Jei D. Marcade’s “That Night at Henry’s Place” takes on horror movie tropes as you search for a missing friend at a party that’s getting out of hand. In Astrid Dalmady’s “Night Guard / Morning Star,” you must hunt down a vanished painting–and the truth about your relationship with your mother. Last–but certainly not least!–Elizabeth Smyth’s “Zoinks!” asks one of life’s fundamental questions: Can you get away with it, in spite of those meddling kids? (And their mangy mutt, too.)

We’ll round out the issue with essays from Anya Johanna DeNiro and Sharang Biswas, and “I Found You First,” our festive, seasonally appropriate cover art by Laura De Stefani.

This is our last issue for 2019–phew! 2020 is going to be a little different. For one thing, we’re going to be switching to a non-profit organization. To support that goal, and to make sure that sub-Q is sustainable for the long term, we’ll be running a subscription drive some time in the summer.

One important impact of that on 2020 is that for now, we don’t have an open subscription period planned. That’s because the three issues planned for the year (February, April, and June/July) either already have content or will be special cases. February will include the winners of our 2019 subQjam (which you can join now on itch.io!) alongside a game by Ken Liu and one other guest author. The June/July issue will be our subscription drive issue.

A little bit more about that: Rather than a Kickstarter-style fundraiser where success is measured in dollar amounts, we’re hoping to gain enough subscribers to keep the magazine going without having to run a fundraiser every year.

The success of the drive will affect how the rest of 2020 looks in terms of what and how much we publish and how much we can afford to pay for it. We’ll have more news in early 2020, but the short version is that we can’t keep running the magazine without help from our readers.

All told, we’ll need just over 260 annual subscribers (or a similar number of monthly ones) to stay in the game at our current level. Currently our numbers are about a factor of ten lower than that, so if you want to help us meet our goals you can get a head start by signing up for our Patreon or subscribing on the website today. Doing so will also mean you get to see our special issue as soon as it’s available–instead of only if we reach our funding goal.

(Note, though, that we still haven’t become a transition at this point, so donations and subscriptions are not tax deductible quite yet!).

Of course, if we hit our goal before June/July, well… that means we’ll just stay open for business as usual, probably with an open submission period early in the year.

The post December 2019 table of contents appeared first on sub-Q Magazine.

This story is set in the same universe as “With Those We Love Alive,” and while you don’t need to have played that one to enjoy this, doing so might increase your enjoyment. If you want to give it a whirl, fetch a pen or other writing implement and head on over to Porpentine’s website (Go ahead! We’ll wait!).

October also brings an excellent complement of essays by Sharang Biswas and Anya Johanna DeNiro, and our lovely cover art from Laura De Stefani.

In other news, our 2019 game jam is coming up fast! We’ll post an announcement in November with information about our two guest authors (spoiler: they are both fantastic and I wish I had a chance to share a table of contents with them!) and the year’s theme will be announced when the jam opens to entries on November 15th.

You can sign up now and learn more about the jam on our itch.io jam page.

The post October 2019 Table of Contents appeared first on sub-Q Magazine.

These things—along with memorable characters and unusual settings—are some of the things that always make me stay up late reading.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the two games in this month’s issue also have these things in common. In Eleanor Hingley’s “A Tragedy of Manners,” you’re thrown into the perilous atmosphere of a dinner party on the private planet of Lord Cephus Alikarn, the brother of the Emprex of the Luminous Empyrean. In “War is a Mazed Garden” by Nin Harris, you must escape from the Governor’s lush—and deadly—garden maze in time to let your fellow insurrectionists inside.

Will you tarry in a floating gazebo? Make a faux pas with your dinner fork? Tease secrets from a mechanical bird? Make friends or enemies? Play on and find out!

Our issue cover art, “Peer Pressure” by Laura De Stefani, is an apt imagining of a perilous dinner party setting, and rounding out our issue are essays on how actions define humanity in games and outside them (by Sharang Biswas), twenty top pieces of IF (by Anya Johanna deNiro), and how dialogue interacts with player choice (by Bruno Dias).

Hard to believe, but it’s already August! What does the rest of the year have in store?

We received over 30 submissions during our June/July window, and are processing those now. Coming up in our October issue, we’ll have a new piece of interactive fiction by Charity Porpentine that’s set in the world of “With Those We Love Alive,” and our second annual game jam is starting in November. Keep an eye out!

The post August 2019 Table of Contents appeared first on sub-Q Magazine.

