Planning a Choice-based Game (Patreon)

If you are planning a traditional novel, you can find countless books, articles, and blogs on writing that provide recipes for this task. Much less has been written for writing games though the industry has increased in the past two decades, bringing more instructional materials to the forefront. At the moment, you can find coursework on narrative design for video games or even receive a degree in game design. Not much has been written for planning a choice-based game. In this article, I will discuss the key elements to consider before writing your first game, including creating the plot, developing characters, determining stats, and deciding on end states. This article will assume you are using Choicescript as the software behind your game, although most of the discussion will apply to games written in other software.

What to Consider Before Writing

Writing a choice-based game starts with the concept. What is your game about? What genre is it a part of? Why do you think your game would be interesting and enjoyable to players? When I consider a concept, I try to articulate it in a short paragraph. This is also something required if you want to pitch to Choice of Games. This concept may very well be part of the marketing used to sell the game in the various app markets and on Steam. In writing your concept, you should communicate several major characteristics of your game:

1. What happens in the story?

2. What kind of person/entity will the protagonist of the story be?

3. Where and when is the story taking place?

When you consider these three questions, you need to think in active and concrete terms. Below is a poorly designed concept:

It’s a zombie apocalypse story set in medieval times where you play a knight in a heavily populated kingdom. Starting at the main castle, you must battle your way out of the city walls. Along the way, you meet a cast of characters who may aid you or stand in your way.

Some of you may be intrigued by this concept, but it fails in several ways. First of all, it’s not saying what actually happens in the story with any degree of specificity that will help engage the reader’s imagination. It does not offer any variability in the person you will play throughout the story. It does an adequate job of sharing where and when the story is taking place. Let’s consider a better version.

After a long battle away from your kingdom, you return to court just as a new threat breaks out. A disease has befallen the once thriving land of Havelot, the highest populated kingdom in the land, causing the dead to rise. Play as a knight, archer, healer, or wizard and lead your allies through the city to salvation.

Still not the greatest concept, but it’s definitely going in the right direction. The main strengths are as follows:

1. This concept helps the reader to imagine the protagonist in a specific kingdom as a choice of several character archetypes (knight, archer, healer, or wizard). 

2. Reading this, you can see the actions you must take to “win” the game. You must lead your allies to salvation.

3. It’s much more specific and engages the reader’s imagination.

Writing a concept is not easy. In the last game I pitched to Choice of Games, it took twelve revisions for my editor to greenlight it. This should not be a trivial matter, because you should refer to it and even revise it as you write the game.

Once you have an acceptable concept, you need to start thinking about several major parts of the game that beginning writers often overlook. I could write whole articles on each of these elements, but I will provide an overview of each in this article.

Plot Progression 

Of course you need to plan out the plot of the story and generally how the plot will progress. Some writers prefer a more free-flowing style of generating the plot while others prefer to outline each chapter in great detail, even down to every choice presented to the player. At the least I recommend writing a paragraph or two for each chapter. In a choice driven game, events that occur early in the game should impact the story farther into the story, and this level of planning will help ensure things are not missed. If you expect to have a major battle in chapter 8, how do decisions made in earlier chapters affect that battle? Is it possible you meet an ally in chapter 3 or acquire a magical item in chapter 5? Maybe you angered a shopkeeper in the very first chapter who works against you in that battle. If you write too much of the story in a free-flowing form, it becomes very difficult to line up interactions between the various parts of the story.

Some writers use very detailed and organized outlines, while others use story maps or flowcharts. I generally stick to a very loosely structured chapter by chapter synopsis and let the story take shape as I write. If you take this approach, I suggest your chapter synopsis establishes where and when the events take place, what major choices you may present to the reader, and the possible statuses of the main character at the end of the chapter. If we use the medieval zombie apocalypse example from earlier, a possible chapter 5 synopsis could read:

After arriving at the temple, the MC and the group meet the Keepers of the Shadows, a secret cult that knows one possible way to end the zombie curse. The MC needs to defeat their champion, convince their leader, or break into the tomb of their god to learn of the spell to break the curse. The MC may succeed and obtain a scroll written in an unknown language with the spell, may have failed in acquiring the scroll but gaining an ally in the Keepers, or angering the cult and making them an enemy.

