My first game is Supernatural in New York. Before that, I had only played games on Itchio. (and it’s usually not convenient to run games from a mobile device). On that site I first played demo of The Bastard of Camelot, after which I wanted to see what else author had and found this site and CoG games.
4 Likes
Didn’t enjoy the first one I played. Thankfully, I gave this company another shot after a very poor first impression. Mecha Ace and Jim’s zombie games got me hooked.
6 Likes
I actually found this forum before the store. I had been playing choose your own adventure
style games elsewhere and went searching for more. Played the most popular demo at the time first, which was Guinevere, and was hooked.
After that I burned through the entire existing library, which was pretty small at the time. First was either Choice of Vampires or Choice of the Dragon, but they were right after each other on the same day.
7 Likes
My first game was probably Choice of Romance and I only ever played one path (I felt my MC got a happy ending and didn’t want to change it).
I probably either got to Choicescript games via looking for CYOA like games or through dome link from Visual Novels.
I love that I can change the text size. It’s so much easier on my eyes (terrible eyesight).
2 Likes
Alter Ego (not sure if that counts), then Tin Star.
3 Likes
Zombie Exodus, I could only Play the free chapters, because I did not have money to spare. But I remembered it years later, when I had more spare money
2 Likes
Reasonably sure it was Choice of Robots? That’s the one that made The Impression that got me to pay attention to other games in IF at least.
I was so excited to find they existed? I loved choose your own type books as a kid. I think it was actually through an app recommendation from the Play Store. I’d been kind of playing stupid otome/gacha games* on my phone and didn’t know the text based stuff existed.
*I’m not saying otome as a genre is stupid, but the phone games I was playing definitely were.
4 Likes
Hey, my first one was, war of the Gods. I have found the holl Choice of Games and Hosted Games. When I was, I think 13 Years old or something like that. I can’t remember the all Details. But I had so much fun discovering and playing them all, it was a completely new experience for me in this Time. But beautiful and exciting I have Enjoyed playing it and on till now. sorry vor any spelling errors.
2 Likes
My first game was life of a mercenary I was really fond of it that I made around 5 playthroughs in a single day and after I finished reading it . I started searching for similar games which led me to the lost heir trilogy which made me love this kind of games even more and since then I have read nearly every published game especially the medieval fantasy ones and after 6 years of reading many great games I decided to start writing my own around a month ago
6 Likes
The Big Four (the only four games available in CoG side) Choice of Vampire, Choice of Romance, Choice of Broadsides, and Choice of Dragon
Plus the two games of Hosted, What Happened Last Night? And Paranoia
6 Likes
Werewolves: Haven Rising. I’ve just finished playing Vampires: The Masquerade - Bloodlines on Steam and went to store to see if there are similar games but with werewolves and it showed as one of the results. While the concept of the IF wasn’t new to me I was a bit sceptical about the text game, however it was about a week before the release date and someone in the steam comments wrote that you can try the demo on this site.
5 Likes
My first was Choice of Magics which my brother showed me. I’d never heard of interactive fiction before, and it blew my mind. For a while I only bought games my brother recommended to me because I am not an adventurous person, and I actually found the forum when I was google searching a guide for a game I had. It took Covid for to actually start engaging with the community though.
5 Likes
Choice of Romance, and it was perhaps ten years ago, or so. I was involved in some game fandoms on Tumblr, and whenever one of us ran into something fun, we’d drag a bunch of the others into it, with us. Someone linked to Choice of Romance, and I played it somewhat obsessively. Later, I also played Choice of the Dragon and Choice of the Vampire, but I didn’t get really deep into COGs until a few years later.
5 Likes
Oh, I used to wonder about this too! I used to play CYOA books growing up, and then one day found Choice of Romance and it rekindled my love of interactive fiction. I played the other three games available then too, got sad when there was nothing left to discover, then found Hosted Games
I distinctly remember playing Imprisoned, trying to get all possible achievements… and failing more times than I can count 
5 Likes
Choice of dragón
5 Likes
So, this was back in early 2022, I think, or maybe even earlier. I’d played a bunch of Twine games on itch.io, so I checked out Twine’s website on a whim. Back then, there was a section displaying different games made with Twine. I clicked on one, and was brought to the Interactive Fiction Database page for Harris Powell-Smith’s Aquarium, introducing me for the first time to the IFDB site and the surprisingly long-standing community surrounding interactive fiction. After finishing Aquarium, I poked around the site, looking for free games to play.
It was there on the IFDB that I found my first three ChoiceScript games. They are, in order: Victor Gijsbers’ Turandot, Crème de la Crème, and Tally Ho. These three, along with Harris Powell-Smith, hold a special place in my heart for selling me on ChoiceScript games. Without them, I wouldn’t be here typing this right now. Somewhere in that early period is also Creatures Such as We, but I can’t place it in the timeline.
But the first ChoiceScript game I ever saw was probably MetaHuman Inc. The striking box art stuck in my mind, and it was a surprise when I saw it in CoG’s list of games all those years later, bringing back hazy memories of a teenager scrolling through the Play Store with nothing better to do.
In a way, things have gone full circle, because it seems those Twine games on itch.io are by authors who moved away from ChoiceScript, for one reason or another.
6 Likes
Oh gosh, this was so lovely to see! I made Aquarium and my other early Twine games (ten years ago now!) because I was inspired by a lot of the IF around at the time, from authors like Porpentine, Brendan Hennessey, Emily Short, Anna Anthropy, Maz Hamilton, and lots more. Reading “Rise of the Videogame Zinesters” by Anna Anthropy made me feel more confident in trying out making my own IF.
Around that time, I revisited Choice of Games; I’d played Choice of Romance and Choice of Broadsides around 2011 or 2012, and then got back into CoG games via Choice of the Deathless and playing Creatures Such As We in the 2014 IF Comp. I then played a bunch of other CoGs that came out around that time, and carried on from there.
9 Likes
Oh, I LOVE Choice of the Deathless. Vega remains one of my very favorite ROs ever. I should play that again.
5 Likes
This was one of my first too! I loved it so much. I would play a section on the bus ride to school so that the next section would be ready for me on my way back home.
5 Likes
Same. I saw a bunch of other ones but dragon caught my interest.
3 Likes