I have been planning to develop a ChoiceScript game for a little bit but I have encountered a problem when it comes to writing. My story is about a failed child prodigy racer who ends up getting roped into street racing (initial d style) but I don’t really know how to properly detail the races.
I kind of want it to be similar to Initial D in terms of the races. There would be your protagonist in your car and you would pick your choices (which might be timed) and your rival would react accordingly. I feel like 1st person would not allow for the rival to play much of a part in the race until you overtake them or they overtake you. 2nd person has the same problems as 1st person, but it wouldn’t be as jarring to switch perspective mid race to show what your rival is doing. 3rd person might be the easiest in writing races but I don’t want the entire story in 3rd person, only the races.
So yeah, if anyone wants to share their opinions that would be great.
If none of this makes sense I don’t mind clarifying.
Timed Choices: This is fine in a video game with graphics where the player is reacting to something on screen, such as Dragon’s Lair, but timed choices in a CYOA where the player has to read stuff just seems a bit unfair as it could result in punishing slow readers. It also has the problem that on the 2nd+ play through that if the speed at which the choice is made matters more than the choice itself, everyone can win every race every time just by making rapid choices and not reading anything thus have essentially won races they didn’t actually race.
Perspective: Most CYOAs use second person perspective. The one I read that used first person just read weirdly. I think that third person is more common in the visual novel style CYOAs as that is the only time I’ve encountered it.
Avoiding time in a racing game is not an easy thing to do, yet choicescript doesn’t support timed choices. For The Race I got around this by having every choice take a numerical amount of time. If you make too many long choices, you would finish each stage of the race further behind the other teams.
You could always include skills that mean certain choices can be performed quicker…
Like another has said, choicescript doesn’t support timed choices. I believe you can make any of the perspectives work, I just suggest keeping to one so it doesn’t confuse the readers though.
In my racing story I simply set up the races with a bunch of different choices that would change what place you were in. Added some stat choices to effect the racing, and it actually worked well. So that’s what I suggest anyway.
Perspective switches can be confusing, and timed choices can be hard on slow readers unless you put the choices on a separate page and have one word choices like- run, hide, stay or break, gas, turn.
Also, I thought timed choices were possible just not done often.
