Talon City, his other CS project, was also very good. Noir with owls.
4 Likes
SLAMMED!
by Paolo Chikiamco
Published June 2013 - 250,000 words
Slammed! is a Choicescript game all about wrestling. You go through a career starting from a collegiate wrestler all the way to the heights of nationwide super stardom. That’s if you can handle the physical, mental, and emotional demands of the industry.
Slammed! was a pleasant surprise for me. I’d heard good things about it in passing, but I’ve never been a fan of wrestling. Not really. The closest I’ve ever gotten was Hulk Hogan toys in the 1980s and playing WWF wrestling video games with friends.
I watched quite a bit of wrestling in the 1980s and 90s, however, mainly because one of my best friend’s LOVED wrestling. When I first met him, he lived in a trailer with his mom, and sleep-overs would come to a grinding halt for wrestling matches on TV. Later, in high school, after his mom married his step-dad, he moved into a nice two story house and could afford to get the pay-per-view matches. We shared many other interests with each other, but wrestling wasn’t one I enjoyed like he did, but regardless, the three of us would all watch it together anyway.
Because of that, Slammed! actually brought back a lot of nice nostalgic memories for me as I played, especially the opening chapters. My other best friend and I would love to wait for our wrestling-fan friend to get really into a match on TV and say some variation of: “Wow, this would be pretty awesome if it were real…” then slowly grin at each other as our friend launched into impassioned speeches about how “Yes, it’s scripted, but the athleticism necessary to make it look real and perform like that is incredibly difficult and—” before realizing we were just trying to get a rise out of him and punching us in the arm. He’s the reason I knew what ‘kayfabe’ was going into Slammed!
The opening chapters in the independent wrestling circuit were especially interesting to me because that same friend went on to become a semi-professional wrestler in the independent wrestling circuit as a heel until the pressures of time on the road, low pay, injuries, and plus a new daughter, all made him decide to give it up.
So, that’s a lot of words to say, I had Slammed! on the back-burner of my Choicescript game catalogue for a long time because I just wasn’t enthused about playing an interactive wrestling novel. Which means it really says something that half-way through I was punching the air in excitement and shadow-boxing as I read and imagined the matches playing out in my mind’s eye.
PROS:
Love of the sport. Chikiamco clearly loves wrestling and it shows. More than that, they have done an incredible job of making that love infectious and spreading it to the reader.
I’m no expert, but it all seemed incredibly authentic to what a rising wrestler would go through and the nature of the business.
Time skips done right. Slammed! covers a period of several year’s in your character’s life and career, and it would be easy for this to feel poorly paced or fragmented, but the author knows what the through-line and theme of the story is and keeps it as the connective tissue bridging all the scenes and jumps in time.
The story feels like a well-written bio-pic of your wrestler, smartly knowing what the reader needs to experience, see, and learn in each part of the career before neatly jumping to the next milestone.
Strong, simple stats. There are only six stats in Slammed! and each is tightly controlled and used.
You have three stats covering your wrestling moves - whether you are strong, have great technique, and your ability to trash talk. The last three include your relationship with the fans (how much of a Face or Heel you are according to the favor or heat you get from an audience), and whether you are courteous to your fellow wrestlers or only interested in making yourself look good.
The final of these three is ‘Kayfabe’. Maybe one of the more unique stats in Choicescript history, since it measure how much you lean into the theater of professional wrestling’s storylines at all times or if you drop the illusion outside the ring.
It’s actually a fun mechanic, letting you perform actions or say things you really don’t feel or believe as a character, all in service of a storyline or the public image of your wrestling persona. I started as a heel in the independent circuit and the game immediately tested my commitment by having a little girl ask for my autograph and giving me the option to be mean to her. (I couldn’t do it, and my fellow wrestlers laughed at me, which I thought was great.)
No relationship stats. Now, I know I just dinged the first Community College Hero game for bad relationship stats, but that was for ambiguous and non-useful stats.
Slammed! doesn’t give you any relationship stats at all, and…I really liked it?
