Steam is now selling text adventures, starting with Heroes Rise

Interactive fiction developer Choice of Games announced today that Valve has allowed it to sell two of its Heroes Rise interactive fiction novels on Steam, paving the way for more text adventure games to be sold on the platform. This isn't the first time anyone has distributed a text-based game on Steam -- Christine Love started selling visual novels on the platform when she released Analogue: A Hate Story back in 2012, and Zoe Quinn brought her text-based Twine game Depression Quest to Steam last year. But unlike those games, Choice of Games' Heroes Rise titles are pure text adventures -- there's no sound or graphical effects. Together, the first two games include over 275,000 words written by author Zachary Sergi, who is currently at work on the third game in the trilogy. Choice of Games is asking fans to buy the games as a show of support for more interactive fiction on Steam. "Together, we can bring a new genre of games to Steam," reads the aforementioned announcement. "Making it possible for a new generation of interactive-fiction authors to make a living."