=For End Master's Manifest Destiny contest=

When Alexsis starts trying to steal your favorite seat in the school cafeteria, things get serious.  The pair of you decide to resolve this dispute in combat:  a game of capture the flag.  Can you beat your nemesis in a game of capture the flag, and reclaim what is rightfully yours?

This story is a short cave-of-time style game with seven possible victory endings.  Happy flag-hunting!

As humanity begins to leave their corner of the galaxy for the first time, they encounter previously uncontacted alien races.  As one of earth's leading diplomats, you will play a key role in shaping the future of your species in this unfamiliar world.

A mostly cave-of-time style story with limited rebranching in a few places, and five victory endings.

Winner of End Master's Culture Clash Contest

When a thunderbird attacks you while you search for the missing Professor Keirz, you crash-land on a plateau near the legendary ruins of a ruined Anzaran city.  You must make use of the resources around you to repair your damaged flyer, find your missing friend, and unlock the secrets of the ancient Anzaran temple.

An open-map item-based puzzle game with one good victory ending, and one great victory ending.  Good luck exploring the ancient Anzaran plateau!

For End Master's Manifest Destiny Contest

Discover the dungeon's secrets, fight deadly monsters, learn magical spells, and more in this traditional dungeon crawl adventure!  Can you survive the dangers of the legendary Crag?

An open-map dungeon exploration game using player stats and items, with eleven victory epilogues, as indicated by the first two digits of your score.

Thanks to Nightwatch for the fantastic cover art!

An unexpected supernatural disaster leaves you and your your younger cousins adrift in a strange sea full of mythical creatures and beings. Can you and your cousins escape, or will you succumb to the deadly sea?

Currently, this is a short cave-of-time style game with three victory endings. It is complete in its current form, consisting of the first of many planned "episodes" for the game.  It will eventually be expanded into an episodic gauntlet-style game.

Your score indicates which ending you reached.  0 for a death ending, and a score of 1, 2, or 3 corresponds to one the game's victory endings.

Play this short interactive storygame to learn what traditional RPG class best fits your style and personality!

Possible results include: Fighter, ranger, rogue, mage, cleric, bard, paladin, and inventor.

Yeah love em. Used to run convoluted week-long mafia games at summer camp. Those murder mystery group games are fun too.

Done

Congrats Mystic! Congrats everyone!

If you're doing a strict epistolary format with written letters only, I think the plot would most likely lend itself to some kind of history/fantasy politics intrigue game. Mainly because if you set in the present day or future, you raise all kinds of questions about why aren't these people texting or emailing or calling each other on the phone. (Though you COULD tell a story in the present day using emails/texts or similar/)

I say politics for the following reasons:

1. If the characters are various important political figures, it explains why they're seperated by distance, and why they have the time to write so many letters.
2. The epistolary format allows only for 2 characters having a one-on-one conversation at a time--no group conversations, action sequences, etc. Since it's a storygame, you have a single player character, so every interaction in this game is a private one-on-one conversation with that one character. To me, this indicates subterfuge and deceit. If everyone's on the same page, restricting them to private conversations is boring and pointless. If everyone is lying and wildly misinforming each other, this instead becomes an asset. It's also a great opportunity for humor.
3. All the action needs to happen in "dialogue" in this kind of story. A political intrigue story is easier to fit to this requirement than most. It would allow a single character's words to have greater impact.
4. Someone operating exclusively through their words to others strikes me as a good opportunity to write a manipulator character, controlling the flow of information. This obviously lends itself well to politics

Examples: Scheme for political gain, assassination plot (orchestrated by narrator, or uncovered by narrator), sending out military instructions from a distance, doing research into a mystery by getting in contact with various people, etc.

If you're not strict about "letters only," you could expand to things like scribe-written meeting notes, inventory assessments, interviews, scientific research, journals, recipes, secret codes, etc. The sky's the limit.

If you're going to do this, I strongly encourage you to take advantage of the format in some way. Don't just tell a story that happens to be told through letters. Tell a story that could ONLY be told through letters.

Narrator voice is going to be EXTREMELY important in this game. You'll need to pick someone distinct, likeable, and widely appealing to your audience. Since whole pages are going to be written in this voice, you don't really have the option of creating a bland narrator and hoping the rest of the story does the work.

Good luck! Epistolatory style can be a lot of fun.

Off the top of my head, Kansas, Billy Joel, ELP, Moody Blues, Queen, the Eagles, and similar things. My music taste comes 100% from what other people had on in the room while I was there lol. I've been told a couple times I have boomer taste in music.

Click here for javascript course

For the technically illiterate like me who don't already know HTML and CSS, here are your links.

