The Rise of Cthulhu (WIP) (79.1k words, Prologue+Chapters 1-5, Updated 7/31/2026)

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Thank you for the feedback and the compliments! I hadn’t thought I’d needed to tell the player to check the stats screen, as that’s something that it seems is standard in a ChoiceScript game (I always check after making any choice to see what changes), but I’ll consider putting a note there. Choosing a profession is probably the most important decision in the game, as it affects not only your starting skills and items, but it also affects how characters react to you, and the game can be a different experience. The dilettante character has very high social standing and is also a patron of the arts (hence the 75% in Wealth and 50% in Art), as well as having a good deal of free time. Maybe the dilettante could also have a reputation for solving minor mysteries, and the MC’s father could perhaps have mentioned you to the dean.

Failing skill checks can actually give you small increases in those skills, plus there are other ways to get larger increases if you figure out certain things, even on skills that are related to what you’re doing but haven’t been tested.

Alyssa and Lt. Doyle are sharing information so openly because they hope to get information in return. You can definitely improve Alyssa’s article by finding more clues. The article she writes depends a great deal on whether or not you’ve talked to her and found certain clues. There are also other potential rewards for helping Alyssa. And if you play a reporter, you’ve written the article yourself, and its contents depend on what clues you found. It can be difficult for the dilettante to find most clues, as you have lower levels in many of the relevant skills, but that’s balanced by where you do excel. It’s okay if you don’t find out things during the free-roam portion, and indeed there isn’t enough time to do everything, even as a dilettante with a fast car. The story makes sure you can progress even finding only the minimum clues (in this case, the button).

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You could also, I’d think, instead of telling the player to check the stats page, just mention that professions affect stats?

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Just did one playthrough. The investigation section was pretty interesting, and drew me in.

Some thoughts.

Lt. Doyle named one potential suspect: Catherine Evans, the alleged leader of the Evans gang, though he has no proof as of yet of her involvement

It is unlikely that the police would reveal a suspect’s name to the press, as it could tip them off if they are guilty, and it could be considered libelous if they were ultimately innocent. Only reason would be if the suspect is a fugitive, and you need help from the public to apprehend them.

At the general store, I can buy things, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to keep track of how much money I have and how much something costs.

Once you establish that Waite is a suspect, the only option if you do not have a car seems to be to break into her house. I think there should also be an option to inform the police first, as house-breaking is illegal even if she were guilty of the crime. A more daring character might do that, but a more moderate character should have a more moderate choice.

I might have missed it, but was there ever an option to question the janitor at the scene?

Good luck.

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Thank you for your feedback!

I’ll change it so that Lt. Doyle simply does not mention the suspect by name. You only actually meet this person on one particular path.

Money is abstracted in this game through the Wealth stat. Rather than giving the character a fixed amount of money and having items cost a specific amount, the number of items you can buy at the store depends on your Wealth (and the text displayed also hints at how many you can afford to buy while still saving enough for travel expenses). Once you’ve purchased all you can afford, all of the purchase options are dimmed out, and you can only leave the store.

I’ll add the option to call the police (from a nearby payphone, so as not to waste too much time going to the station). Lt. Doyle will thank you, but he knows he won’t be able to get a search warrant based solely on the button and will say so. The police won’t actually be able to help, but you should still have the option to try that first. Doing so will preclude following Abigail Waite in your car if you haven’t tried it already, as she’ll be long gone at that point.

No, there is no chance to talk to the janitor, who is gone before you ever get to the scene.

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At long last, Chapter 3 is now live! I apologize for the delay, but this one took me a lot more time than the previous chapters. Chapter 4 may be a while, but hopefully not as long as Chapter 3. I hope to finish the writing by the end of April, but the testing and fixing may take longer.

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May 2026 Writer Support Thread
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I tried another playthrough as a doctor. Anyway, some notes.

Taking a medicine dropper from your doctor’s bag, you carefully collect the drops of blood from the shard of broken window glass.

The blood would have been dry at this point. You would have to scrape it off the glass. Also, even without the doctor background, a character should have been able to take the bloodied glass, put it in a clean bag and bring it to a lab.

Since you work here, you already know the way there. You go through the hallway to your right and around the corner, soon reaching Lab 2. There is a wide variety of medical and scientific equipment. You select a microscope and prepare a slide with a drop of blood from the dropper you collected, then peer through the lens. At first, the blood cells in the sample appear normal. But after careful examination, you are able to determine that the cell nuclei contain too many chromosomes, a lot more than a human would have. Could this be animal blood?

