I have to imagine due to the nature of the label and the stories they don’t want the more mature stories being easily stumbled upon, but I will admit I’m surprised there isn’t a tab just mentioning it exists, I think hearts is the one branch that does have a lot of room to grow in marketing (actually now that I think about it, can you even access the Heart Games on the Web outside the direct links in the announcement blog?)
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In fairness to the company, they did trial translating a few games into Spanish and evidently, it didn’t make enough for them to consider doing more games or more languages.
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I don’t play on a smartphone, but it seems the apps are separate too, and it’s a shame that there seem to be quite a few players who like romance but don’t know of the existence of Hearts Choice. Even though there are games with explicit expressions in HG too.
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Some games actually had a Spanish version? I didn’t know that. But it makes me wonder why they chose Spanish. If it were up to me, I’d translate the popular titles into Chinese, given the massive population and the huge number of Steam users. Even then, I highly doubt they’d be able to recoup the money spent on translation. It must cost an absolute fortune, right?
Well, I get the feeling that in a few years, if you’re playing on a web browser, Google Translate’s AI will probably be more than enough to handle it anyway.
With titles like Infamous having 6,000 Patreon supporters, I feel like cogdemos itself isn’t entirely unknown.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially since I’m currently working on two WIPs myself. I’ve been a huge fan for months, but when I try to talk about IF in the real world, it’s crickets. I’ve only ever met one person offline who even knew this genre existed! I think our lack of mainstream popularity boils down to a few major hurdles:
1. The Identity Crisis (Are we a Book or a Game?)
Even as an author, I struggle to explain what this medium is to my friends. If you call it a “book,” mainstream readers don’t understand the branching choices. If you call it a “game,” gamers open it up, see walls of text, and bounce off. To me, IF is “Books+”. Regular books are like custom movies in my head, but IF is a whole different level—I’m not watching someone else’s movie; I’m actively living the part. But how do you market that feeling to someone who has never experienced it?
2. The Review & Visibility Issue
Look at traditional publishing: Harry Potter, Reacher, Twilight—they make millions. The quality of writing in IF (like Fallen Hero—shoutout to Malin, whose level I am desperately trying to reach!) is absolutely on par with mainstream bestsellers.
But traditional books have huge PR machines and author blurbs (I once picked up a Marcus Sakey book just because Lee Child praised it on the back cover). In IF, we rely on App Store reviews, which are incredibly frustrating. You get 1-star reviews from people who just didn’t understand the genre they were clicking on. Thank god for people like Kate doing real reviews, but we desperately need wider reviewing ecosystems outside of our own forums to give potential buyers the confidence to spend their money.
*(Side note: I actually spent hours talking to an AI, unpacking the exact tropes and feelings I loved in my first few IFs. It gave me tailored recommendations, and I found so many amazing hidden gems that barely get mentioned even here!)*
3. The Genre Issue
Finally, there is the genre bubble. I love the superhero and supernatural stuff (my second WIP is exactly that!), but if we want mainstream readers, we need mainstream genres. My first WIP is actually about a young lad wanting to be a footballer. I wrote it thinking it could bring in readers who don’t necessarily read sci-fi or fantasy. But the paradox is that the current target market is everyone on this forum. So it’s a huge risk to write outside the established meta when you’ve spent 10,000,000 years coding and writing your passion project.
Fundamentally, the quality is here. We just need the publishing world’s marketing tactics to catch up to what we’re creating. Does anyone else feel like we need a push for more “mainstream” genres, or better review visibility outside the stores?
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To add to my previous thoughts, I’ve been brainstorming how we actually get these stories in front of people who don’t browse app stores for text games. Here are three avenues I think the genre is missing out on:
1. The Return to Physical Media
We are seeing a massive resurgence in physical media right now. People love real books and bookstores are thriving. Why not lean into the retro Choose Your Own Adventure nostalgia and release physical editions?
I know this is tough because ChoiceScript tracks complex stats, relationship meters, and hidden variables—you couldn’t just print Fallen Hero without making the reader use a D&D character sheet and a calculator! But perhaps some of the more purely narrative, less stat-heavy games could be printed to get physical books on shelves and introduce the brand to bookstore shoppers?
