Choice of Alexandria Description: Can your steam-powered inventions save the ancient Library of Alexandria? Will you sacrifice the library to protect the city? Or will you protect the future king Ptolemy IV instead?

“Choice of Alexandria” is an interactive novella by Kevin Gold, author of “Choice of Robots.” Your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based–90,000 words, without graphics or sound effects–and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

The year is 245 BCE; you’re a heroic polymath librarian, invited to Alexandria to tutor prince Ptolemy IV. Coach the prince in the Olympics–or help him ditch the Olympics to show his art and poetry there instead.

Or disregard your tutelage to focus on inventions instead! With the help of Archimedes and Euclid, you can discover the steam engine, the germ theory of disease, or even robotic automata, thousands of years ahead of schedule.

Will you deplete the libraries of other cities to enrich your own? Achieve popularity for your scientific inventions, or protect the legacy of the empire? Will Ptolemy IV grow up hedonistic and selfish, or wise and just? Will you be ransomed by the pirate queen Nefertari, or can you win her over with your silver tongue?

Change the course of history in “Choice of Alexandria!”

• Play as a brilliant inventor, a gifted speaker, or a life-saving doctor
• Make great discoveries while protecting Prince Ptolemy IV from manipulators at court
• Save famed mathematicians Archimedes and Euclid from untimely deaths
• Based on the real life of Eratosthenes, ancient genius who calculated the size of the Earth
• Save the Great Library and invent the steam engine two thousand years early!