#storyscape games

[xx-rpr]

[reallyhardy]

to my fellow former storyscape players:

are there any games out there currently that you feel are comparable in quality to storyscape?

please leave me some suggestions in the replies -- for me the gap left by storyscape has yet to be filled, and the books available in choices these days just do not hit the same as they did before PB started leaning hard into CEO romance and babymaking books.

[ekkurea]

Process ↓

Commission for Reinajruiz (inst)❤️‍🔥 Title: Crimson Souls🖤

[cozmostreet]

so emotional after taking a trip down the memory lane™️ storyscape, love island season 2 … the two of you will always be famous

[justhereforthefanfiction]

Me, every time I fall in love with a fandom.

Me, when becoming too invested in a kdrama:

[crazy-loca-blog]

I thought about sharing what's been my view during the last few days... I can't believe how much I needed to leave the big city for a while, my stress levels have mostly gone and the only reason I think I won't get rid of the constant exhaustion it's because I won't have enough days to sleep and fully recover! 😂

Anyway, I'm not dead, I'm here, and I so want to have time to read all your wonderful fics and stories, but as I've been so exhausted, the moment I try to pick anything to read I start falling asleep and it sucks (it's not that your stories are boring, it's just that I'm too tired! 😂).

During my time out I've managed to read some Choices' chapters though. And of course, I have some opinions no one asked for (but I need to share them anyway):

ALPHA is EVERYTHING Wolf Bride should have been. It was such a fun reading! But let me tell you, I'm going to need many answers in Book 2, Book 1 left too many unsolved questions.

I also managed to read THE BILLIONAIRE'S BABY. My biggest issue was that I didn't understand certain dialogues and attitudes because they weren't consistent with the game I was playing. I ended up restarting the book and that's when I realized that if you don't pick any diamond scenes until the story forces the MC and the LI to hook up, everything makes much more sense. I mean, the book is still awful (especially the ending... that was so "wtf?!?"), but at least now I kind of understand what I read.

The last book I finished was SHIP OF DREAMS. It's not a terrible book, it's not a mind-blowing book, it's OK. I can't compare it to the Storyscape story because I never read that one, but I honestly didn't expect the plot to be different to the movie, so no surprises there. The amount of smut was completely unnecessary, I think it ruined a lot of moments, especially because the characters in the book had very nice personalities that could have been further developed: both the nice guys and the villains were on point. The ending? Disappointing, as it didn't solve one of the big conflicts in the book.

Right now I'm reading UNBRIDED. Man... what did they do to Mandy? By the end of Untamable, she was the LI of my MC's brother, and then suddenly she becomes a LI for my new MC? It took a lot of chapters to understand what had happened between the end of Book 1 and the beginning of Book 2. Awful move! That should have been explained at the very beginning of the story! I also hate, hate, HATE the fact that you can't be a genuinely nice person without having some romance involved. Most of the time there is no choice and that makes me feel super limited in my game. Finally, I don't understand why the MC is so scared of telling everyone her secret. I didn't expect to get a good book here, but even if the story makes sense, I'm so limited in my choices that I end up feeling I can't play the book the way I want to and that kind of ruins the experience.

Anyway, I hope to be able to return to this little corner soon. I miss being here, but the constant exhaustion is not helping. I can't even keep up with all Choices' releases as I used to as I fall asleep mid chapter, so I'm reading books that have at least 10 chapters completed and that's kind of working better at the moment. I miss my life from a few years ago, where I was tired, but I had time to share stuff here. I'm on my way to fix it, but I really need my body to cooperate for it to work! 😅

[readingcutie]

Why you don’t have to worry about RC shutting down

Lately I have been seeing a lot of talk about RC shutting down. I want to smooth everyone’s fear with it by giving reasons of why they aren’t shutting down and an extra tidbit of why storyscape shut down (since I saw one post that brought it up and once I found out the reason of why it made barely any sense)

This is not even speculation, someone just decided to make a post complaining about people wanting DRs right away. They used RC’s finances as a reason for why people should stop complaining.

Other promotional deals, back when RC started doing DRs they would also did free diamonds and teacups events for specific books but that has stopped. I think that those events with those books were not profitable but DRs are so they continued them.

