Making CYOA Challenging

[Peter_Piers1 (Peter Piers)]

That’s informative, thank you. I’m not surprised at those results, and that’s pretty much what I chose as well.

[matt_weiner (matt w)]

Mind you, when I talk about what most people would do I really mean “What I vaguely think most philosophers vaguely think most people would do” – it’s not a real result.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

@absinthe

I think you’re expecting CYOA style to require the same kind of thinking as a parser, and it just doesn’t. That’s like expecting a cookbook to require the same kind of reading as a thriller.

Note that I’m not “expecting” anything. I just explained why this style of game never made me think, which is a fact, and I explained why I didn’t like (in general) the choice-based IF genre, which is a personal opinion. If other people like it, of course I’m fine with that, I’m not expecting that everything should cater to my tastes (although that would be nice ).

@zarf

So, not to keep repeating my own example, but did you try Bigger Than You Think? That’s where I tried to split the difference. It’s not a gigantic puzzle-fest, but the goal is not “to steer the story from start to end”.

I tried it (and finished it) and yes, actually it has made me think somewhat. I think it’s the only choice-based game without RPG elements that has made me think at the moment, so congratulations are in place!

Anyway, that game has some actual thinking because is “less” choice-based than others, so to speak… i.e., it has an inventory that adds some state (apart from the scenes) makes the game mechanics more similar to parser-based.

Also, I still think parser-based games make me think much more, because this one can be solved by trial and error - if you get stuck and it’s 1 AM and you feel like going to bed and not thinking much more, you can click all the objects in all the locations. Or you can sometimes solve puzzles by clicking objects in locations that seem somewhat related, without exactly knowing what your character is going to do. This is still not as much thinking as in parser-based IF where you have to come up with the exact idea of what to do, by yourself.

@Neil

Actually, I disagree with the first part of this thought, but the second nails it perfectly. In parser IF, you do need to make a list of choices. It is held in your mind, but it is still there. Will this door unlock with the blue key? The gold? Or maybe I need to use a password. A spell. The difference is that hyperlinks point out which of these the auhtor has considered. You actually don’t have to read the author’s mind, unlike in parser IF where you need to hope that your reasonable list of actions has been catered for. And that you get the phrasing right.

The decisions you make in the door example are not what I would call choices. You are not choosing between A or B because you will probably just try all of those until you are able to unlock the door.

What I was calling choices in my post is points in the game where you can either follow the path A or the path B, and each of the paths take you to a different place with different outcomes.

While that of course can happen in parser-based IF as well (after all everything that can be done in choice-based IF can obviously be done in parser-based IF), it is typically used/emphasized much less because it’s not the main resource to move the story. So typically the game will (as in your example) throw an unlocked door at you, and you will be free to take your time and try things until at some point you say “Eureka”, have a good idea and get to actually unlock it. This is what I like: thinking by myself until I come up with the solution. On the other hand, in a choice-based IF that aims to be challenging, the most typical structure is that you will have to take choices between some options that seem to unlock the door, but some of them will be good choices and some will be bad. Here is where it mostly boils down to reading the author’s mind.

Of course, in poorly-implemented parser IF, you also need to read the author’s mind a lot because there will be logical verbs, synonyms and actions that are not contemplated, but that’s an implementation issue that can be solved with betatesting. I was talking about the genres themselves and how they work when things are done well, obviously a badly-implemented game (in any genre) is a badly-implemented game.