In the Cards is a WIP interactive fiction where you play a budding psychic learning how to use your powers. There are currently five chapters released, totaling approximately 147k words, out of a planned two-part series.
After receiving your grandmother's tarot deck, you start seeing hints that not all is right in the world of the spirits and fae... and you're about to be caught up in the storm that's brewing.
You've always had psychic powers. Reading auras, speaking with the dead, and channeling spiritual energy through runes - these number just a few of the things you're capable of. It's not an unusual gift in the kingdom of Khepris, though it's uncommon enough that you've only met a few other people with such abilities in your small hometown.
After a plague sweeps through the kingdom, unrest bubbles up in the realm known as the Beyond, home to fae and spirits alike. A group of fae who call themselves the Butterfly Court are testing the boundaries between your worlds, and they don't seem to care what harm they may be causing along the way.
With a deck of tarot cards imbued with mystical powers in your possession, you're pulled into the struggle against the Butterfly Court. You must join one of two organizations - the King's Guardians or the Hounds - in order to fight back against this mysterious court… or risk losing everything.
Befriend or romance one of four characters
Specialize in different psychic skills: intuition, mediation, or concentration
Perform castings - the human version of magic - to subtly influence the world around you
Collect tarot cards and consult with spirits
Uncover a hidden plot that threatens the border between your world and the Beyond
Investigate the Butterfly Court by joining either the King's Guardians, an elite guard loyal to the royal family, or the Hounds, an alliance of fae and humans alike
Although romance is not the main focus, I enjoy a good love story as much as anyone. The main character is 16-17 for most of the story, so the romance won't go beyond PG-13. If you're not interested in romance, no worries - it's not an essential part of the story.
Since these characters won't make an official appearance until a few chapters on, I'll only post their names and tagline for now:
Rekai/Reika, the Free-Hearted Fae (m/f)
R is young for a fae and enthralled with the human world. They enjoy traveling to different places and partaking in local cultures, particularly food and dance. They can get along with pretty much anyone and like to make friends wherever they go - but of course, that doesn't mean they haven't made a few enemies, as well.
Niran/Nira, the Gentle Acolyte (m/f)
Kind-hearted and patient, N tends to be shy, especially when meeting new people, but can be quite talkative once they feel more comfortable. They believe strongly in using their gifts to help other people. When you first meet N, they're studying to become an acolyte and later a priest of the World Temple in Tepar.
This game is rated roughly PG or PG-13 - some violence, topics around death (you're a psychic who can talk to the dead, after all), and other adult themes.
The demo can be found at CoGDemos. You can also check out the thread at the Choice of Games forum if you want to send me a message there.
Also, if you enjoy it, please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi.
Hello. Are all ROs mono? I hope there are no poly routes in your game?
Nope, no poly routes. It is possible to flirt with more than one RO during the early-on "getting to know you" stage, but you can’t have a romantic relationship with more than one person.
Although, just to temper expectations: there's currently only a hint of romance in Part 1; you don’t really get to the full-on relationship stage until Part 2.
Bringing these monthly updates back! Progress last year was pretty much as slow as molasses, but my schedule has recently changed, allowing me to devote a bit more time to this.
One thing that I will say is that this sixth chapter will likely mark the end of Part 1 of In the Cards, BUT before I submit the whole thing to Choice of Games, I'm definitely going to do at least a little (and quite possibly a lot) of rewriting to make the introduction to a few things smoother/more natural.
Hey there! Just dropping in to gush a bit! I stumbled upon In the Cards and fell instantly in love with the way you write, and I'm so eager to see how where the narrative goes. Take care of yourself! Byeeee 🫶🏻
Thank you, your well wishes are much appreciated!😊❤️
I just played through In The Cards for the first time, and it's excellent! I love all the characters, especially Ech, and I like the magic system and enjoy the overall mood of the story. I'm so worried for Hest, what a cliffhanger!
Thank you for having written and shared this! I had a lovely time with it, and am looking forward to the next chapter.
Thank you, both for playing and sending a message! ❤️Writing on this game slowed down last year, but I'm hopeful of getting out the next chapter within the next few months!
I really love your game, the world you've created is so cohesive and interesting, the stats create a lot of intriguing options to try out and the characters are easy to care about- honestly, it's a joy to read. Thank you so much for sharing it! If you're interested in more engagement, I'd highly recommend doing update posts here on Tumblr and notifying the "interact-if" blog. They share game updates and releases in the community and I think your game deserves lots of love. Well wishes to you!
