In "Portals of Fate: Echoes of Connection," you are Dr. Alex Ryker, a brilliant yet obsessive scientist in the neon-lit city of Neo-Tokyo, 2135. Your groundbreaking invention, the Dimensional Gateway, unexpectedly activates, allowing an unknown entity to cross into your world with a cryptic message: "Return soon to conquer." As you and your dedicated lab assistant, Sarah, unravel the mysteries of the multiverse, you'll travel to vibrant, diverse dimensions teeming with wonder and danger. Each world offers unique challenges and breathtaking landscapes, testing your ingenuity and courage. Amid the high-stakes adventure, the story explores the delicate balance between groundbreaking scientific discovery and the often neglected human connections right beside you.

In an era far removed from Earth's history, humanity has spread across the stars, establishing colonies on distant planets. On the barren, windswept world of Eos Prime, a team of scientists discovers a mysterious alien obelisk buried deep within the planet's crust. This artifact, bearing the enigmatic name "Ziran," holds the potential to alter human DNA and redefine human evolution. As the team delves into its secrets, they uncover ancient ruins and face terrifying alien creatures that guard its mysteries. Amid ethical dilemmas, hidden legacies, and looming threats, the team must navigate the perilous path between scientific progress and catastrophic danger. Readers will journey through a tale of discovery, conflict, and survival, where each decision shapes the fate of humanity itself.

Thanks. I'll look forward to Jim's new game.

For the record, it's not the writing or story of School Days that I love (though I admit it's a pretty clever satire that soared over many heads), but the game design that I love. It's creative and unique for a visual novel. Unprecedented, even.

Well, it doesn't necessarily have to be writing. Yes, for text-based CYOA, it can be understandable that some limits have to be placed. But I do know of a couple of multiple-path games that use mainly graphics and animations to tell the various stories (like visual novels and other CYOA video games like Fable), and that's probably an easier task to accomplish, maybe...? Especially if it's done by official companies with time and money on their hands, as opposed to unpaid writers and indie game developers.

Well, don't get me wrong - I understand the constraints that come with being an unpaid writer. I'm not really blaming anyone on this site.

In fact, the thing I'm bothered by isn't 'indie' writers at all. Rather, I'm annoyed by the big companies like Bioware and Telltale Games, having all that profit and money and waste all that potential on something so... limited. They just fail to see the potential CYOAs can go.

Look at Undertale. Imagine a game like Undertale with the budget of Mass Effect. Holy cow. It would be like Chrono Trigger, but even better.

Thanks. :)

So first off, I'm new here, obviously. Hi. 

Throughout all my life, I've been quite a fan of CYOA games, but there's always something bugging me about the medium. It's tough to make a good CYOA game, I know, but the problems nonetheless bothered me. I hope I could share them here.

The most important thing about CYOA games to me isn't the writing. Though the writing is still relatively important, and I certainly would find bad writing annoying, there's another factor that matters to me more - the branching and the nonlinearity. And I'm not just talking about having "multiple paths" (something which I learned was rather easy to create, albeit create poorly). I'm referring to having that experience that you get to play a role in the story, I'm referring to you having the freedom to insert yourself and your personality into a larger world.

To take one example, the EndMaster story, Ground Zero, doesn't really seem to allow you the choice of playing who you want. You're forced into the role of an anti-social and ill-tempered man. That's not who I am. Instead, much like many mainstream CYOAs like Telltale's games as well as Japanese visual novels in general, you're forced to play a character and hope to god that you're able to provide some input in this person's decisions somewhere down the story. It feels a little detached, like there's a distance between me and the story, when I get this kind of experience. It doesn't feel like I've been transported to another world and I'm the one who gets to choose my own adventure. Instead, it's the author who chose the kind of life for me, and the kind of adventure for me.

On the other hand, the flip side isn't really that glamorous either. You might have known about this company making a series of CYOA games on Steam called "Choice of Games". They allow you to type in your name, age, and have quite a number of input to decide the kind of personality your character would have. Unfortunately, compared to CYOA on this website and visual novels in general, Choice of Games doesn't really have top-notch writing quality. The stories are mediocre and lackluster, and formulaic even. And with their recent notoriety of forcing feminism agenda onto players, their track record in terms of writing hasn't been the greatest.

So, between these two compromises, it's tough to find a CYOA that I really like. There were exceptions that really shined for me, such as the School Days visual novel.

When it comes to visual novels, my problem with them is that, while they often have well-written stories, they just don't really offer that much choice in the kind of person you want to be. School Days, on the other hand, is entirely different. You can be a total jerk, or you can be the sweetest guy. It's awesome. You get to play you, not someone else, and see what kind of outcome you'd have in this world. Having over 20 endings in the HQ edition, School Days promises to let you be the one who decide your fate through every action of yours. It's absolutely amazing. And while it doesn't have as amazing a story as the more linear CYOA like G-Senjou no Maou or The Walking Dead, it's actually quite a clever satire making fun of dating sims that let you date multiple girls without consequences. School Days has consequences when you date multiple girls, and boy, do the consequences get bad. Never after School Days have I found a more nonlinear visual novel ever since, with those of Key VNs (like Clannad and Little Busters) being the only ones that came close.

Then there's the Mass Effect trilogy. It's a step down from School Days, but the writing is indeed a step-up. And you also get to choose whether to be a smooth-talker or a jerk, a lot of options there. Although the endings are limited by a lot compared to School Days (3 ending as opposed to 21), Mass Effect's journey allows you to make decisions for yourself based on your personality. It's again, pretty fun to decide for myself whether if I want to be a jerk or not.

Then comes the Choice of Games CYOA. Like I said, it has the most customization options out there, but the writing can range from merely decent to mediocre to terrible. I do enjoy that my name,age, and race are the ones that pop up in the story though, as opposed to being known as "some guy" like in Ground Zero. But again, the writing needs massive improvement.

In conclusion, I guess what I would really want out of my CYOA games is the massive range of branches of School Days, the customization of Choice of Games stories, and the writing quality of either EndMaster stories or Mass Effect 1&2. I guess that's probably too much to ask, but the thing that really bothers me about CYOA being released nowadays, especially Telltale Games, is that there just isn't a lot of freedom in their 'adventures'. Usually, when it comes to the term, 'adventure', the first thing I would think of is 'venturing' or 'exploring'. This means that multiple routes and multiple ways to go about the story should be expected. I shouldn't be going only a single path throughout the whole story with some trivial options littered here and there. I should be able to decide whether if the Reapers would invade Earth, whether if I'm able to stop WWIII from happening in the future, whether if I'm able to make an impact through my many actions. Telltale Games lacks that personal connection because most of their major story events are unchangeable, Choice of Games will set scripted events in their stories no matter what you choose (Choice of Robots being a notorious suspect), and Shepard will always do the same thing in certain events whether you choose this or that in Mass Effect. My point being - choices have to matter. Don't sell your game as "Your choices matter" if they really don't matter that much in the grand scheme of things, in the big picture.

I guess in the end, it's simply impossible to make a good CYOA where you can tell five entirely different stories for the players, right...? Well, School Days did it. Spectacularly too.