There are different standards of living in the world, that might seem like a no brained but someone compared RC’s profits (a Maldova base company) to that of three American companies and one German. I am only focusing on America because that is where I am from and have the best knowledge on. Even in my country the prices can change drastically, at my university which is in Rhode Island there is a chain store called insomniac cop lies and it was $5 cheaper here than the ones in Boston. I am saying this because imagine how drastic the change would be if insomniacs were in Moldova when a state change changes that much. I checked, a gallon of milk over there cost ~$3 while here it costs ~$6 and according to that same source as well there is a 87% decrease of Moldova’s rent compared to the US. Which means that RC would have to make less than the American companies to stay afloat.

Storyscape was a unique case of shutting down, storyscape was owned by Fox which is how they made series about The X-Files and added characters from Titanic because at the time Fox owned those titles. As many of you know Disney bought Fox but what many of you don’t know is that Disney does not want to develop their own games so when they buy out a company they close any game development under that company including storyscape

[hpowellsmith]

Hi! I have played and enjoyed all of your games, and even though I am a big fan of CoG, I have struggled to find any other companies who make similar games.

I’ve seen you post on a few  occasions about similar games and was wondering if you had any recommendations, CoG or otherwise. Thank you!

There isn't really a company that does exactly what CoG is doing, but there are lots of places to find IF or IF-adjacent games to play!

There are a lot of companies making and/or allowing users to make narrative mobile games which are often free to play with a model where paying opens up "premium" choices or cosmetics. Lots have sprung up over the years and sadly a lot of them have shuttered (Storyscape, Lovestruck, and others). Some friends have written for the Storyloom and Whispers apps. For a couple of years I worked on Love Island the Game but haven't been keeping up with it after I stopped working on it (which was during late Season 4/Bombshell). Then there's things like Dorian, Romance Club, and the older Chapters, Choices, Episodes, etc, some of which are created on commission and some of which are user-created games... It's worth having a look and seeing if any catch your eye.

I'd always recommend the work of Failbetter Games and inkle. (Mask of the Rose, Failbetter's first visual novel, is out now!) Both have branched out beyond being purely text-based but they have strong foundations in IF. Similarly Over the Alps, which was made by my former colleagues at Tributary Games, and King of the Castle (a narrative multiplayer game that I finished working on last year) are a great time. Games from Hanako Games are great, and if you liked Crème de la Crème I'd point you to Black Closet for dark academia school scheming. Christine Love and Autumn Chen are incredible creators too. I haven't played them fully yet, but Pentiment and Roadwarden promise fantastic narrative experiences with great storytelling.

I recommend having a look through the AdventureX lists of past exhibitors which include lots of really exciting narrative games. Narrascope also has plenty of speakers who have made or are discussing interesting games.

Also take a look at the IF Comp and Spring Thing archives for a huge collection of free IF with loads of different genres, tones, and sizes.

sub-q magazine isn't publishing new material anymore and you'll need to click past the expired security certificate but it published a wide range of short IF, some with more branching and some with less, but always interesting. (my first game writing sales were to them!)

On here, @/interact-if often posts themed recommendations. There are a lot of authors posting ongoing progress and devlogs of IF projects, sometimes on the CoG forum and dashingdon, sometimes on itch.io, and @/interact-if can be helpful for filtering though or finding ones that match what you're looking for. @/manonamora-if-reviews has started doing in depth IF reviews too. And on the subject of itch.io, there are many interactive fiction games on there both complete and in-progress.

Finally, if you're interested! Some of my all-time favourite ChoiceScript games include:

A Study in Steampunk

Asteroid Run

Choice of the Deathless

Heart of Battle

Heart of the House

Professor of Magical Studies

Tally Ho

(You can play Choice of the Deathless and Heart of Battle for free with ads.)

Thank you for the ask!

[ultimatebottom69]

You don't provoke a hoe dude. That's like the last thing you wanna do.

[sciralta]

originals never even released in my country… and we only got storyscape for around 3 months? 😭

anything high quality gets snatched from us

(at this point i’ve almost fully moved onto IFs..)

rip tbh Eternal City alone should’ve made storyscape profitable

Honestly the density of good IFs from Choice Of/Hosted Games is insane.