Thank you! That is very good advice. I definitely need to get back in the habit of posting regular updates again, if nothing else. Progress has been going at a snail's pace (thanks, day job!), but I'm getting closer to finishing the next chapter, slowly but surely!
In the meanwhile, I'm always happy to hear that people are enjoying my work. 😊
Oh snap! Thank you for telling me. I've fixed the link now. I really appreciate the bug reports, because this would've completely escaped my notice otherwise.
Hello I just wanted to inform you that there might be problem with stats page for COGdemos demo, as it always come with infinite loading bar.
Huge thank you to everyone who messaged me about this! I have fixed the issue, so it should be good now.
I'm super grateful for letting me know about bugs like these. Thought I squashed 'em all before uploading, but I always manage to miss a few lol.
Note: it may take the site a few hours to show the update (happened the first time I reuploaded something during testing), so I thank you for your patience!
Minor Update - Reupload and New Art - February 11, 2025
It's a bit later than I planned, but I finished cleaning up some of the code and have reuploaded everything to CoGDemos. Here's the new link.
Some notable changes:
I've made it so you don't have to "lock in" to deciding whether or not to use the cards. Instead, I've replaced it with a "card affinity" that keeps track of how many times you use the cards.
New cover art! It's nothing super fancy, but the old cover was very basic and has been bugging me for a while. (Shout out to @MeowMeow422 on the Choice of Games Forum. I'd been wondering if I should really go through with the change and your work last year inspired me to do so!) Aimed for the new art to better match the story and overall feel, but let me know what you guys think.
A Brief Guide on Uploading ChoiceScript Demos to Itch.io
Since Dashingdon is shutting down, and there will be a lot of folks wanting to host their ChoiceScript demos elsewhere, I thought it'd be a good idea to provide a brief guide on how to do so for itch.io.
This is for Windows in the folder actions, but it shouldn't be too difficult for folks to translate for Mac. This also assumes you haven't changed any of the files within your game folder other than those found under 'scenes'.
Within your game folder, locate the 'web' subfolder, right click it and select 'Send to' then 'Compressed (zipped) folder. Name your newly compressed file something sensible, and I recommend moving it to a new folder outside of your game files, just to keep everything neat and tidy.
2. Assuming you already have an itch.io account, navigate to your dashboard, and click the 'Create New Project' button.
3. Name your project as you like, and under 'Kind of project', select the 'HTML' option.
4. Set the 'Pricing' to 'No Payments', you cannot use ChoiceScript for profit unless it is with the Choice of Games or Hosted Games publishing labels. No one wants to get in trouble unnecessarily here.
5. In the Uploads section, upload your newly zipped file we made in step one. After it's finished uploading, you'll be given one drop down and two tick boxes. You need to tick the 'This file will be played in the browser' option.
6. I've found so far that 'Viewport dimensions' work quite well for desktop at 1080 x 640. Either use these numbers or experiment and find what works best for you.
7. You must tick the 'Enable scrollbars' option for your game to display properly, otherwise options, text and buttons can be clipped off the bottom of the viewport.
8. Continue filling out the rest of the form, or skip it for now and scroll all the way to the bottom to the 'Visibility & access' section. Here make sure you have 'Draft' selected. This prevents others from finding your game until you're ready, and I always recommend play testing things before you make your work public.
9. Finally, hit the 'Save' button, then go and have a look at your creation by hitting the 'View page' link. And there you go! When you're ready for public release, just change the option in section 8 to 'Public'.
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A few things to bear in mind about hosting on itch.io:
There isn't currently any way for your readers to save their game. I'm sure someone could write in a plugin similar to Dashingdon's at some point, but as for right now, this isn't available. See addition/edit below.
Make sure you properly tag your game with the 'choicescript' and 'interactive-fiction' tags. There are an awful lot of games on itch.io and it's easy to get lost in the crowd. Make sure folks can find you by having the right tags.
I hope this brief guide was useful to folks.
Best of luck to you with your writing!
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Addition/Edit:
Thanks to @hpowellsmith for bringing this to my attention. You can add save functionality to your game by using this addon:
The ChoiceScript Save Plugin
Just tried it out on my own game and it works perfectly.
