JUNE ROUND-UP: new and upcoming

This month’s extensive round-up includes a choice selection of recently released and upcoming titles, covering sci-fi, horror, fantasy and cyberpunk – in print and digital formats.

 

You Are Deadpool

All five issues of Marvel’s unique interactive adventure YOU ARE DEADPOOL, have now been released. Written by Al Ewing with art by Salva Espin (issues 1, 3 & 5) and Paco Diaz (issues 2 & 4), this limited miniseries has received many favourable reviews.

DID YOU EVER WANT TO BE DEADPOOL??? Now’s your chance! This series is not JUST the most amazing comic book you’ve ever read…it’s also a role-playing adventure! YOU decide what choices Deadpool makes!

YOU ARE DEADPOOL is available from your local comics retailer, from Marvel’s website (print and digital) or from the digital comics service ComiXology.

 

Tunnels & Trolls Adventures: City of Terrors

One of Tunnels & Trolls’ most iconic and beloved adventures, City of Terrors, has now been remastered for MetaArcade‘s Tunnels & Trolls Adventures app.

City of Terrors was originally published in summer of 1978. It was the largest T&T adventure ever published at the time, and still stands as an historic achievement on many fronts. This magnum opus from Mike Stackpole was massive: over 20 different adventures were available for characters to partake in just by walking the streets of the city. The work was so large it required the manifold talents of both Liz Danforth and Robin Carver to fully illustrate it in its glory.

The adventure introduced us to an entirely new part of Trollworld: the tropical island of Phoron and its flagship City of Gull, which evokes shades of Sanctuary from Thieves’ World and Fritz Lieber’s Lankhmar. Players could encounter legendary NPCs like Marek the Master Rogue and Mingor Diamondfist who are now firmly established in Trollworld lore. You might thwart the invasion of an orc army, encounter slavers and alien invaders, and might even come up close and personal with two different deities.

Paul Movitz of the crack MetaArcade content team has brought Gull to life as a key part of the Crown of Klade adventure arc. The plot threads which have persisted since Mistywood, Road to Gull, Sewers of Oblivion and more start to lead to an ‘ultimate’ resolution. But to see it all through to its epic conclusion, you’ll have to wait for our next adventure!

City of Terrors is now available to purchase for 50 gems (US$5), and as always, you can try it for FREE by simply watching an ad. The Tunnels & Trolls Adventures app is available on iOS and Android. Further information about the app and its many games can be found at MetaArcade’s blog.

 

Project Hyrax: Beyond Time

MidnightOwl Studios have recently released their immersive, time-travelling game Project Hyrax: Beyond Time. This suspenseful sci-fi adventure will require you to read and interpret messages, making decisions ranging from the simplest to the most important, life-threatening actions. It’s an engaging and thrilling experience in which the story plays out in real time, containing different pathways and featuring many outcomes.

A scientist has to travel back in time to search for his father, who’s lost in a prehistoric period due to a failed time experiment – you must help him. He needs to venture deep into a primeval jungle to complete his mission. Is this just another search and rescue mission, or is there something else going on in this ancient world?

The Project Hyrax: Beyond Time app is available on iOS and Android. Further information can be found at the developer’s website.

 

Star Wars – Choose Your Destiny: A Han & Chewie Adventure

This new Choose Your Destiny series for younger readers from Disney Lucasfilm Press was recently launched, beginning with A Han & Chewie Adventure.

Jump inside the Millennium Falcon and help Han and Chewie as they journey across the galaxy on a simple smuggling job. But nothing is ever simple with Han Solo, and when things go wrong, Han pretends to be Jabba the Hutt to save himself, Chewie, and the Millennium Falcon.

Choose Your Destiny: A Han & Chewie Adventure can be purchased from online retailers such as Amazon (US and UK) and Book Depository. Also, author Cavan Scott and artist Elsa Charretier are featured in an interview on StarWars.com, talking about the development of the project and their personal experiences with interactive fiction.

 

Lone Wolf: The Realm of Sommerlund

Fans of the Lone Wolf gamebooks, and of Joe Dever’s world of Magnamund, may find plenty to interest them in The Realm of Sommerlund from Cubicle 7, the latest detailed resource for the Lone Wolf Adventure Game.

In this exhaustive setting guide you’ll find a detailed history of this most essential region of the Lone Wolf world. You’ll discover detailed city maps for seven of Sommerlund’s greatest cities, with hundreds of locations to explore. Beyond the cities, you’ll find detailed gazetteers for the provinces that make up the home of the proud Sommlending people.

With additional details on the Sommlending army and navy, the royal family, Kai monasteries, the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star, Druids and Darklords, the calendar of Sommerlund and much, much more, this book contains the most complete and up-to-date body of information about Sommerlund, the heart of Joe Dever’s incredible Lone Wolf setting, ever published!

The ancestral home of the Kai Order is described in great detail, presenting Sommerlund’s geography and history, its people, flora and fauna. Written by Joe Dever, Vincent Lazzari, August Hahn and Darren Pearce, The Realm of Sommerlund provides a wealth of valuable information, bringing Sommerlund to life for any fan of the Lone Wolf series.

Available in both hardcover and pdf, The Realm of Sommerlund contains details never previously revealed, making it a definitive guide to the Kingdom of the Sun. Further information and purchasing details regarding Cubicle 7’s range of Lone Wolf Adventure Game products can be found at their website, or you can head directly to DriveThruRPG to download the pdf.

 

Choice of Games: Rent-a-Vice

Rent-a-Vice is a 150,000-word interactive cyberpunk-noir mystery novel by Natalia Theodoridou. You play as a private investigator with a bad habit, an ex, and mountains of debt-troubles so deep that you stand to lose custody of your child. When a mysterious client asks for your help finding their missing lover in the seamy world of virtual experience, it’s up to you to gather evidence, experience the technology for yourself, and solve the case.

What doesn’t kill you…kills someone else, and leads you down an ethical rabbit hole. In the near future, paying users can rent the “virtual experiences” of other people. These “feeders” sublet their own bodies, at the risk of their own lives, so that customers can safely enjoy extreme, potentially self-destructive vices, like binge eating, cliff diving, or worse.

Rent-a-Vice is a mature game about life and death, containing dark themes and difficult, personal choices. Now available for Steam, Android, and on iOS in the Choice of Games Omnibus app, you can also play the first three chapters of the game online for FREE. Visit the Choice of Games website for further details.

 

Blackout

Mini Chimera Game Studio currently has a small preview of its upcoming dark-themed game Blackout for FREE download on itch.io, containing the first chapter (from a total of 10). Influenced by White Wolf’s World of Darkness, H.P. Lovecraft and weird shows like Twin Peaks, Blackout is a game about choices, with the story changing markedly based on the choices you make – play it a second time to see exactly how much choice is available.

You’ve been a part of something terrible, something so unspeakable that it made you blackout and forget the events of the past few days. Now you are faced with the choice of going after the truth, facing the shadows that hide within our world, or trying to forget by leaving all of this behind. 

Maybe it’s not too late to turn back.

Available from itch.io for Windows, macOS, and Linux, you can also read more about Blackout at the developer’s website.

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