Forums » Writing Workshop » Read Thread

I assume the answer to this is simpler when it comes to storygames that lean more heavily into the "game" part. This is especially true in RPG-style games where staying alive for as long as possible or reaching some other predetermined goal is key. Same goes for puzzle games and the like.

My question is more directed towards those "story" leaning storygames. What makes you decide how difficult your game is in the 1-8 scale? Is it an estimate of how likely it is the reader gets a "good" ending, or do you go by another method?

There was another thread like this a while back...and I think the general consensus was "It doesn't matter too much just take your best guess and go with it!"

Needless to say if your game is story based and isn't a gauntlet (ie you die a lot easily) chances are your game is...easy anyways?

But yeah...I'd imagine you just determine it the same way you would a puzzle game. Weigh good endings vs non good endings (I've always found this metric weird considering how subjective that is. What "really" makes an ending good or bad? What about in between endings? Best advice is look at the whole of your story and figure it out from there. There's no objective way to do this anyways...but I'm sure someone else will give a more sophisticated response than this anyways...hopefully...)

Would be more complicated if you have a handful of good endings but also a "True Good/Best Ending" as well that's harder to get...does your rating account for that or not really? But yeah you get the point by now...

I'd suggest asking. I usually post my games for beta-reading in the writer's workshop before publishing them, and virtually every time I've been wildly wrong in my guess for difficulty level and people told me to change it. So maybe get a few people to play through before you publish and ask them.

For me, if it's a story, that's pretty much a one or two. You can get an ending. Hooray.

If there's a puzzle you have to figure out, maybe I'll up that to a three.

The only time I'll put it higher than that is if there's an actual game or thing you have to solve to get to an ending.

Yeah this makes the most sense for me honestly.

Just put whatever, seriously. No one pays attention to that number and it's an artifact of a time when inventory puzzles were assumed to be the norm. The community happened to evolve in a different direction and Difficulty is just a historical oddity now.

Maybe dust it off if you're going to write a quiz.

I figured it was an obsolete metric for stories, I usually just randomly select one of the options tbh unless it's a quiz/game-like work.