It was almost a necessity for a game like this, because you have different friends and relationships during your career and some of the tension in storylines revolves around whether or not you can trust people. Having a relationship meter in the stats for everyone would have really undercut that.
But I also realized I liked just staying in the story. Often there is a temptation in Choicescript games of checking a character’s relationship meter or stat before you make an important decision, or after an important decision if you are worried about their reaction to your actions. Without stats, you can’t do that, so you are forced to just go with your gut and read for any signs of the other characters’ approval or disapproval. It’s…freeing, and something I hadn’t considered before, assuming all Choicescript games just needed relationship stats or a meter visible to the player.
Exciting action in text form. I wasn’t sure how well wrestling would translate to a purely text medium, but Chikiamco makes it look easy. There were three or four times I had to go to the internet to look up a wrestling move based on the name given, but besides that, the action was clear, exciting, and dramatically paced.
There’s lots of interesting choices in the matches as well. Do you go along with the script? Do you play to the crowd? Sell the other wrestler’s moves? Turn it into a real fight? How do you best utilize your own wrestler’s unique strengths and weaknesses?
Meaningful gender differentiation. You can be a man or a woman in Slammed! and rather than being purely cosmetic, it meaningfully changes wrestling leagues, character opinions, reactions, and even whether or not what your character is doing is an attempt to break a glass ceiling.
The history of the sport being male-dominated, or women used as spectacle and eye-candy isn’t ignored. Misogynist characters exist and push back and you can respond.
To me, it’s a really great handling of differing character genders, and while I know Slammed! would have still been a fun and interesting game to play as a male character, I was impressed at the extra attention and added layers when playing as a woman wrestler.
Nice subtle story that builds. What starts as seemingly just a biographical telling of a wrestling career slowly transforms into a coherent story, piece by piece, until you have a strong personal character goal in addition to the desire to reach the top of the wrestling stardom.
SPOILERS: I accidentally named my character the same last name as my rival, which was sort of hilarious, especially since I chose a small rural Southern town as my hometown. My head canon was that they must be second cousins or something. I also like to think that the instances of Delgado vs. Delgado announcements just heightened the drama for fans!
I also have to compliment how the story ends (at least the ending I got). Chikiamco knew what the major theme and tension of the storyline was and once that was settled, the game quickly wraps up with a small denouement, which I felt worked perfectly.
There were some unanswered threads, but it was all stuff I was fine to leave dangling, like they were left there purposely for the reader to imagine different future career scenarios with their character.
CONS:
Assumed reader knowledge of wrestling. This is a minor thing, in my humble opinion, but Slammed! assumes some prior level of familiarity with wrestling.
Chikiamco does take pains to explain things like kayfabe, faces and heels, but other terms you have to either work out yourself from context clues (which is possible in many cases), or taking a moment to look up the info online.
This most often came up in the terms for wrestling moves. Do you “counter with a DDT” or “go for a leap frog before counter attacking”? Other times wrestling moves were clearly explained after a term is used.
Still, I guess it isn’t unusual for Chikiamco to assume someone buying a quarter-million word interactive novel on wrestling wouldn’t be a complete layman on the subject.
Final verdict:
(9/10)
Final verdict, I would definitely recommend Slammed! to anyone that enjoys interactive fiction, not just wrestling fans. For wrestling fans it will just be extra enjoyable.
I didn’t go into it thinking I’d be so impressed, but here I am!
11 Likes
For what it’s worth, the game actually does have various relationship meters under the hood and a couple other stats but all of that is hidden. I came into this game a similar way you did, not with the same type of background but the general vibe of, I’m not a fan of this sport, I know nothing about this thing, let’s see how it goes, that was a few years ago. It hasn’t changed my opinion much on wrestling as a whole but the game was really, really good, and is still one of my favorites
2 Likes
Oh, I know that. I just thought keeping it under the hood and invisible to players was actually refreshing. Maybe I should have phrased it “Invisible Relationship Stats”. It let it be much more nuanced, and kept it ambiguous if characters really liked you, were pretending, or hated your guts.
It felt much more like real life interactions that way. Instead of checking progress on a meter, you do your best to interact with characters and have no idea what is going on in their heads or how they’ll react later on.
