Scandal (WIP) [Updated: 7/31/2021]

This is inspired by the TV show Scandal by Shonda Rhimes.

It’s something that I’ve been wanting to see for a time. I hope you all enjoy it.

THE MC IS GENDER-LOCKED FEMALE

Summary

Living in Washington, D.C., you’ve learned many valuable skills. Assets that have helped you create your own small empire within the darker recesses of the city. You have learned to hold your head high and forget about your past-- well you’ve tried anyway. But with one small phone call, you’re thrust back into the world that you’ve desperately tried to forget. That you would do anything to get out of.

But you’re the best of the best. The only one that can fix the mess that the elite of D.C. has found themselves in.

You just have to remember that it’s just a job. To not let feelings, old and new, get the best of you. You had to keep looking forward to what was in front of you.

Remembering every step of the way that you were there to solve a scandal. Not be the cause of an entirely new one…

Details

President Christian “Chris” Anderson (M): The current President of the United States. A man that is known far and wide for his perfect smile and charm. With dark brown hair that is cut to perfection-- only the slightest hint of his natural curls appearing-- to his sky blue eyes. President Anderson is exactly what America envisions as a leader. You were one of the only people to know what lurked beneath the surface. To see beneath the mask that the POTUS put on.

First Lady Alcina Anderson (F): The doting wife to the POTUS. Alcina Anderson always kept her political mask in place. Never allowing her wide smile, or loving eyes, to fade for even a second. Even if she felt like lashing out with each moment that passed. With long black hair that fell in perfect waves past her shoulder blades, that was always perfectly kept, and stunning emerald green eyes. Alcina was quite the sight to behold. If only people truly knew the mind that lay beneath the sparkling smile.

Stephen Beckett (M): Your partner-in-crime. The man that stood by you as you struggled to open your company. That has never wavered even in the slightest. Dark skin standing out against his kind honey-brown eyes. Light brown hair kept short as he never liked taking care of it when it was long. He’s the only one that knows your past-- well all that you were willing to share with him. You just hope that he wouldn’t turn away from you when he learned the rest.

Quinn Matthews (F/M): The top agent for the Secret Service. You had only met for brief instances when Christian had been first elected. You hadn’t even realized that you had made an impact on the stony agent. But every time you entered the room you could feel a cool grey gaze following your every movement. Some would say it was simply because it was in the job description… but something more seemed to lurk beneath the surface. You hadn’t even seen Quinn in anything else but the standard suit that all Secret Service Agents seemed to wear. Pale blond(e) hair never being out of place against alabaster skin. You always wondered if anything could crack that cold exterior.

Character Art

President Christian Anderson and First Lady Alcina Anderson

Special Agent Quinn Matthews

Stephen Beckett

Features
  • Customizable MC - choose your sexuality, name, appearance, skills, and personality.
  • Character-driven, romance-focused story.
  • Resolve the scandal that is shaking Washington D.C. before everything you know crumbles beneath you.
  • Allow your unique experience to shape your skills.
  • Will you keep running from your past? Or will you finally face it?
  • Fall in love with 1 of 4 love interests.
Changelog
  • Chapter(s) one and two implemented. (Still need to add more dialogue options in both.)

  • Next update will include chapters three and four. As well as new dialogue choices.

07/31/21

  • Chapter Three Added
    —Will add more dialogue options relatively soon. I will also be implementing the stats along with it. (I needed to change some things about them.)
Artbreeder

President Christian Anderson

First Lady Alcina Anderson

Special Agent Quinn Matthews


Stephen Beckett:

BONUS:
Christian Anderson (Younger)

Alcina Anderson (Younger)

(Thank you to the wonderful Kyna on my Discord for these wonderful renditions.)

Demo Link: Here
Tumblr Link: Here
Discord Link: Here

298 Likes

Looks neat! Chiming in to say that as fanfiction it should probably be under Hobby Projects and not Hosted games

11 Likes

I was really surprised that the MC had an affair with Chris! I wasn’t expecting it at all and it really added drama to the plot

Bug Report


I think this is supposed to be “I’m well aware of that”

4 Likes

Can’t wait to have had an affair with the president but fall in love with the first lady for maximum drama lol

15 Likes

Wow, the demo was super interesting. WIPs where the principal characters are in their 30s-40s are pretty rare!

