Wayward Children (WIP)

Welcome to Wayward Children, an investigative horror game set in early-1800s England. You are a member of a fractious religious order now known as the Brothers. Founded centuries ago, your order is tasked with protecting the populace from the depredations of supernatural beings. Few now know of your order’s existence, and fewer still believe that you accomplish anything beyond wasting time on fanciful myths and legends. Nevertheless, you still receive calls for aid whenever fear overwhelms reason.

It’s an easy life most of the time; food and board are provided, with most days spent checking false alarms generated by paranoia, superstition or outright lies. Yet nobody who believes in their cause envies Brothers, for when a call to action is justified, it often ends in death, or worse…

Begin


This is my first attempt at a Choicescript game, as well as my first post here, so to be honest I’m kind of sweating bullets. I suppose I should start with a warning, just in case.

Disclaimer: This game is set in a low-fantasy rendition of England in the early 1800s, where strange terrors stalk the night. Expect violence (though not overly gratuitous,) and death (including children). As well as violence, I’ve tried to keep the game grounded in reality while not in the presence of the supernatural, so expect to deal with some archaic views regarding women, parentage, etc.

Tone: With that unpleasantness out of the way, onto the game itself. The primary tone here is horror; though the player will be a trained member of an order dedicated to combating the supernatural, this doesn’t put him on anywhere near equal footing with Intruders. It just means he might survive long enough to fight back the darkness in one small corner of the world. On a similar note, there won’t be much in the way of romance. The player’s lot in life is a lonely one, with little time for personal comfort.

Gameplay: Lastly, I’d like to point out that the game might be text-heavy or light on stats for some. I wanted to put emphasis on investigation that will hinge more on how the player chooses to spend his limited time and approach certain situations than on stats. Since this is also just the introduction, a lot of it is spent establishing setting/characters, and I wanted to avoid injecting pointless choices. That said, I’m conscious of the fact that people expect plenty of interactivity, so that brings me to the last point…

I’m still green both in terms of writing and Choicescript, so advice is always appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to try it out.

EDIT 1: Truly shocking amount of bugs in this on upload, but I think I’ve got most of it ironed out now with your help. Thanks for your patience!

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I don’t have a single minute right now but in my first break i will check this out. It seems interesting :+1:

Hm. Can’t say I care too much about the gender-lock, especially given the fantastic tone of the story. Yes, “historical accuracy”, but in this kind of game, it holds little sway.

That being said, the setting is quite good, the writing seems solid so far, and the scenario intriguing enough. Intrigue-based games are pretty rare, and it’s always nice to find a well-written one. So far, it seems to be the case. Will need more time to explore the demo fully though.

Good luck, and keep up the good work!

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Advice- watch Supernatural. You want a story about brothers fighting demons and not having much time for love to inspire you, that is your best bet. If you’re aware of the show already, attract fans by suggesting the horse name ‘Impala’ when we buy a horse. :slight_smile:

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Wow, you’re a hell of a writer. This is a really gripping story, and I’ve been completely sucked into it. Unfortunately, I’ve come across a bug when you try to talk to the happy group, drinking. It says:

bloodybassintro line 346: Invalid option; conflicts with option ‘Congratulate them on their fortune.’ on line 344

I personally don’t really care whether the main character is male or female, but @Talyrion brings up a good point. A lot of people on CoG prefer if they get to choose their gender in the game. So, unless you have a specific reason why you want the MC to be male, you could consider adding the option to play as a young woman in a religious order known as “the Sisters” :yum:

Edit: Found another bug when talking to the sour old man.

bloodybassintro line 159: increasing indent not allowed, expected 8 was 9

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I understand that the choice of gender/orientation is really important to a lot of players, but there’s a few reasons I chose to limit it here.

Firstly, as said in the description, romance isn’t a particular factor here. I know that isn’t the only reason one would want to select a gender, just that the choice has less significance here than it might in other games.

Secondly, as the story progresses, the concept of motherhood will play a significant role. The curse/haunting that hangs over Carswell is based around this theme, so which gender the player is would have a significant bearing on how it relates to them, which brings me to the last point.

To be honest I’m still kind of overwhelmed with sorting the various paths through this story since it’s very open-ended. It’s a lot more convenient for me to have one less item to worry about at this early stage. Maybe in the future once I’ve made more progress I’ll look into including the option and how it affects the story.

Thanks for the input.

4 Likes

Damn, my bad. To be honest, I was kind of wavering on whether or not to post this and just decided “now or never,” so even though I went through quick/random tests and ran through manually a few times, I’m not surprised there are issues.

Thanks for the heads up and please let me know if you run into more of them.

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Hmmmm. Okay. So now we’ve got Waywalkers, WayHaven, and Wayward. Got it.

Game breaking bug if you ask about Thomas.

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Loving the game, and I noticed this bug too!

Hey! Welcome to the community @harvestmoth! I’m glad you decided to “take the plunge” figuratively speaking. I am looking forward to this game!

The title sounds like a VC Andrews novel. Anyway not interested in GLM but I wish you luck.

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At least Wayward is a real word.

Fixed, thanks for letting me know.

Well it was originally going to be called “Choice of Ghosts” but you wouldn’t believe how many start with that. Mainly just a working title at the moment anyway, will probably end up changing it.

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I was just joking, but Wayward Children is just fine IMO. Looking forward to it.

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