"Choice of" Games

[lobotomy42]

Has anyone here played any of the "Choice of" games?

http://www.choiceofgames.com/

They're essentially Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books with a dash of RPG stats. I've usually been able to do complete playthroughs in an hour or so.

I've been playing them lately and I have to confess - I'm addicted, even to the crap ones. "Choice of the Star Captain" is definitely the best written and most game-like of the bunch so far. (The author, Dorian Hart, apparently had a design credit on BioShock.) The others I've tried - Romance, Heroes Rise, Dragon - all seem to be structured like ego-stroking Bioware romances, where you customize a character and watch as everyone around you tells you how awesome you are.

[shammack]

I have a totally unfair grudge against them because for a while one of the guys behind Choicescript was pushing it really heavily within the interactive fiction community, popping into unrelated threads and taking every possible opportunity to plug Choicescript and campaigning for people to enter Choicescript games in IF competitions, despite the fact that to a significant portion of the community, the inclusion of choose-your-own-adventure as "interactive fiction" is grudgingly tolerated at best. It might be a fine system for what it is, but I'll forever associate it with seeing that guy's spam everywhere.

I did play the dragon one and the zombie one and neither held my interest at all. I also think that the way most of the games are titled "Choice of [something]" (so you don't forget you're playing a game made with Choicescript!) is slightly gross but mostly just results in a lot of awkward titles that make the games sound completely generic (which is maybe not an inaccurate impression, based on the ones I played).

[Gwardinen]

Just tried Heroes Rise, a superhero variant. Seemed ok. Got to the end of the free trial. The full game costs £3. Thought about all the things that cost that amount or less on Steam, the App Store and even the rest of the Chrome web store. Did not buy it.

I quite enjoy both choose your own adventure games and genuine interactive fiction... but it really does have to be very good to measure up to the bounty we find before ourselves these days.

[dibs]

I'm totally getting this.

[subbes]

I was going to come in here to say what shammack already said. But he'd already said it.

Hey, shammack! You and I think so alike. We should get married or something.

[Lu]

This always confused me about marriage. When you get married, shouldn't you get married to the best man? Because he's the best man. I say, always get married to the best man. Grooms are alright, but the best men are the best.

[juv3nal]

despite the fact that to a significant portion of the community, the inclusion of choose-your-own-adventure as "interactive fiction" is grudgingly tolerated at best.

Choicescript aside, Is it really as contentious as all that? Emily Short has done stuff with Varytale and Andrew Plotkin has done a thing with Undum and the stuff that Aaron A. Reed has done, although they don't leverage the newer library things, is pretty much CYOA.

[TurboPubx-16]

Just tried Heroes Rise, a superhero variant. Seemed ok. Got to the end of the free trial. The full game costs £3. Thought about all the things that cost that amount or less on Steam, the App Store and even the rest of the Chrome web store. Did not buy it.

I quite enjoy both choose your own adventure games and genuine interactive fiction... but it really does have to be very good to measure up to the bounty we find before ourselves these days.

Could you provide a link to some of that bounty? The last time I checked out interactive fiction was probably ten years ago.

[Gwardinen]

Sorry, by that I meant that while I enjoy interactive fiction, paying £3 for a moderately good instance of it can be hard to justify when you look at the video games you can buy for a similar amount of money. As an example, I quickly scanned Steam for games under £4 and it came up with Overlord (which I loved) and Alpha Protocol (while while profoundly flawed got a lot of love around here for at least trying some interesting things).

When you compare it to other interactive fiction I would imagine the value proposition gets even more difficult to justify, since the vast majority of IF is free. I'm also certain that the vast majority is crap, but there are undoubtedly works that are as good or better than this out there too.

All of that said, I don't want to make it seem like I don't appreciate what they're trying to do with this website. It was just almost comical how quickly I put the thought of actually paying several pounds for the game I was playing out of my head.

[juv3nal]

Could you provide a link to some of that bounty? The last time I checked out interactive fiction was probably ten years ago.

here are some award winners:

http://www.ifcomp.org/comp11/

http://ifwiki.org/in...ZZY_Awards_2011

In addition to the aforementioned Emily Short, Andrew Plotkin, & Aaron A. Reed,

I'd have a look at:

Adam Cadre

and Victor Gijsber

It kills me to do it because it's kind of a spoiler, but I feel the only responsible thing to do is offer a trigger warning for the following Gisjber title:

De Baron

edit: oh, also check out Deirdra Kiai, who you may know of from some non-IF indie stuff.