Do you use it as an author or as a reader, do you think it makes for better content? I love and hate it sometimes but am interested in what you have to say
I always heavily admire everyone who puts the time and thought into it to make it work. The Happy Maid story is a great example for how i think the game system is used to perfection. As an author however i can't be asked to design a story that widely spread, i'm more a singular storyline kinda person.
Happy maid makes excellent use of the game system as do a few others but I find with the current system I have to plan out more which can be restrictive as an author
My story https://chyoa.com/story/I-am-a-True-Fan---The-Game.10233 I am a True Fan - The Game has taught me that it is a double edged sword. The main positive is being able to path readers so to speak. You can hold multiple narratives together by making choices lock out certain branches and open others. It adds stakes to your readers choices as well. Unless they "cheat" and go back or restart each choice ushers the protagonist toward a certain destiny. The negative is the planning. Some chapters you write may only put out 750 words but you may have written twice as much with if else statements to customize the text to fit your readers choices. I have certain chapters that are actually five different chapters in one because of this. Advice I would give to people thinking of writing game stories. Plan out your story with an outline before hand. Use that outline to create multiple hidden variables that you can use for later character decisions. It sucks to have to go back and add them and then ask your readers to restart. Put in more than you think you'll need. At certain times have a converging event. Whether it's the protagonist starting a new day or whatever make it so you can bring all the threads back to a single point before spreading them out again. Otherwise your story will get too unwieldy.
This is exactly what I do, I sit down with a pen and paper and map it out with certain points that pull everything together so to speak. A new day is a pretty common one but I have used changes in location and others stuff too. However once you plot it out there isn't much room for changes later which sucks.
I had the same problem. To combat it I write out several chapters and leave them in draft. This way as I go down the chain I can go back and edit them changing variable, story conditions and what not. Also, sometimes I find I need to create a chapter between two others. That would be impossible if I published a chapter as soon as I finished it.
I created The Arena of Illusions with the main goal of testing the game mode. It seems complicated at first, but once you get familiar with it it becomes rather easy to use, especially since you don't have to use all the options available to you. At times the game mode requires a bit more work and planning, but at other times it can save you some work because it provides an easy way to keep track of certain things: Items you have (not) found, NPCs you have (not) met, decisions you have (not) made, etc. The only thing I find a bit annoying is that if a chapter gets added to a branch other than the one I am following I have to either start over (losing my progress on the current branch) or turn off game mode.
