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So, here's what I'm up to:

I've been dividing my time between various projects. My first project is writing in Inform7 - just to learn it's intricacies. It's a summer-long project and a secret. (So, shhh.)

My second project is using abusing Quest in order to make a series of simple story-games for my ex-girlfriend and my cousin. This is my retro project - to capture the feel of 1979's original five Bantam books.

My third project is using this site. My original plan was to just transpose the Quest stuff over. Not anymore though. It seems I really want to do something different, something more original. I came up with six ideas, each of which could be good. The ideas - are less synopses and more as titles which describe (to myself) what the ideas are about. I'd like feedback on which I should tackle first - So I'll include a brief synopsis:

A) Whatever Happened To Mitsy? (A 16 year-old girl goes missing and no one but her best friend notices.)

B) Best Kept Secrets (A young man moves to a town inhabited by cannibals.)

C) Far Far Away (A teenaged girl runs away from her home in the city to the country where she runs afoul of the law)

D) The Premonitions Of Carol Blake (Carol's nightmares about her friends dying come true)

E) An Epic Prank (A practical joke goes awry and kills a boy, which is then covered up)

F) My Girlfriend, The Outlaw (A nerdy guy meets a nice girl online - until he realizes she is a wanted criminal)

 

I like the cannibal one.

I haven't really run into many IF fans here. Though I view CYOAs and IF as an apples and oranges things so maybe the lack of crossover shouldn't be surprising. (Twine and COG's respective takeover and corruption of the IFDB and intfiction forums aside...)

The funny thing is, I'm not as much an IF fan as I am nostalgic: Way back when I was 16, I programmed a simple parser on my C-64 and made a funny IF game about getting locked in a cellar. That parser led me down dark paths in my life.

Compare that to when I was 13 with my TI-99 4/a: I made several CYOA with nice (read extremely blocky) graphics. One was about the Hulk, one was about being god-like, and one was about how NOT to pick-up girls. The last one was my personal favorite - it was more about how NOT to be like me! xD

(and thanks for the input - Best Kept Secrets gets a vote!)

 

 

I didn't discover IF until 2002 or so, and didn't get seriously into it until I rediscovered it a couple years later. I was coming off of playing MUDs and looking for a way to create cool little text worlds without having to learn how to program or actually host them.

I've got a couple WIPs in Quest and used to have countless semi finished ADRIFT projects. (Vastly prefer ADRIFT as an authoring tool really, but the community has like three people left.)

IF players unfortunately have extremely high standards and I always got bogged down in 'OK the tree is unimportant scenery, but, describe it. OK now describe the trunk. The bark. The branches. The leaves. You mentioned sunlight on the leaves, better describe it. OK good now do the sky and dirt and each individual blade of grass, but first, press the shotgun against the roof of your mouth...

Cannibals.

Cannibals. 

Of course cannibals. What else did you expect?

Really, it was a very silly question.

For your EX-girlfriend? Alright then, that's weird. Anyhow, A's probably my favorite, followed by B.

"For your EX-girlfriend?"

Yes. Why is it so weird to have an EX you still like to hang with?.. Perhaps when you get to be old-steve, you will understand. A is a good choice, btw.

Actually I was wondering more about your phrasing of "my ex-girlfriend and my cousin" since it wasn't completely clear if those were two different people or in fact the same person. 

Not that I'd judge such a thing of course.

So far:

A has 2 votes.

B has 6 votes.

All the rest (C through F) have 1 vote each.  (I voted for all of them!) So, It is looking like B may come out on top. Everyone seems to like stories about cannibals. That's good to know! If I was to be without food for 40 days, at least now I'd know who NOT to bring with me. :) Thanks for the replies!

Basically, to compete with cannibalism around these parts your other games would have had to promise an incestuous romance option, at the very least.

I see. So, these Hills, Do Have Eyes! Gotcha! But I could only add incestuous romance if 1) It was non-consentual, 2) There were anthropomorphic cat villains involved in the sax, and 3) Anime tropes used without thought or excuse. I'm sorry to say, but I just can't bring myself to use tropes like that. So solly. ;_;

Hey, option B sounds like a brilliant idea! I look forward to reading what you come up with.

Okay, here is the new run down:

A has 15 votes,

B has 7,

and all the rest combined, has 1 vote! (I down voted a couple by 0.05 multiple times!)

So, A has the lead...

 

"Hey, option B sounds like a brilliant idea! "

Yeah, yeah.. I remember AOL, just say Mee To next time! ;P /jk

A. Perks my interest. It does so because what would probably be the twist in the story isn't known by the description you gave.

Well, A. is confirmed. I'm going to shoehorn it into the contest. A hero - in this case - can be many things. I believe it can work!

"what would probably be the twist in the story isn't known by the description you gave"

The strange thing is: Everyone knows she is missing, but they do not care. Not her parents, teachers, friends, except for the player's character. The twist(s) is/are already worked out, but it's a secret - so you'll have to read it to find out! :)