I’ve started converting one of my stories into Choice, but I’m wondering if displaying too many choices to the player in one go might dilute the meaningfulness of the choices presented or that too many choices might overwhelm the player. What’s a decent number of choices to give people, and should that number be consistent?
More than two if you can, and less than ten unless you’re making a joke out of it (as I think Heroes Rise did at one point).
More than two shouldn’t be a problem. I have a 112 possible endings to draw from, with 410-420 central plot drivers to get there. was going 35-50 choices per scene, but I’m only two scenes in and I fear that the web might be too difficult to proceed. Would be nice if there was some kind of Guide or Template to work from.
See how other games have done it.
I’d misunderstood you and thought you were talking about the number of options in a given choice, not choices per scene. I don’t know that there’s any answer to the latter… as many choices as it takes to tell your story the way you want it told?
I generally give the reader 3 options every 1-2 pages. Sometimes I end up going with 2-5, but 3 is definitely the most common by far. It makes sure that your choices still have effect, but the reader also doesn’t feel like he’s being forced into anything.
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i have not (successfully) written anything so a can only give you a perspective from a reader of all but one of the games
when reading early on choices with lower amounts tend to feel comfortable later on more choice give the feel that the game was really keeping track of my choices. generally 2 choices seem ok but when there are a lot of 2 choice options it begins to feel like your going down a hall and you have left or right as options 3 always tends to feel comfortable even as final choices, 4 choices early on give me a feel that the choice is cosmetic fake or minimal effect mid way in 4 choices feel a little more comfortable as it seems feasible to be as result of previous choices or the author isn’t setting themselves up or worse straining themselves (yes some of us worry about the authors more than the book/game) lat game the 4 choice option is great and very much happy to see, 5 and beyond early on is seen to be cosmetic or similar to a name choice midway through its seen as minimal effect mor so on especially long games later on and especially last 2 choices it makes me really feel like i might be addicted to the game and end up trying to play through every option even if its a choice that i dont see suits me just to see what happens at 6 choices they only seem to work as either names/colors or endings to me
hopefully this was helpful and didnt seems like i was being harshe ranting or to critical just wanted to give a readers (or maby just my) perspective
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