Our games this month both consider a similar theme. In “Dead Lake Crossing,” by Hannah Powell-Smith, you travel across a wasteland at an ancestor’s behest, and “Replay” by Robert Dawson puts you in control of a device that gives you endless do-overs–but at what cost? Our cover, “Not Again!” by Laura de Stefani, portrays another all-too-relatable experience.

In our essays, Sharang Biswas examines the control (or lack thereof) authors have over their published work in “Dukes and Dumbledore: Truth and Canonicity in Stories.” We will also have an essay from Anya Johanna deNiro, on a topic to be announced shortly.

As a reminder: Patreon supporters and on-site subscribers get early access to all our content on the first of the month. We’re committed to paying our authors for their work, and subscriptions help us do that in a more sustainable fashion. We’re also committed to making great works of interactive fiction available to the public, so if you’re not a subscriber you’ll still be able to access all our content starting on the 15th of the month.

In mid-July, we’ll be running an original Twitter-based piece of Interactive Fiction from Nin Harris, with the same setting as her recent story “Dreams Strung like Pearls Between War and Peace”. (We’ll also archive the piece on our website after it’s run its course, if you want to check out paths that weren’t followed in our play-through, or if you don’t have Twitter.) This is something new for us, and we hope it will be an interesting experience for everyone involved, so keep an eye out for more news about that.

We hope you enjoy our games, essays, and art, and don’t forget to return to us in August for another issue!

The post June 19 Table of Contents appeared first on sub-Q Magazine.

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 be, don’t sweat it: you’ll still be able to access the full issue (for free) on February 14th.

Now, on to the fun stuff. This month we’re publishing seven different games with seven very different takes on our favourite four-letter word—from the familial to the romantic and the complicated to the wistful.

All our authors this month submitted their games to our first game jam (or its accompanying proposal submission window), or were invited to write for the issue with the same constraints: each entry had to contain 1000 words or fewer, and had to be on the theme (generally speaking) of love. We received a great bunch of entries from all around, and were thrilled with the range and diversity of the submissions.

In addition, we solicited two original works, one from Olivia Wood and one from Cassandra Khaw and James Persaud.

We’re really excited to bring you the games we selected:
Cheaper than Therapy, by Olivia Wood

BaoBao, by Cass Khaw & James Persaud

Pretend You Love Each Other, by Olivia C Dunlap

The Vector III’s Potluck Signup Sheet, by Holly Schofield

Unmaking, Unmade, by Grim Curio

at 3am, I didn’t think of you, by Tai Jia Xuan

(What does love mean? Read our interviews with the February issue authors to find out!)

Some other changes we’ll have this year are regular cover art and more non-fiction.

Our cover art is from artist and game designer Laura De Stefani, and is titled “Fill the Void.” Some of you may recognize it as also being an entry from our subQjam. All of our staff loved Laura’s lush visual style so much we just had to have more. So throughout the year, we’ll be publishing either a piece of art from Laura or a piece of interactive art like “Fill the Void” front and center!

Finally, each issue will also feature essays by Sharang Biswas, Anya Johanna DeNiro, and Bruno Dias. Every two months, they’ll bring you insights and opinions on a number of things related to creating, consuming, and thinking about games and interactive fiction. Be sure to check back regularly for those!

As you can see, even though we’re publishing fewer issues we have a lot in store for 2019. Want to be a part of it? Watch out for our next submission period, which will be some time in March—more details to come on that when we have them.

In the meantime, we hope you all love the games and essays we’re publishing this month as much as we do. Let us know what your favourites are on Twitter, Facebook, or Discord.

The post February 2019 Table of Contents appeared first on sub-Q Magazine.

This month on the 18th, we’ll be bringing you “Thanks for the Memories,” an original sci-fi piece from author and game writer Erin Roberts.

On the 25th, we’ll feature a guest interview with Erin, where she talks about her process for the game and IF in general.

And of course, next Tuesday, the 11th, will be our regular column from Bruno on Making Interactive Fiction, this time on the topic of anthology games. (New to that term? Check out Ryan Veeder’s Tales from Castle Balderstone, which took 1st place in the Grand Guignol category of this year’s EctoComp.)

February Issue Invited Authors

In other exciting news, I’m pleased to be able to reveal our invited authors for the #subQjam February issue!

Joining the two completed pieces of IF we select from our itch.io-hosted game jam, and the two proposals we select from our Submittable queue will be an original piece from Olivia Wood and another from Cassandra Khaw and James Persaud.

Read on to learn more about our intrepid contributors!

Olivia Wood works as an editor and writer 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.

