Here are your 2024 Nebula Awards nominations for Best Game Writing

The Nebula Awards are one of the most prestigious for the genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and in 2019 they added a new award for Best Game Writing. This is a pretty expansive category as it includes video games, tabletop roleplaying games and even interactive films. While the winner is typically from a video game nomination there have been nominees and winners in the interactive category — the first award for 2018 went to Black Mirror: Bandersnatch — as well as TTRPGs with Thirsty Sword Lesbians receiving the reward for 2021 (in a year that had several nominations from TTRPGs).

The 2024 nominations are across several fields; while video games dominate with four nominations there are also three nominations from the Interactive Story category and one tabletop roleplaying game making the cut. Since the Thirsty Sword Lesbians victory three years ago the awards have gone to more traditional AAA games in Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3. With the former’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC in the running this year will major video game studios make it three in a row, or will we see a winner from an Indie studio or outside of video games entirely? We’ll find out when the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association announces the winners the first weekend of June.

Here are this year’s nominees:

A Death in Hyperspace

Nominees: Stewart C Baker, Phoebe Barton, James Beamon, Kate Heartfield, Isabel J. Kim, Sara S. Messenger, Naca Rat, Natalia Theodoridou, M. Darusha Wehm, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Infomancy.net)

The first of three Interactive Story nominations this year — think “Choose Your Own Adventure”, but on a computer instead of a book — a Death in Hyperspace is a murder mystery that you as the ship’s AI must solve before time runs out (there is an option to play without a time constraint if you don’t think you can handle the additional pressure). You can interview characters, find physical clues, and keep track of who you suspect all within the friendly(?) confines of the web browser. There are eleven possible endings — can you solve your captain’s murder?

A Death in Hyperspace can be played in any web browser for free online.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

Nominee: Hidetaka Miyazaki (From Software)

Shadow of the Erdtree is the award-winning DLC for 2022 Nebula Award winner Elden Ring. As an open world “Dark Souls”-style RPG, Elden Ring is famous not only for its grueling boss fights that evoke its Dark Souls pedigree but also the setting and story that was crafted with the assistance of legendary author George R.R. Martin. Shadow of the Erdtree continued in that vein, adding over 40 new boss encounters. Its success has not been without controversy, though, as being nominated for “Game of the Year” at last December’s The Game Awards sparked a discussion as to whether its inclusion as a DLC was warranted. Whether that argument resurfaces for the Nebula Awards remains to be seen.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree can be experienced on Playstation 4/5, Xbox One and Series X/S, and Windows via the Steam Client. It requires the player to have Elden Ring on the same platform as well as meet conditions within the game.

The Ghost and the Golem

Nominee: Benjamin Rosenbaum (Choice of Games)

The first of two Interactive Fiction nominees from Choice of Games, The Ghost and the Golem finds you in the year 1881 on the border between the Ukraine and Poland with a magic amulet in your pocket. It reveals to you a future of bloodshed as strife and antisemitism spread across the Russian empire. You can try to stop it, but how you do so is up to you — you can find allies among the local population to protect your village, breathe life into a golem or even make a deal with a demonic sheyd.

The Ghost and the Golem can be played via the Steam Client or in the Choice of Games app on iOS, Android and Amazon platforms.

1000xRESIST

Nominees: Remy Siu, Pinki Li, Conor Wylie (Fellow Traveller Games)

In the near future, a mysterious alien race arrives on Earth and brings in their wake catastrophe: a disease that wipes out all of humanity except one teenage girl named Iris who is not only immune but also immortal. A thousand years later Iris is known as the ALLMOTHER for an underground society consisting exclusively of her own clones — although unlike Iris they are not immune to the disease still plaguing the surface world. One of your Sisters (as the clones are called) comes to you with a dangerous revelation: you have been lied to. Now you must jump between the past and the present as well as changing game modes to learn what really happened and what truths the ALLMOTHER is concealing from you.

1000xRESIST is available on Steam and for the Nintendo Switch.

Pacific Drive

Nominees: Karrie Shao, Paul Dean (Ironwood Studios)

Pacific Drive is a first-person driving survival game set in an otherworldly version of the Pacific Northwest. Your only companion is your station wagon which helps you scavenge resources and outrun the storms that plague the zone, though you do get some assistance over the radio from a bare handful of former scientists and a mechanic who have survived the Zone since the beginning. Upgrade and configure your car how you want as each trip back reveals new challenges and dangers. Can you find the answers you seek amongst the anomalies and hazards that await you?

Pacific Drive is available on Steam and for the Playstation 5.

Restore, Reflect, Retry

Nominee: Natalia Theodoridou (Choice of Games)

The second of two nominations this year from Choice of Games, Restore, Reflect, Retry is an interactive horror novel set in the 90s. You and your friends discover a game and you all start to play. And play. And play. Nobody remembers how you actually found the game, and the stories keep changing. Can you solve the mystery of the game’s origins and also save your friends? And what’s this about a ghost living behind the game’s screen? Or are you the ghost in front of its screen?

Restore, Reflect, Retry can be played via the Steam Client or in the Choice of Games app on iOS, Android and Amazon platforms.

Slay the Princess — The Pristine Cut

Nominees: Tony Howard-Arias, Abby Howard (Black Tabby Games)

If you’re a regular reader of Blizzard Watch then you probably are already aware of Slay the Princess as it’s a game that one of our regular writers champion frequently (it’s me, I’m talking about me). A hand-drawn and chillingly voiced psychological horror visual novel, Slay the Princess asks what you’ll do to save the world, especially when the demands placed on you by the world are questioned by the voices in your head. Do you attempt the slay the princess, or do you try to save her? Each choice you make brings the world one step closer to salvation — or destruction.

Slay the Princess — The Pristine Cut is a free expanded edition from the original release. It is available on Steam for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, on Playstation 4/5, Xbox One and Series X/S, and the Nintendo Switch.

Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast

Nominees: Jay Dragon, M Veselak, Mercedes Acosta, Lillie J. Harris (Possum Creek Games)

Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast is the final nominee and the lone TTRPG nominated this year. Set in the titular Bed & Breakfast it’s always September 15 and there’s always room for new visitors in this slice-0f-life story. The “campaign” is played over the course of 48 chapters lasting 1-2 hours apiece. There are long-term residents of the B&B that players can choose as their character or they can choose amongst the 50 guests available. Players can drift in and out or change characters between sessions, and everyone’s story can advance to its own conclusion. Because the game changes based on your players’ decisions the experience is designed to be uniquely yours.

Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast is available digitally from Possum Creek Games, while you can buy a physical or digital copy from DriveThruRPG.