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I think that they’re a somewhat different beast - there is a lot more expectation in ChoiceScript games about branching and varieties of ways to resolve problems or go through each scene, for instance - but there are definitely lessons to be learned from other kinds of interactive narrative. There is a lot of helpful cross-pollination that can be had from playing a wide variety of interactive narratives and romances, even within ChoiceScript games, which handle it in many different ways.

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Perhaps a more attainable mechanic could be having the LI’s personality and circumstances vary according to the choices the player makes. Like when you reach certain conversational milestones you get to choose where the conversation goes and why in a way that shapes what path the LI is on. Want a stereotypical bad boy? When you find out what his job is pick “mechanic” and the story goes one place from there. Like a nice guy with abandonment issues? Pick a “nice guy” job and when it get to asking about his family pick the option that gives him an awful family. The entire game doesn’t have to branch, just the circumstances of the LI. Particularly as we’re talking about individual authors and not game studios with entire teams dedicated to each title, this may be more attainable.

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Ooooh, that’s a great idea!

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I am curious as a straight male (but really as anyone who prefers women in dating games or reality) given we often talk about the romance type tropes as male - the boy next door, the jerk, the mysterious one, the comedian, the bad boy, the gentleman etc - do we think that female romances can fall into the same tropes or do you think there’s trope romances that can only work with one gender?

Also I think it’s not impossible to do a romance game with only one RO but it would probably need to be fairly flexible with how they are to appeal to the reader, though not enough as to make them a slab of stone with appropriate dressing!

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Yes to both.

Romance is not defined by gender alone, but the tropes, stereotypes and devices used to write romance are often dependent upon roles in society and other set expectations of the audience being written to.

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That’s what I probably figured. Looking at the list I suggested it’s probably possible to change most to female, even the male named ones to girl next door, bad girl and… gentle lady? But you have female specific ones like Tomboy and the like. So assuming a RO game for HC was going with female only ROs they could opt for some of those as a basis (though ideally more nuanced).

I also would like to reiterate a desire for more slice of life RO games, which I get the impression many traditional romance books veer towards. Games like Life at Elevation, Life Gives You Lemons and that medical student game (forget the name) could be ideal baselines for this, but games with distinctive locations or interesting but believable jobs with romance as the focus.

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One of my pitches for HC did have the MC married to someone and how I considered approaching it was to let players determine their gender and personality through their choices. There effectively would be four starting points which was the spouses jobs which set their initial personality but it would change through your interactions with them.

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That actually sounds pretty incredible! I have an idea that also only includes one RO, but I’m not sure if people would actually want to play it

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You won’t know unless you try :slight_smile:

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I agree this could make for a terrific game, but I suspect it would multiply the kind of complaints that come in already for gender-selectable ROs: “didn’t feel like a real person,” “just an MC puppet,” etc. And it would be an added challenge for the author not to play into that by ensuring that dialogue and how the MC/others behave around the RO varied sufficiently by the kind of character the player had chosen the RO to be.

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I’m pretty sure that “girl next door” is actually the original (and more common) version of the trope, and “boy next door” is the genderflipped version. :sweat_smile: In addition, there are quite a few other female romantic stock characters, like the ingénue (very innocent and naïve), the femme fatale (the bad girl trope), the manic pixie dream girl (very eccentric – maybe equivalent to the comedian?), and so on. You only have to look at a few harem anime to see how many of the characters are essentially stock characters.

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I do not think that we need to branch the entire game or even most of the game. Honestly, I think that most authors could get away with the last third/ final act of the game like choice of robots and/or magic.

Take Hearts of Battle. Massive spoilers:

This text will be blurred

The first two third of the game is fine. Then that scene happens with Ferrado and there is a marked shift in the quality of the game because once you get back from the trip and deal with the breakdown of the arena it feels like the game should branch.

Try to imagine it. A rebellion path with remi where you end up doing what the rebels seem to mostly always do in the game anyway, but now its a choice and you actually get properly involved with the rebellion Ferrado and the other noble should properly potentially die in this path.

An Eryx path where you continue working the showboasting in the arena, but it culmitnates in having to fight your lover. Oh no!
That is already where the author where going with Eryx, but it falls flat in all the cases where the mc does not get along with Eryx. Imagine instead if it only happened in their route and specifically because the overseers of saw that you were a couple and set the fight up to screw you over. Free romance drama right there in the text.