Scientifically, this section has some problems :slightly_smiling_face:

  • If the blood has been splattered on glass for hours, the chromosomes would likely have been degraded by now.
  • People did not know how many chromosomes humans had until 1955.
  • Red blood cells do not contain nuclei and chromosomes. You would need to check white blood cells, which are much less common in blood.
  • Microscopes were very rare and expensive in 1925. It is likely you would have to personally get permission from the lab supervisor before you could even touch it.

I think at that time, chemical tests were performed to see if blood had a human or animal origin.

I tried out the Innsmouth section, where you investigate different locations before being whisked away to the big bad reveal. Still, I feel like a lot of these sections are filler which tell you how grumpy folks are in Innsmouth without giving substantial information to progress the mystery.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts. Best of luck with the next update.

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Thank you for your feedback! I’ll have to change it so that you collect a piece of glass with blood on it and then do chemical tests when you do the analysis. The exact number of chromosomes was not known yet in 1925, but I believed from my own research that it was known that certain animals had a lot more. Still, with the chromosomes not available, that whole idea won’t work. The doctor route is one of my favorites, and there are several clever ways around fighting (which the doctor is very bad at, but does have that scalpel to make things less painful) and other obstacles. It’s good that you caught that, as it allows me to fix it before uploading the files when Chapter 4 goes live.

The Innsmouth investigative portion is designed to leave you with more questions than answers, though there are a few useful things you can do in it. One is the variety store, which if you missed a chance to go shopping in Chapter 2, lets you do that, as well as buy some booze and save time later. There are also a couple of other things that you can do that are unique to certain professions that can be helpful in Chapter 4, but doctor is not one of those professions. Doctors have plenty of other benefits, though. You can get a little information through some options in the free-roaming section, but all of those are optional, and the big reveal tells you everything you need to know.

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Chapter 4 has now been added! It contains over 12.1k words, for a grand total of over 65.8k words so far. It was a lot of fun to write, and I think it will be to play as well. There are seven new achievements, the most of any chapter so far, bringing the total to 20. This chapter had a lot of options and possibilities, so I didn’t test every possible thing like I’ve been doing so far. It was kind of getting out of hand in Chapter 3, and it would have taken too long to do that for Chapter 4, though I did test most things that can happen. As always, feedback and comments are appreciated!

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Man this was great!!!

Chapter 4 had me on my feet with complete fear and anxiety to the point at every decision I was just saving my game each time and also made me paranoid on who to trust.

But like every great work…I now have to wait for a update on chapter five​:sob:

But anyways keep up the good work kind sir and may Azathoth be with you…wait nah I let him not be with you can’t have you going insane.

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Thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it (if being terrified is enjoyable)! A lot of the inspiration for Chapters 3-4 comes from the original short story by H. P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Many of the things that happen are similar, though the events in my story take place a couple of years before that one. The narrator in that story takes one particular path, but I made things interactive, allowing the reader to make the decisions that can take the story in different directions, though always ending up in the same place.

Chapter 5 will probably be done at some point in June. I haven’t started on it just yet, as I’m taking a little break, and I’m planning to beta test something next week, but I intend to at least write the beginning of it over the next few days (with a teaser to be revealed on snippet day, May 15th, in the writer support thread). The intense action of Chapter 4 will probably settle down to a slow burn for Chapter 5, though there can still be some excitement, and of course plenty of insanity.

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Ok, next round. I tried playing as a criminal this time.

“Ah, of course. He did mentioned that someone would be by. Laboratory C is vacant at the moment. It’s down the main hall, second door on the left.”

Mention

Also, it is very unlikely that a professor would just allow you to use his lab unsupervised if you lack the knowhow for it. Your best bet would have been to hand him the blood sample and ask if he has a lab assistant who can test it.

“Invest?” sneers the servant. “With what? You don’t look like you’re good for the money.”

