Any good free interactive sites or apps other than Choice of Games?

I’m interested in the adult games you were talking about if you wouldn’t mind still sharing.
Thanks!

Please inbox me those adult only sites.

Delight Games, especially the Wizard’s Choice series, have really good characters, great writing, and great stories. The downside is that the choices are basically “try to guess which irrelevant choice this author thinks is the best one.”

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You should definitely try the `Huntsman`` - it is simply amazing. It’s a great story and extremely well written. Very few grammatical errors in the first book. Which is a breath of fresh air after most of the text games I’ve played. The games take on raising stats is neat, the story compelling, the characters are great. If you like horrors, of course :wink:

After the first demo version you can buy all other 10 chapters for just $3,99. Alternatively, buy each chapter separately. Very cheap and very interesting!

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If there has been anything I’ve learned over the may years of coding and designing is you can never satisfy everyone. There will be some who absolutely love your stuff and others who venomously hate it.

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So, pretty hostile post here AnneR as an introduction to the forum. I’m going give you the benefit of the doubt for now that you’re not trolling and reply.

I don’t understand the obsession with choosing the gender and orientation of the protagonist. At what point does it matter in most of the stories beyond the (usually) shallow romance options? If so much time is spent on the numerous permutations possible doesn’t that mean the story will likely suffer?

Shouldn’t a story in the romance genre and a story in the action genre play at least somewhat differently without attempting to shoehorn action into the romance game or romance into the action game?

This has been discussed elsewhere on the forums with regards to depth of romance and whether some stories are better off without it. Some stories definitely do require orientations etc as the characters may be locked to a particular orientation, gender flippable or simply to stop annoying readers with potential romance options that wouldn’t interest them. There are some games on the list that do not contain romance options. The short, short answer is, much of COG’s audience likes romantic options and games are can get bad reviews on the stores if they don’t contain any.

A story involving the heir to the throne (for example) SHOULD differ depending on the gender of the protagonist as well as the orientation. Otherwise why bother to create the scenario?

Why? If we’re talking about historically accurate Tudor England then sure. If we’re talking about a made up magical filled non-historically correct land with the rules set by the author, can’t they do as they like? The other reason to create the senario is for setting pronouns and RO’s as previously discussed.

Actually there are a few that are branching games on the site. And even some of the semi-linear ones can lead to significantly different endings. The more linear leaning ones often tend to be more popular than the highly branched ones so more of them are written and they get more attention.

This is an exaggeration for many, and more than you’ll get for many demo sections for books off amazon. If you do not wish to pay for the games, you can always stick to the free ones. If you don’t like them at all (which seems to be the case) why are you here to complain?

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I don’t know if this is the best topic to get involved in as a long time lurker (I’ve rarely been tempted to post as it seems like the more interesting topics always wind up getting locked/deleted anyhow and it seems like a waste of time to participate…) but just to put in my two cents I have to say that while I don’t necessarily agree with AnneR’s tone, the point about the…pointlessness of the gender and orientation stuff is something I’ve been feeling for awhile. Beyond the first couple I played back when it was still a novel concept I’ve never felt like it was anything but padding, to give the illusion of more choices when none of them mattered. Add the fact that it almost seems mandatory in every game now and I feel even less like I’m making interesting decisions about how I’ll play my character.

I realize I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I read a story, it’s because I want to read about a fun or dramatic or interesting plot. I’ve never in my life read a book or watched a movie and thought ‘well it was very well written, I’d have liked to enjoy that, but unfortunately the protagonist wassn’t exactly like me and I wasn’t personally interested in the person they got together with and so this is trash with zero appeal’. I know these stories are in second person but I’ve never taken the ‘you’ to be ME. Reading a choice-based story is more like role-playing, and I’d rather not even be offered roles that don’t matter and effect nothing about the plot.

But as long as I’m having a minor rant…for that matter it bugs me even more when love interest characters have their gender or orientation changed to match what the reader is interested in. The author isn’t even attempting to make them a character of their own or have consistency in the story’s world when that happens, it’s just a wish fulfillment fantasy for the player at that point.

…okay well it was nice to finally get that off my chest. Cheers everyone and happy Thanksgiving, if you celebrate that.