While no one argues that a plot outline or synopsis is helpful, many starting writers of choice games never consider the next three topics when planning their games. It’s always shocking to me how little these topics are explored until farther into the game.

Major Characters

Again, volumes of books have been written on creating characters. I don’t think the basics of character creation are far different from choice games compared to traditional forms of writing. I will tell you what works and give advice that I’ve learned from creating dozens and dozens of characters over the past ten years.

First off, nonplayer characters, those who meet and interact with the MC, should be tools that aid the player in roleplaying, achieving their goals, and helping them to shine as stars. Those are the major aspects of NPCs I consider when making them. Always remember that in choice driven games, the MC is the star. Everything in the game is there to help that star shine. Though you want players to love the other major characters of the story, they need to be created to help the MC’s story.

When creating characters, I ask several questions:

1. What is the major morality of that character? How does it help to explore the MC’s morality?

2. What major skills/traits does that character have? How does it help explore or reflect the MC skills?

3. How will the character interact with the MC? What are possible outcomes of that relationship?

Besides those questions, you still need to create the character that is vivid and specific. You need to give them traits and flaws and a background that will help them come to life. I also suggest you make them slightly larger-than-life. I have experimented with a number of ways to make characters in my games and those with strong personalities, a clear-cut morality, and very specific goals always resonate with readers.

For example, one of my most popular characters in any game is Rachel from Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven. When I was designing Rachel, I thought it would be interesting to have a highly manipulative character with a high moral center. This concept for a character came after writing Tom from the original Zombie Exodus, a manipulative character who has low morality. Rachel wants to keep people alive during the outbreak and is willing to manipulate them to save them. Her role in the story is to give the MC a bad ass spy to help lead the group as they head out of Nightfall. She’s quirky, intelligent, and listens to the MC. If a player’s main character lacks fighting skills, they have Rachel at their disposal. If the MC is well trained in fighting skills, they have a partner to go out scouting or raiding. She was created to help the MC achieve their goals, whether it’s leading a democratic group or trained killers. At times she will challenge MCs, disagree with them, fight with them, or even work against them. These are all created as opportunities for the player to explore different sides of their MC.

An interesting discussion was recently raised on the Choice of Games forms. “Do you NEED romance options, personally?” I don’t think you absolutely need romantic options in your choice driven game. The golden rule of storytelling is to create the story you want to tell. However, the vast majorities of players enjoy romantic options. Remember you are helping readers to live in a fantasy of their design. Most of us want to explore intimate relationships in stories.

When you are designing your game, you need to consider whether you feel comfortable writing romantic options and how far you will allow that romance to reach. Will there be scenes of intimacy or sex? What are implications of that romance? Are there emotional impacts for the reader? If you are creating a character just to give the main character a fantasy partner who doesn’t challenge them in any way or help them to explore different sides of that character, you are not doing justice to the story.

Be careful creating too many romantic options. These characters add a considerable amount of content, which translates to time and effort. I have found 4 to 6 romantic options is a good range for a story. You want to provide several personalities and appearances that readers may find attractive.

Stats

I am often surprised that so few choice game writers consider stats during planning of their game. Stats are essential to writing a story that changes as the game progresses. You need to track how players perform and the choices they make. The majority of stat changes should occur when a player makes a selection and a choice. Therefore when I write a choice, I consider changing 1 to 2 stats for each of the options.

There are four main types of stats you should consider:

Establishing stats — these stats help define the MC at the start of the story. They represent the class, background, or profession of the protagonist. They should not change based on common choices and should be set through early narrative scenes. In some cases, like Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, you may design a nonnarrative character creation system. That’s fine if the flavor and genre of your game are suited to those types of mechanics. In general, readers want to be immersed in a story and not meta game. I will always stress a narrative approach to building MCs over a straight up character builder.

Personality and Morality stats — these stats help define the MC in many emotional and esoteric ways. Generally you want to track their P/M stats and reflect them back to the reader. For example, I like to use idealistic vs. cynical in many games I write. I use this because most people can easily understand the difference between an idealist and a cynic. People show up on a spectrum of idealism, and I can use choices to test them throughout the game. After I have tracked that stat for a while, 6 to 8 choices at least, I can then provide text to reflect that MC’s attitude as relates to idealism. For example, if the MC is involved in a conversation and I don’t want to write a full choice for how they may react to a question, I will do a quick check of their ideal stat and write 2 to 3 options depending on that stat, typically highly ideal, neutral, and highly cynical.

