Tag Archives: romance
Black Closet
Hanako Games’ latest is a time-management game in which the student council at a posh girl’s school acts as a detective force, solving mysteries, intervening in conflicts between students, and preserving the school’s reputation. You play Elsa Jackson, student body president, … Continue reading
Naming and NPCsity
Last post discussed player-directed – or, at least, not directly author-mandated – naming for individual player characters. But there’s another important use-case: naming lots of characters, using generated names. The Simple End of Things Creepy narrative block-puzzler Road Not Taken has a town populated by … Continue reading
Best NPCs 2013 (a much-belated set of XYZZY Award Reviews)
As part of running the XYZZY Awards (announcement on that soon, I swear), for the past few years I’ve organised focused reviews of the finalists in each category, drawing on the rich pool of critics and reviewers in the IF world. … Continue reading
Shooting the Moon
So omigod you guys I am totally pashing on Shooting the Moon. It’s a three-player story-oriented RPG, usually but not necessarily romance-oriented. It’s #2 in the storygame trilogy Three Quick Games about the Human Heart, by Emily Care Boss: game #1, Breaking the … Continue reading
CYOA structure: Tween Romance
Choose Your Own Adventure books (the series, not the medium) typically had the same kind of hero: a white American pre-teen, somewhat gender-ambiguous but tending towards male-default, engaged upon some variant of a Boy’s Adventure. This wasn’t totally inflexible — … Continue reading
the effect of salacious troubadours on the state of Denmark
You know how it goes: you’re the nineteen-year-old daughter of the Duke of Crete, you’ve been married off to the bastard son of the King of Denmark, and you’re pregnant with your second child. Everyone else in the court is … Continue reading