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That is point of the novel or a movie. It is a narrative about the protagonist and their struggle in the environment they were put into by the author or writer, which is some what different from what the CoG is aiming at.

One thing unique about CoGs is it aims for us to be integrated or to be part of the story or the world the author have created so they try to customize your orientation and background and take into account your choices if possible. I know that some stories are linear and others concentrate on world building but some authors have to gone some lengths in order to make our choices matter and reflected in the ending.

To be honest, I love some romance options integrated in my fav CoGs stories. It makes the story more interesting.

Well, that’s just my two cent.

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I think recent posters have been missing that the titled offered under Choice of Games and Hosted Games, are text-based choose your own adventure role-playing games. Choice of protagonist gender, orientation, appearance are vital parts of these things to allow people to be able to invest in the narratives.

Not interested in that sort of customisation? Go ahead and create a generic straight white male called John Smith an knock yourself out - your character will be no different from the vast majority of player characters to date.

Fancy a little variation? Go ahead and create that lesbian Asian woman and go have fun.

The point of choice is to let you choose how you want to have fun. That’s the point of these games. If that really doesn’t appeal to you, I think maybe you’re looking at the wrong game genre.

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The character might as well be a generic straight white male no matter what you choose, that was actually part of my point.

Since they’re essentially fake options that literally don’t matter in the slightest I just click my way through with whatever the first option is. The customization options I pay attention to are things like skills and stats and starting inventory. Things that effect the plot or the strategy I’ll be using.

I don’t want to sound like I care more than I do, because the only thing that actually bugs me about the whole thing (besides the inconsistency of NPCs I mentioned previously) is when purely aesthetic stuff that amounts to certain words being automatically swapped around gets praised as some kind of in depth customization and listed as a feature of a game, when it usually appears to be just a script tacked on after the story is already written, probably because it’s essentially mandatory at this point.

Can anyone suggest a game where anything meaningful happens as a result of these kind of choices? I’ll accept is entirely possible I’ve only played the less interesting ones and gotten a false impression. I’d love to encounter a Valkyrie-like faction you could only join as a woman, or as an orphaned female character getting sent to a different orphanage than when playing as the brother and unlocking an entirely new plot, anything like that.

NPCs as defined characters you could only get close to or access subplots around if you played someone they’d realistically be interested in romantically would also be great. Anything like this would add tons of replayability beyond just the usual ‘this is how you get the single optimal ending, congrats you figured it out’.

And I mean really no one else rolls their eyes at these scenarios like ‘Meet NPC. She’s a lesbian… unless you want her to be straight. Don’t worry it’s all good, this character only exists in the world as a doll to be tailored to your whims.’

Maybe I’m hoping for too much but I’m just big on exploring consistent settings and really like the feeling that a plot is really taking my choices into account even in ways I don’t expect.

And there are just simple things like…I wrote a story once about a girl wanting to be a paladin even though females in her culture and religion upon joining the church were expected to learn the healing arts and go around feeding the poor and such only. I’ve considered turning it into a CYOA and outlined and mapped out alternate plot lines extensively, including cities and factions and an economic system the player can become involved in…and yet if I ever really took the leap in converting it all to choicescript I get the feeling it would be unwelcome here because the character is just herself, and does not come equipped with interchangeable parts. And of course the very foundation of the entire plot would make no sense if she did. She is who she is BECAUSE she encountered resistance in this specific way. I honestly tend to think less of a character’s depth if who they are is generic enough that nothing about who they are or where they’re coming from matters to a story.

Okay not sure why I typed all that lol. This was supposed to be a short post and now I’m just wanting to go add more to my story. In an attempt to be on topic, maybe I will go check out a couple of those sites the OP mentioned again. I think I’ve seen all the active CYOA sites out there (surprised there’s not more) I’m just spoiled on the more consistent quality on this one.

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And just as an aside, it’s so strange to be told I must not want variation and I’m playing the wrong kind of game when what I’ve been saying is yes, I want variation. My entire post was about wanting more variation. Please, someone write a story where I can find some because that’s a major factor in why I’m playing these games in the first place.

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The gender/orientation/appearance doesn’t have to be meaningful beyond giving people a character they can invest in. I, for instance, gain far greater enjoyment from games where I can create my own character over games with fixed characters. Most of the games under the CoG and HG brands fall under this umbrella I think.

