide to pay, the barest minimum will entitle me to your game and tutorial?

Yes. You’ll even be able to download my IF suite without having to download any of the books. If “MOTORCYCLUS” does happen to show up on your computer, though, I’d advise you against trying to delete it—you’ll only make it angry.

Brill. :smiley: And I’ll then tell you whether iFrotz can handle it, just so you know. For your general information, iFrotz can currently handle vanilla Glulx without any hitches (unless a room has an accented character in its name, in which case it freezes). It doesn’t play any sounds yet, but does display images - however, if you’re displaying them mid-text (as opposed to having a separate window for them), they often obscure the text.

And hyperlinks are buggy as all getout.

An update! I have inside information saying that the bundle is doing very well. Thanks very much to those who purchased it!

To those who haven’t: The bundle will only be available for another 3 days and 6 hours! I say this not out of a selfish desire to sell more units, but as a purely altruistic caution against your missing out on these books and games. I don’t know what you’d do with yourself if you let this opportunity pass you by.