We’ve got quite a variety of new interactive games to report on this month – there’s surely something for everybody in this interesting and diverse selection!
Trap for Winners
A sci-fi interactive narrative featuring tabletop elements, Trap for Winners is the forthcoming title currently in development from Prime Games (developer of Hwarang and Kumiho, Transomnia, and the Dust and Salt adventures). An adaptation of the gamebook by the same name released in 1997 by the innovative Bulgarian author Michael Mindcrime, Trap for Winners looks set to deliver another richly detailed, text-based adventure from this impressive independent game studio – this time within a new and exciting universe.
The fate of a conquered alien world is in YOUR hands. Investigate the strange events around the war between Earth and the alien planet Dorya as you seek a balance between your military forces’ prestige and your popularity amongst the people of the conquered world. Play a mini-board game on randomly generated tiled terrain during missions, encountering 5 levels of difficulty with a checkpoint system for both casual and hardcore players.
Players will also discover 12 full-colour illustrations within the game, based on motifs found in the original gamebook’s black & white artwork created by Ivaylo Ivanchev.
Trap for Winners will be available for PC and mobile in English, Bulgarian and Russian later this year. You can learn more about all of the currently available Prime Games interactive adventures at their website.
Midnight Arcade: Excellent Ernesto Cousins 3 / Wrestlevania
The second book of the Midnight Arcade play-your-way adventure series is now available for purchase. Written by Gabe Soria, and featuring illustrations by Kendall Hale, Excellent Ernesto Cousins 3 / Wrestlevania will see players encountering a haunted arcade on a deserted boardwalk.
During a late-night stroll on your boring summer beach vacation, you discover a derelict video arcade managed by a ghostly attendant. Presented with a magical game token, you select one of two games you wish to play, the Excellent Ernesto Cousins 3 or Wrestlevania. Once you place the token in the slot, you have to make choices to advance through the games, and your decisions control whether you beat the game – or die.
Both games feature unique challenges and life-like game play that will delight readers, and the most important choice in either game for those now trapped inside them, is the one that will keep them alive.
Head to the Penguin Random House website for more information about the Midnight Arcade series.
The Sword of the Bastard Elf
Sam Iacob’s ludicrously lengthy adventure The Sword of the Bastard Elf has finally been released! Featuring more than 350,000 words (1825 sections!) and more than 100 original illustrations (it also includes an illustration by fantasy art legend Tony Hough), this epic tome additionally incorporates a beer and pretzels RPG for a ‘Dungeon Bastard’ and up to four players (including an introductory scenario), providing the opportunity to pretend to loiter around Bilgeton and the surrounding lands.
You are a half-elf kicked out of home into an uncaring, violent and funny fantasy world. You have to find a place to crash – will you claw your way back into your family home, find your real father, become insanely wealthy and famous or die in a hole some place? It’s up to you!
You can get the PDF, black & white or full-colour hardcover versions from DriveThruRPG along with a deck of item cards (in card or book form), or purchase the b&w softcover version from Amazon (US / UK). Note that a smaller ‘Travel Edition’ will also be released very shortly, featuring just the main adventure (not the RPG content) in a much more compact and less weighty form.
Choice of Games
A couple of new releases of interest from Choice of Games this month: Choice of Magics and DinoKnights.
Choice of Magics is a 550,000-word interactive, post-apocalyptic fantasy novel by Kevin Gold.
Thousands of years ago, the ancients destroyed civilization with five schools of magic. Each spell comes at a terrible price. Glamor charms your adversaries, rotting your body from the inside. Divination reveals faraway secrets, exposing your own secrets to others. Automation gives objects the spark of life, destabilizing the climate. Vivomancy can heal or change living things, with bizarre side effects. Blast your enemies with Negation energy, forming permanent clouds of deadly fallout.