I think physical media is really coming back into popularity, people wanting to own physical things, books and DVD sales are up, even HMV is back on the high street!
2. Tapping into the Amazon Ecosystem (Kindle & Audible)
We need to be where the readers already are. Why aren’t these pushed harder on Amazon? I know basic e-ink Kindles can’t run the interactive code, but what about other formats? We are seeing voice-activated interactive stories on devices like Alexa—could there be a market for “Interactive Audiobooks” on platforms like Audible? People listen to audiobooks on their commute; being able to say “Option 1” out loud to make a choice could be a revolutionary way to experience IF.
3. Better “Loss Leaders” (Full Freebies)
When I first got into this, I didn’t have much money to spend on a format I didn’t understand. What hooked me was being able to play a game for free (I think it was Choice of Romance or Choice of the Dragon).
I know authors need to get paid, but publishers in other industries fund “loss leaders”—giving away a highly polished, shorter product entirely for free to hook users into the ecosystem. I know CoG offers the first few chapters of games for free as a demo, but there is a psychological difference between a “demo” and a “free short story.” If there was a big push of fully free, high-quality short games marketed to standard readers, it could confidently onboard people who are hesitant to spend money.
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I would say this is tough because releasing a physical product is a much more complicated ball game compared to releasing a digital product. You need to handle manufacturing, packaging, warehousing and freight. Printing, assembly, storage and shipping is expensive. Handling things like replacements and returns for a physical product will also be another expensive headache to throw into the mix. If you want to ship internationally, things like international customs and regulations will be an even bigger challenge.
I know some popular indie devs who have done this, via kickstarter. But they have really huge fanbases and equally huge markups to make it profitable for them. If we can get a critical mass of people willing to pre-order some very overpriced books from us, we could try that. Otherwise, this will be a pretty risky venture.
Amazon has been hands down the worst platform in terms of sales by a mile. I’m not sure why, and I’m not sure how we can push sales over there. Choicescript games are compatible with screen readers, so you still sort-of get an audiobook option there.
I agree with this point. True story, I asked Jason if I could release my first title for free on HG, but he was quite firm about it, and would only accept a commercial product. I wanted to explore free-to-win, but they went with a paid option as they felt we would be giving up a lot of potential revenue as a free-to-win title. (I’m not writing for money, but I went along with it anyway.)
I wouldn’t have given Choice of the Dragon a second glance back in 2010 if it weren’t free, and that’s what drew me into this ecosystem. (Even if I think it’s a pretty crappy title by 2026 standards.) In the early days, I did buy Choice of the Vampire after playing it for free as I really liked it, and went on to buy all the chapters for the original Zombie Exodus (after playing the earlier ones for free) as well as Lucid’s and Cataphrak’s titles.
We technically have free-to-win titles to do this, but the wait times are getting insane, and even To Ashes You Shall Return has 20 minute wait timers for a 30k word game. If CoG/HG wanted to release some purely free titles to draw readers in, I’d be happy to write the free content. (Meanwhile, you can always play a completed 480k word game I wrote, for free.)
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If I were writing for physical media, my story would be very different. I would have less customization for the main character and maybe only one or two romantic options. My plot would be more straightforward, too, perhaps only focusing on the mystery around the parents or around the Shadows. This wouldn’t just be to simplify stats, but to also shorten the story. I’d also want to re-write to have longer sections between choices or to have choices with a more immediate impact. One of the benefits of Choicescript is delayed branching. A choice a player makes earlier on has impact later. I use that both in building stats that enable success in a later test, but also to trigger booleans that don’t come into play until later.
While Choicescript and virtual interactive fiction stories are very similar to Choose Your Own Adventure books, they are ultimately a completely different medium. Moving from one to the other would not simply be a matter of stripping out some stats and clicking print. It would be an act of translation similar to turning a book into a tv series. You can do it, but the two creative products would be very different.
This is a breadth-depth issue, I think. The science fiction/fantasy audience is massive, but we really only skim the surface. I don’t know that the issue is getting more mainstream readers. Rather, I think we need to find ways to reach deeper into audiences of genres we’re already in.
Maybe that means getting free copies in the hands of tastemakers. Maybe it means setting up a booth at GenCon and other conventions (note: GenCon because it is a gaming convention with a large creative writing-focused track for novels, short stories, etc).
