I plan on sparkling in “flavour” text choices but have each one of them be invisible checks needed for the ending. Is this seen as a bad thing or a simple a neat concept that is seen as okay?
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It depends.
There have been games where whether or not you can/cannot romance a specific character was dependent on a single choice despite so many other choices sounding as if they impacted it. Or games where you could only get a ‘good’ outcome if you played in a very, very, very specific way, stats and attitude-wise. Neither was too well received.
Aside from such extreme cases, the question is how and where do the choices pop up.
Is it (like the more extreme cases) that the player has to pick a specific favorite drink, or is it more in the vein of ‘go to location Y instead of X’ without barring the player from e.g. romances (like if you don’t go to X you cannot romance this or that character anymore, because X had the sole trigger for it)
If that makes sense.
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Well if its a constellation prize, I am not planning on writing a good or bad ending. (you can die and those are considered early ends ig). of the two endings, the whole point is no matter what other people think, its the choice that you can live with.
Some ROs will agree with you and the rest will disagree with what you did, no matter what you choose.
But, if you pick a certain type of choice multiple times in the invisible checks, then it will lock you out of the other ending.
Ok, I understand.
If it’s an invisible check I recommend making it at least a little obvious. Or at least not impact the game too much, I remember the amount of hate a certain Detroit: Become Human ending had simply because if you miss one thing, you lose out on an ending, a good one too. It really depends on how important/obvious it is really, but more important is that you show why that choice was significant and how it makes sense.
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i’m not sure about the overall feeling about invisible checks (but my hunch is that some people like them a lot, others don’t really mind em, and a few loathe them), but for me personally i’ve come to realize after playing a lot of IFs that i am a major control freak when i’m playing them. i really like to know what the hell is going on so i can choose accordingly. but! i do think most readers are probably open to invisible checks and stuff as long as they don’t completely take away from the sense of player agency.
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I hope I say this in a way that makes sense.
I am completely okay with invisible checks..If I know they’re invisible.
Let’s say you’re walking, and you slam into a wall. That’s fine; Your fault for not paying attention. But that wall was invisible? Well now you can’t be blamed for walking into something you can’t see. In fact, it’s the fault of the person who put it there! Now put a sign in front, that only says “Caution”, it doesn’t even have to say for what, just to be careful.
If you’re walking into an invisible wall after reading the sign, it’s your fault entirely.
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Technically if this helps, the invisible checks are questions about your PCs “Character” and how they handle certain things and their outlook on life.
Does that seem visible enough?
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Certainly! If you basically say “My character is this way, and would do this, in that situation.” then nobody should have any right to complain about be able/unable to do something when you said what your character would do.
Like, you have an option to say I like flowers, well you can expect *set Like_Flower true to be in the code of the choice, right? You can still know it’s there even if nothing is put on screen, it’s not in the stats menu, nothing brings up flowers anywhere again, ect.
So when
*choice
#Let the flowers wilt.
#Repot them.
shows up, you can know exactly why letting them die is grayed out.
*create Like_Flower false
*choice
#I like flowers
*set Like_Flower true
*goto fchoice
#I don't like flowers
*goto fchoice
*label fchoice
*choice
*selectable_if (Like_Flower = false) #Let the flowers wilt
*goto fdie
*selectable_if (Like_Flower) #Repot them
*goto flive
*label fdie
You watch them struggle in vain for life. Almost amusing.
*finish
*label flive
The poor plants! You can't help but take a trowl and pot them again.
*finish
You said you do or don’t like flowers. When/if it ever comes up again, you know why what happens, happened.
If, that all made sense..
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Spoiler: your invisible checks won’t be really invisible. If you make a note of a choice in your script (and consequently, the save file) then people will take a note of it, no matter if the game makes the act of notetaking obvious or not.
That said, i’d be also wary of locking options based on the supposed “flavor choices”. People are quite intricate creatures and --to reuse example from above-- just because someone picked “i like flowers” doesn’t mean they’d never find a potential reason to act in opposite manner and let some specific specimen rot based on their take on the context.
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Thats why I said checks in pural, it has to be a repeated behavior over the course of the game, ofc if you are a Fence sitter then both options are still available.
Honestly, even in such case this seems just like constricting player’s freedom of action for… basically the sake of constricting their freedom and no real benefit?
The “fence sitting” also kind of misses the point i was making – which was, that even a person who is acting in certain manner most of the time can have a moment when they choose to act in different way. In fact, this is often associated with some sort of character growth, by moving on from one’s set ways. By blocking such ability, “because you acted different multiple times before” you are just depriving the player of such moments. IMO it’d be better/more satisfying for the player if the game recognized such developments instead of preventing them from happening.
Fair enough, just keep in mind this vision sounds like a somewhat irritating and limiting experience from the player’s perspective. I’m not saying this is the consensus (i don’t think there is one, other than “different folks see it differently”) but that is going to be the case for some subset.
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for the sake of the narrative and the ending, I have a vision and I want to see it through.
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In theory, I am a little biased as a writer but there is a reason in a sense, tho they are only 2 main endings. They are a lot of sub endings.
Basically the two endings are how you handle a very important specific choice, and the sub endings are the aftermath of that choice + the events that take place over the course of the story.
And well I do feel you about it being limited in a sense, but that’s intended. Not to spoil things too much for my wip, but the PC isn’t very mentally sound and they naturally gravitate towards violence as their answer.
If you have a firm vision for how you want to do it, then commit fully to it. See how well you can make it work. A failsafe suggestion is to release a demo sooner into development rather than later. This way you can solicit feedback earlier on UX. This allows you to pivot early enough in the process if warranted or if you choose to stay the course, the feedback will help you better refine what you’re doing and perhaps find ways to accommodate player critique in ways that let you stay true to your intent.
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I released already, the feedback so far has been minor but I haven’t written much in the first place.
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Probably the best thing you can do then is build a quasi-vertical slice of how you optimally see the system working from first decision to final resolution, even if it’s just a single quest line, something players can go through start to finish, and give feedback in. Maybe even build in a cheat sheet once they’ve cleared it that shows the pivot points and checks so they can see the nuts and bolts and weigh that against their own experiences while playing.
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Ahh, i see. Okay, that does hit a bit different, if the MC comes with some pre-made personality so to speak rather than have it all built with the player’s own choices. Limited control is easier to accept in such case.
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Hi, been playing Choicescript games and hanging out around here since Choice of the Dragon. Given that’s 15 years, I’ve probably played at least 500 WIPs or so?
If I may be blunt, my opinion is that, especially if it determines the ending, is that it’s a terrible idea particularly if the player has no way of knowing it without external means like glancing at the code. You really should indicate it or at least heavily hint it to the player at some point; though even only telling them at the ending can be annoying.
All it actually does is not tell the player there were other ways, and/or frustrate them, and then they go on to play something else because they either think they saw everything or have no idea what to do and don’t feel like going through it all again. Some JRPGs actually already do this, and they often do it terribly where not taking some possibly esoteric action or choice means a bad ending for you 20+ hours later, with zero indication or feedback it was important. They end up feeling like you’re being punished for not reading the creator’s mind and playing the game exactly the way they want you to.
Apologies if this is a bit blunt, but it’s an existing trope I’ve been on the receiving end of many times and I genuinely can’t recall a single instance where it was anything but a negative point.
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I see, I see.