But I did manage to con a tailor earlier into thinking I was a private investigator. Maybe I could con this guy into thinking I’m a wealthy crimelord? :thinking:

The servant raises his hands when you aim your weapon at him. “And if you shoot, everyone for blocks around will hear it,” he says. “You don’t have enough ammunition to handle that kind of trouble.”“Maybe,” you say, "but you’ll still be dead."Reluctantly, the servant unlocks and opens the gate and lets you inside. “Go on into the house, then,” he says.“And leave you here to shout for help?” you say. “I’m going to have to do something about that.”“You can’t shoot me, or everyone will hear it.”“Yes, but I can do this.” You club him over the head with the stock of your gun, and he falls in a heap. A quick search yields only the ring of keys, one of which he used to unlock the gate.

If you wanted to use the gun threat approach, you should have worn a disguise like a bandana first. (I mean, chapter 4 kinda makes the whole subtlety thing moot, but still…)

If you wanted to club him, you should ask him to turn around first, before knocking him out. He is going to panic and flail if he sees you swinging a loaded gun at his face, which could make the whole thing (literally) messy.

You are stranded overnight in Innsmouth. At any time, pursuers could find you. You briefly consider setting out on foot for Arkham. It’s six or seven miles away. Then it occurs to you that if you do hike down the road, you’ll be alone on it at night. You would be easy pickings for someone coming after you in a car. Your only option is to spend the night in the hotel and hope for the best. No other vehicles are visible in the town square to take you back to Arkham.

Six or seven miles isn’t that hard. A criminal thug should have enough physical strength to manage that. To your pursuers, you could be running in any direction. Even if they did correctly guess where you’re headed, you could simply hide behind a tree if you hear a vehicle approaching.

Horror parts are starting to pick up in Chapter 4. It’s a good way to get the blood pumping. :+1:

Good luck.

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Thank you for the feedback! I’ll definitely fix the typo and other problems before I do Chapter 5. The professor can supervise the use of the lab equipment, but he won’t have an assistant available to do the work, it being Sunday, and the MC will still need to use the Science skill. I can also reference the disguise ability if you have it for those encounters where it might be useful.

When you consider heading out on foot toward Arkham, it does mention if you don’t have enough Athletics that you’re not in great shape and carrying a heavy load to boot, but I can also add a statement that it wouldn’t be a problem if you do have enough Athletics, which the criminal definitely does. Walking to Arkham would certainly short-circuit most of Chapter 4, but I can offer the choice to try it, only to have the MC come across a roadblock with alert guards, where it is impossible to leave the road due to coastline on the east and an impassible rise on the west, thus forcing him/her to turn back.

I’m glad you’re enjoying it. The criminal path is a fun one.

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I’m updating this thread to keep it from being automatically locked after two months. I’ve been extremely busy since May, especially spending a lot of time looking for work, so I haven’t made anywhere near as much progress as I would have liked. I’m currently about 70-75 percent done writing Chapter 5, which is shaping up nicely. I have over four hours to write tonight, which should take care of a good chunk of what’s left. I hope to finish the chapter sometime next week, though it will still take me some additional time to test it before I upload the new stuff.

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At long last, after many delays, I’ve finally finished and uploaded Chapter 5! It has almost 12.6k words, and the total is now over 79.1k words. This marks approximately the midpoint of the story. I’ve added a whopping ten new achievements, for a total of thirty so far. Again, I couldn’t test every possibility, but I got most of them. As always, feedback and comments are appreciated! Chapter 6 may be a while, as I’ll have to do some “research” on Lovecraft’s stories set in Kingsport. It’s been aeons since I last read them. I don’t know if I’ll finish writing it by the end of August, but it probably won’t go live until September either way.

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Ok, tried the police detective background this time, and there seemed to be plenty of options to just shoot at something.

Your gun already in your hands, you quickly aim and fire. Abigail collapses in a bloody heap, dropping her dagger.

Shock sets in, and it’s a while before you can move. You have just killed a woman.

You tell yourself that she had a dagger in her hand and that she was dangerous. Then you remember that she could have killed the museum security guard, but she left him alive. In agony, unconscious, burned, and mad, but alive. Maybe she did it to be cruel, but that doesn’t make you feel any better. You’re sure the police department will back this as a legitimate shooting. That doesn’t make you feel any better either.

When you finally recover, you search the scene and the body, confirming that she is in fact dead. While Abigail had nothing of interest on her person, you recover the matches and the dropped dagger, as well as an ornate key in her purse that is most likely to her house. That is your next stop, for you feel you are no closer to unraveling this enigma, and your only hope is that you can find some new leads there, and maybe even the stolen artifact. You head back to your car and drive there, parking nearby and approaching the front door.