One thing I noticed (feel free to ignore if you don’t want feedback/criticism about writing style):

:warning: PERSONAL OPINION ALERT :warning:

Feel free to ignore any or all of this.

There seems to be a lot of sentence fragments. This can definitely be an effective technique, even though it’s technically ungrammatical (rules were made to be broken)!

But since there were so many, to me it was sometimes difficult to read because the flow of the writing feels like it keeps getting interrupted. The writing also sounds passive at times because sentence fragments are typically used for conveying description, not action.

For example, in the first page of chapter one below, I’ve underlined all the sentence fragments. In particular, the sentences “My sleep addled mind taking…” and “My gaze rising to meet the sparkling brown…” feel awkward to me. Replacing “taking” with “takes” and “rising” with “rises” would sound better in my opinion, but YMMV.

One last thing:

Since I played as a gay woman, I didn’t encounter this directly, but I did do some code-diving, and it seems it a bit strange that straight and bi MCs are locked in to the president affair. Some players may be annoyed that they’re locked into this particular path because it’s impossible to know it’ll happen beforehand (unless you code-dive :stuck_out_tongue:). It also sort of makes the president feel more important than the other ROs.

I assume that the president affair isn’t plot-essential because gay MCs obviously aren’t on that route. So IMO, your readers will probably be happier if you give them the choice of having had an affair or not.

19 Likes

more please :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :hushed: :hushed: :hushed:

2 Likes

I have not seen the show but wow, your story’s premise show so much potential omg I’m already IN LOVE. Just that little bit of Alcina was enough for me, pls ma’am MA’AM IM ALREADY HEAD OVER HEELS FOR YOU.
I cant wait to see what’s gonna happen next, I’m so exited!

4 Likes

I can’t help but notice all of the option for clothing are all for female perhaps maybe add more for the male and unisex option for the nonbinary and maybe move the option where you decide and select your gender more in the beginning IMO.

Sounds interesting

woop s read the whole demo before I saw it was female gender locked, spent the whole time wondering when I can correct people and stop them from calling me ‘ms’. I got too excited at the thought of the scandal being the president having an affair with a man, my bad. OTHERWISE, I liked it, had a good bit of intrigue and I would be hooked if I played female locked games so I’m supporting this from the bushes.

15 Likes

Love it, this wip looks very promising, the affair with Chris makes everything more interesting haha, have to say that the graphic design looks very nice. Found This stat that doesn’t appear

5 Likes

I have to implement them :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:. I’ll be adding everything in with the next update (chapter three is where you can choose your MCs skills). I’m known to mess them up when fiddling with them before the time I actually need to implement them. So I decided it was best to hold off for a moment.

I may be doing a small update to add a few more choices soon… I’ll try to incorporate some of the stats.

14 Likes

I agree completely. Sentence fragments are best used slightly more sparingly. Just changing a few of the “ing” verbs into “s” verbs and adding a comma instead of a period would make everything a lot more readable.

Example
  • He jolts at my sudden question. His head almost banging against one of the shelves in the fridge. A large smile pulling at his lips as he turns around. Complete innocence etching itself across his face as he opens his arms. “Took you long enough.” → He jolts at my sudden question, his head almost banging against one of the shelves in the fridge. A large smile pulls at his lips as he turns around. Complete innocence etches itself across his face as he opens his arms. “Took you long enough.”

Furthermore, you need to watch your tenses. Grammatically and texturally, it’s correct to have sentences carry over the same tense most of the time. Since you’re writing in present, convert to present.

