Category: Blog

Games fetishize heroes. Traditionally, games devote their attention to the Hero and the details of their epic quest. We players, bloodhounds slavering for plot, fixate on this Hero. We tear into them, inhabit them, and through their agency, we exert change on an authored world. Killing is often involved. (The bloodhound metaphor still holds.) * […]

The nomination period for the 2019 Hugo awards is well underway, and those of us at sub-Q thought it might be helpful if we made a little post about our eligibility as a magazine. So: 1. sub-Q Magazine is eligible for the Best Semiprozine award. (We have a high enough circulation and we pay contributors.) […]

One question we commonly get when we invite people to write things for sub-Q is some variation on: What the heck is Interactive Fiction? And—let’s be real—it’s a pretty good question. Searching Google for “what is interactive fiction” brings up lots of results; people have written whole books on the question. (If you want a […]

One of the things I always found enjoyable about writing parser fiction was writing room descriptions. It’s a very specific craft, and one that’s pretty unique to interactive fiction and game writing. In most fiction, it’s relatively rare that you can indulge in this kind of descriptive detail at length; parser games, on the other […]

This month’s issue is all about LOVE. First up, though: heads up. We’re doing something differently with early access for our Patreon supporters and on-site subscribers. We’re committed to paying our authors for their work, and we’re hoping this helps us do that more sustainably. If you’re not currently a subscriber and can’t afford to […]

Welcome to 2019! I’m thrilled to have a regular column in sub-Q and get the chance to write about interactive fiction. For my previous essays at the site, I’ve largely written about games from a slightly earlier period of the development of interactive fiction, from the late 90s to the mid-2000s, a period in which […]

Laura De Stefani is an All round artist who loves drawing on any support, sculpting and modelling. She likes to travel and go to game-jams. You can follow here here: https://twitter.com/Odris_Den, https://www.instagram.com/odris_den/, https://odris-den.itch.io/. Laura is the author of our cover art/game for February’s issue, “Fill the Void.” This interview was conducted via e-mail in January […]

Olivia C Dunlap is the author of “Pretend You Love Each Other,” the first-place game from our first subQjam. Olivia is a writer, programmer, and game developer from Little Rock, Arkansas. She’s a co-founder of Little Rock Games and has a portfolio that includes interactive fiction, tabletop games, and other digital interactives. She’s always got […]

Tai Jia Xuan is currently a Creative Writing student in Singapore, and the author of “at 3am, I didn’t think of you,” one of our February games. She just really likes interactive fiction, and hopes to continue exploring more. You can find her idling at @nuaxaij. This interview was conducted via e-mail in January of […]

The first time I took up a pencil and underlined a sentence in a novel, my hands shook. The line winked at me cheekily, sat smug and brazen under the typography. Outrageous and provocative, it wanted its own label: Marks in a Novel Biswas (2012) Graphite on Paper It chuckled. One did not write in […]

Grim Curio is a writer, developer, and classicist from upstate New York, and the author of “Unmaking, Unmade,” one of our February games. She is passionate about archaeology and the uncanny, and can be found on Twitter at @grimoirtua. This interview was conducted via e-mail in January of 2019. sub-Q Magazine: Our theme for 2018 […]

Olivia Wood works as a writer, editor and narrative designer, both freelance and for Failbetter Games (Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies). She has written for the award-winning narrative game Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, and is working on the next game of the BAFTA-nominated studio, the Pixel Hunt. This interview was conducted via […]

Holly Schofield travels through time at the rate of one second per second. Her short stories have appeared in Analog, Lightspeed, Escape Pod, and many other publications throughout the world. She hopes to save the world through science fiction and homegrown heritage tomatoes. Find her at

Wow, so. 2019, huh? We have a lot of fun things planned for this year–including the winning entries from our first ever game jam, and two new original pieces to join them in February, a few additional non-fiction columns every month, and the possibility of issue-wide cover art too. But before we get all starry-eyed […]