Sunny’s Five (or so) Bestest Video game (or video game adjacent) Writers

Regardless of what you may think, much of the time that you THINK Sunny is just sitting on the beach, holding a fishing pole and gazing at the horizon he is actually THINKING. At least, that’s what he wants you to think.

Sometimes, he’s just thinking – I wonder if I still have any bait on this hook? Or, is that a nibble? He certainly is NOT thinking about putting out every other light at the tiki bar and then hiding the ladder to drive Kuro and Periwinkle crazy. And he knows nothing about that enormous Grouper that was in the pool yesterday. 

No, he’s been considering which writers he wants to sing the praises of to answer Periwinkle’s video game writer challenge. Because Sunny can either think of way more than five, or less than two, because he tends towards video games that lack any real story. Mostly. But there are some very notable exceptions, and here they are. Oh, and one writer who is video game adjacent but he really loves this writers work so he’s shoehorning it in here. 

For instance, speaking of more than five, there is the cooperative of writers who created Katawa Shoujo all of whom are listed on the link. Katawa Shoujo – which can be downloaded at the same website, is a beautiful, kind, compassionate, understanding and open visual novel about a young man who develops a heart condition, and is transferred to a boarding school that specializes in accommodating young people with disabilities. Of course, he meets a number of beautiful young women each with their own talents and abilities, and oh, a disability as well. Sunny hasn’t dated all of them yet, because he’s fallen madly in love with Lilly Satou and no matter who he sets out to win – he always ends up with Lilly because he can’t resist her. 

Npckc is the writer of one night, hot springs, a VN which is also downloadable at the writer/developers website (linked to their name there) or on Steam. It is very short, but very sweet, and very kind. It is focused on Haru, a Japanese transgender woman, who was invited to the hot springs by her old friend Manami to celebrate Manami’s upcoming wedding with all her girl pals. All Haru wants to do is to enjoy being with everyone else, but because she is transgender there are special considerations to be kept in mind. It’s a beautiful story, well written, and thoughtful about situations transgender people deal with every day in every country with grace and forbearance and in this case, with the kind support of her friends.

Choice of Games is a sort of central webhost/developer/sales for a number of people writing text based adventure games. Sunny is super hooked on these games and has played a few of them over and over and over. A special treat has been Night Road, a game written in the Vampire the Masquerade world and even though they haven’t yet added his favorite Malkavian clan for it, he’s sure they’ll get around to it. The writer is Kyle Marquis. He does a fantastic job of holding onto that noir dystopian feeling while still providing plenty of adventure and choice. You can purchase it through Google Play or on Steam along with all later updates adding various clans. You can find out more about them here. 

Evan J. Peterson wrote Drag Star! For Choice of Games and it can be found on Google play and probably other places. It’s a quick, fun romp at being a contestant on a game show verrrrrrrry similar to RuPaul’s Drag Race. You can be campy, comedic, avant garde’, or classy or any combination. Be catty and mean or sweet and peace making (Sunny, of course, is always a sweet peace maker – as far as you need to know). This is a short game, but don’t worry, you’ll probably play it more than once. Kudos to the writer for capturing the fun and flair of drag stars! Mr. Peterson has his own website here and does quite a bit of writing in many forms!

Sunny likes fun and humor in his text based games – and Fox Spirit: A Two Tailed Adventure serves plenty of both, with a little dose of Japanese style fairy tale and fantasy setting. Amy Clare Fontaine is the writer and she spins a story you won’t soon forget – and you’ll want to see all the endings. She also writes articles and books, her website is here.

Now for that video adjacent writer – D.Rus writes the Play to LIve series on the Kindle. It is finished, with seven volumes. If you watch Isekai anime, you are familiar with the set-up here. However, the background story is very well thought out science fiction, going into how people end up “perma” in games and the reaction of the world’s governments. Unlike many Isekai, in this series becoming “perma” – that is stuck in a game for good, is often done very much on purpose to escape from some situation in life – like immanent death from a brain tumor. Some governments figure out this is a great way to empty the jails… This story is from a Russian point of view which adds another layer of interest. The game story is also well thought out and thoughtful – not just an overpowered hero hacking and slashing his way to fame and glory. Max (the protagonist) takes quite a different route from Necromancer, to a follower of the Fallen One  (an abandoned AI that remained in the game past the developers “removal” of it) and he makes his fortune with a clever use of alchemy to invent something sadly missing in game – cigarettes! It’s fun but also very profound at times. You can find D.Russ author page on Amazon here.

Now, we can get back to fishing and petting sea monsters.