On the subject of oppressive situations and narratives, Honeysuckle by Cat Manning which is a Bluebeard story is great. Maybe a good pairing with Natalia Theodoridou’s Sour Cherry. The tool it’s made with, Texture, doesn’t entirely play well with itchio (I’ve found this with my Texture game, too) as the button text ends up smaller than intended, but it’s well worth a look.
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As someone who fiercely loves her spreadsheets, I find that it helps me have a goal to be motivated for
Though my partner does find the amount of writing spreadsheets I have to be quite ridiculous. Gotta have 1 spreadsheet minimum for each project or WIP or even barebones idea. Two spreadsheets is preferred: one for current word counts and a second one for predicted word counts, detailed by scene per chapter (and sometimes by RO). It’s an easy way to feel productive during a break from writing lol, or at least it feels like a break to me
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I know that feeling; I’m seven tabs into my Pactbinder spreadsheet and counting. It’s shockingly useful, but I knew I’d gone too far when I started breaking out the VLOOKUPs and pivots.
I haven’t actually used it to track stuff like word-count and stuff - that’s a good idea, maybe it’s time for tab 8 - just feedback tracking / game design / system balancing / scene progression in the ‘open world’ parts of the game..
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I’ve got an entire chapter where the goal is to get re-involved in the life of an RO’s ex-husband and then ruin his parade (not a metaphor). Really really gotta make sure there isn’t a bug in the code that allows the main character to get cucked lmao.
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At the start of projects I track daily wordcount excitedly and then invariably lose the will to do so sometime in the late-middle. I do have a bunch of documents where I track difficulty balancing throughout, though.
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It’s a whole new world. I managed the first couple of chapters with only my basic outline as a planning document, but there’s a bit of an explosion in branches in chapter 3. Currently it’s really simple: just a basic list of bottlenecks and branches. But I am now going to go in and add balancing stats/buffs. Hopefully if I have it on one line of a spreadsheet it won’t take me literally hours to go through and check it’s all balanced.
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Now that I’m getting into way more branching as my story progresses, I’m finding it really difficult to keep track of all the different stats a player could have. I love putting stat checks for flavor text and varying reactions from NPCs, but, man, is it tough as nails to figure out what numbers I should assign as the thresholds to make it fair for the plethora of choices the players have made up to that point. I think that’s what’s holding me back from writing my current chapter efficiently.
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Welp, i just realised the app i use for my codes, does in fact, have a way to check wordcount lol though including code
Anywho, chapters are obviously counted, but do y’all count the stats and/ or startup as well?
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I am very new to this, but what I do (which I got from reading a blog by someone who was really experienced) is name the different pass/medium/fail stats and asign them numbers in startup. Then if I feel like it is too easy/difficult/whatever to get a particular outcome, i can adjust all of them at once rather than having to change individual stats.
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Thanks for the suggestion! That sounds like it could be really helpful.
I think I might be misunderstanding what you mean, though. When you say you name the pass/medium/fail stats and assign them numbers in startup, do you mean you create variables for the thresholds themselves (like low = 30, medium = 60, high = 90) and then use those in your stat checks instead of hard-coding the numbers?
For example, in my startup I already have personality stats like:
*create kind 50
*create practical 50
So, I’m not sure if what you’re describing is different from that, or if you’re talking about creating separate variables specifically for the stat-check thresholds. If you don’t mind, could you give a quick example of how you implement it? I have a feeling I’m just not quite picturing it correctly yet. Thanks again for taking the time to explain it!!
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Like this at the top of a scene:
*temp dc_easy 10
*temp dc_medium 14
*temp dc_hard 18
And then for the check:
*choice
#Use a ${block} to weather the impact.
*gosub_scene utils calculate_trait_bonus "composure"
*if (adj_toughness + trait_bonus_applied) >= dc_easy
You set your guard firmly as the energy projectile crashes against your defence with a sound like a wet basketball bouncing, the force jarring your arms. Eric rolls his shoulders back as you recover. "Still standing, huh? Most people tense up too much and eat it."
*else
You raise your defence too late, the energy projectile crashing against the top of your guard. The force drives your own gloves into your face with a blunt smack. You stumble, nearly falling. Eric drives forward, head low, steps sharp and direct.
