Invited Writers are Unearthing Stories

The News! Awesome News!

When we (Livia and Fernando) started Prowess Games, we did it with a vision—we wanted to share highly thematic stories, written for adult readers. We wanted to focus on specific themes, and use that blend of books and videogames to change immersion and engagement to tell stories in a different way. It was also a medium for Livia to start writing again, something she has shared a few times during a number of interviews.

But beyond that vision, there was another. A dream, more precisely.

We wanted Unearthed Stories to become a platform for other authors (especially self-published authors!) to dip their toes on writing for games. But more importantly, we wanted to give back to the community that has helped Unearthed Stories grow so much in so few months.

Truth to be told, we never expected to be able to do this now, barely six months after launching on iOS, and only a few months after the game’s first birthday… but here we are! Acquiring stories and expanding Unearthed Stories!

Wait, what? How does this work?

We (aka, Prowess Games) are acquiring short-stories from invited authors to publish in Unearthed Stories! There are some things worth knowing:

• For now, this is invitation-only. Prowess Games is not open for submissions.
• Because we are an indie game studio, we are only inviting indie authors. An “indie author” is either self-published or published through a small press.
• All invited stories will be short-stories. Namely, between 3000-7000 words, plus a very short author’s notes.
• The invited short-stories are free to read! This means you can install Unearthed Stories (also free!) and read straight away!
• You can rest assured that Livia—our lead writer—will continue to write long interactive novels and novellas.
• At the moment of writing this, we have three (3!!) authors lined up, and we will release details on the first short-story very soon… and mini-spoiler alert, they are incredible authors, and we are thrilled to be able to work with them.
• Many of the stories we are acquiring are set in the invited author’s worlds—and this is because we’re fans of their work!
• All invited stories will be written by humans. We support human creators—ultimately, art (and books, illustrations, and videogames are art) is a human endeavour.

Now, you may have a bunch of questions by now, with the most important one being when are we releasing? What’s the cadence? Are we doing updates?

It’s actually simple! We are expecting to release one new short-story monthly or bimonthly. However, we may not publish invited short-stories in the following exceptional cases:

• In the same month when we do a themed release with big novels by Livia (like when we released Elusive Pathways, Cats Take Over, or the others). After all, we want invited writers to have the spotlight for the month.
• In some specific seasons (e.g., end of the year, when Winds of Winters comes out, when Doors of Stones comes out…) You know, when everybody is focused elsewhere.
• When life happens. After all, Prowess Games is an army-of-two (plus a cat), and indie authors also tend to have too much in their plate.

Regardless, we’re committed to this and very excited for the short-stories we will unearth!

What happens now?

First, stay tuned to our socials because we’ll announce the first author very soon!

Second, your support means a lot. Something as simple as sharing our updates on your socials and spreading the word, puts Unearthed Stories before the eyes of many new readers… and that inflow of players means that we’ll have a bigger, better budget to keep acquiring more stories and supporting more authors. And, perhaps, managing to achieve some wilder plans sooner than expected.

You can also support us through our RedBubble Store and get some awesome merch (many of those are Livia’s watercolours, if you didn’t know), or even donate to us on Ko-Fi. Both of these warm our hearts, earn our eternal gratitude but, most importantly, help us have more budget to keep acquiring stories.

To close off, we are delighted to be able to acquire stories from independent writers, and can’t wait to announce the first one very soon! Stay tuned to our socials, @prowessgames and @liviajelliot.