The video format is annoying, but you can scroll down for a transcript. Again, not sure what access is like for non-students but I'm sure there's some other free resources on the web.

Honestly I recommend going the hard way and learning HTML/CSS/JS. I self-taught with some courses over winter break and am still a beginner, but already coded something with links and items into JS. It probably wouldn't take you any longer to learn than any other coding system, and it's probably much more flexible.

I could send you links to the courses I used, but they might be behind a paywall (I got them free with my student email).

Short of that, the CYS editor can do practically anything, it just takes a lot of repetitiveness that you might be able to avoid with other formats. What you want to do can probably be done with the CYS editor.

I've been experimenting with some changes in writing schedule recently, and I'm curious about what approaches other people take towards their writing. What do you all do for your writing?

Do you have a regular schedule at all? If so, do you have a daily/weekly word count goal? A time-based goal? Or just start writing at at specific time and see where it goes? Or do no writing at all 99% of days, and get 5000 words in a day for the two days preceding a contest deadline?

How much writing is "a lot" for you? Is 1000 words in a day rare, or common, or common for days you write but otherwise rare?

Do you generally keep to a single project, or work intermittently on whatever interests you? Do you prefer working on short projects or long ones? Do you write exclusively storygames for CYS, or lots of other things too? Do you find that the type of project impacts what writing schedule works best? What are you working on now?

If you've had multiple different writing schedules in the past, what works best for you? What wouldn't you try again? What do you recommend?

Do you have a specific writing environment? Or can you work anywhere? Do you have a specific software (or pencil) you prefer?

Basically, I'm just curious about what works for different people. Be cool to see your answers!

Wow! That's amazing!

The reults are in!

Best Writer (story): Six different spellings of "EndMaster" got a total of 8 votes.

Best Writer (language): Gower, with 5 votes.

Honorable mention to Ninja, with three votes.

Best Editor: Sherbert, with 2 votes.

Honorable mention to the three people who had never heard of "editing".

Best Reviewer: A tie between Gryphon and Mizal, with 3 votes each.

Honorable mention to Thara, with 2 votes.

Funniest Reveiwer: Everyone put a different answer for this one.

Most Likely To Win A Swordfight: Three different spellings of Sent got a total of 3 votes.

Most Likely To Lose A Swordfight: A tie between Ace and Crystalpeng, with 2 votes each.

Honorable mention to Cel for being crippled, and Abge who has apparently lost a swordfight in real life.

Most Likely To Be Abducted By Aliens: Sent, with 3 votes.

Most Likely To Really Be A Bot: A tie between Ford and Larmiar, with 3 votes each.

Most Likely To Be Professionally Published: EndMaster, with 6 votes.

Honorable mention to Avery and Ninja, with 2 votes each.

First To Die In A Horror Movie:A tie between Ace, Mizal, and Peng, with 2 votes each.

Most Likely To Survive A Horror Movie:No one got more than one vote, but two people put "me".

Most Likely To Be The Killer In A Horror Movie: Ford, with 3 votes.

Honorable mention to EndMaster and Thara, who each got 2.

Most Useful If You Were Stuck On A Desert Island: Mizal, with 3 votes.

Honorable mention to Sent, with 2 votes.

Most Useful If You Were Stuck In A Crashing Helicopter: A tie between Sent, with 2 votes, and people who thought no one would be any help.

Most Useful If You Had To Dispose Of A Body:No winner, no one got more than one vote.

Most Useful If You Were Starting A Business: A tie between Cricker and Mizal, with 3 votes each.

Honorable mention to Sabley, with 2 votes.

Most Useful In A Glorious Final Stand Against Your Godless Foes: Malk, with 6 votes.

Most Likely To Join A Cult: No winner, no one got more than one vote.

Most Likely To Buy Cryptocurrency: Ford, with 4 votes.

Honorable mention to Ogre and Mizal, with 2 votes each.

Most Likely To Be President: EndMaster, with 4 votes.

Honorable mention to Mizal with 3 votes, and Ford with 2.

Most Likely To Assassinate A President: A tie between Ford, with 2 votes, and 2 people who said they would.

Next To Publish A Storygame: A tie between Mizal, Ugilick, and Ninja, with 2 votes each.

Next To Win A Contest: Darious, with 3 votes.

Honorable mention to Mystic with 2 votes, and the person who is forbidden to prophesy in matters of this importance.

Next To Get Shamed: Crystal Penguin, with 3 votes.

Honorable mention to Ace with 2 votes, and the two people who said "me".

Next To Get Banned: Antoinette390, with 8 votes. Possibly nine, as one person couldn't remember the name of the person they wanted to pick, and said "that noob girl".

Additionally, there were two people named "ace", but one submitted an entirely blank form, and one person who put "Mizal" for every category.