There are some where any combination of gender/orientation/appearance matter but I don’t recall names off the top of my head there are also some wips where these things affect more than player investment.

Also, if you find being told you’re looking at the wrong genre “strange” how do you think you make those of us who actually enjoy character creation whether or not it is meaningful beyond letting us create a character feel being told our preferences and enjoyment don’t matter?

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In Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, those types of decisions have minor impacts in situational scenes. As an example, while shopping at the store, having body piercings will give you an additional discount as will having the right kind of job.

If games were to have major impacts occur because of customization of this nature, the balancing and work involved in creating these games would increase exponentially.

In that same game, Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, choosing a nephew as a liability option is proving to be a very popular fan favorite. This choice adds additional dilemmas and dangers to encounters - both social and conflict encounters.

The trouble with having even this much impact on the game is that having a nephew almost becomes mandatory to experiencing some content and this excludes part of the audience. Which means that @JimD must be very careful in what extras are given or having a nephew becomes an unofficial must-choose option to experience the optimal content in the story.

Having such shattered experience doesn’t add replay to most people because quite frankly most people do not care to roleplay such extremes to experience “just another optional path” as you advocate. It would be a waste of development time and effort to put so much writing and mechanics into something only a fraction of your audience will see or that threatens to imbalance the game as to cause what you say is your biggest gripe - making one way the game the most efficient and “best” route.

1st - there are games with more non-mutable characters then others:The Samurai series, the Infinity series, and Lords of Aserwik are three better known titles but Somme Trench is about being a WW1 soldier and the PC is more rigid then most -its a great game but some in the IF marketplace will be excluded from your pottential buyers because of that rigidity. That is just the way the business reality is.

If you really think there is a need for the type of significant impact resulting from character customization, then perhaps you can develop the game that shows the rest of us how to do it. Just like most every other business sector in the world, CS market place is a copy-cat community. We will do what proves to work for other authors. That is the wat sport leagues are, that is the way industry is and that is the way IF-gaming is too.

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Ah ok, see what you’re looking for now. The problem is what you’re asking for ISN’T simple. You’re basically asking for 2 completely different stories. One where you’re female and are struggling to become a paladin although it’s not usually alowed. And one where you’re male and everything is fine and dandy because it’s expected. So what you’d probably want to look for if you want that level of difference between genders is genderlocked stories. There are a few on the site although at the moment they’re all male and in Hosted games (like the Lords of Aswick and Study in steampunk). But yes, in those, you’ll find a difference.

The ones written with a flippable MC are usually done that way because the genders are considered to be on equal footing or the entire world get’s flipped over to reflect the heirachy (like in broadsides and choice of romance). Often that is completely appropriate, I mean if it’s set in present day, no one’s going to tell me I must stay home and cook and clean for the menfolk all day, while the men must go off to war. The differences can be more subtle. The same with “made up” worlds where you can make things as you want. For example in one of my WIP’s Abysm’s veil, I ask for gender mainly to set the pronouns. You don’t realise how often you use pronouns until you start trying to write without them. I don’t want to lock it to a particular gender as it can work for either so I ask and set the pronouns. There is a bit of flavour text here and there (as males are rarer in this particular senario) but it doesn’t penalise you for being male in the same way that your story would “penalise” you for being female and wanting a particular job.

Alright anyway, I think you should write your story about the paladin. If there is a good reason why something is gender locked, it can really add to the story. If there isn’t, that’s when people really question it (for example you’re playing the CEO of a company in modern day USA, why do you need to be a straight white male?) and that’s why gender is selectable for most games. If you’re planing to write for the official label they have to have a selectable gender but not for HG. So look at it this way. If you’re a writer for a living and you need to write a story would you make two different stories that most people will only read one of (because they’re male or female) or would you write one that can be adjusted for both and get paid the same. If you need to pay your rent, you’re going to go with the latter. And TBH for most games it’s no big deal, it works fine.

Edit: There are many gender locked RO’s and some that are orientation locked as well in COG’s. If you’re looking for specific ones I’m sure someone can tell you.