That’s the same for me, then. I’m not about to start watching or following wrestling again—it didn’t turn me into a wrestling fan—but I did really enjoy the game.
3 Likes
This is 100% my preference (and how I write my own stuff). Give me diegetic reasons to know how people are reacting to me. I tend to read through most CS games with minimal checking of my stats – I’d rather take myself out of the story as little as possible – but character relationships are one area where assigning explicit numbers to a variable actively weakens my immersion.
5 Likes
It’s crazy that I’d gotten so used to them that it really took playing a game where they just didn’t exist as something to look at or check that made me realize, “Hey, actually, I think this is better!”
It also wasn’t present in my mind before then because as I write Choicescript, I’m, as the author, handling all these variables and flags for relationships, so they are top of mind to me from that side of things.
But yeah, I think I’ll go the way of invisible relationship stats in my work. It feels more natural. In real life when we say something or do something in front of someone we don’t usually get immediate feedback, certainly not in the form of numbers or a meter.
2 Likes
I did something similar in the upcoming Chapter 5 of The Rise of Cthulhu. I don’t use relationship variables, as you don’t have companions, but the vast majority of this chapter takes place in a single location, and I use a temporary variable to track one character’s opinion of your sanity. She gives you feedback based on its value at certain points (and it’s used for a couple of achievements), but it’s completely invisible to the player. The things you said and did that made you appear sane or insane should be fairly obvious, though.
3 Likes
That’s really the heart of it. If you as the author, or the author, are providing enough character feedback in the story, you don’t ever really need to show the player any meters in the stats.
Plus, it sets up treachery or betrayal much more cleanly than any meter could.
I think it was Kreg Segall in one of their Choicescript games that actually played with the relationship meters in a funny way, with one character being so shallow and superficial that her entire opinion of you swung back and forth from 0 to 100 based on if you flattered her or gave her even the smallest push back. I thought it was hilarious as a sort of meta commentary on the character, but I did see that some readers were horribly confused by it.
4 Likes
I knew people would send in bug reports about Mopsie’s relationship meter, but I thought it was funny enough to risk it. (In my current game in beta I have a character who is precisely the opposite, whose relationship meter never budges from 50 no matter what you do, and I suspect I’m setting myself for more of the same.)
I’ve eventually come around the notion that it’s a good thing to give players the opportunity to hide the relationship stats right in the menu. A lot of people don’t like them there, and a lot of people do like them there.
7 Likes
I thought it was funny, and while I was confused the first time it happened, I immediately realized the joke the second time it happened.
As far as Slammed! and invisible relationship stats, I’m not sure it would have worked any other way, since a lot of tension is whether or not certain characters actually like you, are planning on betraying you, or are only acting nice or mean because of kayfabe and the storylines.
Yeah, the relationship meter never moving might be a harder joke to sell.
I have noticed a tendency to put them on a separate page in the stats menu, but I feel compelled to check anyway if they are there!
4 Likes
And then you have is losers who bring up the code and spend more time using it like a spreadsheet instead of actually playing the freaking game, yes, this is a self call out here
3 Likes
I only code dive once I’ve decided I’ll never play the game again. Usually that means after 3-4 play throughs. Then it is mostly curiousity and picking up tricks for my own coding.
5 Likes
I try to at the very least just read along and not look ahead 
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I like to code dive to figure out new things to do in a game, or how to get a specific outcome, or if I suspect there’s a bug that’s breaking branching…or there’s a puzzle I flat-out can’t solve.
2 Likes
See, I can’t trust myself to do that. As someone who has actually taken coding classes and done it for games before, if I open up the game in a code editor, I’m just unable to keep from pulling every thread until the sweater unravels.
I seem pathologically unable to just peek behind the curtain. I’ve got to grab the man behind it, throw him into the open and shake him while demanding all the wizard’s secrets. 
7 Likes
Oh, no, I absolutely will read everything (or until I get bored by endless almost-same-with-only-minor-varieties text blocks in any event), it’s just that my brain then goes “I want to see that in-game” and then I start tracking backwards how to reach that particular scene (and if there’s multiple, if I could get all of them in same playthrough).
