I have to admit, Soul of Fire was not the fantasy interactive fiction story I thought I would end up writing. Inspiration really is something that you can't control.
Hey everyone, Iosif here :)
I'm going to share here my journey in writing the demo story for Trueself: Choice Stories.
Growing up, I was fascinated by the Lone Wolf gamebooks. I remember waiting for the slow WiFi to download the books, and I would spend hours per day just playing, trying to guess which branches of the story were major enough that I would replay to try them.
The books are great. Immersive, long. However, what I did not like so much was the fact that the entire story really only happened centered on the main character. Interesting characters you would meet would conveniently disappear after one or two scenes, leaving you alone with your sword and your Sixth Sense. I always ended up selecting this skill, just in case.
Anyway - back to Soul of Fire.
I realised that there is a certain order to the interactive stories that I played. At some point, I had become so accustomed to the patterns that things just became predictable. Of course that merchant was going to sell you out to the guards. Of course you help the prince and he will give you a bag of coins. What I realised is that not so many choice-based story games exist that entirely surprise the reader.
The first chapter of Soul of Fire is intentionally written to feel like a lot of other fantasy story games. But things really, really get out of hand, and what seemed very clear-cut in chapter one will look very, very different in the next chapters.
I hope you like my story. The game itself, Trueself: Choice Stories, is in closed testing, so you can message me if you want to test it. And if you liked Soul of Fire, please recommend it to a friend. It would help me a lot!
Signing off,
Iosif