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To keep the tone collaborative, I think that @Moxie and @LordOfLA both want things that can co-exist. It’s good to create characters that the player can invest in–totally. And it’s good to have those choices create neat branching. In an ideal world, most every choice would lead to lots of branching narrative.

But, time and energy being what it is, one cannot always have a game that radically branches for choices of gender or orientation, or race. That may be a failing in this human endeavor of ours, but that’s just the way it is. But in the absence of that branching, it’s still a good thing to have the choice so that the imaginative work can happen in people’s minds–so that their protagonist can be more fully imagined.

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Hi, well, I understand what is being said here that some choices, particularly character creation appearance choices are meaningless, but for some people it isn’t.

By having the option to pick hair color for example, the player can be sure that the hair color he wants for that character is what he wants it to be. If you have it not set, some may have a harder time imagining it so (like me). It’s all a part of immersion in the character you want to play as. Sometimes it doesn’t really have to have a reference in the game at all, for example look at most games with 3d graphics and character creation, your appearance in those are usually very irrelevant, but it’s just a way for the player to identify more with the character he wishes to create.

Some even go further, for example in fallout 3, fallout 4 and the sims, the apperance of the parents can affect the apperance of the children, but it makes no difference besides that, yet it’s a feature that a lot of players enjoy when having character creation, as well as other things like body shape, it has no effect in the gameplay or story, but it allows the player to better finetune and create the character he has in his mind.

In text games it’s maybe more meaningless because you can’t see it all the time, it’s like a variable that just gets set and thats it, but for some things that’s fine. If I have brown hair and go to another country is that something they should bother with? Not everything needs to be referenced at some point or change the story in major ways.

A good way to aknowledge the creation is having these mini references at some points in the story, for the example given before, if you have piercings someone may comment on it, as some people care about it, some don’t, sometimes just having this minor aknowledgement can help immersion for the player.

I’m for example am making a WIP for a game that has several character creation options, such as nationality, religion, race, transgender option, and different languages. I set several default countries and added an option for the player to add their own, including what languages they speak. Not all languages will be used in the game, because such a thing would be impossible, but some will, and may reveal additional information or other things. Other languages might not be used at all in game but will still be listed in the profile of the player. Some might ask why because there would be no point? Well for me the point would be of immersion, that is you at least, you know that language, but the game may never go into a country that speaks that, but there’s no need to, but your character speaks it. At the very least, some of the more “meaningless” choices I set as optional, such as hair color, eye color etc.

A complete different story based on these is difficult, but I do want to have those pop up in a few moments, like for example a mission where the KKK is involved, the player, if caucasian and not of mixed race, might try an option to pretend to be a KKK member to infiltrate them and kill the leader easier. Such an option would not be possible if the player is of another race or mixed race, those would have to seek another way.

For some settings, like games set in fantasy worlds, usually the author can make it so that these are non-issues for that world, so there’s even no point going in with such expectations for treatments based on things like gender to be different. For games which are set in the real world, I think it would be more viable to expect such things depending on the era. Sometimes having such aknowledgments, even if in a negative manner, can help better immersion in the world if that’s what it’s supposed to be like.

But sometimes it’s also a lot of work the more options you add, so I’d rather have them even if not being used, because at least for immersion it can help. What’s bad about selecting them anyway? Just 3 additional clicks?

The religion options I added are sometimes just different ways for the players to express themselves regarding particular situations. I have no knowledge in Islam for example, so I asked for an Indonesian friend what to say in a particular moment of the game and he really liked the idea. He said as a Muslim that having such options helped immersion for him greatly for just being able to say something at a particular point.

Take one of the missions for example, where the target is a televangelist. Christians characters have exclusive options to pick to express themselves. It may not change the whole mission, but at least it’s another perspective.

The cool thing in character creation is that some people like to just create themselves in the game, others like to play as someone completely different (roleplay) even if this character has different ideals or background than the player themselves. For example, I set North Korea as a selectable nationality in my game, even though I don’t expect any North Korean to ever play the game, nor do I expect someone from Tanzania or India to do so, but I added them all, maybe someone from Italy just wants to make his character from one of those countries instead. In the extreme case of North Korea, I even added exclusive background options to cover things like escape and such, just so the player can have a more immersive story. I know that some people don’t even care about that, but I do, and so I want to make it possible.

