I'm partnering with Choice of Games to bring you an interactive fiction story called Bright Young Things: a game of justice, heroics, and an ever-widening gyre. It's a 1920s superhero story- think one part Jeeves and Wooster and one part The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
The world’s hung over from the War and the Flu. But the night’s young, the music’s loud, and you’ve got a city to protect…
During the Great War, both sides used xyltraxazine- a dangerous new chemical weapon- to incapacitate the enemy. After the War, people who’d been exposed to xyltraxazine began to change, and not all for the better. Some of them gained strange abilities- incredible strength, inhuman speed, flight, shapeshifting, invisibility, or even mind control. The zills walk among us, and you never know who is one until they lift a motorcar. Some lost their minds, becoming anti-social, vicious, or outright murderous. The d—-ed blighters want to destroy the world for the fun of it.
Unfortunately, these two categories overlap… and that’s where you come in. London needs a hero; you need a distraction.
Discover your superpowers in 1920s London. Choose your past- were you a poor soldier? An ambulance driver? A rich kid in the officers’ tents? Choose your powers- are you a Herculaen, a speedster, an icarus, a skinchanger, or an invisible? Help the citizens of London - for fame, fortune, or the joy of doing the right thing. Fight petty crime, stop a runaway train, and kick the blighters into next week.
Keep up a double life- or don’t. As a widowed person of quality, you’ve got to keep up appearances. Lords and ladies don’t acknowledge all this super-hero rot– and they certainly don’t participate in it. Will you hide behind a mask, or defend your do-gooding? What will you do when you have to be in two places at once? Fend off your feckless “friends” and hangers-on… or convince them to help you stop the end of the world as you know it.
Romance a messy young lord, an excitable pilot, your steadfast valet/lady’s maid, a canny cub reporter, or your childhood friend turned anarchist blighter. Or love them all, come what may. Balance Society’s expectations on your love- or flout them, and pursue forbidden romance.
Uncover a blighter conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of government… or discover the method to the blighters’ madness, and join them. Save London from utter destruction, or rebuild it in your image in the aftermath.
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