As a young scrounger of antiquities, you hope to build your ruined world anew with these rediscovered spells. Now you must decide which of these magics can transform your post-apocalyptic society, and what you’ll risk to bring hope and light to your kinsmen.
Can you bring the world back from ruin and shape a new society? Use your magics well, and you could become as a god; use your magics poorly and destroy the world all over again.
DinoKnights is a 177,000-word interactive novel by KT Bryski, set in a world of golden grasses, rolling mountains, blistering summers – and dinosaurs!
Saddle up to defend the realm on dino-back! Once a humble farmer’s child, you’ve been accepted into Queen Isobel’s Rangers: brave knights who patrol the kingdom of Pascalia on scaly beasts. But just as you receive your own dino and begin your career as a knight-ranger, you discover evil forces are converging to destroy the Queen, and Pascalia itself.
Enemies and terrifying foes surround you: but whom should you fear most? The Dread Wizard Sargossa, raising an army of un-dead dragons, or an enemy much closer to the court—the Queen’s own sister, Ermessen? And what about your burgeoning talent for magic? Will you hone your powers to save your village and fight Sargossa? With a dinosaur at your side and sword in hand—the realm’s fate rests on you!
Choose one of six different dinosaurs as your steed, including allosaurus, triceratops, and velociraptor!
Choice of Magics and DinoKnights are now available for Steam, Android and iOS. Visit the Choice of Games website for further details or to play a portion of the game for FREE.
Graphic Novel Adventures – Season #1
Van Ryder Games, publishers of the Graphic Novel Adventures series of comic-gamebooks now has all 5 books available for sale via their online store. Captive, Tears of a Goddess, Loup Garou, Your Town, and Sherlock Holmes: Four Investigations can be purchased individually or as a boxed set housed within an exclusive illustrated slipcase.
Additionally, Van Ryder Games now has FREE double-sided colour bookmarks available to download and print from their website, featuring the Character Sheet artwork for each book. All other game materials are also available to download as PDF files – allowing you to keep your new books in good condition, clear of any gameplay marks.
A further 5 titles for a second series have also recently been announced, including the superhero adventure Mystery; two more Sherlock Holmes books; and Pirates, a 2-part kid-friendly series where you travel to a mysterious island in search of an escaped prisoner.
Visit the Van Ryder Games website for more information.
Warlock of Firetop Mountain: Goblin Scourge Edition
Tin Man Games’ acclaimed, tabletop-inspired RPG adventure is coming to the Switch handheld console and will launch on the Nintendo eShop on September 13th. Warlock of Firetop Mountain: Goblin Scourge Edition will be released complete with all existing DLC and will include over a dozen unlockable hero characters. Each character comes with a unique miniature, with both story and combat unfolding in different ways. Different narrative options will unlock and you’ll enjoy the strategic challenge of a fresh set of attacks and abilities with each hero you play as.
This special Goblin Scourge Edition features three additional adventurers whose stories are intricately woven into the Goblin Scourge – explore the dangerous caverns and uncover the mysteries of Scarclaw’s evil minions. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain will also allow you to play as one of Zagor’s evil minions – Slime Beast, Giant Rat, Skeleton Warrior and more – in a combat-heavy, story-light ‘Gauntlet’ game mode. Battle your way deep into the mountain, striving to earn as many Souls as possible in a single dungeon run!
Warlock of Firetop Mountain: Goblin Scourge Edition is now available for digital pre-order at a 20% price reduction.
Also, please remember, if you have any interesting gamebook-related news that should be featured here on GBN, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us by using the contact form on our SUBMIT NEWS page! We may have an army of dark minions lurking in all corners of the interweb gathering the latest news, however, plenty of great stuff still manages to completely pass us by. We’re here to promote projects by spreading the word and discussing the genre, so don’t be shy to let us know about any new or upcoming interactive fiction.
Hello.
Do you Know if the The Sword of the Bastard Elf pdf has hyperlinks?
Thanks.
Yes, it does feature hyperlinks.