It's Free! All Free!
Today is a big day. In a few hours as I type this Death by Scrolling, a game I made with the man who needs no introduction, Ron Gilbert, becomes available. It’s been an amazing project to work on. But it also got me thinking about my personal projects.
When I began to put up my vampire prose and my weird little throw-back BBS game (Swords of Freeport), I was struggling with a day job that was rapidly falling apart (because, video games industry). That’s no longer the case. I’m still in a messy place of having no real idea just what I’ll be doing next year, I now know that short of disaster I will be able to finish and release Dungeons of Freeport (a semi-classical roguelike) and Deck & Conn (a Super Star Trek-like game being published by Microprose).
It also means I’ve started to re-assess some of these personal projects. More specifically, that I was charging for them.
I’ve decided not to do that any more.
Links! For free!
As of today, I’ve decided to make Swords of Freeport available for free (with the option of a donation) over at itch.
I have also done the same for my queer vampire prose, meaning you can not only play my interactive novella, but also read its related novel & novella.
In the interactive novella “So, About Last Night…”…
Los Angeles, CA
1996
Okay, so it’s not the first time you’ve hooked up with a stranger at a party.
And it’s certainly not the first time you’ve woken up feeling like death after a party.
This is, however, the first time you’ve hooked up with a stranger at a party, woken up feeling like death… and discovered a newfound compulsion to drink human blood.
Time for you and your beat-up car to trek back across town to the party and track down this strange girl… before the sun comes back up.
In the novella Ruby Red Lips…
New Hampshire, 1995
For Cally, it was a fairly typical night. Leave her college dorm, trek off campus to a nearby bar, go endure some local band who’s opening for a West Coast one that may actually not suck, and end up low-key crushing from across the room on the cute goth girl dancing alone.
Her expectations that the band would be good were high; her expectations of being assaulted by a vampire and having her entire life turned upside down were zero.
Oh well. At least she was right about the band.
In the novel Can’t Play Dead…
Queensland, Australia
January 2016
Nobody expected a two-pub beach-side resort village to have a second life as a college town, but it did - becoming home to a lot of young people, all escaping something.
For Tracy, moving was a way to start afresh. New town, new state - and new gender.
For Elizabeth, losing her partner had sent her spiralling into anger, despair and gin.
For Heather, coming out went smoothly - until she met Ash.
Transitioning, dating, and life’s other problems sure would be easier if it wasn’t for the heat, the humidity, and the vampires.
I’m making all of my work free on itch, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate some gratuity, especially a I’m still in as volatile position as any other game developer (or creative, generally) these days, so as always donations via itch or tips by Ko-fi is appreciated!