The Luminous Underground
Strange things are going down in the Underground! Build your team, descend beneath the city streets, and face down horrors with magic in one hand and science in the other. Can you prove to everyone that you’re the best daemon hunter in town? Play Phoebe Barton’s The Luminous Underground, a 660,000-word interactive fiction game and finalist for the 2020 Nebula Award for Best Game Writing, and find out!
It’s been a long time coming, but my game The Luminous Underground is now available through Choice of Games! Step into the boots of a seasoned daemon dissipator as you stumble into a secret war beneath the city streets, discover mysteries left forgotten, and find out how your choices shape the world around you. It’s available from the following storefronts:
Do you have what it takes to fight furious daemons, shoddy gear, and City Hall? Will you help fix the city, or watch as it crumbles?
Just Cause Mobile
Square Enix has scrapped Just Cause Mobile before handing it an official debut.
Chris Kerr, “Square Enix cancels Just Cause Mobile before launch,” GameDeveloper.com
The free-to-play project had been available to download as part of a regional early access rollout, but has now been cancelled.
I’ve been looking forward to announcing my work on Just Cause Mobile for two years now, but some things don’t work out – at least I got paid. My involvement was writing side-quest scripts for twenty-five missions as well as character mini-bios, all of which I will now never see as finished products.
I guess that’s business.
A Death in Hyperspace
As an embodied ship Intelligence and fugitive former warship, you’ve faced many challenges.
But when your captain dies suspiciously halfway through a hyperspace transit, you know you’re in trouble. Not because you need a captain — you can pilot yourself just fine — but because, as an aficionado of mysteries and detective stories, you know there’s only one explanation: murder most foul.
Investigate your rooms.
Interrogate your crew and passengers.
Solve the mystery.
Will you find your way back to reality — or be stuck in hyperspace forever?
First published for IFComp 2024, and released under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
I was honoured to be asked to be part of the stellar writing crew that put the Nebula Award-winning A Death in Hyperspace together. My responsibility was the writing for the character Until Tomorrow, the starship maintenance technician who may or may not be the murder you’re tracking down — you’ll have to play it to see!
Her name absolutely does come from The Littlest Hobo, though.
Phoebe Barton - Science Fiction Writer 