So, I thought I’d stop by here and be more transparent about wordcount and such with how I calculate it, how I code, etc. etc. I’ve just seen it come up in a few places and wanted to give an explanation to it. Note that this isn’t trying to deflect any of these criticisms, in fact it’s validating them if anything. BUT I also want to give pause to the idea that the word count for the story is actually something like, 150k.
Short Answer
I suck at coding.
Long Answer
I suck at coding, BUT ALSO THIS STUFF!
So, in order to calculate word count, properly, we need to know how I structure scenes in my game. The answer to that is ‘poorly’. Good thing is; I’m fully aware of this. If I could please direct the classes attention to the image below.
That is a picture of a single scene. Cindy Lou Who voice “But Vi, there’s two scenes there. Why are there two scene there?” Well let me explain why.
I suck at coding.
But the longer explanation is that I prioritize the fluidity of the writing process, or what is considered to be the fluidity of my writing process, more than I prioritize condensing the game.
The top one, chapter2p1, stands for Chapter 2 Part 1. The bottom one stands for Chapter 2 Part 1 Route B. The first scene is coded with gender variables for if the PC picks “Male” or “Female” preferences for sexual preference. The second scene is coded with gender variables for if the PC picks “Both” or “Neither” for sexual preferences. This means that I write an entire scene in the first part with the gender variables in that scene. THEN after the scene is completely finished, I copy and paste the entire scene to Route B and just change the gender variables as needed.
Very inefficient, I know. I’m a writer first and foremost though, not a coder, so I give myself a bit of leeway here. Luckily, I know all that when going to calculate total wordcount. It just means I have to do a bit of extra work when calculating said wordcount. So, I only count one of those scenes when calculating wordcount, not both. In the case for Chapter 1p5, I cut the word count of that chapter in half, essentially.
Now, let me show you what ChoiceScript says the word count actually is.
1,380,620 Words. Or so ChoiceScript IDE says. But that’s not really true. That’s counting all scenes. So instead of closing half the scenes of the game every time I want to check word count, I instead just divide the total word count by 2. That leaves 690,000 words, give or take. But, then again, that’s not right either, is it?
No, we need to slim it down even further, specifically due to one scene. One scene in particular that I am actually going to go back and condense.
Lance’s after Funeral Scene. In total, you can most likely take off about… 110k words from that scene. I realized this while thinking about my response to all this today, so in light of that, I’ve taken the word count title down to 550k words, as I think that’s a fair approximation.
Now, my dear Read-y Lou Who, you may be asking, “But the total wordcount of each playthrough is still only 60k. Isn’t that still 1/9th of the total wordcount?”
Yes.
“Surely there’s not that much branching in this story, since the story for the most part all ends up at the same place anyway.”
Wrong. I don’t know if anyone thinks this specific part, but I feel validated in my answer to absolutely, 100% say; wrong. There is that much branching. Even if you want to slim off another 50k worth of words for other text that may be repeated throughout the game, you are still only seeing 1/8th of everything this game has to offer. For the sake of this, I won’t even focus on flavor text. What higher stats let you see what different dialogue in certain scenes, etc.
You start the game. You go through Chapter 1. You enter Chapter 2 and there are 4 entirely different scenes to experience on the train. You can pick two of them. You are seeing half of that part. You immediately go into the next scene of the chapter; Crime Scene or Police Station. Two completely different scenes, which will lead to two completely sets of information. You are now seeing half of that part of the chapter. Skip the debrief at the station/explanation of remaining teammates mutations you haven’t already discovered because I haven’t written that part yet, you come to the next part of the chapter. You pick 1 out of 4 scenes to choose from. All of these scenes are literally entirely different. So you see 1/4th of what this part has to offer.
In that Chapter, there are 4 scenes you can potentially see out of 10 that are all, and I cannot stress this enough, completely different. The 4 conversations on the train, 2 different ways of investigation, 4 different scenes in the hotel rooms. That is 40% of that chapter give or take as it stands right now.
