Once long ago I wanted to make my tribute to the 1992 Infogames “Alone in the Dark”. Not being a programmer and failing all other routes I decided to tread down the path of history and into the CYOA or “Choose Your Own Adventure” territory.
What Has emerged is a solo game meant to evoke the feeling of an old school role playing game. At it’s heart is the choice based game inspired by that old gem of a video game. Through there are many similarities you will find that it has mutated into something much more disturbing.
At this point I am seeking Proof Readers for the ( level 1 errors )written script. This means the flow of the story, scene transitions, and various described areas. I’ve written many sections of this story at different times over the past year and so I may have missed cast-off elements from previous rewrites. It is these inconsistencies and out of place elements that I need found and addressed.
I do expect to rewrite many sections. Because of this ( Level 2 errors) involving grammar and spell checking are not my main focus. However there are times when atrocious grammar can make certain passages confusing and unreadable. Feel free to point the fingers of correction in these cases with enthusiasm.
I do love suggestions to make the story flow easier and other cool ideas you may come up with. I may not incorporate them all but If they are useful and constructive I may just take it up as a challenge to improve this work.
If you wish to test the most basic game play elements all I ask is for you to keep track of “event codes”. Those are the two letter code words that are purely accumulative.
If you wish to play the game purely for its game design please know that this is intended for beta testing after scripting is corrected. Currently it is based on the tabletop Dungeon and Dragons 3.5 Open Game License rules and is modified and simplified. For those that love rolling polyhedral die please make mention of any unreasonably difficult foes , tests, etc.
NOTE: I used the wrong term and a “Reviewer” for the game is not what I should have asked for. I humbly ask forgiveness for this faux pas. Where the dice rolling game aspects are concerned I have simplified it extensively. The result is the same but much easier to play.
Most of all Enjoy!
As always feedback welcome.
Or simply report any errors found here.
As always feedback welcome.
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Are you going to eventually code the game?
I admit to being abysmally at programming. Eventually I would like to have it converted but I have no illusions. Questioning replies are most often the only feedback I ever get about anything. ( This is because I had previously asked for reviews and not the appropriate term of Proof reading. ) Provided that replies follow that pattern then there is little chance that someone would even check out my programming. Therefore there is little inspiration to convert it. I have even considered converting it to pure choice based decisions with no dice elements at one time. That to me is more of a strip down routine than a conversion. Without reason, cause, inspiration, or demand then there is a high chance that it will remain unconverted.
It seems that the term “proof reader” is what I should have used from the beginning. It’s taken over a month before someone corrected me and even then it was when my communications skills were not at their best. You see I currently have either a cold or a flu. I hope this new update to my post makes all the errors you’ve witnessed make sense.
I personaly feel that I am complete with this game. I am ready to code to choicescript. Here is the current link to the plain pdf file.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9tHyMGXPGz3OVNoRDBYQ0FGMWc/view?usp=sharing
Advelh36e has issues converting into html with the bold commands. If anyone wants to take a peek to see what I’m looking into doing ild be glad to. Most of this is location based exploration with searchable details and a few switches. it has a D20 die system with rolls only for actions not damage. Multiple races, classes, objects, etc. I’m thinking of my new project being set in the mythical world of WolfHelm.
Hooooly shit. That’s awesome. And I totally forgot about game books! I need to get one, they seem very fun to play solo 
I would offer to code but I’m in the middle of my own game and helping out a few others. do you plan on adding all the d20/dice mechanics in your game? Do you plan on still using event codes or converting some things into stats and attributes? I haven’t thought about using event codes but they could be super easy.
If you need some help turning your manuscript into a formatted/designed book or PDF I have some experience with InDesign (graphic designer) and I might be able to help you with that. You might already have a professional lined up though. I’ll definitely book mark this when I have some time to read, maybe this weekend. Is there a synopsis?
I am tempted to write a new game book. A part of this game book is to ‘feel’ like an old 1980’s printed book production. It has front matter, back matter, etc. Even the rules were ‘written’ for a high fantasy adventure book “to be released later” instead of the product that theyre in. That’s one of the reasons I wrote this as a game book. I wanted people to pick up a pencil and some dice and to have fun playing the game.
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Like what you’re trying to emulate. You could release the print version and the choice script version separately, or make a new kind of Choice Script where you have to (honestly) put in your results, that could be an interesting dynamic. Get rid of the stats screen, tell the player to write it down instead. Go on the honor system, the ChoiceScript would just be for conveniently flipping through pages without having to actually navigate a PDF or print anything. You could even embed the images and stuff in there, it wouldn’t be too out of place.
Technically using choicescript to flip pages would be in essence using raw html. Can you embed an image in choicescript? The idea is to embed an image of the book cover, the badly aligned page background, the hand drawn character sheet, etc.
You can embed an image but only left, right, or center. The reason I suggested using CS to flip through pages is that you won’t have any possibility of “peeking” at other scenes, and you won’t have to scroll through all 100 pages to find the correct page, you would just click the decision you want to make, and the story would show up.
Of course, if you’re going through that much effort, why not just make the actual game with variables etc, so they player doesn’t have to write anything down at all.
So you could have an easier job programming it (basically not messing with any variables, just giving the player the option to choose “I passed the dice check!” or "I failed 
") or maybe “My strength is over 10” vs. “My strength is under 10” and it would take you to the correct page, or you could have a full game experience with built-in die rolling, character sheets, etc, and it’s now a CoG style game. Again, the first option is totally honor-based, but it’s almost a more open game since you can cheat if you want to and experience all the possible content.
Hmm, something to think about, I’m partial to just coding the actual whole game though xD
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