You are a Californian inmate firefighter, flying out to stop a wildfire in the sierras. You are also a native of this land, descendent of a proud line of firewalker shamans, but the blaze you're facing now is unlike anything you've ever seen. As you stand before it with your high-powered chainsaw, you'll will have to face the demons of your past. Depending on your choices, you may emerge tempered, reforged, or burned to a crisp. The choice is yours, Chief.

This is a game for adults. It has a fair bit of gore, violence, sexual elements, and touches on offensive topics. If that's not for you, turn around now, this site has plenty of other content that you will like better.

Despite the word count this is a short game: Typical time for one playthrough is 25min.

This game was an entry to Sherbet's "Summer's End Synnergy Contest". (I wanted it to be Quentin Tarantino, but it turned out David Lynch.)

It's 1942 and you are Karl Petersen—In another life, you'd still be studying for your doctorate in English Literature, but this isn't another life, and you've been assigned as second officer of the submarine U-156, patrolling the South Atlantic. So come on now, the Third Reich is at war and the Kriegsmarine needs you!

The game was made as an entry to END MASTER'S PROMPT CONTEST 4, with the prompt “A story about naval warfare.”

Content Warning: I thought this one would turn out on the lighter side, but the usual sex, violence, occasional torture and optional suicide crept back in (It also has language!). In cinematic terms think of Hemmingway and the Reservoir Dogs re-enacting the Omen on a submarine.

Regardless of word count, this is a short game: Playtime is only 20-30 min.

There are several storylines but only ONE TRUE ENDING.

In this near-future hard sci-fi noir story you are Patricia 'Mace' Angelside, an ex-cop who has a hard time adjusting to her role as a bodyguard for the heir of a business empire. Can you keep him save during his trip on a luxury space liner? And, do you actually want to? Depending on your answers, this might turn dark pretty quickly.

This is a game for adults: if you are under 18 please give this one a pass, there are many other stories on this side you can enjoy.

This is a relatively short game: Much of the word count comes from the breadth of choices you have. You'll likely reach an ending within 20 minutes of reading, but there are quite a number of major storylines to explore.

This game was started as contribution to Sherbet's Summer's End Synergy contest. The theme of the contest was a character coping with a bad event in the immediate past. I thought that would go well with a noir detective story. An important inspiration was William Hjortsberg's noir novel "Falling Angel," but I wanted to escape some outdated cliches of the noir genre. You might say I wanted to show another side of the Angel, hence the name of the story. Specifically I wanted a female protagonist and a sci-fi setting. To accommodate the noir theme near-future hard sci-fi capitalist world, ala "The Expanse" was an obvious choice. In the writing, the story got a bit out of hand, and eventually I had to quickly write another game (Rainbow-1) to have something to show by the contest deadline.

Everything looks calm right now: The usual mists are wafting in from the Red River at nightfall. They bring the same old smugglers sneaking into port, the same old harlots, making their rounds on the piers, and the same old bards, spinning their tales in the taverns. But, the good citizens are huddling in their warm little houses, speaking their prayers to Sol. They pray for order, stability and the holy law to protect them. Let's hope they pray really hard, because strange things are starting to happen on Rador's day, a burglary goes unreported, a work of art is destroyed, an ancient demon walks the street and there are whispers of snow.

In this story you step into the boots of Nyvella Begat, a young lass trying to find her way in a city filled with intrigue and adventure. But when a startling discovery disrupts your comfortable life, you must decide who you want to be, lest others seal your fate for you.

Fabrikant's note: This is the second version of Goldbird. The original game by Northwind was intended as a metaphor on fate. While there were quite a number of endings, fate would try to push you towards one of them. To see some of the rarer endings you had to assert your will through a series of decisions. The result was a puzzle where choices had delayed consequences, and branches were unlocked by combinations of choices. Mostly, this subtlety was mostly lost on the audience. With Northwind's permission I have rewritten the storygame in a form that is easier to navigate (though there are still some delayed choices and well-hidden branches to discover). The game still tells the same story, containing essentially the same branches, but I have added some small bits of my own, rearanged others, and told some events which were only hinted at in the original.

Also this quote which is a bit more recent

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?

--Richard Dawkins

For stoic philosophy, it's really easy: Hands down Marc Aurel is my clear favorite. To get into it just install a phone app with stoic quotes; there are lots of free ones. Reading a quote a day and thinking about it for a bit, is the way to go.

For horror, I like the classics. Poe, Lovecraft, etc. Poe's Ligeia is a great short story. A lesser known old master of horror is F. Marrion Crawford. He has a short story collection that is really good. It's called "For the blood is the life".

It actually started last year, so more like 12 months. Funerals you get used to. But I am almost 50 now, and people start dying who are my age, i.e. friends I thought would be around forever. That was a new one to me.

Pro tip: Hang out with your friends while you can.

"You gotta read that," he said, "it's really good."

"Sure, what's the title?"

"Empire of the Vampire"

"Hell no," I shook my head. "Seriously?"

"I know. But--"

"Please," I interrupted him, "if the author was not a complete moron, why would he call it 'Empire of Vampire,' of all possible titles?"

I read it anyway, and wow--it is actually a good book. If the title made you are expect a cheeky romantasy, you are so wrong. Let me localize it this way: If you start from Stephanie Meyer and then stroll over to Anne Rice, and then continue walking a long long way in the same direction, this is where you find this book.

I imagine a lot of YA vampire-trash readers might have stumbled across this novel and came away changed and a bit scared. (which adds to my enjoyment of it, of course)

Yes, it is about Vampires and blood and love. It is also gritty and dark and philosophical. A true grimdark book in the tradition of Joe Abercrombie but with more weight and momentum, in a world where every gesture has hidden meanings.

It is also a very well written book. Easily among the best-written books I own. The narrative flows like a sweet, viscous liquid (dare I say blood). Reading it felt like a religious experience.

The story is set in a fantasy world based on the French renaissance (think monasteries, famine, plagues, and revolution) which gives it a different, more serious vibe than English medievalish fantasy. One of its big themes is the role of religion and tradition in a world which is about to leave such things behind.

Anyway, here is the first sentence:

It was the twenty-seventh year of daysdeath in the realm of the Forever King, and his murderer was waiting to die.

Have you read this book? Do you know other examples of good books with a stupid title?