Example
  • Laughing, Stephen quickly turns around to look at me. His expression one of good natured humor as he shook his head. → Laughing, Stephen quickly turns around to look at me. His expression one of good natured humor as he SHAKES his head.
Other Things:
  • I didn’t turn around as he heard him frantically start moving. Already settling onto one of my barstools, pulling the morning paper in front of me. My drink almost choking me as I read the headline. → I DON’T turn… as I HEAR (i think the sentence is supposed to be in both present tense and it’s supposed to say “I” instead of “he”. i’d also really, really recomment combining the first two sentences and saying “chokes” in the second one)
  • It was the name— the image— I have fought so hard to craft for myself. While it had always been mine since birth, I had never felt like I truly owned who I was. Not until I began my business. Not until I started doing what I loved doing. → i like this line a lot. that’s all.

Something that I really enjoyed about your writing was the dialogue. I think it flowed very naturally and I was particularly pleased to see that you used contractions in the right places, something that’s small but has a pretty big impact on the way conversation flows (to me, at least).

Overall, I saw this on Tumblr a while back and was very excited to play. The plot seems interesting and I’m invested in seeing where everything goes. I only read the first chapter, but I can see you put a lot of time & effort into this and wish you all the best!

2 Likes

Um when it says sexuality I thought it meant both the gender you identify as and which gender you are attracted too. Did I misinterpreted that?

Me too i got confused with that one maybe the author meant the sexual orientation and not the gender of the MC. It would really help a lot if they clarify that part in their post to avoid any misunderstanding. :thinking:

“Sexuality” usually just means a classification as gay, straight, bi, pan, etc. So if you were a gay man, the “gay” would indicate sexuality and the “man” would indicate gender. But I do agree that it would probably be best to include the female-locked part in the game description as well. Even though it’s in the gender-locked-female category, that’s easy to miss since the text is quite small.

1 Like

This was amazing! There is a serious lack of mature ROs and MCs in IF games, so is nice to play with characters close to my age. Also, i have a question (if not too spoiler):
Is Chris affair important to the plot? If not, can we have the choice to had or not had the affair with him? Maybe he was the one who wanted to have an affair but we did not want it to, and then choose our fellings about that.
Thank you for this great work!

12 Likes

@Eleana

I’ve played the demo of your game and here’s my review.

  1. I think you should add a feature to customise our gender as well, because as far as I’ve read the story of your game, it doesn’t suggests to me that the game should be a gender-locked game.

It should be, “I’m well aware of that”


Here it should be, “You’re the only person that can”.


Here it should be, “You don’t know how much it means to me”.

  1. I believe the story is based on a show, correct me if I’m wrong, so you probably didn’t mentioned what was the event that the MC left White House for. I think, for those who didn’t watched the show should get a little recap of the things which compelled MC to leave white House

  2. Further, a suggestion considering that the context of the game is based on a show, as a writer, kindly take the liberty to add things or remove things which the show had in order to make the game for fun. For example, if in the show the MC was female, you don’t need to force the players to take a female character only.

  3. Moreover, if I left White House for reasons which are strong to my convictions then you should probably add a option to refuse the president that I will be working for him. However, you can put a narrative that the president provides a deal which is irresistible, such as giving a huge deal which will give me a lot of cash and a great boost to my career like hiring me as Press Secretary of White House in future if I do well or a portfolio position in his cabinet. (I will like the portfolio position which can also give you the option to make a sequel of the game in later date if the need arrives) :slight_smile:

That’s All! Thanks for reading for may god bless you all!

2 Likes

I really enjoyed your writing. I’ve never watched Scandal, but I don’t feel that detracted from my enjoyment at all. Are these people characters on the show, or is the setting just the same?

I’m also curious about the affair. I’d prefer not to have had it if it’s not integral to the plot but it’s certainly not a dealbreaker for me. The intensity between Chris and our MC was gorgeous, so even if the affair becomes optional, I’ll play through it at some point.

If you’re not interested in feedback on MC being genderlocked, I would recommend stating that soon and clearly in the OP.

2 Likes

The setting and theme are just the same. I made the mistake by saying based on instead of inspired by :sweat_smile:, which was my fault and I apologize for that.

The affair is an integral part to the MCs backstory (with it being shifted a bit to allow for the gay MC, but it goes in a slightly different direction for Alcina). However, you have free reign to how your MC will react to it. Influencing the future and the like.

17 Likes