Should I use ChoiceScript for my game?

Game Development
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I’m nearing the end of the first draft of an interactive story I’ve been working on for the past few months, and I’m trying to determine if it’s a good candidate for ChoiceScript. When I began writing it, I wasn’t sure what form it was going to ultimately take, whether it would be more text-based or end up in full visual-novel format. But at this point, I’ve decided that it will be more of a text-focused, interactive novel with no or minimal visuals. It’s a science-fiction romance story with two named, gender-locked female protagonists who serve as each other’s love interests whom the player switches between at various intervals.

At this point I’ve written just over a hundred thousand words in what’s basically a novel-form rough draft of one possible route through the story, with occasional notes about branching choices and alternate endings peppered in. I intend to add more player interaction opportunities and keep track of certain story- and character-related variables once I begin refining the text and settle on an engine to use, whether it’s ChoiceScript or something else.

The engines I’m considering are:

  • ChoiceScript (no experience, but it looks straightforward)

  • Ren’Py using mostly NVL mode (some experience)

  • Twine (some experience);

  • Godot (currently learning for a different, non-IF project).

I have an associate’s in CompSci, so I’m comfortable with coding, though I’m far from an expert.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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Choicescript is pretty easy to pick up. If you have some experience in using twine and ren’py, learning choicescript shouldn’t be an issue.

This might be a problem if you’re trying to get an audience here. Unfortunately, the choicescript fanbase has certain expectations and preferences. Sci Fi isn’t a popular genre here. Also, extensive character customization is more popular here. Having two player characters with fixed names, gender and relationships will be a very hard sell in this town.

I’m personally supportive of trying new ideas, but unfortunately, that’s not the way this fanbase works.

The good thing about choicescript is that there is a strong community built around the system. However, this community has certain expectations regarding what they want to see.

If I may ask, what is your end goal? Are you planning to sell your game for money, are you trying to build an audience or is it more about personal fulfillment? Depending on your goals. I would say pros and cons to each.

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If you haven’t already, I recommend playing a few demos of ChoiceScript games to see if it matches the mechanical structure you’re envisioning for your game, especially Hearts Choice, the romance imprint, which can feature gender-locked characters.

If you like what you see, you should try coding some of your game in ChoiceScript to see if it can do the things you want to do.

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These are good questions. Thanks! My end goal is to create and release a game that hopefully some people will enjoy. When I started, I intended to release it for free, but considering the size of the story, I now want to charge a few dollars for it (though I’d rather release it for free than not release it at all; money’s not my primary goal here). So, I suppose if I were to fully answer your question, if there’s an audience for my game and the kinds of games I want to make, then, yes, I want to build one. I would find that personally fulfilling. And if the games require a reasonable amount of work to create, I’ll probably be inclined to charge a little bit of money for them sometimes.

I’ve played some ChoiceScript games in the past, and I like the format. It basically looks and feels like an interactive novel. But I also realize ChoiceScript isn’t something one can just use however one pleases. Even if I don’t end up using ChoiceScript, what I end up with isn’t going to look or feel drastically different from a game created with it.

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I’m actually having trouble figuring out which Choice of Games games are Hearts Choice games. I’d definitely like to play a few of them.

That’s a good idea. ChoiceScript can definitely handle everything I need my game to do.

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Oh! It’s on its own separate website. Thank you!

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You could attempt to rewrite maybe the first 10-30k words of what you have written so far in choicescript, and set up a WIP thread here to determine the level of community interest in your project. If it does well, you could also set up a patreon and work towards completing the game and publishing it on HG, to earn some income from your writing.

You can also send me a DM if you ultimately decide to go with setting up the WIP thread. I might be able to take a look and offer feedback.

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Oh, that’s a great idea! I want to finish my current draft first, so it might be a few weeks, but I think I’ll do that.

That’s very kind of you. I might just take you up on that. Thanks for all your help so far!

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@ChanceOfFire has already addressed a lot of these but I’m going to echo them.

Choicescript via HG has a very specific audience. You can publish things outside of that range (I still do) but your chances of getting a faverable response go down markedly with each “strike”. So it depends on how much that means to you.

