CYOA – Page 30 – Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling

Rat Chaos (j chastain)

Rat Chaos is a very short Twine piece. It plays with agency not in the usual ways (discovering you have none, playing with how the protagonist refuses to claim agency, or revealing that the only meaningful agency the player can have is to quit the game). Instead, Rat Chaos explores the idea of surface agency as a distraction; the notion that solving the more obvious problems might be a way to shut someone up, to avoid listening to the deeper things they have to say. The first couple of screens may seem bewildering, but it’s a quick play whose significance reveals itself after not too long.

Ectocomp 2012

Ectocomp is a Halloween-themed IF comp, which takes entries just before Halloween and then runs judging through the month of November. All of the games are written in 3 hours or less, which means that they tend to be very brief and a bit on the buggy side. Even with that caveat, though, several of this year’s crop were rather entertaining, and of course none takes very long to play, so it’s worth a look.

If you’re interested, there’s still time to play and vote!

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Nightmare Cove, Coliloquy

Nightmare Cove is an interactive text horror game for Kindle Fire. I don’t have the right equipment to run it myself, but it looks to be illustrated, and its creator describes it as being choice-based with a “light inventory system” (which suggests something perhaps like the CYOA created with Adventure Book). There are also a couple of pre-defined characters to play with, which suggests a little less personal configuration than in the most open of the ChoiceScript games, but that the product does rely on some RPG features.

And speaking of new commercial choice-based work, the company Coliloquy is publishing a variety of interactive stories — 18 are already available on Amazon — including supernatural thrillers, mysteries, and interactive erotica where you can pick the characteristics of the hero.

There’s a long article about their work in The Atlantic. The description there focuses most on the reader-satisfaction qualities of this kind of book: Coliloquy uses analysis tools to track which choices are being selected and help authors write more of the content that readers want. I feel bit dubious when I read things like this, because I think it can lead authors down the wrong path: “everyone picked A therefore choices B and C were a waste to write” fundamentally misunderstands the way choice-based literature works. I also think reader gratification is sort of the least common denominator goal of interactive narrative, and that there are lots of choices to offer that are more interesting than letting the reader color in the eye color of the protagonist.

Still, having good stats on what readers are picking is a very interesting feature (see also Varytale) — and it’s extremely interesting to watch the expanding ecosystem of free and commercial textual games of all sorts.

IF Comp 2012: Valkyrie (Emily Forand)

Valkyrie is a CYOA in Twine. As usual, the jump will be followed by non-spoilery comments; then if I have anything spoilery to say, there will be spoiler space. I don’t know that this had beta-testers, but because the Twine format makes it more difficult to test for that, I’m being a little lenient with the choice-based pieces.

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IF Comp 2012: Last Minute (Ruderbager Doppelganger)

Last Minute is a CYOA in Twine, whose premise is that the author is desperately trying to finish an entry for the competition. (Yes, others have had this idea.) As usual, the jump will be followed by non-spoilery comments; then if I have anything spoilery to say, there will be spoiler space. I don’t know that this had beta-testers, but because the Twine format makes it more difficult to test for that, I’m being a little lenient with the choice-based pieces.

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IF Comp 2012: The Lift (Colin Capurso)

The Lift is a CYOA in Twine. As usual, the jump will be followed by non-spoilery comments; then if I have anything spoilery to say, there will be spoiler space. I don’t know that this had beta-testers, but because the Twine format makes it more difficult to test for that, I’m being a little lenient with the choice-based pieces.