You’re entirely correct, but I would bet translation poses a few issues. (1) Many of the wordcounts are massive. I’m counting anything 100k+ in that category. (2) The translator would need to understand coding to an extent. They may even need to re-code occasionally if words divide differently in both languages. (3) They would need to understand authorial intent even more than a regular translator since some lines or sections are meant to have ambiguous meanings based on what the reader has read previously.
For example, I have sections of dialogue where one person says one of two lines (split by a multireplace). Then, the other person responds with a single line of dialogue, no modifications. However, if you get dialogue A, their response sounds genuine. If you get dialogue B, it sounds sarcastic. etc.
Translation is a beautiful and difficult art (…I’m the kind of person who buys multiple translations of a single work…). And I’m betting Choice of Games-style interactive fiction stories pose unique challenges for translators. That doesn’t make it impossible in the least, but it would make it more time consuming and costly.
I tell them it is like Choose Your Own Adventure stories. (Very different as described above, but an easy touchstone). I pull one up on my phone and let them click through a couple screens. If they play visual novels, I make that comparison. If they play story-heavy video games, I make that comparison.
It is different, though, so really many people have to try it out.
It is my understanding that people rarely shop for books on Amazon (especially with all the slop on there lately). Rather they go to sites like GoodReads (admittedly Amazon-owned) or Romance.io to find books and then go to Amazon. Maybe taking the time to get on these sites would be more helpful?
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Just for clarity, I don’t mean it should be all physical media, the apps are significantly better, it just means if there was a physical presence of a handful of custom books made for print that people could see in say Waterstones, it would lend credence and legitimacy to the genre. It’s about being physically noticed not just randomly being found on Steam or Google Play say.
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What I’m hearing is: we need to gift copies of Wayhaven to prominent booktokkers and watch things explode.
Definitely agree. I was hemming and hawing about picking up a CoG title for a couple years before I finally caved. I’ve always been a bit of a penny pincher and the idea of spending $10 on a game that doesn’t even have graphics didn’t sit well with me for a time (especially since the screenshots we are given look kinda ugly in my opinion, I know there are reasons for the style chosen and it’s a personal preference thing but it just looks so archaic, especially when advertised alongside AAA games with pristine graphics).
Now of course I’m hooked but it was definitely a hurdle in the beginning. Better sales would help too.
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It’s removing the barriers between the people and them enjoying the products, once you’ve got them through the door.
Or not sure if this crazy idea works, but instead of paying per book, people can subscribe to CoG/HS on a monthly subscription, they get a month free, authors get paid relative to views/reads like artists on Spotify?
They enjoy it for a month, then want to subscribe because they can’t have scratched the surface of whats available in that time, but it’s long enough they understand what its all about and can grow to love it as we do here!
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A subscription model just doesn’t work, since the authors would get pennies in exchange when thinking of the margins, Spotify already barely pays anything and their a huge company with one of the biggest consumer bases around
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I’ve always thought that the WIP scene worked similarly as loyalty marketing.
Instead of bringing in new customers it gives already existing readers free stories they can read, large numbers of WIPs means at least one update to something semi-regularly, you can see how a story develops over time, engage with the authour or talk with other fans making this more like a community than a place to consume content.
But it’s biggest strength I think is seeing how other people are writing their own stories, how much engagement it gets from readers, seeing in practice how it is possible to code.
I think that is a more effective way to make readers into fellow authours than all the coding guides and published books under the sun.
(excuse any typos, in a rush)
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I wonder what the process for partnering with StoryBundle and Humble Bundle is like. Not for a full IF bundle, but as an additional title occasionally within their bundles.
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I might voice an unpopular opinion, honestly don’t know the sentiments on it here, but i don’t think it’s just marketing fault. I worked in book publishing, albeit non-interactive ones, and was one of the people in charge of quality control, and if i learned anything from talented marketing girls there, good product will market itself.
And Choice/Hosted games maybe were a more prominent example of text-based videogames, but nowadays in 2026 people have something to compare. I remember trying my first Choice game, which was Choice of robots, and while i enjoyed a lot of IF games since then, did anything change in those 12 years? Maybe a rogue option added or two.