Pros:

Choicescript is arguably the easiest text based IF language to pick up. (Some people say Twine, but I still think that CS is much easier personally)

It has a forum and wikis for easy access to advice and help.

HG has a built in audience so you will get exposure of your game with minimal advertising/no effort. HG also handles all the releases so you don’t have to deal with the stores.

You can make some money on them by publishing (this may be a pro or a con depending on how adverse/pro you are to charging a fee or ads to play.). Note you can publish outside of HG for free (not even any tips allowed) if you like using CS. If you want to charge money though you need to go via HG or get a contract signed with COG.

Choicescript is pretty accessable for everyone including screen readers.

It’s good at creating and tracking variables (I think that’s one of its main strengths.)

Your game contains romance which is very popular with CSG audiences.

Cons (with specifics for you game):

Very little customization is possible in your game. If you want pretty colours, sound effects, animations, text effects etc, twine is the better way to go.

Although 100k sounds like a lot, for CSG audiences, they will consider it a short game and many will not read it/rate it unfavourably.

Character locked games tend to reduce their audience markedly, character locked games are even worse, as many people like the self insert option. This will be compounded negatively with the POV switches.

It sounds like it’s pretty linear apart from the ending. You’ll likely need to try and add a lot of at least flavour text/or additional paths to try and hide the rails.

Science fiction is fickle around here. If it’s soft scifi you’re probably good to go though.

As Chance says, if you’re on the fence you can always code up a chapter and see what you think though.

Edit: Just to be clear, you can definitely make a HG game however you want as long as it meets the minimum requirements of length, non-AI/plagerism, not containing anything in the restrictions. It’s just a measure of managing expectations if you do make something out of the norm for a popular HG game (very long, customised character, fantasy/power fantasy with multiple romance options). There are gender and character locked games, games with switched POVs, hard scifi, <150k word games, all on the HG list so they do get published from time to time.

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That’s all very helpful. Thank you!

I’m predicting a typical playthrough will be about 100k-130k words read. This doesn’t include code or alternate flavor text, branching paths, or endings. Is that still considered short by CSG audience expectations?

You’re not wrong about it being a rather linear story, though I do intend to include some branching paths and keep track of character relationships so that the principle characters interact with each other differently depending on the player’s choices.

It’s definitely soft sci-fi. In fact, it’s close to being fantasy. Since those elements don’t start appearing until about a third of the way through the narrative, I do have concerns about people who enjoy science fiction becoming impatient if I promote it as a science-fiction story. On the other hand, if I promote it simply as a romance, I risk alienating readers who were expected a more realistic story. It’s a dilemma, for sure.

I’m going to do just that.

Consider my expectations appropriately tempered. Thanks so much!

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I don’t have exact stats on that one as people seem to judge by total word count rather than playthrough length (that’s a whole other kettle of fish I won’t go into here). It might bump it into midrange. Games under 150k total (including code and branches) tend to be labelled “too short”. If you’re taking 130k per read-through, taking into account branches and code, it’ll likely edge to total count closer to 200k (or at the very least over 150k) which tends to be considered not long, but passable for many.

Also, just a heads up, it’s considered a bigger fault for a shorter game to be too branched, rather than too linear. Just try your best to hide the rails so it’s not really obvious it’s on the linear side (even flavour and cosmetic choices can really help with that, you want a strongly story based game to feel immersive) and you should be good to go :slight_smile:

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If you’re going text-focused with minimal visuals, then Choicescript and Twine would seem to be the best options. NVL Ren’Py would still require images. Inkle maybe?

The biggest requirement for Choicescript is game length. People want LONG games. Super super SUPER long games, more than 150,000 words, which is more than an entire novel. If you’re ok with writing that much, it’s pretty good.

The median Choicescript HG is a high-stakes fantasy adventure with many romance options and a highly customizable PC. The more you deviate from that, the tougher it will be. The ‘customizable PC’ part in particular seems to be important to many readers.

The benefit of HG is primarily in distribution. There is some in-built marketing, but it’s not as much as for the premium label games, so you’d still need to actively tell people about your game. (Other authors please let me know if I got this part right!)

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One can make a game in Ren’Py without images (I’ve made demos this way), but it’s certainly not conventional. Inkle looks intriguing, though, in my opinion its status as middleware complicates things as much as it offers possibilities, in my opinion. I’m exploring ChoiceScript first because of what a straightforward option it could be, coding-wise, to accomplish my goal.