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If there is any decent gay smut on it please mail me the adult only links too, provided you still have them of course.

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In other words authors are being forced to spend development time on gender and romantic permutations or their stories will suffer in terms of reviews at the hands of the audience? That seems rather discriminatory of the readers.

So if my setting is a historically accurate setting, should certain options simply be forced into the story whether or not they seem to fit that setting? According to the ‘official’ requirements for submission the answer is yes. A game set during a historically accurate (as possible) WWII must have the same options as a game set in a fantasy/science fiction setting or the story will be rejected.

Should a homosexual protagonist in a historical medieval setting be expected to produce an heir to the throne, knowing that chaos and civil war could result without a clear line of succession (to throw out an example of a possible scenario)?

I’m curious, which branching games do not lead to the same ending? How many authors create completely different endings and not just minor variations on the same path?

Actually after attempting several of the ‘official’ games that is not much of an exaggeration. A chapter spent creating a character (often with attributes that are poorly explained), a chapter giving the reader an exposition dump regarding the setting and the protagonist’s place in it, and a requirement of payment to continue seems to be a rather standard development.

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Hey that’s the nature of writing for an audience. If the readers have a preference, you can choose if you wish to meet those or not, but everyone is free to leave a review.

As long as it’s not discrimatory/hate speech, you can definitely make a story to be published under HG with the things you’re talking about including genderlocking if you wish. In fact there are some world war stories on the site if you wish to look that fit what you say “would be rejected”. If you want to write for COG, that’s still fine but the amount of work for the author to write several different stories of which only one is likely to be read (see comment above) will get exponentially larger. COG is a brand that tends to publish for established authors. They need to use their time wisely in order to make enough money for things like food and electricity. So why wouldn’t they prioritise their time with settings that can be adjusted for either gender, orientation or race? Besides, not everyone wants to read a real life story where they’re being descriminated against. If I’m going to be a female warrior, I really don’t want every second person I speak to refusing to have anything to do with me and trying to send me home. Sometimes I just want to play the story.

I’m curious, which branching games do not lead to the same ending? How many authors create completely different endings and not just minor variations on the same path?

Mine for starters- Wizardry level C. It has several very different endings although I believe some of them can be difficult to find.
My day off is also very branchy I believe.
Iron destinies is relatively linear after the beginining but has several completely different story lines.
From memory Life of a Wizard branched as well although I haven’t read it in some time, but I do remember it having high replayability
Metahuman has a number of different ways to resolve the ending scene as do many others (they’re in the category of semi-linear as they branch towards the ending)

Anyway that’s a few from the top of my head, there’s probably others. So why are the very branched ones in the minority? Because it cuts the play through length down. It also means to add to the story becomes exponentially harder as the branches are going off in all directions and the word count becomes very high. As an example, mine has a playthrough length that I think ranged from about 9,000-25,000 words with the average somewhere in the teens. This is considered “short” for a game even though the total was up above 100,000 words and the reviews reflect that. People often read it once and then leave a poor review. You gotta understand, this is writing for an audience, not just for myself, so you’ve got to take this into account.

Well we can agree to disagree on that one. I’ve usually got a pretty good idea as to whether a story is going to interest me by the end of a demo. And you do know that the reason why they’re in app purchases is to let people have a demo right? Otherwise you’d have nothing but the blurb to judge it by. In places where demos are actually allowed, (such as steam) they do have demos available.

Anyhow, it seems as if you’re here just to argue. What do you suggest if you have something constructive to add?

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I have found that out of a lot of apps/games I buy on the AppStore, CoG games or hosted games are the most most frequent. I’ve tried nearly all from either category. Why? Because they are just that good. And for like around $5? Sign me up. There’s just so much freedom and variety in these games. I even have a category on iPhone where I keep all CoG/hosted games separate from everything else. These games imo are just rpgs without graphics or sound. It’s like I’m reading a book, which I love to do, but I can decide how the book goes. If $5 or more keeps these games coming? I’m all for it. Realistically speaking, you can’t expect the author to put these out and not get some form of competition. They put their time and effort into these games and I for one feel they should be rewarded, critiqued if needed and supported to continue the work the authors do. Anyways this is just my opinion. Feel free to ignore it if you don’t feel the same.

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