Chapter 3 has 6 scenes in total. You see 3 of them.
Chapter 4 when it’s finished will have you play through a total of about 6/9 scenes available, if I don’t add more variations to the second half of the warehouse scene than I’m already planning. Hell, as it stands, the warehouse scene adds 60k words in total, but only 5k words per playthrough. It has 6 different possible endings, and those are only the endings that are in the demo so far.
Spoilers for Chapter 4
Chapter 4 Warehouse Scene Layout for Lance and Alvarez Route
- You can stay on the catwalk instead of falling which leads to:
- PC Killing the Suspect and badly injured.
- PC Killing the suspect and not badly injured.
- Lance Killing the Suspect/PC not badly injured
- You can fall off the catwalk which can lead to:
- Alvarez killing the suspect and PC being badly injured
- PC killing suspect and not being badly injured.
- Lance killing suspect and PC not being badly injured
- Lance killing suspect and PC being badly injured
That’s not accounting for the different ways the PC approaches the situation and whether or not Lance’s hand ends up crushed in the fight.
Keep in mind, on top of all of this, the player is unlocking Extra Scenes at times depending on what dialogue options they pick.
There’s more under the hood I could go on and on about but I feel like this already is starting to sound like me being defensive, which I guess to be fair, I kind of am. I am adult enough to recognize and admit that. However, more than that, what I want to get across is this:
There is bloat. Absolutely. But I account for that when calculating my word count and advertising my game, and I like to think I’m very conscientious of it when setting up expectations for the experience people can have while playing my game. There is a lot of branching. It does take multiple playthroughs to see everything. That’s done by design. Is it the smartest move? No, probably not. A lot of people only play a game once then move on. But it also ensures every person’s playthrough can be tailored to them as much as possible.
Is the game 1,000,000 words long? No. Is it 600k words long? Not yet. Is it around 450-550k words long depending on how you want to do word count? Yes. Yes it is. It is not, indeed, 100-150k words long. If you want to see just how much changes, play the game more than once. Purposefully miss some of the important clues in the investigation scene. Play through all the solo scenes. Fiddle around with stats.
I love when people talk about my game, don’t get me wrong. It’s not one of the heavy hitters. It’s not Wayhaven, or Fallen Hero, or PoMA, or KaE. I don’t have a discord and I only make like, 40 bucks on my Patreon. But I do give my game the respect as if it was one of those big titles from other hard-working authors. I don’t advertise falsely and I don’t try to take the easy way out. This story means far, far too much to me, and I’m much too passionate about it to do something like that. Seriously, if you want to know why I started writing this story in the first place, listen to this. I made the first Podcast free for a very good reason. https://www.patreon.com/posts/behind-scenes-1-78650741
I’ll even give you all the timestamp for it. The explanation starts at 2:20. Listen until about 11 minutes.
It got a bit heavy here at the end, but anyone who frequents here knows I take criticism and sometimes change the game accordingly to it. The fact that people can talk to two people on the train and choose to sit by themselves is a testament to that. So this isn’t me trying to explain anything away, it’s me just setting the record straight. And again, if you want to know why I’m so damn stubborn on making sure people know it’s not just me trying to make my story more popular, and why I want people to know why I’m so emotionally invested in this series specifically, listen to the first ten minutes of the free episode on my Patreon. You don’t have to become a member or follow or anything afterwards; I just want you to hear where this story came from and why it came about.
So, that was… a lot that pretty much no one asked for. With all that in mind, I hope all the people who see this, who think this, don’t take it as some sort of jab or attack or anything. Genuinely, I was just wanting to explain myself, and now that it’s written down, anyone having the same thoughts can have a place to look for an explanation.
With that, I’m gonna go back to my writing cave now.
Stay Brilliant,
-Vi
i FEEL LIKE IVE TRIED EVERYTHING 
i’ve already read through all of the tips, anymore?
Some of the bug reports I get are hilarious I swear lmao
