To Reign in Hell: the empress is gone, and the throne is up for grabs

To Reign in Hell is an interactive dark fantasy novel by Stuart Martyn: entirely text, with no graphics or sound effects, around 600,000 words and hundreds of choices. You play a demon freed when Hell's tyrannical empress vanishes and the contracts binding everyone shatter. Archdemons are raising armies, revolutionaries want the aristocrats' heads, heaven has spies in the underworld, and you get to decide what kind of power you want.

The world-building is the big draw, a scheming, politics-heavy Hell full of factions to side with or against, and several distinct routes that make a second run tempting. A checkpoint system lets you explore branches without restarting the whole book. You can play as male, female or nonbinary, befriend or romance demons, and build some truly monstrous creature in character creation. Dark themes come with the territory, but it is all on the page and at your own pace.

It is not quite as grand as the title promises. Most of the story is the scramble for the throne rather than ruling from it, the early chapters can feel dense before the lore clicks, and some supporting characters get too little room to shine. A few typos slip through, too.