https://chyoa.com/story/Holiday-Spirits.13080 Apologies in advance for the wall of text. I am finding as I write this story that there are a lot of different elements competing for my time. I am curious what people find enjoyable about playing the game-mode stories on this site, both to inform how to use my time in writing the story but also out of general curiosity. Question 1: Tuning: to put it simply, how hard should it be to access the various paths? Choices in this story are gated behind a combination of an actor's interest level and the actor's level of inebriation (and whether or not certain events have occurred), but is it better for there to be only one sequence of choices that leads to some branches, or is it better to create some "wiggle room?" Question 2: Puzzle Solving: To a certain extent this is a continuation of the first question. There are a few (and there are planned to be many more) situations that are meant to only be accessible if there are only two people in the room. There are (or will be) mechanisms to get other people to move from room to room, but is it "fun" to go through that exercise of shuffling between people, or would a "shortcut" not requiring the use of the mechanism / game mechanic be preferred? Question 3: Detail and Responsiveness vs Quantity: it is easy to reduce the length of chapters, especially in the case of conversational choices, down even to single sentences, and doing so would allow more choices to be at least written (if not fleshed out) in the same amount of author-work-time. It takes much longer to write the chapters in such a way that they (a) show and don't tell, and (b) change according to the current situation and what has happened already. As an example: I would like refilling people's drinks to be an option during the after-dinner phase. One choice to is have a "Refill their drink" option in each actor's conversation node which is always available and has the body text "You refill their drink." and always increments that person's inebriation by a tick. The other end of the spectrum is to have a response (or two) that are conditionally available depending on how long it has been since they have been topped off and whether they are pleased or displeased with you at the moment, with descriptions that are slightly different each time that chapter-choice is activated. Question 4: Broad vs Deep: More choices are better than fewer choices, but do you prefer a large number of shorter paths, or a small number of deeper paths? This is a conundrum pretty universal to CHYOA, in my opinion. Question 5: Transparency / The Fourth Wall: how clear should it be what a person's level of interest is in you, or just how inebriated they are? If a person has currently had three drinks, but the threshold for a certain action is at four drinks, should that be hinted at?
My initial plan for story development goes in roughly this order: - put at least nominal hooks/choices in place to unlock sex scenes with each actor - write at least one substantial sex scene with each of the actors (including going a little out of my usual comfort zone and writing some male-male content) - fill out the choice paths so that there are at least a couple of conversational paths with each actor - perform a polish pass on the "setup" phases to add more description and check on the tuning - additional sex scenes - additional dinner conversation paths All of this dependent on what people are reading and what I'm feeling like, of course. That approach, though, will make me feel a little less guilty about publishing the story so early.