It’s not the same magic as encountering everything without knowing what’s going to happen next, but there’s still certain magic in playing through it yourself as opposed to just reading it.
6 Likes
I’m one of those nerds who accidentally ends up playing a character who’s like 80% the same as the one I played in my first playthrough whenever I try to replay a branchy RPG or IF, so my usual policy is that if I want to code-dive, I’ll do so after my first play through.
And yet I get upset if I find out my choices didn’t matter…!
6 Likes
I really love to play different roles, (drama and theater kid in middle school, high school, and college), so I mix it up as much as I can and just role with the consequences.
It’s also why I get annoyed if a Choicescript game has failure states (like actual game-overs) because it feels like then I am looking for the correct way to play, rather than just sinking into a role and following through with it as that character really would, consequences be damned.
8 Likes
Psy High
by Rebecca Slitt
Published Dec. 2014 (Word count? No one knows.)
Psy High is a young-adult supernatural mystery set in high school, where you and your friends have developed powers. Unravel a plot against the school body, solve the mystery of your powers, and find a date to prom.
Psy High is, for better or worse, very YA fiction. That’s either going to be your jam or not, but it’s a plot with nearly 100% teen characters in a high school setting. It’s almost funny how obsessed your character can be with normal teen drama even after the source of their powers and the plot to take over the school is revealed. Like, “Yeah, the world may end, but my world will end if I don’t get a date for prom!” Do you want to work on your plan to save the school or go on a date?
It also falls into that time period of Choicescript games where the community was moving deeper into narrative story weight versus mechanical gameplay, but hadn’t gotten into epic novel territory yet. That’s probably for the best where Psy High is concerned, because as written, the story, while interesting, doesn’t have the legs to last too much longer than it does.
It didn’t set my world on fire reading it, as I’m old and genre-savvy enough I knew the answer to the mystery the moment the introduction was finished and I was given my second case as the school’s self-appointed student body detective. But, it was written well, was well-paced, and kept me entertained enough to play through most of it in one sitting.
PROS:
Stats are near perfect. Having read through and dissected so many Choicescript titles recently, stats are one of those things that are easy to do wrong. Either an author has too many, they aren’t clearly defined, there is too much overlap, or they aren’t used or balanced well.
Rebecca Slitt has five skill stats and three opposed stats and they perfectly cover everything you’d need for a game set in high school. You have Academics, Athletics, Social, Popularity, and your Magic skill. Outside that, you have have your propensity towards subtle or bold approaches, whether you are out for others or yourself, and how obedient or rebellious you are.
Each have clear uses and it’s always obvious what choice is using which stat. Each was also nicely staggered by the end, with the ones I used often being very high, others being low, and just one or two I never focused on staying near the middle.
Get to use your powers on a regular basis. You start with one power and soon discover the ability to add another power if you focus in that direction, and the game continuously lets you use your powers for all sorts of things.
Using your powers almost always gives you more information than you had before, and I never ran into a situation where I thought my powers would be useful that Rebecca Slitt didn’t give me the choice to use them.
There is also a nice progression of ability if you use your powers regularly, where you get better and better at it.
CONS:
Story is predictable. It falls into existing conformity horror or assimilation horror sub-genres, with the addition of magic powers.
I’ll blur the rest of this section for spoilers, in case you want to play the game yourself first.
SPOILERS:
So it turns out the principal and a teacher are working together to turn students into ‘model citizens’ by brainwashing them with magic to dress better, be more responsible, set goals, do homework, and apply for college scholarships. Remember when I discussed this being aggressively YA fiction? Yeah, this is the terrifying plot you’re trying to stop, though the game does give you the option to assist the principal if you want to.
Now, this can be genuinely creepy when done right, like in 1998’s Disturbing Behavior. Psy High weakens the horror considerably though, because you pretty much never get to meet anyone before they get brainwashed and join the Blue Crown Club. Even though the character supposedly knows these kids, you never get to meet their original personalities as the reader.