I’ve written close to that much already, not including code, so I don’t think length will be a problem. I just need to make sure the quality of my writing and the interactive experience is worthwhile for the player.

Yes, I’m definitely going to take a hit there. But I get it. I like playing games with highly customizable characters too sometimes. This just isn’t one of those.

Thanks so much for your advice!

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I was going to suggest Twine honestly but ChoiceScript works fine! I would suggest posting on multiple platforms though. Itch has a much broader community around interactive fiction. CS can be compiled into html and posted there. I highly recommend it and I know you would definitely find some audience members there :slight_smile: especially if you use tags like #yuri, #otome, #female protagonist, etc.

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I have a lot of experience with Twine, but I always feel like I’m fighting it whenever I work with it, unfortunately. But it’s still on the table.

I’ll go check out Itch. Thanks! My game could definitely be considered yuri, though I think using the #otome tag could be misleading, since that might lead people to believe it’s about a female protagonist romancing male love interests (even if otome games technically don’t have to be).

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I wrote a guide some time back if you need to put a choicescript game on itch.

I suspect it’s an underserved tag. It did help me rack up a substantial number of clicks. (Data) I think your game would match the tag description as it appears on itch, so it would be fine to use it.

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I think Twine might be the better option considering how you already have experience in it. CS isn’t able to compete with Twine feature wise (no music, no animations, no dynamic elements); it’s biggest selling point is being very easy to learn. You can still use CS to make a great story but since you already have a coding background I would recommend Twine.

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I echo what many have said so far about the warnings, but I will add a few things:

There is a large and loud fanbase (maybe not on this forum) that wants more Yuri and feels like that is one of the biggest things that many games lack. So if your story is a hit with some of these players, word of mouth WILL spread.

Making a game according to what’s popular might be smart, but that will also make you one of the pack. I picked superheroes for Fallen Hero (might as well have done/labeled it as Cyberpunk or Sci-Fi with some tweaks) because I saw that as being more popular at the time, but the true selling points for many (at least the fans who talks about it to their friends) have been mental issues, romance and trans narratives, neither of which I thought people would latch on to at the time.

There is a classic saying about the movie industry: Don’t ask the audience for what it wants, it doesn’t know what it wants. Just because something is not commonly done doesn’t mean that it can’t be the next cool thing.

There are ways to make fixed characters feel more appealing to people who like choices. Sidestep from Fallen Hero is a pretty fixed character when it comes to background, motivation, personality, and story. Based on a book in fact. However, I have added a to of minor customization to enable people to personalize their experience in ways that don’t change the central core. For example, it doesn’t matter to the story whether Sidestep is a tall, white man with short blonde hair, or a short latino woman with a cute bob. Things like that might take some coding, but it will deepen players immersion when they see it on the stat screen. Even if you have gender locked characters, picking things like that will make people forgive a lot of things.

A railroaded story as a first story is good! That means there is a good chance it might be finished.

Another thing to consider about fixed characters and choices is to have variation in how they go about things. That gives a lot of choices in a more straightforward choices. Things like being rude, or taking risk, or being meticulous about things, or other more stylistic choices really add to immersion. They make a fixed character feel less fixed.

The most unusual thing about your story is playing both protagonists, and having them romance each other. That sounds COOL! I have not seen that in a story before!! Some people might love it. Some might hate it. I am fascinated.

Even if there are a few aspects about your story that people don’t like, if they enjoy the others, they will stomach them more easily. For example, many people are uncomfortable about using the Puppet in Fallen Hero. Or, indeed, playing as a villain. They don’t want to engage with those aspects of the game as much, and thus they lose some options. But there are enough other things for them to enjoy in the rest of the game that it’s not a gamebreaker.

In short, I love the versatility of Choicescript as a system, and the forums can be super helpful. However, it also has very strong viewpoints. Go with what you feel the core of the story is, especially since you don’t set out being rich from your first game. Know what criticism you can listen to and make your story better, and which will break it and turn it bland. That is the biggest thing to look out for. Keep your story yours and not your audience’s.

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Twin flames :wink: