Games With Great Stat Pages

Game Development
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Hey everyone!

I wasn’t sure if General was the best tag for this thread but I figured it works.

I’m in the process of making my own ChoiceScript game and while progress is going great so far, the stats page is abysmal. It’s my hope in making this thread that I can find inspiration from other authors as to how they’ve gone about organizing, and to also gather input from people as to things they’ve liked or disliked about stat pages in general.

So: what ChoiceScript games (or demos) have had stats pages that you’ve loved? Why did you like them? And if anything, what could they have done to make it better?

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I think it fits best in Game Development–I’ve just changed it. Hope that’s ok.

Linking this thread with an excellent discussion of judging a game by its stat page.

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Sadly, I can’t tell you how to make a good stat screen, but I can tell you what type of stat screen I absolutely hate. It’s when some authors hide important stat charts behind additional tabs, so you have to go to the stat screen first and then choose between different tabs like “Skills” or “Relationships” to be able to see those important charts.
In my view, stuff like that should always be on the main stat screen as it is essential to the game, whereas additional tabs should only be used for extra information like lore bits, character roster, pictures, etc.

Hope that helps! :slight_smile:

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This is great to know! I’ve just added a lot of new personality stats to the game so I’ll have to organize those into sub-categories but keeping them all on the first page is great input.

My game is set in current time (technically in the future but definitely not futuristic if that makes sense), so I was thinking of having a secondary page or two where you could see more information/lore about each of the characters in my game Wikipedia style.

Anyways, I appreciate your feedback!

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Thank you, and I think that’s a great idea! (especially since I used a similar approach in my own games :sweat_smile:)

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I have concerns about the stats page getting too cluttered and ultimately overwhelming or even turning-away readers.

My solution to this is “hiding” chunks of stats behind *if statements unless they’re relevant to what the reader is doing in the story.

I don’t have any relationship meters in my game but as an example, I have 3 different “combat” scenarios that each rely on a different set of stats. (Solo: if you’re fighting alone, Squad: if you’re fighting alongside companions, and Ship: if you’re engaged in a ship-battle).

I have a boolean variable for each of these scenarios. If you’re in Solo, the solo variable is true and the others are false.

Then in the stats scene I have

*if (solo = true)
 {shows stats relevant to solo combat}
*if (squad = true)
 {shows stats relevant to squad combat}
*if (ship = true)
 {shows stats relevant to ship combat}

The idea being, whenever you enter one combat scenario, its respective variable is *set to true, and the others are *set to false.

This way, the reader has immediate access to only the information they need at that time and don’t have to wade through a potential sea of stat meters, or dive into a bunch of “tabs” to find it.

Idk how well this works with things like relationships since I imagine they could be changing all the time depending on the game, but I guess you could *create a variable that is True when you’re having a conversation with someone and then False when the conversation is over, even for each individual character if you wanted…

So something like

*if (relationship_conversation = true)
 {shows all relationship meters}

Or if you want it to only show the meter for the relevant character:

*if (relationship_character1 = true)
 {shows meter of character1}
*if (relationship_character2 = true)
 {shows meter of character2}

*comment and so on…

Anyways I find this to be a very useful alternative to compartmentalizing would-be urgent information into tabs.

It’ll look like a mess on the author’s side because now your stats scene is littered with *if statements but, from the readers perspective it’s very clean and convenient.

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I think if a stat page feels too cluttered, that’s probably because a game has too many stats to begin with. Less is more when it comes to stats as the more of them there are the more confusing and indistinguishable from each other they tend to become.

That’s an interesting idea, but sounds like a nightmare to code, and might confuse the readers unless the game explicitly tells them what is happening.

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If I may, I’d like to put forth the stats page of Shepherds of Haven.

With beautifully designed section headers, the main stats page comprises of the most important ones readers would utilize (or see) in-game. I really like how it’s all organized in a neat and concise manner!

The stats themselves are sufficiently varied and yet not overly complex too. What I find most creative is how readers can customize the display according to our own preference (e.g. you can hide the sections you don’t want to see).

The stats page also links up to a codex, and a character page, all of which lead to separate pages of lore-relevant details. It really helps in the immersion into the world of Blest, and serves as a nice little place where lore is presented.

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I read that thread just yesterday and (hopefully) learned a lot.

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