Rather than run through the addon author's own tutorial here, I'll just forward you to the Readme on their Github page.
One small note I would add is when it asks you to make the two small additions to your index file, make sure you right click the file and open it with your coding program, don't double-click it as this will just open it in an internet browser, and it won't give you the access to what you need to change.
Hi, I just found out that Dashingdon is shutting down at the end of January, just wanted to give you a head's up!
Thank you for the head's up! And thank you to everyone else who messaged me as well. It's really heartwarming to see so many people in this community looking out for creators!
I've already made a new account on CoGDemos and was planning to upload In the Cards this weekend or next. Truth be told, since I have to reupload anyway, I want to smooth out some of the code in earlier chapters. It's a bit of a mess, lol.
Happy New Year’s, everyone! I'm hopeful that 2025 is going to be a good year.
For my IF wip, In the Cards, I got a new job at the end of October last year, so progress was nonexistent in November. Now that I've settled into my new schedule a bit more, though, I've resumed my creative writing bit by bit. I'm hopeful I'll be able to release chapter 6 sometime this year.
I probably will not end up doing the extensive rewrite I'd mentioned in a previous post. Practically speaking, I simply don't have the time, and I don't want this to be an "eternally in-development" project.
Ha! Monthly. Anywho, I am working away at this IF slowly but steadily. I've gotten quite a bit of inspiration for the rewrite I'm planning - some scenes will be the same, but there are certain characters for whom I want to have a lot more involvement. So, there will be a lot more content added. Looking forward to sharing those with you, but it will take a bit as I plan to release chapter 6 before any rehauls.
Speaking of which, there will be a lot of branching going on in the latest chapter, some of which will be decided by previous decisions, but most of which you'll get to plot out yourself. Among other things, you'll finally learn more about the spirit haunting your uncle.
Descend to the Underworld and live among myths as the deity of spring!
Fields of Asphodel is a 1.3 million-word interactive novel by JJ Laurier. It's entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
Forced into an arranged marriage with the God of the Dead, only you can decide what to make of your new life. Befriend misfit deities, repel giant attacks, find the culprit behind the river goddess's mysterious illness, and use your powers to nudge Fate in your favor! Decide what kind of deity you want to be—whether you'll answer prayers, how you'll develop your powers, and what role you'll take in governance.
Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, bi, asexual, or poly.
Play as neurodivergent or neurotypical.
Take on the powers of spring and life.
Find love and friendship among the gods of the ancient Greek Underworld.
Develop your abilities and hobbies, and choose the kind of life you want to live.
Grow a garden in the Underworld.
Defend the realm, advise the King, and solve a mystery.
Make a new home, or seize the opportunity to return to your old one.
I am delighted to announce that the wait is finally over. Fields of Asphodel is now available on Steam, the CoG Website, via the Hosted Games Omnibus app, and anywhere else Hosted Games are sold! For the next week, it's on sale for $7.99 (USD), so get it before the price goes up to $11.99!
Thank you all so much for your support through the game's development; it's what made this possible. A special shout-out to my Patrons, to the Discord server crew, and to @gncrezan, who not only makes regular and amazing art related to the game, but who drew the beautiful cover image as well.
If you enjoyed Fields of Asphodel, please consider leaving a review on the platform of your choice. It really does make a difference!
❗️ If you're an iOS user and you're joining any Patreon page starting November 2024 (OR IF YOU'RE CHANGING YOUR PLEDGE!), please DO NOT do it through the app. Use a browser instead.
Android app is safe.
We don't see ANY of this 30%. It goes straight to Apple's wallet or it's charged from us!!
You can still use the iOS app safely, however, to avoid this fee you have to use something else when signing up!
Just to let you guys know what's going on: I'm still working on the latest chapter, but part of my silence these past couple of months have been because I realized that there's no way I can do all I want with this story in just one book.
These first soon-to-be six chapters were supposed to only be two or three max, lol, and even with that, I feel like I've missed out on a lot of potential. And if I'm going to split it into two books, I want to write in more character development/interaction by expanding what I already have.
So, after I've finished the sixth chapter, I'll be starting the rewriting process. For the expanded version, I'll be reworking R's role to introduce them earlier, possibly another RO's as well.
I don't want to give too much away, but I hope you'll stick around to see it play out!
