New here, wanted to ask about the forum.

[RevMcG]

Hi there, so I stumbled upon this forum while looking for something else. It seemed like my kinda place and good to have discussions about stories!

One quick thing I wanted to clarify, is this a specific forum for a specific app? Or is it including any narrative choice story app? I only have experience playing Choices, Episode, Romance Club, Love Island, Maybe, Moments, and Chapters. So I’m just confused if there is a certain app that has multiple stories labeled ‘Choice of…’ etc. Or if this just a generic story app site.

My other more main question, is if there are any stories/apps that you know of that have good options to play as a male character and also romance a man. If its on any of those I’ve mentioned, then I already read it lol. But idk if this of ‘Choice of’ series has that kinda stuff.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and any potential help!

[Eiwynn]

Hi @RevMcG –

This forum is mainly for Choice Script games. Publisher labels for Choice Script include: Choice of Games, Hosted Games and Heart’s Choice games. The main web site has a catalogue of all published games under these labels, with the forum also offering Works in Progress (WiP) that are shared in hopes of getting feedback.

If you have any questions regarding ChoiceScript, you can always check out this thread: Master List: Links for Beginners, which is a master list of ChoiceScript guides. If you don’t find your issue there, then you can always make a thread asking for help on the #game-development:choicescript-help category, though chances are someone has already asked it, so try and search for it first.

Some users may get impatient and ask when you’ll update your game. This is actually against the forum rules, but we leave it up to every WIP author if they want to personally deal with these questions or not. If ever you don’t, do not hesitate to flag the comment for violating the rules, and a moderator will deal with it.

Oh, here’s some advice regarding your opening post. There’s a known bug that doesn’t let people edit it after a certain number of days or edits (we’re not sure which), so if that happens just message me or any moderator and we’ll fix it right away.
And for organizational purposes, I suggest that you take a look at the markdown reference guide we have here. As your game grows, so will the opening post, and it’s best to get an organized system down now before things get unwieldy. This thread and this thread are very good examples of what I mean.

Lastly, we encourage users to reply to multiple users in the same post, if possible. You can do this by writing @ and then their name. For example, @T.K will tag you as if you had been replied to directly.

I believe that about covers it!
If you have any questions, feel free to ask the community.

Edit: I forgot to address your second main question; sorry. Here is the answer: Choice Script games for the most part (if not all) allow you to interract with them on many different levels. This includes choosing your protagonist’s gender, sexuality, and they normally have various different Love Interests or Romance Options you can chose between. This interactive choice means that more likely than not the Choice of Games, Hosted Games and Heart’s Choice titles you read will allow a male-male romance.

Edit2: The Heart Choices games are a little more romance orientated titles, so they often have restrictions on the protagonist, the romance options, or both that the other two labels do not. The catalogued games do give brief descriptions, which often will lay out any restrictions or features available.

[AletheiaKnights]

Nice to meet you, @RevMcG . If you haven’t discovered Choice of Games yet, you’re in for a real treat. I suggest you look up Choice of Games, Heart’s Choice, and Hosted Games on your app platform of choice and download the omnibus apps. You can use them to do a search for free games, so you can play a few and see how you like the format. These may be longer and more involved than the games you’re used to. Don’t be surprised if they ruin you for all those other story apps. (And if they don’t, there is a category on this forum called “Other Interactive Fiction” where you can discuss other story apps if you really want.)

And you say you’re looking for games that will allow you to have an m/m romance? Oh boy, are you in the right place. There are over 100 games in the Choice of Games line, and except for a few in which the main character’s gender is never specified or there’s no romance subplot, every single one allows you to play as a man and pursue a relationship with another man.

The Heart’s Choice line is entirely romance-focused. Right now, there are two games in which you can choose to play as a man and romance another man, and one game (All-World Pro Wrestling) which is entirely m/m and very sexually explicit. (All games on Heart’s Choice at this time are free to play.)

The games published by Hosted Games have much less strict style standards than the other two. They don’t have the same consistent high standard of quality as CoG and HC, but they also have some of the most popular and/or well-made ChoiceScript games ever written. Many, if not most, will allow you to pursue an m/m romance.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

[rose-court]

Hi there!

I’m mostly going to reiterate what’s been said and clarify some points.

This forum is dedicated to games made with the ChoiceScript programming language. Choice of Games is the name of the company that owns the rights to ChoiceScript as well as being the publisher of the main line/label of games. If you’re on mobile, it may be easier to browse through the CoG catalogue on the [Android](Android Omnibus for Choice of Games now available or iOS omnibus apps. These apps allow you to browse and buy all the CoG line of games in one single app, a concept you’re probably already used to if you’re already familiar with Choices and other apps, but which I pause to clarify because if you’re an android user, you might stumble upon all of the same games in standalone apps on the Google Play Store. These are the exact same games/stories as are in the omnibus, so there’s no need to buy them separately unless you really enjoy the game and want to support the company and the author!

Now, CoG has games in a variety of genres, ranging from sci-fi, action, adventure, fantasy, etc. and all of the games/stories that include romantic subplots will always give players the option to choose their gender (cis/trans/nonbinary/genderfluid/etc) and sexuality (gay/lesbian/bi/aro/ace/etc) because of the company’s aim to remain inclusive to all genders, sexualities, etc. Heart’s Choice is another line of games with their own games and omnibus app. As mentioned earlier, these games have romance as the main genre and plot, so kind of the reverse of what you’ll see in CoG games, with romance not always being a given.
Because of the amount of detail and focus given to romance in this line of games, authors are allows to narrow their focus a bit, so you won’t always get as much freedom to choose some protagonists’ genders and and sexualities, it all depends on the specific game. For example, All-World Pro Wrestling is a Heart’s Choice game that only lets you play as a male protagonist and only features male romances.

Last, we have Hosted Games, which is a line of games where the authors are regular folks like you and me! Unlike with CoG and Heart’s Choice games, the authors often aren’t professionals and thus are not creating these games under contract or guidance from their respective company’s editor. It’s a much more loosey goosey system that’s intended to directly benefit non-professionals or authors who are really only writing in what little free time that they can. In fact, the author of the very first Hosted Game was still in high school! The entire idea behind this line is to lower the barrier for entry when it comes to publishing, and for this reason, requirements are intentionally much looser and more flexible.
It’s also for this reason that you might read/hear that the overall quality of this line of games is lower than Choice of Games and Heart’s Choice while in the same sentence being told that Hosted Games contains some of the most popular games and series ever made with ChoiceScript, as it’s a mixed bag of semi-professional authors, writers who have lots of experience but who have never been published, first time writers of anything, etc.

Like CoG games, the genres featured vary wildly, though I believe that fantasy is the most popular genre. Unlike all the main line of CoG games however, Hosted Games can in fact lock protagonists into set genders and potentially sexualities. While I can’t think of any that have done the latter, the former is quite common, and you’ll find a great many male-locked protagonists, though not all of them include gay romances. That said, the most popular series of Hosted Games definitely let you choose to play as gay/straight/lesbian/aro/ace/etc in addition to letting you play as cis/trans/nonbinary/etc.
Lastly, as with the other lines of games, Hosted Games has an Android and iOS omnibus apps.

So, knowing all this, it shouldn’t surprise you that the forum is home to a large amount of work-in-progress (abbreviated as WIP) games from all these lines, and most are available on here to test and give feedback on. Just be careful not to ask for updates, as we don’t want authors to feel pressured into giving updates when they may not be ready.

I know this can be quite a lot to take in, so feel free to ask any questions and I promise the community will be up for answering just about anything. And, since I’m sure you’ll be asking this soon, you can ask us for game recommendations right here!