List of all stories by word length

[Historian]

Is there any listing of how many words each story has? I prefer long, epic stories, but not all summaries include word-length and there are a LOT of stories on this site. This is just a minor detail, but I would like to save myself some time if I can.

Thank you.

[DUNGEON_MASTER]

I think really long ones are

Iron destines
Tin star
Mecha ace

[Mary_Duffy]

Every Choice of Games title lists the word count in the description. So far our longest Choice of Games titles, off the top of my head:
-Choice of Rebels (600k+)
-Choice of the Cat (600k+)
-Choice of Robots (300k+)
-Empyrean (300k+)
-Heart of the House (300k+)
-Vampire 2 (300k)

[varroth]

Tin Star is probably the longest one out there, 1,2 million words I believe, and it’s damn good.

[Aleksa100]

I think magikiras has around 1 mil words…its quite good story i reccomed it

[SleeperHold]

So, I looked up the games and wrote down the number of words for each game (some of the games don’t have the number listed in the intro description, so I only have those that had the number listed). Here’s the list I have of both CoG and Hosted Games (only gonna list games w/ 200,000+ words).

1. Magikiras - 1,100,000 words
2. Choice of Rebels - 637,000 words
3. Choice of the Cat - 600,000 words
4. The Shadow Horror - 533,000 words
5. Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven - 500,000 words
   (50,000 per playthrough)
6. The Iron Destinies - 455,000 words
7. Guns of Infinity - 440,000 words
8. Highlands, Deep Water - 340,000 words
9. Empyrean - 325,000 words
10. The Hero Unmasked - 300,000 words
11. Saga of the North Wind - 300,000 words
12. Choice of Robots - 300,000 words
13. The Sea Eternal - 283,000 words
14. Seven Bullets - 280,000 words
15. A Study in Steampunk: Choice by Gaslight - 277,000 words
16. Evertree Inn - 265,000 words
17. The Superlatives: Aetherfall - 260,000 words
18. Metahuman, Inc. - 260,000 words
19. A Wise Use of Time - 260,000 words
20. The Last Monster Master - 250,000 words
21. Slammed! - 250,000 words
22. The Lost Heir 3: Demon War - 250,000 words
23. The Lost Heir 2: Forging a Kingdom - 250,000 words
24. The Hero of Kendrickstone - 240,000 words
25. My Day off Work - 240,000 words
26. Champion of the Gods - 217,000 words
27. Demon Mark: A Russian Saga - 200,000 words
28. The Eagle’s Heir - 200,000 words
29. The 3 Games - 200,000 words
30. Academy of Disaster - 200,000 words

[Carlos.R]

I’d love to see if there’s any correlation between word count and gross sales, but I don’t have access to sales figures.

[Jacic]

It’s also worth while noting that the total words, does not always mean “epic” length. It can mean increased branching. For exmaple Iron Destinies is at number 6, but has a number of stories that branch from the beginning. Not one very long one. So it depends if your the kind of person who likes finding all the branches or if you only read something once or twice. If you’re in the latter category, you’ll want something linear.

[MeltingPenguins]

Anyone maybe have the additional wordcount per playthrough?

[adrao]

Very interesting thread. It would be very interesting to do a correlation between total length and reviewer rating… mmmm let me see…

[MeltingPenguins]

length, playthrough length and review maybe.

It seems (unfortunately) common that people give a low rating to a game with a huge total count but only relatively short playthroughs.
(To which I ask once more: Why do you play an interactive novel if you intend on only playing it ONCE?)

[Jacic]

Doubt it. You’d need the authors to supply playthrough via running random tests.
Some are definitely known for being more linear than others though (which could be a good or bad thing depending on if you like replayablity, and there’s definitely a sliding scale from very railroaded to very widely branched without a single “central storyline”). If in doubt, I’d ask the advice of the forum for a particular story if it is of particular sticking point as to whether you’d buy something.

Edit: you’d be surprised how many people do only play interactive novels once or twice (there have been a few discussions on it a while back but can’t remember where to find them )

[MeltingPenguins]

@Jacic

Doubt it. You’d need the authors to supply it via running random tests.
Some are definitely known for being more linear than others though (which could be a good or bad thing depending on if you like replayablity, and there’s definitely a sliding scale from very railroaded to very widely branched without a single “central storyline”). If in doubt, I’d ask the advice of the forum for a particular story if it is of particular sticking point as to whether you’d buy something.

Edit: you’d be surprised how many people do only play interactive novels once or twice (there have been a few discussions on it a while back but can’t remember where to find them )

Still find it a bit weird, especially when people then go and say that a story with many branches was ‘too short’ and how they were promised 200k+ words…

[Natman1025]

Holy crap, 1million words… I need to redownload that game again

[Jacic]

Yeah, very common unfortunately. I actually kind of like some of the more traditional branching stories, but the fact is, unless they’re very long to get the word count right up, they tend to get a lot of poor “too short” reviews in the store which is probably why you get fewer of them being written in the first place. They can be done, they’re just a lot more work than linear plots and you have to hope people realise they’re not linear, because you’re right I have seen a number of reviews in the app stores saying “this was no where near x number of words” even for some of the less branchy ones as well.

[kgold]

I actually didn’t realize how rare it was still to have games over 300K words. But there’s going to be one more reasonably soon - Choice of Magics is currently at 450K words as I write the last chapter.

[Cataphrak]

@kgold

But there’s going to be one more reasonably soon

Make that two more.
The Cryptkeepers of Hallowford clocks in at around 360k words at the moment.

[Gower]

Three more: Tally Ho is 620K words!

[Historian]

That’s exactly what I was asking for! Thanks!

[Samuel_H_Young]

Make that four more: The Magician’s Enigma will likely be 350k.