An a ferrado path where you try to game the system to become their bodyguard and have fun with the character Ferrado was untill the twitter discourse switch gets turned in their brain. The MC can flat out say that they are mostly interested manipulating Ferrado and that characteristic of the MC is another victim of Ferrados power imbalance obessession. But imagine instead that you got onto Ferrados final path by specifically saying that you want to play that manipulation game with them. Ferrado could keep their charactistation as someone dresses you in fine clothing and forced you to their parties, and readers would know that they entered an uneven relationship beforehand, and opt in instead of whatever weird twitter discourse.

Petra should properly have something to do with the flee branch. Two absued people who realise that “screw all this” we should just run. Would be a fine path.

I think people bring of Heart of Battle again and again because it is so close to being there. It´s author is good, the writing fits up til the last act, the potential is so clear and then… just nothing.

You do not even have to be that branching. Pirate Pleasure which most people agree feels more like a romance novel, does the smart thing and lock the ro just before the final conflict then the last act of the game is the mc and ro working together to deal with the mcguffin given the feeling that they are a couple now. It is not that much branching, but it does give each of the ro a time to shine together with the mc giving the reader a sense of “they are good together.”

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You may enjoy the author’s next HC title when it comes out - the final act has a structure like this where each path/course of action is more tightly tied to each character (though it’s not the same subject matter).

I remember that too. I wonder if the comments about Jazz Age, or maybe just the expectations from other ChoiceScript games, informed that shift. Some of my favourite games have three romances - Heart of the House and Choice of the Deathless come to mind - and perhaps today’s audiences would still enjoy three (Noblesse Oblige has three and isn’t as popular as the other games in the series - but it isn’t a HC and there are other factors that contribute to the lower popularity); a very in-depth single romance ala Our Life could potentially work.

Certainly the workload difference between three and five romances is bigger than the sum of its parts, as you say in your post. Among all the sensible things you said in the rest of the quoted post, if one isn’t careful it’s really easy for characters who you’re not specifically choosing to hang out with to fade into the background, which makes for a flatter game experience and then feels odd if they later confess that they like you.

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I think that making the paths notably different here would require just about as much work as just making two separate ROs. Different dialogue, different environments, different activities, etc etc. About the only thing it would do is prevent you from having to work multiple ROs into the story somewhere.

However, it would also come with the flaw that you’d have to build your RO, and that always feels a bit lame IMO. It wouldn’t be a character you came to like, it would be picking parts out at Build-a-Bae workshop. I want… a femme fatale… with a heart of gold… and family problems. Etc.

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Such unified starts and finishes work wonderful, as long as a few core design decisions are made firmly and with proper-follow through.

In my experiences, it takes a special skill-set to execute and deliver these successfully.

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Belle-de-Nuit and Never Date Werewolves seem to have done just fine having three romances each (although BdN got a fourth in the sequel).

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I am going to be honest. Character you do not specfically choose fading into the background in a romance game is a feature of the genre not a bug. While an ensemble can have a romance sideplot, romance stories are very rarely ensembles. It is once again the plot with romances being a very different beast than the romances with a plot. The focus is (and should be) on the mc and their chosen one. The exception would be polycules, but most of the stories are not polycules.

An quite frankly RO who have little presence shouldn´t choose to confess they like you no matter what If the player has showed no interest in them. It is properly because they, the reader, are not interested in them.

The problem with jazz age was that not that there was only two ro.
The problem was the two ro in direct conflict - so it felt very much like if you choose one the other should properly not like you, but the player also had like three or so other side plot with important goals so the player could actively ignore both RO´s. Leading to a situation where the RO confesst to you even if you have mostly ignored them and the few times you have interacted with them you actively sabotaged their career.

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I definitely see what you mean about features not bugs - I guess what I also mean is the importance of giving players enough time to feel they have got to know all the characters before locking in.

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I am still learning to write romance, but it seems to me that this balance is ever so more important in a romance genre than usual, and I feel it is essential normally.

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That and it was clearly written originally not as a Hearts Choice release and was evidently rushed to completion for the second half of the game. Kind of a shame since as a period piece the first half is pretty good. If the socialite friend had been adapted into a third love interest and the second half had been done with the time and effort of the first, it would have been excellent both as a HG and HC game.