Hello, all! The issue of ChoiceBeat: The Visual Novel and Interactive Fiction Zine has arrived. Lots of variety for all sorts of narrative game players/creators in here.
Thank you for reading. I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions!!!
Fledgling Realms – An interview with Paul Wang, the prolific ChoiceScript author behind The Hero of Kendrickstone, Sabres of Infinity, Hunter: The Reckoning – A Time of Monsters, Mecha Ace, and more
Cat President: 3rd-Rate Candidate – Breaking news! Real cats run for president!
Loom – A magical, musical graphic adventure adventure by the legendary LucasArts
Kinetic Reportage – Visual Novels as documentaries
Laugh Track – Create your own horror-world of oppression disguised as a teen sitcom
Dirk the Dictionary – Can’t get enough gay furry visual novels
Keep Driving – The source of our vibe-filled cover art this issue
Thanks for the issue. I especially liked the Kinetic Reportage section, and the nswengine feature. There are currently two listings for games made with nswengine on IFDB, and this actually got me to play one of them: A House Once Envied, A House Once Cursed, which uses the geographical features in an interesting manner. I was surprised that the creator of nswengine has deleted all their accounts, and the engine, too. But it does look like there’s a backup of the engine on Itch. The backup says the original was under the MIT License, so the creator is hopefully OK with it.
For those just looking at the thread who may not have seen the magazine issue: nswengine literalizes navigation between passages. Each passage is a literal room and each choice is associated with one of the four cardinal directions. There are no variables, but you can create strange non-Euclidean structures to guide the player’s travel through the rooms of your game. Minimalist, but in an interesting way.
