A fun new way to converse with your story…
Remember my ‘writing a novella in 2 weeks’ series from a couple years ago?

Me neither.

But I loved that story and its characters and settings a lot, and I’ve been wanting to return to it and finish redrafting, except that I never seemed to be able to regain that initial momentum.

Then a month ago HiddenDoor reached out to me to test their worldbuilding RPG. The site allows you to play public domain worlds like Pride and Prejudice and Sherlock Holmes, or author-created “community worlds”.

You need to be on the ‘Creator’ subscription tier to create your own worlds, but if you make your worlds publicly playable, then you can earn back part of the subscription fee from any paying ‘Fan’.

Since Dark Academia (my novella) developed out of a solo RPG game, I thought it was the perfect fit for a playable world.

☞ You can now play Dark Academia on HiddenDoor.

The process of creating your world on HiddenDoor is quite detailed, but there is a worldbuilding wizard that can give you very helpful prompts based on your existing writing or on any vague story idea.

The gameplay centres around cards, so you create cards for your story’s characters, locations, and items, and players collect them as they play.

☞ If you’re worried this will take ages, don’t! The game can create and populate these cards automatically from a list you feed it.

The game also creates new random cards throughout the story, so players aren’t limited to “canon” story elements.

What I love most about HiddenDoor is its ability to take you in unexpected directions. In fact, those are the only directions it can take you in, no matter how meticulous you are about entering world details.

The game won’t write (or retrace) your story for you, and it will probably be even less consistent than you are about characters’ voices and habits, or the whereabouts of certain items.

But because it’s less inhibited than you are, and because it hasn’t been stuck in the same storytelling rut as you, it can help you discover

• a new detail in a setting,
• a new insight into a character’s motives,
• an alternative scene that approaches the story from a different angle…

and even the slightest of these insights (delivered through the fun of gameplay) can return you to that state of eager interest in your story.

At worst, playing with HiddenDoor will be a pleasant diversion for an afternoon, but at best it can help you resurrect stories that you genuinely care about.

And really, I don’t think there can be any better justification for recommending that you try it, nor any higher praise of its efficacy than: IT’S FUN!

You can sign up for free at HiddenDoor.co, or use my code EADEVERELL for 25% off a subscription plan until the end of this month (30 June 2026).

☞ This post is NOT sponsored by HiddenDoor, — actually they don’t even know I’m writing it — nor do I receive a commission if you use my discount code. I’m just eager to share a tool that I believe can help inspire you. :)