And yet now you have games like Life and Suffering of Sir Brante, which is just an IF game with some more polish and effort. We have things like Roadwarden and Citizen sleeper, which are, in a nutshell, if you squint hard enough, IF games with some rpg elements. There are games like Golden treasure: The Great Green, which got actual rpg mechanics with added visuals. Hell, even the closest example, Arcadie: Second-born, it got a better interface with actual normal functional save feature. If you stretch the definition enough, life sims like Growing up, I was a Teenage exocolonist and even Princess Maker games can qualify as a genre-adjusted ones, just to name a few. Even without big 3d visuals, copyrighted music and bigger teams of above mentioned Telltale, Don’t Nod and god bless the madman David Cage games, which wouldn’t be a fair comparison, there are so many options outside of Choice games that simply offer more. Hell, even itchio IF projects have unique ways to present themselves. And it’s exceptionally hard to go back to worse versions after tasting better ones.
Can you honestly just look me in the eyes and say quality is already there? Which quality? What exactly changed for presentation of Choice games in the last 12 years besides adding some pronouns?
In my opinion before even talking about any marketing, Choice games need to up their standarts first of all, because they were not standing on the spot. And i do not mean author writing, regardless of how well written something is, the obsolete engine cannot present it in a better way than modern analogues, which got many more things outside of just writing going for them.
It doesn’t matter how much one loves reading, cover of the book IS important. Maybe it wasn’t the same 12 years ago, but at the moment Choice games got the least appealing cover out there on the market. So changes has to start from there.
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I really think they should stop forcing their philosophy onto players and at least add a standard save and load feature already. The WIPs have it, after all. I don’t understand the point of going out of their way to remove it for the release. There are players like me out there who aren’t great at English and often misunderstand the intent behind the choices
It’s fine for me because I play on a browser with an extension installed, but if I didn’t have that extension, there is absolutely no way I would be playing.
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From my experience tiktok and instagram are still the default/go-to for digital marketing. Sure tiktok the app is less stable recently but that really have not impacted the userbase much. However, with the caveat that influencer marketing is much more effective and desirable on tiktok compared to other platforms. Instagram is still the default for many marketers. Short form content is king (tiktoks, reels, YT shorts, etc…). Facebook is still really good, if your taeget demographic is boomer.
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Personally, the only thing I sorely miss from a technical perspective when reading ChoiceScript games (as compared to other forms of media) is the ability to scroll back. A standard save/load would be cool, but the checkpoint system works well enough for me I think.
What really sucks for me is when I get distracted mid-read, then when I return to the IF I can’t remember the last page and need to make a big choice that I feel unequipped to make a call on. That can be a total fun / experience killer and make me want to restart or even put the IF down.
I don’t need to be able to make choices when I backscroll (kinda like in some VNs where you can read a message log but can’t re-make a choice), but not being able to turn my page back is a really odd-feeling experience - we lack a feature that paper books have, and I genuinely think that it’s one of the real friction points a non-gamer new IF reader who is used to literature will have. Worse than that, the lack of page history / back button is a feature that I’ve seen ChoiceScript games actively get bad reviews on Steam for lacking…
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You could do on-demand printing, but it’s my understanding that the quality of that would make me really really disappointed professionally.
Debatable… I find Twine games way more awkward to play on my computer than CS games, the UI doesn’t scale properly for some reason.
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Sorcery! Witchcraft! I must know the marketing genius that made this possible!
I’ve been saying this since I was only a fan in 2016. I avoided these games because of their basic look for years, and that was 10 years ago. But in the end, I can’t make them change anything.
Your example of Life and Suffering of Sir Brante is perfect. I wish I could have a presentation like this, but it would cost quite a bit of money. I’d settle for something that doesn’t look like it came off a BBS in 1994. But that may just be me. *shrugs
When you say boomer, do you actually mean boomer? Or anyone over the ripe old age of 35 
It drives me up the wall how people misuse that term in the last few years.
I’ve had great results from on demand printing from companies like Lulu. My first 3 books were done on there and I plan to print my upcoming Werewolves (The Haven Rising series) Haken novel there. If you don’t mind perfect-bound 6x9 paperbacks, the quality is better than some books I’ve gotten from a physical store.
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