Let’s see how Candlelight Games, the new startup from ex Pixelberry employees fares

[choices-and-voices]

Okay, Story Time: Many moons ago, back when Choices was first beginning its descent into steaminess and Storyscape was still hanging on by a thread, there was also another interactive fiction app on the market, called Originals. Its stories were a bit more mature and a bit grittier, had more space for complex themes and difficult decisions and tough consequences, and all the MCs were gender-of-choice. Its take on a vampire story was called Immortal Thirst and was set in a 1920s jazz club. There were three love interests: Viktor, the owner of the club who was secretly a vampire; Marisol, a singer at the club who knew about vampires and protected them from hunters; and finally, Cary, a bartender at the club who didn’t know about vampires and was disgusted when he found out, considered them an abomination to God. In Episode 6 of the story, Cary was fatally injured, and you had to choose between letting him die or turning him into a vampire, saving his life by transforming him into the thing that he detested most. Then, if you saved him and also romanced him, the story eventually ended with the scenes above – with Cary saying that yes, he struggled at first with the thought that his soul was now damned, but deep down he knew that something born out of your love for each other could never, ever be damning. And now it’s been four years, and Originals is long gone, and whenever I want to post about it I have to write this huge intro because I have no idea if anyone still remembers, but – I still think about these scenes all the time. I think about how the writers somehow wrote a story that makes perfect sense no matter who your MC and LI are, but if you do happen to be a male MC romancing Cary, it is also a tear-jerkingly beautiful metaphor for a man in a traditionalist society learning to love the fact that he loves another man. And this is in an interactive fiction game, one that only lasted a couple of years before being shut down. One that wasn’t seen to hold its own against the pressure of ‘sex sells’. And it still blows my mind every. single. time.

[xx-rpr]

I'm still devastated over what happened to Storyscape. The sadness of what happened hits out of nowhere. How could you take such a magnificent storytelling platform away.

[niealle]

Hey, guys! I’m thrilled to introduce you to a Discord server that I’ve created call Storyscape Lounge. I created this because tweeting about my feelings regarding anime, manga, and manhwa isn't enough anymore. I'm really hoping I can enthusiastically discuss the things I love with people who share the same interests as me. This was initially an anime, manga, and manhwa Discord server only, but then I realized that I also want to connect with others about gaming, K-drama, and other topics. So, this Discord server is pretty much for anyone.

Honestly, I also created this server with thoughts of befriending aromantic ace spec individuals who share the same interests as me.

Here’s the invite link to the server: https://discord.gg/nsvFamGc 🫶🏻

[ekkurea]

Commission for Reinajruiz (inst)❤️‍🔥 Title: Crimson Souls🖤

[they-callme-ami]

🎉Happy New Year!🎉 It's 1:21 am on January 2nd but here are ten things (in no order) I wanna see in 2023 on tv, movies, and media in general

Butch4butch/stud4stud and butch4femme/stud4femme representation.

Femme4femme rep can stay but it's disabled and/or plus size, and I don't wanna see a single white woman. Not ONE skinny white able bodied femme in 2023. None.

Tiana's show gain as much popularity as Tangled: the series

Black sci-fi and fantasy that has no racism. Period. Not towards them or any other fantasy race.

A sitcom about 4 black women trying to make it in the city (I'd you've seen this post, you know what I mean) but make it take place D.C. or Atlanta.

Bratz. Just bratz. Animated movie(s) and show(s). But make em 2d and not white-washed.

Reverse harem anime and/or manga with either a chubby protagonist or a black/brown protagonist. I want it girly, cheesey, and colorful.

Storyscape to miraculously come back to life.

Outlast Trials full release

Horror game with black-female MC that doesn't revolve around racism....unless we're killing Klan members.

Come on everybody, reblog and manifest for 2023 with me. At least some of these gotta come true.

[ultimatebottom69]

Bro I'm at book 3 for real they be like that !

Heaven’s Secret characters as John Mulaney’s Quotes

Dino about his father:

Sammy when MC went to kiss him:

Lucifer 24/7:

Andy everytime:

Adi 25/8:

Mimi:

Geralt:

Fencio about MC’s mom:

Misselina: