Interest Check Thread

Seeker of mysteries?
Or Hyper-dimensional transmigrator?

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Like others have mentioned I think neither ā€œomniversalā€ nor ā€œsleuthā€ rolls off the tongue. Titles are hard. They have to be unique without being alienating, they have to convey genre without being generic and they have to be simple without being forgetable.

My suggestion is to take a look at how others have done it in the same genre. Thatā€™s always a good place to start.

Here is a (user submitted) list in IMDB of ā€œThe Best Detective and Mystery Thrillersā€.

And here is the Tv Tropes wiki on titles.



Personally, I seek inspiration in poetry (for no good reason other than the fact that poets are masters of words). This is how I chose a working title for my current project (which I hope to post sometime soon).

So I randomly picked Shakespearā€™s Sonnet 18 andā€”what you know?!ā€”it gave me an idea.

Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
      So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
      So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

[WIP] In Eternal Lines

I like the words in eternal lines or simply eternal lines. I think they make for a good, mysterious and enticing title.

ā€œLinesā€ can refer to the threads of an investigation, but also to the string theory responsible for the existence of the multiverse (omniverse, I know). It can also refer to the different paths since this is an interactive work of fiction or retain the original meaning of the poem as in ā€œthe lines of the poemā€, i.e. the written word, since this is a text-based game.


[WIP] As Long As Eyes Can See

This is a tougher sell, but I like it. It sounds like a James Bond flick. I like the double meaning that ā€œeyeā€ can have, as in the expression ā€œprivate eyeā€.


[WIP] Under Deathā€™s Shade

Again, this sounds like a James Bond flick. Itā€™s a reference to the imminent danger of being stranded in an alien dimension and having to solve puzzles to get away.


You can use them as sub-titles like a real James Bond flick :joy:.

[WIP] The Interdimensional Detective: Eternal Lines

[WIP] The Interdimensional Detective: Eyes Can See

[WIP] The Interdimensional Detective: Under Deathā€™s Shade



Ok, Iā€™m having too much fun with it :joy:.

Good luck and happy writing.

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Just reading these titles make me excited! :drooling_face:

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In Eternal Lines sounds like a cool subtitle. I MAY USE IT.

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I read your WIP, and cannot determine the general direction of the plot progressionā€¦ I will have to wait until you post more.

In any case, personally, I feel that the title should either be chosen to represent the story as a whole in a vague but interesting way or allude to a key aspect of the story.

After some light consideration, and reading the suggestions above, I feel that the subtitle method that was mentioned above would be best, with some mention of the detective and some subtitle that includes a general term for the plot of your story.

Something like the titles above is nice. I have also come up with a couple ideas:

The Detective: An Interdimensional Enigma
The Teleporter: An Omnidimensional Investigation

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Thank you to everyone who voted! I think I have a clear front runner out of the ideas. Iā€™m gonna take a swing at Scion Family Reunion (Nameā€™s gotta change though) with the bar the 7 deadlies run (7th Circle, of course) as the act 2 hub zone. Iā€™ve got a rough outline sketched out and I like how the sleuthing should work if I do the conversations well enough.

I just wanted to reach out and get thoughts on romance options. It seems like thatā€™s a pretty popular feature of Choice of Games, but I wonder if it quite fits the story Iā€™m trying to tell what with the main relationship being something the player came from, not necessarily something theyā€™re exploring. What Iā€™m thinking about doing is creating 3 romanceable personalities, and leave their genders up to the player to decide. On that note, hereā€™s a couple of polls to help sort my thoughts there. The first is the gender question. The second is about the side characterā€™s mythic backgroundsā€¦

  • Player assigns romantic characterā€™s genders.
  • Romantic characters have preset genders.
  • Who needs romance? Just focus on the gods.

0 voters

  • May, Maenad Party Animal
  • Ven, Human Monster Hunter
  • Lex, Bartending Champion of Uncle Dion
  • Snow, Vampire Security Guard
  • Fang, Cat-folk Friend of Honey-ma June
  • Lore, Goth Friend of Zegreus and Melinoe
  • Lysandr, Norse Drinking Buddy to Uncle Tony
  • Grey, Daemon Agent of Envy/Sloth

0 voters

*Zagreus, and Grandpa Tony (Poseidon)

Please let me know if you think of any character types youā€™d like to see! Iā€™m always open to ideas.

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Hello everyone, I just wanted to update you all on how things are going. I have outlined the prologue, chapter 0, and chapter 1 as well as decided on a target number of chapters (16) over the course of the plot progression. I have also decided on a name for the genius and the head of the company that will be in charge of developing you, Emerson (Emmy) Oā€™Donnell (Note that I will be using this name as a unisex one).

Lastly, I will be creating a WIP thread after I complete the writing of Chapter 0 and have started working on the glossary, tutorials, and stats. Thank you for your support.

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I donā€™t know who most of the, are (bisides the ones who mention posiden I can guess them.) so Iā€™m just going with the coolest sounding names for my votes.

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Dion is short for Dionysus, and Maenads are kinda his critters.
June is Hera, taken from Juno.
Zagreus and Melinoe are Hades kids.

For the gods, iā€™m trying to keep their mortal cover names but itā€™s tough to talk about them without spoilers. Iā€™ve got cursory backgrounds for each character but wanted to give an off the cuff intro to see which impacts best with the least information. Tbh, Iā€™m surprised Grey is in the lead.

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My sister is working on 3 CSGs, and so I wanted to test the water here a bit. Which of these three story concepts intrigue you the most?

#1. You play as the only beta tester to an artificial intelligence app developed as a digital diary by a terminal cancer patient. In this game, the only thing youā€™ll do is to have conversations with the AI chatbot. This is a wee game intended to be about 100k words. You donā€™t get to learn more about your control character, and the focus is on the chatbotā€™s psychological development as you teach it about life and the human mind. Think of it as likeā€¦ Emily Shortā€™s Galatea. Story is contained in one book.

#2. Set in a Renaissance-esque fantasy world. You are the child of a runaway bastard in a time rife with blood magic and intrigue, as two feuding kingdoms war against another for pride or vengeance. Meanwhile, an ancient threat looms from the ashes of war. You start out as a small player, barely significant in this conflict, then gain influences by forming relationships with other players, from your own father to street urchins, to foreign dukes and queens.

#3. Set in a low fantasy, mid-1950s time period. You play as a foreign volunteer worker in a post-war country ravaged by hunger and disease. This was originally a collection of short stories heavily inspired from real life and personal history, but stitched together to make a larger narrative. Out of all the three, this one deals more with mature and psychological themes (without gore), exploring the after effects of war on people, especially young children.

Note: All three are character and/or relationship-focused. That being said, the poll is by no mean final.

  • Option 1 (sci-fi, psychological)
  • Option 2 (fantasy epic)
  • Option 3 (post-war exploration)

0 voters

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They all seem interesting, but personally I prefer lighter toned works when life gets difficult. I would probably read all of them, but the fantasy one would probably be my favorite right now.

As I am also partial to exploring sentient AI, I would also like to see how you flush out that interaction from the human side. I hope to include a similar, albeit abbreviated, arc in my story from the other perspective. Good luck to you and your sister. I cannot wait to see how the story turns out!

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The fantasy epic sounds really fun, but Iā€™m wondering how itā€™d be different from all the other fantasy CoGs. The premise is only slightly different from many other fantasy WiPs and while that is by no means a bad thing, Iā€™m wondering what the game would entail specifically. Is the goal to become a duke? Is it to prevent war? Is it to get legitimized? And how many paths would be open to the player? It sounds like it would have to be a pretty open world for the concept to work, so heavy railroading could take away most of the agency and fun in this case. Iā€™ll still vote for it of course, but these are just questions that came to me.

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Hello! Iā€™m very new to writing a CYOA type of book but I have an idea and Iā€™ve already written a potential prologue. (I have a link but I donā€™t know if Iā€™m allowed to add it here, so tell me if you want to test it!)

The entire premise of the book is about the only child of a tech company CEO suddenly being orphaned due to their mother being brutally murdered in her own office. The MC is then whisked to Rodinos, which is a city that sits on a cloud under Olympus, The Golden City, and learns about the magical world (I know, cliche). This is where they are to finish their studies and get a degree from Rodinos University, where her mother graduated.

The thing is, murders similar to MCā€™s motherā€™s are happening to people on campus, most of the victims are demigods. Thereā€™s also a revolution against the gods going on and all around, everything is tense. Not the welcome MC expected.

Basically,

  • You can play as any gender, sexuality, and physical appearance
  • You can play as any of the eight main species, four inherently ā€œevilā€ and four inherently ā€œgoodā€, with any of the four main elements
  • You can choose whether to support the gods or the mortals during the revolution, and you can betray any side. You can also choose to only support yourself.
  • You have to find out why thereā€™s a murderer/group of murderers going around killing demigods the same way your mother died
  • You also want to know more about your family tree and why your mother hid you from the magical world for so long.
  • You can romance any of the six main ROS (I have plans to do poly routes, both exclusive poly ones and poly ones where youā€™re allowed to romance more than one without them necessarily romancing each other. Good luck to me.) but I might make two more characters romanceable.
  • It will be skills and relationships based but I wonā€™t write it in a way thatā€™ll make it hard for the reader to get their desired ending.
  • There will be a hidden trust stat that will influence how the other characters treat you, though if youā€™re high enough level of charm and/or wit, you can trick them into being nice to you.

Now, I just recently started the rough outline and the actual writing but the lore and world Iā€™m using here is similar to one Iā€™ve made for a book I was writing but lost motivation for. It was too rich a lore for me to dump until I get back my motivation, so Iā€™m using it here. I also have a lot more ideas that seem too much to put in an interest check thread.

This also will only be the first book of maybe two or three.

Will this be interesting enough for readers or do I have to change things up? (Edit: if you have suggestions, please tell me!)

  • Yes
  • Yes, with suggestions
  • No, you can make it better

0 voters

Thank you!

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Can you clarify what you mean by ā€œinherentlyā€ good and evil species? Does your choice of species actually determine your characterā€™s moral alignment (and if so, does that limit choices?), or are you allowed to behave contrary to the in-universe perception of these species?

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Of course! I still havenā€™t decided between making it based on your past choices, (if you choose more ā€œevilā€ choices prior, you can only choose between the ā€œevilā€ species), or making it entirely up to the player. But either way, it will not lock your characterā€™s alignment. You are allowed to behave however you want to, and it will all determine the kind of ending youā€™ll have. I probably have to say, though, itā€™s more cunning/selfish than evil before the time youā€™re about to choose your specie. There will be more ā€œevilā€ choices later.

(I keep putting evil between quotations mostly because I donā€™t want people to think choosing evil choices or self serving/cunning ones will guarantee a bad ending or bad character. As I mentioned in the first post, you can always trick the others into thinking youā€™re good. Thatā€™s not to say it wonā€™t damage your reputation/relationships if you ever get exposed, but thatā€™s for the later book/s.)

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Personally I feel really turned off when stories tell me certain species are ā€œevilā€ and some are ā€œgoodā€, just because.

I feel like framing it as them being those things is one thing, and another is them being perceived as that for in-universe societal reasons.

Granting the player insight (not necessarily immediately, maybe slowly unveiling it) as to how those perceptions came to be is valuable, and even more valuable is providing insight through character experience (how does an ā€œevilā€ character grow up under this conception? When do they become cognizant of this perception on them? How do they feel about it? How do they react? What is their perception on the ā€œgoodnessā€ of the ā€œgoodā€ species from their side?). Interestingly, the Greek mythology itself is a lot this way - if I remember correctly, Gods were portrayed and perceived very humanely, with faults and positives both.

So, if the game plays with those notions of evil and good (not exactly like Iā€™m saying of course hahaha), Iā€™d say that is a really interesting premise! The other plot premises you offer seem cool, and Iā€™m personally very fond of poly options that get acknowledged by the game. :stuck_out_tongue:

Would trust be gained in ways clear to the player or opaque (such as, you can try to charm people to trust you but wonā€™t know if you did until it comes down to it)? I imagine it possible to go either way.

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Oh, that is very valid, I personally donā€™t like that too. Itā€™s more of how their world is, I guess. Like, there are creatures that purposely go against other species as part of their traditions and theyā€™re obviously most likely to be perceived as bad. This is set in a modern world but there are bound to be others who still stereotype and those who still let the stereotypes cloud their judgement.

As I mentioned in my other reply, their specie choice wonā€™t lock them into good or evil, so it really is more like the latter.

The player, from the very start, is surrounded by both ā€œgoodā€ and ā€œevilā€ creatures. There will also be some character experience to clue them in on the prejudices and stereotypes and how the modern world is fighting against that. Much like how our world is, no matter how forward thinking we are, there will be those who choose to stick to their more conservative beliefs. As for the Greek mythology part, thatā€™s one of the most fascinating parts of Greek mythology for me. The Gods werenā€™t perfect, far from it, yet they still have/had supporters. Iā€™m planning to use that in the revolution part of the story.

I can assure you, the game will! Thank you so much! And I, too, am fond of poly options. Sometimes, there are too many good ROs and only one hand to hold in games, so itā€™s frustrating having to pick. I can always play again with another RO anyway, but I think itā€™ll be fun to have ROs be in love with each other too, on top of being in love with the player.

Ooh, I personally find it stressful trying to figure out the implications my choices have when Iā€™m playing a game if the choices are too vague, so I probably will have them a little bit on the clearer side. Maybe like, "'Iā€™ll help you,ā€™ you lie" kind of scenario? But then again, this is subject to change. This is just how Iā€™ve written it so far.

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The idea of a naturally good race and a nationally evil race is something that always angers me! So are you doing that?

I want to play has a good hydra!

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Hm, not exactly. I probably shouldā€™ve made it so that both inherently and evil were between the quotation marks.

Theyā€™re not ā€œevilā€ or ā€œgoodā€ from the start, the species just either have more history of tricking others or not, or being more helpful or selfish etc. These actions from their ancestors molded what society thought of their species and, while itā€™s set in a modern world were breaking stereotypes is a huge thing, there are those who still view certain species as good or bad, but itā€™s still entirely up to the player what they want to be. The specieā€™s alignment just influences how some minor characters will perceive you or how easily some of them (not the main ones) will trust you. Iā€™m very into writing characters that donā€™t act the way people think they should because of their background, or those who do but are so much more than just their background, so I wouldnā€™t do that.

Uhh, youā€™re probably not going to be able to play as a hydra since Iā€™m only using creatures that have human forms for storyline purposes (open for suggestions btw so theyā€™re not the usual creatures, Iā€™m not 100% sure with my choices yet), but Iā€™m thinking of adding a sidekick to the game so you can choose between non-humanoid creatures to be your pet/sidekick. Iā€™ll add a baby hydra to that, maybe!

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Hello there. Like many Iā€™ve always wanted to try my hand at writing and interactive fiction has inspired me to really think about giving it a go. Pretty nervous about posting this but have got to start somewhere.

I have two ideas Iā€™m keen on. Both are still in the developmental stages so things will need adjusting, though I thought Iā€™d pitch them here to see if either were worth pursuing. My aim is to keep both ideas as a single book experience.

The Shadow of Southerly Side
Steam punk, mystery, low fantasy, romance.

Summary

Under foggy skies and frequent rain, its easy to feel like a little lost in the busy streets of the city. Your life was supposed to take off from here, though it seems as though its come to a total standstill. Trudging home late one evening across the cobbled streets, it was just another night. Just another lost dayā€¦

Until you come home to discover a dead body.

Welcome to New London! A steam-punk, fantasy version of Victorian England where your neighbours are goblins and your life has been flipped upside down. Someone close to you has been murdered. The police assure you it was an accidentā€¦but you know differently. Turn amatuer sleuth as you try to find the culprit, stop your neighbourhood from falling into ruin and maybe even find love along the way.

  • Optional male, female and non-binary MC. - Options for heterosexual, homosexual, platonic or no romance at all.
  • Choose your way of investigating. Are you an observant super sleuth, charming detective or intimidating investigator?
  • Enjoy getting to know your neighbourhood of Southerly Side, from the goblins next door to the elves that run the local store. But is the criminal really hiding in their midst?
  • Catch a criminal and make your markā€¦ Or help the neighbourhood fall into chaos.

Side note:
This one probably gives off big A Study in Steam punk vibes, I know. I will say I have not yet read this story but plan to soon. I just really like steam punk settings and wanted to throw in fantasy elements to change it up. Magic would not exist in this world and its more about solving the mystery and the neighborhood itself, and the character interactions that come with that. However if the stories are too similar I would of course change that.

Daemon Gate (Placeholder name)
Fantasy, adventure, romance.

Summary

Once upon a time, humanity waged a long battle against the Daemons. These dark creatures from the Netherside tried to claw their way through the barrier between worlds and take the human realm as their own. Thankfully humanity was able to harness a powerful magic that was able to force the Daemons back into the Netherside, banishing them from the world completely. Hundreds of years later, fear of Daemons has been sided to the pages of history and horror stories for children. Itā€™s nothing that you need to worry about.

As a mage in a backwater town were magic is a rarity, you spend your days doing what you can to expand your skills. You want nothing more than to leave on a great journey, be able to afford entrance to the Grand Mage Collegeā€¦or just plain old move out of your parents attic.

Until one bizarre incident sees you face to face with a Daemon. Though instead of trying to eat you or steal your souls as the stories say, this one wants to return home to the Netherside. The only way it can - through the Daemon Gate, the last remaining link between realms. And as the only mage itā€™s seen, it wants your help.

Whether by choice or not, you find yourself with an unlikely new companion and journey ahead of you.

  • Make allies or enemies with your Daemon companion. You can even choose its name and form it takes.
  • Have the choice to form a pact and see your magic grow. Be wary thoughā€¦ too much power can come at a price.
  • Choose your style of magic.
  • Hide the return of Daemons or write their return into the history books.
  • Optional male, female and non-binary MC. - Options for heterosexual, homosexual, platonic or no romance at all.
  • Be joined by allies and even gain an enemy or two.

I am not a coder by any means so either would take time to make. I have not planned all details in concrete yet (such as ROs, some world lore, etc). Thank you for reading!

27 Likes