She was selected by BAFTA in 2017 as a Breakthrough Brit. Olivia works with clients to create narrative designs with strong story arcs and writes character-driven stories that marry human relationships to fantastical environments.

Cassandra Khaw is an award-winning games writer, an award-nominated author, represented by Michael Curry of DMLA, and a scriptwriter at Ubisoft Montreal.

James Persaud is a games industry veteran who has done programming for the likes of Paradox, Firefly Studios, Blue Byte, and Rovio. He tweets sometimes as @goffmog and is very fond of owls.

We can’t wait to see what they’ll come up with on our theme of “love”, and hope you’ll consider sending in a game or a proposal as well—if you haven’t already! You can find more information about our game jam and proposal queue here: https://sub-q.com/subqjam-2018-now-open/

The post Table of Contents – December, 2018 (Plus, author reveal for our game jam!) appeared first on sub-Q Magazine.

We have some exciting things going on this month, not least of which is our second game from author Jac Colvin, whose Russalka game “Lost Ones” we published back in March. This month’s game, “Ocean’s Call,” features a different kind of supernatural water creature, and one that’s just as steeped in mythology as “Lost Ones.” We can’t wait to share it with you!

Another similarity between the two games is that both are written in choicescript. Choice of Games has been generous enough to support us in publishing these games, and we’re happy to have them as collaborators on and sponsors of this month’s issue!

If you like what you see, you can find more (and lengthier!) choicescript games in their hefty online catalogue.

“Ocean’s Call” will go live on November 20th. (Can’t wait until then? Our Patreon backers already have access!)

We’ll also feature an interview with the author, Jac Colvin, the week after, and should have more content to announce as the month continues.

And don’t forget to check out subQjam, our first hosted game jam, which is taking entries of 1000 words or less on the theme of “love” from November 15th through December 15th! Two entries will receive publication in our February 2019 issue, with pay at our standard rates.

In addition to the jam, we’ll be taking proposal submissions to a limited-time themed Submittable window that runs during the same dates. Again, the plan is to publish two of the best of these in the February 2019 issue.

Finally, we hope to be able to announce around the start of the jam some solicited authors who will be rounding out that issue.

Don’t miss your chance to participate!

The post Table of Contents – November, 2018 appeared first on sub-Q Magazine.

One of the reasons I like fall so much is the reaction that gathering dark pulls out of people. There’s a tendency to gather, to light fires, to celebrate life as a way of pushing back against the gloom. A tendency to push toward some kind of action that lets the world know you’re still here, still fighting.

That’s a message I think is very useful in times like ours, and this month’s game—”Queers in Love at the End of the World,” by Anna Anthropy—explores similar themes in a very tight space. The end of the world is 10 seconds away: how will you spend those last precious moments of time?

So here’s this month’s table of contents:

October 9th: Bruno Dias brings us his Making Interactive Fiction column, this time with a focus on bottle-necks and branching.

October 16th: Our game of the month, “Queers in Love at the End of the World” by Anna Anthropy.

October 23rd: Our monthly author interview, featuring Anna Anthropy and editor Natalia Theodoridou.

(P.S. We also hope to have a special announcement ready to go some time this month, so stay tuned for that!)

The post Table of Contents – October, 2018 appeared first on sub-Q Magazine.

So the first time I saw a Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) book in my school’s library, I was excited. It was like the best of both worlds! I got to be in control of the characters, just like in a computer game, but I also got the engrossing word-joy of reading. Plus I could carry it with me and jump in whenever (it was a few years before Game Boy was a thing).

What wasn’t to like? I checked it out on the spot, took it home, and cracked it open, eager to dive in.

And then I died on page 2. And then I died on page 26. And then…  Well, you get the picture. And if you’ve ever played a CYOA book, you’re probably not surprised.

Whether or not you have any idea what I’m talking about here, you’re in for a special treat this month, with an adaptation of “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” by Nebula- and Hugo-nominated author Caroline M. Yoachim (whose initials oh-so-coincidentally have the letters CYOA in them in that order).

“Welcome” puts you straight into the story—even if it doesn’t put U into the story—and, well…  It just has to be experienced, really. Anything I can say would just cheapen it.

Here’s what else we have for you this month:

September 11th: Our regular column from Bruno Dias, this month about recognizing and adapting ideas from other genres to interactive fiction.

September 18th: Our game of the month, “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0.” (Don’t want to wait? Patreon subscribers get early access to our games. Sign up for our Patreon.)

September 25th: An author interview with Caroline M. Yoachim.

The post Table of Contents – September, 2018 appeared first on sub-Q Magazine.