*set fight_momentum -1
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Makes sense. One of the little challenges I’m running into at the moment is deciding how to calibrate check difficulty for ‘free roaming’ sections where the player has access to a sandbox of options (researching, exploring, etc) - I can’t decide whether I want to use fixed difficulty checks (so some scenes leading to more valuable rewards are less accessible in the early game without optimization) or scaling ones (so that scenes are of equal difficulty regardless of when they’re attempted, avoiding potential player friction, BUT, by the same token, you dilute the risk / reward and have early-game scenes that are unintuitively difficult if attempted later on).
Of course, I could overengineer it and have scaling difficulty checks hemmed in by DC floors and ceilings…
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Of course!
So, in my startup file, I have this at present:
*create pmini 10
*create pmidi 15
*create pmaxi 20
*create mini 10
*create midi 15
*create maxi 20
*create rmini 10
*create rmidi 15
*create rmaxi 20
*comment p = personality, r = relationship
*comment rp = reversed personality - remember these need to go the opposite way. rpmedium_pass must be *less than* the number stated, for example.
*create peasy_pass 50
*create pmedium_pass 65
*create rpmedium_pass 35
*create phard_pass 80
*create rphard_pass 20
*create skill_easy_pass 25
*create skill_medium_pass 45
*create skill_hard_pass 65
*create rel_easy_pass 25
*create rel_medium_pass 45
*create rel_hard_pass 65
And then I would implement it as in the example below.
#As pleasantly as I can, I'll ask Ahmet to take up the slack - Davies should focus on the magic.
*if charming >skill_easy_pass
Ahmet nods, understanding in ${fer} quick, practical way that you feel Davies should be left to practice ${cer} primary use to the mission.
*set passionate_celyn %+pmini
*set rcelyn %+rmini
*set rferhan %+rmini
*goto ahmet_do_it
*else
Ahmet looks at you blankly, then seems to infer that you are subtly rebuking ${fem} for not doing Davies' job for ${cer}. Before you can correct this impression, ${fe} @{fsing has|have} turned away. Even worse, Ahmet's tersely barked orders pull Davies out of ${cer} reverie. $!{ce} @{csing is|are} clearly mortified at the situation, and @{csing hurries|hurry} to correct it.
*set rferhan %-rmini
*set rcelyn %-mini
*set passionate_celyn %-pmini
*goto davies_watch
I hope that is legible. I don’t think it is necessary to be quite so granular as to create separate variables for relationship, personality, and skill based tests, but because I am so new to this, I am not yet sure what I will find useful later.
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I love spreadsheets. Color coded, hyper-organized, and tagged.
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My answer to that is, of course, spreadsheets. 
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May all of you meet your writing goals this month and then some!
I started and finished one story for my alternate history short story collection, titled either Two Days or What a Difference a Day Makes. I already did one last year so 4-5 more to go. Hoping to have more writing time as things settle down for the next few months.
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I’ve spent the last two hours making a stats spreadsheet on Excel. Your influence is spreading…
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I like “What a Difference a Day Makes”. It’s got the right amount of punch to it.
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It’s what I put as the title on the body of the Google Doc, even though the doc itself was named Two Days. I think I’ll stick with it. Not like I need a searchable title, it’s just couched in a whole collection.
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My spoons have been remarkably non-existent, or at least with certain things (ie I’ve been doing okay with work, and my occasional house chores), so I’ve been struggling to keep up with the writers’ threads here. It’ll still take me some time to go finish reading back the past two writers’ threads which I know I don’t have to but I still want to. In any case, I hope everyone’s been doing well.
I’ve been dragging my feet on many things on reading some books but I really want to get it done within the next couple of weeks. Some of them I’ll read as e-books because I know I’ll have an easier time with that, but first I need to go see what’s up with my library cards (I’m not receiving any emails from “Forgot your PIN?” T-T). So when will I actually do that? Hard to say. But when I go to the library for that, I can also just sit down for a while and read while I’m there. Should help to be in a designated place for reading.
Nothing currently happening on the writing side except for a few lyrics here and there. So I expect I’ll get back into interactive fiction writing in July at the earliest, which means I’ll miss the Neo-Twiny Jam '26 which is unfortunate but it is what it is. If anyone’s planning to join that, though, I’ll look forward to reading your entries.
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