Chatham Student's Text-Based Game Launches Jan. 24

CHATHAM, NJ - Chatham High School senior Brynn Chernosky has created a supernatural world of monsters, magic and romance and on Jan. 24 she is inviting you to join her in it.

Chernosky's text-based adventure "Keeper of the Sun and Moon" combines fantasy, suspense, and a great deal of humor as the character juggles classwork, training in magic, roommate dynamics, and romance, while at the same time working to save the world.

Chernosky spent nearly two and a half years writing and programming the 300,000-word game while juggling honors classes and numerous other school activities. Game development for the game took several years because Chernosky needed to write and program multiple storylines based on choices players make. For a point of comparison, the typical novel averages around 90,000 words, Chernosky noted. Chernosky said each player will have a unique gaming experience.

"Players can expect a different adventure each time they play," she said. "They'll have the chance to fight monsters, learn to use mind control, take classes at a college for supernatural, investigate a series of high-profile thefts, discover a fifteen year conspiracy—and complain about homework with other students."

Chernosky said she got involved in gaming when she was in middle school.

"I, like many middle schoolers, had a fondness for downloading a hundred apps from the App Store at once. When I found a few of the Choice of Games and Hosted Games apps there, I really loved playing them," she said. "I’d always been a reader, and these were books where you literally were the main character. I have a lot of interactive fiction games I like, but I’ll always have a soft spot for Choice of the Vampire, because it’s what really got me into playing them and ultimately writing one."

Chernosky said in her freshman year of high school, she decided that she should try to write the game she wanted to play and the story she wanted to read.

"What kept me motivated for three years was the idea that I would one day get to play through what I’d written," she said. "You get to be both the creator of and the participant in a world, which is amazing."

Chernosky participated in an open development process through the Choice of Games Forum, where she shared early versions of the game to receive feedback. Over the course of development, she built up a fan base on the forum as well as on Tumblr.

According to their website, Choice of Games LLC is dedicated to producing high-quality, text-based, multiple-choice games. Choice of Games has developed a simple scripting language for writing text-based games, ChoiceScript, which it makes available to others for use in their projects, and they host games produced using ChoiceScript on their website.

"Choice of Games has a user-made line of games, Hosted Games, where private individuals program games using the ChoiceScript programming language and submit them to Choice of Games for publication after meeting certain standards," she said. "All told, I spent two and a half years writing in an open development process with continuous testing for the first two thirds of the game, with an additional month of private beta testing for the last third of the game."

Now that the game's premiere is at hand, Chernosky said she hopes people enjoy her work.

"I hope that people have fun playing it. I hope it’s a chance to be the main character of a fantasy book. I hope it might inspire someone else to try a hand at writing," she said.

Not one to sit on her laurels, between now and starting college in the fall Chernosky is already planning on a sequel to "Keeper of the Sun and Moon."

"The sequel will again have an open development process, with the initial demo posted sometime in February," she said. "I’m also working on a novel set in the same universe as Keeper of the Sun and Moon."

The game will be available through the Choice of Games website as well as the App Store, Google Play and Steam.

(Photos courtesy of Brynn Chernosky)

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