Choicescript for video-based choice game? Or alternatives?

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I am a high school theatre teacher and we are having to go virtual with our productions this semester. We thought it would be cool for our fall production to have our students record a choice/choose-your-own-adventure style play virtually (playing out like a series of video clips connected by hyperlink choices). We were hoping rather than using Youtube or something like that where we would have limited control over audience, ticketing, etc., that we might find a dedicated software to do it. I have a little experience with Choicescript.

We were wondering if anyone could let us know if they think Choicescript would be capable of supporting that project, or if anyone has any other recommendations of something that could work well for that?

Thanks a ton in advance!

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First of all, that sounds like a very fun project!

To the best of my knowledge, ChoiceScript does not support video formats (it’s entirely possible that I am mistaken, however, or am not privy to some fancy coding techniques that would allow it to support video). It does allow images, though, so if you are going to use ChoiceScript, maybe you could take a still image from a student’s video to represent the outcome of choice(s)?

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Would Twine’s SugarCube format (more flexible javascript access than the default Harlowe format) work for this?

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ChoiceScript has a *youtube command:

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So if you upload video clips as ‘unlisted’ to YouTube, you could then wrap choice narrative around them.
There are probably better platforms though (not that I can think of any off the top of my head).

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You can embed videos in Twine, but the problem remains where to host the clips themselves. I admit that I’m not up-to-date on non-YT sites and their policies. Is Vimeo still active?

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Vimeo is still around, but youtube on private/unlisted would work fine for hosting also.

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Thanks guys for the great jumping-off points. Yeah, I had not thought of uploading videos unlisted on YouTube and then linking to them through Choicescript or Twine. I will definitely play around.

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If you’re OK using unlisted YouTube videos, you may not need anything else. From what you’ve described it sounds like you’re trying to create something like QUEST?

For fancier linking, you might consider looking into the “interactive video” software genre. While most of it is designed for companies looking to make interactive ads, it can be used to make branching videos and a lot of it is free, like H5P.

H5P example with embedded video clips

You can even find interactive video companies with features specific to storytelling, like Verse or Eko (although those are probably more commercial than you want).

Interactive video is a big market (bigger than interactive fiction, at any rate) so there are tons of tools out there beyond those.

ChoiceScript and Twine can get the job done of course, but a dedicated interactive video tool will give you better support IMO.

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