Resource stats — these stats are ever-changing throughout the game and reflect resources available to the MC. They can be good resources, such as money, energy/mana, status in a city, and relationship scores. They can also be negative resources, such as fatigue, stress, injuries, and debt. A typical way to affect resources is as a reward or punishment after testing an establishing stat. For example, if the player’s knight succeeds in jumping across the opening drawbridge, he may gain the approval of members of his group. If the player’s wizard casts the wrong spell against the undead dragon, she suffers an injury and loses health. Resources should raise and lower throughout the game. Players may even choose to spend resources to achieve their goals.

End State stats – these stats measure how well the MC is progressing through major goals that lead to the possible endings of the story. For example if the MC must gather all of the components of a spell to break the zombie curse, a simple stat may be created at the beginning of the story that measures how far the MC has gotten in achieving that goal. You may think to create individual variables for each single component, but then you’ve created a recipe for the MC. End states should have varying degrees of success or failure. 

It’s difficult to plan out stats. It’s something I struggle with in the planning stages of every game I write. Predicting the type of stats I will use can be an agonizing process. My advice is to create 3 to 4 of each of the stats from the categories above. Write a few chapters of the game and then reconsider your stats. If you are under-using any stats or find they are too difficult to implement, edit your game. Don’t get so deep in the game that you have ineffective stats that do not help drive the game forward.

So far in this discussion of stats, I have not addressed Boolean variables or flags. These are stats used to track specific events. Did the player meet the healer in chapter 4? Did the player defeat the undead ogre in chapter 6? You will use flags throughout the game to check whether a condition is true or false. However you should not rely on them to measure overall resources or goals. In the original Zombie Exodus, I did not rely on many stats to measure goals. I only tracked relationship scores and humanity. Therefore, by the end of the game I had very little opportunities to deliver tailored endings based on the MC’s performance in the game. Players were not too happy after figuring out that certain endings were triggered based on a single choice they made in the last chapter. In my next game, A Wise Use of Time, I relied more heavily on resource and end state stats to trigger endings, and those endings were highly tailored to the MCs choices and style of play.

End states

When we talk about end states, we are referring to the status of the MC at the end of the game, what players often call the ending. You will hear a common phrase, what ending did you get? These are often decided by combinations of end state stats.

How do we do this? It requires a lot of planning early in the game. As a writer of choice based games, you need to decide on the possible outcomes of the story in degrees of success and failure. Your stats need to track all of this so you can assign endings based on a combination of those numeric scores. In effect you are calculating those endings. In this way you are tailoring the story to the player’s choices.

Let’s continue the example of our medieval zombie apocalypse. We created three variables to track the MC’s goals throughout the game: how much of the spell components they have gathered ($components), their overall health ($health), and their own degree of infection ($infection}. We then create a list of these end state variables at varying levels of success and failure and any interactions they may have.

$components

• High: the MC completes the spell and rids Havealot of the zombie plague.
• Middle: the MC lacks some of the components, so the spell only affects half of the kingdom. The MC and their companions are saved, but many in the kingdom die.
• Low: the MC lacks many of the components. The spell fails and Havealot is lost to the zombie plague.

I write the above for each of the major end states stats. In addition, I consider interactions between those major stats for even more unique endings.

• If $components is high and $infection is high, the MC is cured of the zombie plague.
• If $components is low and $health is low and $infection is high, the MC turns into a zombie.

Unless you create these end state stats when you are planning to game, you will not be able to implement them at the earliest stage and effectively track them as the story progresses.

Final Thoughts

The above discussions only touch on the key elements of planning a choice based story. Whether you enjoy planning ahead or prefer a more loosely constructed story, the more work you put into the planning stage, the more dividends are paid off towards the end of the story. At the very least you will need to consider the plot and major characters. I highly recommend you spend some time coming up with effective stats before you even write your first line of the story. Pay particular attention to end states. Give your readers a tailored story based on the choices they make and show them the impact of those choices. Using the guidelines I discussed above, along with reading other materials on the subject, will help you to build a dynamic story.