Instead, you see the brainwashed student, then get told by narration this is strange behavior for them and then are told what they used to be like. Not shown. Just told.
In addition, none of your friends get brainwashed. That might have heightened the stakes or added some teeth to later decisions, but it’s absent here. From what I can tell, none of the half dozen or so students you can actually get close to or date get brainwashed. Instead, again, it’s always people you are told your character used to be friends with in elementary school, or was never friends with at all. Anyone important has an aggressive case of plot armor.
Why is the principal brainwashing students to be model citizens? So he can improve the test scores and graduation and college admittance results of the school to make himself look good for a run for political office! Now, the implication is that he would go on to use this power at a city or state level, but the other failing of the story is that none of the brainwashed students are shown to be suffering or experiencing side effects. Heck, most are depicted as happier.
One of the things that made Disturbing Behavior so, well, disturbing, is that the brainwashing was shown to have real negative effects, trade-offs, and might ultimately even kill the subjects as part of the cover-up. The forced conformity was causing real harm. In Psy High, none of that is present. In fact, in a real kick in the teeth if you DO remove the brainwashing, lots of the students are like, ‘Lol, that was weird. But might as well keep up with those better habits I learned, huh?’
At one point, my girlfriend in the game wanted to go with me to confront the principal in the showdown, and one of the options was for her to ‘Stay here, so you don’t get hurt’ and I almost laughed, because I was thinking, what’s the principal going to do? He’s never shown being violent or abusive towards the students. In fact, he’s shown helping them with essays for scholarships. “Watch out, sweetheart! He’s trying to get you a college grant! No!” 
It’s also never explained where the magical device he uses came from, or how he and the other teacher got their powers, but the reader is left to assume it’s from the tide pools like the students did. However, it’s also never explained why the students all have different powers from their exposure to magic. Presumably it’s based off personality traits, but that’s a guess.
It’s a competently told story, well-paced, and with good prose for the most part, but ultimately it lacks any real sense of stakes or any teeth sharp enough to really bite into and grab hold of the reader.
Narrative quirk that felt oddly judgemental. Rebecca Slitt has an odd quirk I began to notice, where the game would ask if you wanted to do something or ask someone for help and if you chose not to, you’d get a full page of only:
“Alright then.”
And a page break.
It started to feel like she was in front of me saying it with an eyebrow raised and making a little note on a case file. It seemed to pop-up after big set-ups, like how nice a teacher was and how all the students like her and don’t you maybe want to tell her what’s going on and get her to help you? Don’t you?!
“No.”
Full page. “Alright then.”
Now, I know this was likely just the place-holder transition text for Rebecca when another scene wasn’t available, but it popped up frequently enough I started mentally muttering, “Don’t you judge me!” 
Forced attraction to characters in narration. Psy High asks if you’re attracted to boys, girls, or both, than it is off to the races. From that point on, any potentially romance-able character is described as attractive, often with your character thinking how attractive they are. It feels a little bit forced, because even when you reject a character or indicate you aren’t interested, the attraction language continues, and you are usually given another chance later to change your mind.
It’s not terrible, just a bit annoying that because I decide my character likes boys, suddenly I get internal monologues about how dreamy and attractive certain boys are, without first asking me if I want to find that character attractive.
The same goes in reverse, with all the available characters for your orientation finding you attractive. This one is slightly more forgivable, and I’ll even say it’s refreshing to have characters ask you out, displaying some agency of their own.
Final verdict:
(6/10)
Final verdict, I would recommend Psy High if you like YA story-telling and don’t mind a little comfortable predictability in your storylines. It’s a perfect example of why CoG games are a safer bet than Hosted Games, because it’s well-edited and very much OK, which is much more than I can say for some Hosted Games I’m struggling through currently.
6 Likes
A couple things for this one.
This made me laugh.
This was so me when I was in high school! Which is probably why I would rather not play as a teenager again!
Your giant ass chunk of spoilers also gave me a laugh!
I would feel the same! The only time I felt judged was with Love at Elevation, which … I do not recommend buying or reading.
Spill, my friend 
3 Likes