Fake choices seem to be a great way to flesh out the choices and add some depth to the story without causing too many new branches. I can imagine many choices which may cause the player to have a quick thought and move on, or catch a glimpse of some foreshadowing. I have seen 80 days when I was looking to see what was already out there, I haven't gotten a chance to try it but it's at the top of my list! Thanks again for the explanations and ideas!

And to add to this, obviously all the branches could get very out of control, very quickly. If each scene has 5 choices, which each lead to a new scene with 5 new choices... It doesn't take long to have 35 million branches. That's why many choices may branch out briefly and then tie back together.

Example: "You narrowly escape the hellhounds chasing you in the hallway as you run the a door and lock it behind you. You turn around and examine the room you're in. The only way out seems to be through a door on the other side of the room. As you stand there looking around, a pile of bones on the floor begins to gather together and slowly form into a creature. After a moment, a headless skeleton stands before you. It reaches down and picks up a nearby bone and starts swinging it around as it walks towards you"

There may be several different choices that either kill you, different ways to kill the skeleton and explore the room, or avoid the skeleton and run around it but don't get to explore the room. No matter how you get past the skeleton, they both lead out the other door the same way. But it gets wrapped back up. There aren't suddenly 25 loose ends that each need their own unique path. And writing a scene like this room reeeeally doesn't take too much planning and I could probably get something out in 30-45 minutes. It's a lot of work, but I don't think it's like 3 years of writing where I need to sell my house and one of my kids to support the dream of getting this thing finished lol

All of the code for the scripting is in Android Studio with the rest of the code for the app design. This whole thing really started as me just making a simple app and slowly adding and shaping it into something that now is actually pretty fully-featured. Kinda like how dark souls was probably designed in order of #1: Combat, #2: gameplay mechanics, #3: story, this game was built so far based on what I thought I could do. My wife is my main (only) tester and at first she thought it was lame but has recently started spending a lot of time looking through everything when I make improvements.

I built the mechanics from the ground up. Basically when you click a button, the app takes which scene you are currently in and which choice you made, passes it along to a huge list of all the possible scenes with their possible choices. Then it figures out which new scene to move to based on the choice you made. Once it figures out the new scene to move to, it looks at the 5 possible choices. Since 2 of them are chosen randomly, it makes sure that both choices are not the same (1. Attack him, or 2. Attack him) and that at least one of the choices will allow the player to continue.

For every set of 5 choices, 2 or 3 of them may lead to the player's death. I don't want the player to ever be 10 scenes deep and be presented with 2 random choices that both kill him, because that's enough to make someone uninstall the game. There is however a way to obscure which choice led to death. I may mark "Jump into the pool" as a choice that kills the player so that it won't be paired up with "Roll around in the fire". But when you jump in the pool you don't die, you have 5 options like swim north, swim east, swim west, swim south, or dive down... No matter which one you choose, the piranhas eat you. But maybe if you dive down, you can see writing at the bottom of the pool that gives insight into the world or tips for a different puzzle before being turned into fish food? Who knows.

The game auto-saves. If you close the app and reload it, you'll be on the main menu now with an option to start a new game, or continue if there is saved data. On continue it will reload you in your current scene with the same 2 choices so there is no going back and no way to cheese it into re-rolling choices. 

From the main menu, there is a stats page which can currently tell you how many total choices you've made across all playthroughs, how many times you've died... and most (in my opinion) awesomely, "Game completion: X%" which knows whether each choice for each scene has been selected before or not. Something to work towards, lets people know roughly how much there is left for them to find in the game. 

So with this structure all in place and working, I just need to really put together a whole story. I will be definitely looking through this site for inspiration!

Thank you for the awesome feedback! As far as being dark souls related... More-so in the way that it is bleak, narrated like there is no hope and yet you somehow make it further and further as you learn what not to do. And the further you get, the more you realize that's just how the game works and you accept it and start playing it for what it is: an adventure.

The combat would need to be rather like "You emerge out of the tunnel, and you are greeted by the most beautiful view overlooking a sea with the sun glimmering across the water. You spot a tower not too far ahead, along a dirt path. You begin walking towards it when suddenly a goblin jumps out of a nearby bush!"

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****This is where the game becomes interesting. There are 5 possible choices for this scenario, but you are only presented with 2 at a time.****

Possible choices include: Attack him, Try to run past him, Talk to him, Retreat, Lay down and play dead (of course a ridiculous option to make people feel dumb for trying and getting killed).

This time it only shows "1. Attack it, 2. Talk to it"

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Then for each choice there is a set outcome, no dice rolls or RNGs, so at least the choice results are consistent. The game continues to branch off like this and so on.

As far as this entire concept being difficult to code........... That's the thing, I already have coded it. I'm an app developer and I created the complete working framework for this game as a project, I just don't have a story to put with it yet. I can display pictures, play sounds, etc at any moment or for any choice made. I plan on completing the story and publishing the app to the Google Play Store as soon as it's done. 

I just wanted to do something different, all the other CYOA apps are linear and I imagined a game that always kept the player guessing and required them to actually pay attention because they can't just memorize what happens when they click button #1, then #2, and so on. 

Imagine a story where death and rebirth is baked into it, like a Dark Souls-ish feel. A game which is unforgiving; it punishes cowardly choices and rewards the bold. What if there was a game that promised constant death around the corner, yet if you knew where to look there was lore and story depth all around you. 

What if there was a game where every time you played, your choices were shuffled so that every playthrough was unique. Trial and error, learning from your mistakes is at its core.

Call me crazy, but I think a game like this could be something special.