The Passenger

This Hosted Game places you in the role of an extradimensional incomprehensible monster who is forced into earth in the body of a small infant, forced to hide from a horrific hunter.

It then skips far ahead and focuses on events in a small town between you and a cast of characters including your sister and her weird 'friend', a single mom waitress, a mysterious drifter, a cult leader, and a grungy store clerk.

Much of the story revolves around your choices to act more human or to act more like your true self, as well as the ever-looming threat of the hunter.

To me, this felt a lot more like an 'official' Choice of Games game than most Hosted games, with its 4 or 5 opposed stats, frequent adjustments, frequent pass/fail checks, and, like a lot of the Nebula-nominated CoG games, a more-or-less set 'main' storyline with the player's actions more determining their internal state and relationships.

The characters are well-developed and you have a lot of scenes with them. I focused on romancing Roach, and it was one of the more well-developed and in-depth relationships I've seen in Choicescript games. There were a few chapters where I really wondered, 'what on earth are we doing here? Just kind of chilling?"

I had expected the game would deal with a sense of alienation a lot, but as others have mentioned, that's not a huge focus.

I think this will most appeal to people who like nuanced and morally ambiguous romantic partners, good writing, and either very powerful or weak/afraid protagonists (ironically, we are both here).

Cosmic horror is hard to do well, and this game knocks it out the park.

From the very first page the writing will hook you, and it only gets better from there. The tone and pacing is perfectly balanced, and each choice shapes the characters in subtle ways. The ending will leave you thinking about what you just experienced even days later.