“Where exactly was this clearing, Detective?” asks Lt. Doyle.

You give him directions. “Her body should still be there,” you say.

Things were less strict in the last, but even then, if a police officer discharged a firearm and killed someone, even in self defense, they would be required to report the matter immediately. Yet, you search her house and head out for lunch before you get a chance to visit the station and report her death.

Another issue is that you can only shoot to kill rather than fire a warning or disabling shot.

You secrete the pill on your person, thinking it might be useful later, and approach the door. Very faint light from the hall comes in through the keyhole, and your eyes have adjusted to the dark, but it’s still difficult to make out details. The hall does seem to be deserted, at least for now. You try the knob, but the door is indeed locked.

I got this line repeatedly when trying and failing to open the door with different choices.

Your initial destination is your home. It is rather obvious, and the first place someone would look for you, but you don’t intend to stay there long, and you should be in and out before anyone checks for you there. You do need to change clothes, as running around in a hospital gown does make you stand out like a sore thumb. Nothing screams escaped mental patient more than that. You also need to collect your money and belongings, or you won’t get far. Your mail has piled up in your absence, but none of it requires your immediate attention. However, on top of the pile is an unstamped envelope without an address, but your name is written on it. It must have been hand-delivered. Inside you find some money and gladly pocket it. The dean must have had it sent to you.

You will need your key to get home, unless you left it under the mat. I assume it was confiscated when you ended up at the asylum.

Is there romance? I’m not sure after that conversation with Alyssa at the asylum.

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Thank you so much for the great feedback! I’ve got some fixes to do, but there’s nothing game-breaking, so these will go live when Chapter 6 does. If you have a gun, whether you’re a police detective or not, there are options to shoot if that’s what you want to do (especially in Chapter 4, for obvious reasons), but you can choose different options instead. Shooting is not always the best choice. I can add an option to fire a warning shot, and I already know exactly how that will go. I will add in an option in Chapter 2 to call the police and report the shooting almost immediately. There are no phones or radios out there, so you’ll have to drive back to town first. You can use the same payphone you can use before all this happens. I’ll also need to rewrite the scene where you can visit Lt. Doyle later, depending on if you’ve reported the shooting or not.

I can fix the repeated text in Chapter 5 with trying to open the door by adding a label after the text but before the choice.

I’ll mention that there is a spare key under the mat when you get home after escaping, or your key can be returned to you in the event that you’re discharged.

There isn’t full-fledged romance as such, but I touched on this in the Writer Support Thread. Alyssa is a pseudo-RO. You always meet her at the asylum, even if you never met her earlier (she reacts differently in that case). There’s a way to win her over, but it isn’t easy. If you get the achievement Confidential Source, you’re good to go. Of course, due to circumstances nothing is likely to develop before the end of the adventure, but I will most likely reference it in the epilogue. There’s also a male psuedo-RO coming up in a later chapter. He’s easier to charm, but harder to meet.

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Thank you for the new chapter! Dr. Clarke is a treasure. I expected her and the Asylum to be much worse than it was, but instead it was a long needed rest for the MC. I don’t have any detailed feedback, but I wanted to say that I enjoyed playing this chapter a lot. The structure of choices reminds me a lot of older CYOA games, and while it may not be for everyone, it gives me a nostalgic and cozy feeling.

I also liked the mechanic of analyzing a blood sample (or researching) multiple times, choosing the same option and wondering if something different would happen. Clicking on the same option again and again hoping for a different result and actually getting it is one of the most rewarding things in games, and I stand by it.

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You’re welcome, and thank you so much! I got my start on the original Choose Your Own Adventure books in 1979, when I was 5, so that influence must have stayed with me. I wrote my first interactive fiction in 1979 too, which was directly inspired by Space and Beyond, but it wasn’t very good and sadly disappeared.

I’m glad you like Dr. Clarke, who is a great character and quite good at what she does, and that you enjoyed your stay at Arkham Sanitarium. Some players will want to escape the first chance they get, while others may wish they could stay forever, and the story accommodates both possibilities, as well as a middle ground.

The mechanic allowing you to repeat a Science/Research check works because you get a small increase each time you fail. As long as you’re willing to make repeated attempts if your skill doesn’t start out high enough, you can keep going, it just leaves you less time for other things. It’s entirely up to the player.

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