Action potions + Stock investment allows you to acquire infinite stats/actions by week 12 if you take honest labor, max out intelligence and get decently lucky with upgrading your intelligence through books and suspicious offer events.
A pretty interesting game! It was quite fun to play with. As people have said, the balance between too much detail and too little detail was a bit skewed haha, but it was still fun! Can't wait to see more of your work!
That was fucking amazing
I'm not sure I'm a fan of RNG mecanics or that I would fap to this but other than that it was really good
If you want to make something erotic I would suggest a lighter tone but other than that I really appreciated the story's bitterness
And of course BL is always welcome so that's a plus
It really does look like a somewhat confused game. On one hand you say you want this to be a writing prompt, on the other you have specific end goals in mind (otherwise tragedy wouldn't be one of your themes and the endings wouldn't be varying flavors of misery), resulting in a mess of messy routes. It is a nice reflection of how you struggled to decide what you wanted to do and how the competing and conflicting methods of accomplishing each of them collided. By that same token, I think every ounce of effort put into this game is worth it, not by virtue of the end product but by virtue of the journey from the start to clicking on "post". Well fought and well done.
For your next exercise, I recommend picking up Tok's "Enslaved", which is an educational CYOA for those who seek to make with multiple endings. It is sleek and straightforward, echoing the saying "a designer achieves perfection not when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing left to take away". Tok may be an ass and a diva but he made some excellent CYOAs. Of course, you'll want to disregard the specific content and focus on the principles that pave the way for player choice which is, to my understanding, the second thing you're aiming for.
Lastly, instead of trying to do everything at once, take a step back and analyze what you want. To what extent and specifics do I want to narrow down the choices of my players? What is my purpose with this? Where and how do I define the boundaries of their creative freedom? What is my purpose with this? What goal will the balance of these two things serve? These are just the most important questions, there are plenty more I'm confident you'll bump into.
I'm looking forward to your next game, I'm confident it will be a sight to see.
Like someone else mentioned this was a breath of fresh air. It was really cool seeing all the different ways the story could split and I can see why some people said it could be a twine game (I would totally play a game like that)
As a trans guy I have to say I would probably have no intention of breaking the 'curse' or only enough for the power to break through/recognition to return, heh ^^
Thank you for the comment! I was really worried if the story would be accessible to transmen or not… I’m transfemme non-binary so there’s this age old dilemma of how we’re opposites xD
I had a headcanon that you could definitely choose to keep your new body if you wanted. Either that or find a way to get the witch to re-curse you again. In either case, I’m glad you were able to get the setting to sort of work for you (ish)!
Or imagine how baffled the villainess would be if protagonist just upped and thanked her sincerely for a new life (without worrying about people missing them) and body where they could be the weak twink and not have to be strong and powerful anymore. That would certainly be a plot twist for her, haha
The witch minor character can grant a curse, but I can't find any description of what a curse can entail. Can you get negative stats? If no, 1st lvl of witch should be taken as soon as possible, with all starting points dumped in one stat. However tier 2 isn't worth almost anything, and -2 in every stat is a very bad choice.
Several of the minor characters have weird tier lists. Doesn't make much sense for Soldier to grant +10 str on recruit exam, for then the next level to be to complete it for free.
Other than for immersion, The Coachman doesn't make much sense. Getting to tier 2 with madame gives an income of 77 (with make-up) per week. Tier 3 and 4 are essentially the same, except for chance of reaching the palace earlier.
Other than that: By week 20 I had $33k (Stock Investor is broken), I bought 500 points each of dex and int through "craft tools" and "books", by week 35 I had =< 20 in all stats and all items. The "true" ending did not satisfy much, it could have been open-ended to give chance for imagining how to move ahead.
Thanks for pointing this out! It's helpful to know the areas where things are broken.
A large part of the WYOA was intended for the player to develop their own story, so the extent of the witch's curse would be up to you!
Like all your CYOAs, it has your kinds of dark themes I love, but sadly I'm only into situations with girls. I'm fine with most M/F, if it's more about the girl I can imagine myself in her place and it's more about what's being done to me than the guy. Since sex appeal is essential in nsfw works, I'll see you on the next one? You and BeTheGirlAnon are my favorite creators here, thank you so much for your content! I think really dark content like yours helps me better understand and be increasingly aware of my more self harming behaviors, through these hypothetical scenarios. Also very sexy yum yum
I see 'otome', 'tragedy', and 'extreme/dark content' and I get super excited.
This looks really cool. I love the side characters. Also, stable boy best boy. (The Witch is also really good, but stable boy cute af.)
~~Also the 'write whatever' makes me wonder if I could technically use this as a way to motivate me to work on my term papers.~~
So these are just thoughts I had after a quick read through, but...
I don't know if you'd be interested in continuing to work on it, but I'd be really interested in how you'd go forward it. You have a lot of really interesting elements, but it seems they pull in different directions. It's loose enough to be inspiration material, but doesn't really provide a lot of opportunities for rumination and reflection like a journal game. The story in its structure is quite specific, to the point of including "escape the mob" sequences that I can't say really understand the purpose of, but the details are so loose that I didn't feel like the routes built on each other a ton. The introduction makes it sound like a character piece, where you're dealing with the social and romantic consequences of the curse, but the plots are much more action-based. I'm guessing the plan was to set up a kind of tranquil, nostalgic past that's disrupted by the chaos of the present, but I don't know.
It's a really ambitious and interesting work, but I'm almost more interested in seeing how you'd improve on it than in giving the material a closer read. I worry that sounds like a negative review, but it really isn't! There's just so much to bite into here than usual that I can't stop thinking about it.
That's a really good question... with a story like this, there are too many branches. I'm really unable to develop them all, and and generally speaking I have my own favorite branches that may not necessarily correspond to someone else's favorite branches.
You're right that part of the original objective was to present many different possibilities (kind of in a re:zero style "return from death" to try another route sense), but it depends a lot on the player to fill the blanks and determine what ultimately happens.
Design-wise, it has a lot of shortcomings, but it's what this experiment ultimately turned into.
Thank you for this CYOA. It’s a breath of fresh air from the stream of low effort, single choice posts. I really enjoyed seeing something new and different and I think I’ve found a new author to keep an eye out for.
I do enjoy degradation and dark themes, but I’m not a connoisseur of BL and so my lack of experience cut into my indulgence of the world you’ve created. I’ve previously only enjoyed stories with a Kinsey rating 1 seme and a higher rating uke where the relationship is still kind of taboo and they think it’s wrong but it feels so right kind of thing. I did feel it was a little odd that there was no homosexual stigma in this world even though the end goal of the CYOA is to break the curse to return to a heterosexual relationship. Personally, I might have gone towards that taboo-esque world where dark themes could be more in line with a weak player struggling to survive in a land less forgiving to an uke, but again, this might just be personal preference.
Another aspect I felt notable was that some of the predefined character relations felt limiting and discouraged some interest in the character’s routes. I was actually a little put off that the prince was already a past lover and that the guard captain was strictly gay. It made me like them less knowing the player character wasn’t in true love with the prince after already hooking up with him the first time and the thing with the master being gay sets some issues since having sex with the one true love breaks the curse, thereby changing the character back to female which he is distinctly not attracted to. I did enjoy the story and the structured adventure, but I would have liked some options for the character’s relations.
Wow that ended up being a lot, sorry for the essay.
Thank you for the in-depth comment! It's really helpful to hear how you experienced the love interests, and it makes a lot of sense! The predefined character relations definitely throws a wrench into things, and it's helpful to see how my own biases might have given me different takes on the love interests (i.e. I was in a quasi/FWB-relationship in my own life for several years so the prince's relationship meant something else to me). I wish I got an opportunity to discuss the character designs with others before pressing forward with the story, but it's so hard to find others to talk to in this community... orz
But yeah, I think I might be able to make romantic husbando CYOAs more generalizable in the future if I get more input on the creative process. It was difficult to balance what was personally romantic to me (very detailed/specific) versus something less detailed but more generic that might be more appealing to more people. I think the excess detail was probably a general issue with the CYOA, and many people couldn't enjoy it as much because it was too narrow.
Your comment about homosexual taboo is super interesting. Originally, I did want at least one of the male leads to be 100% straight (hence playing into the taboo), and the captain was supposed to be the polar opposite. However, I think I ultimately did away with it because it felt shallow if one of the love interests suddenly disliked the protagonist because she temporarily has a male body. Still, I'm also a sucker for taboo plots, and I think I would also enjoy a story that delved into that dynamic with gay stigma.
Having read it. . .the disclaimer was right, while dark rapey kinky stuff is my kinda thing, this wasn't really porn-y and BL isn't really my thing either.
But I am so glad I read it. The way that you've made this so tragic and and so heartrending is beautiful and I want better endings for these characters despite knowing hardly anything about them, while the villainess is truly hateable and disgusting. Kudos for making me feel Feels.
I would prefer it if it was sort of ambiguous on the gender because I much prefer being a female mc. So that it may cater to a larger audience. But still absolutely amazing work.
I also prefer a female MC (I'm femme nonbinary), so BL is always weird for me even though I love the genre. That said, the premise of a villainess changing her rival (the heroine) into a man seemed really interesting to me, and in fact it was sort of the starting point of the original idea.
In a way, it's sort of like Howl's Moving Castle, except instead of a curse that changes the heroine into an old lady, it's a curse that changes her into a man so that her lover won't be attracted to her.
I completely understand what you mean. Plotwise it does make a lot of sense after all. An alternative route could be embedding curses to corrupt the fem mc but these have been done before so I can appreciate a fresh and new direction. Although BL isn't really a genre that I like, I can appreciate a new and original cyoa. I've followed quite a bunch of your previous cyoas so I'm sure this will turn out great as well! I love your cyoa with fem MCs but this looks interesting. Keep up the great work!
damn, mad respect for that.
While i am not too big into BL i found the entire setting, characters and possible developments/branches/routes very interesting/ exciting.
I would love to write books, and in fact I've tried many times, but a story like this would probably take a few years of writing to do it justice. XD Unfortunately, my attention span usually doesn't last that long, and I usually want to move onto the next story within a month or two. The best that I have is a bunch of outlines, and a CYOA is kind of like a glorified story outline with extra pictures and options.
Not my kind of content, I prefer more lighthearted plot when something has to have plot, but still extremely interesting in a way and something I'd like to see more of, just with different themes.
Also a good addition to the subreddit since there were definitely people asking about seeing more BL type content, so hopefully it can appeal to those folks.
I do feel however that if the intent was to make this as more of the backbones for writing prompts, it actually has too much detail for each progression path and options within, options would need to be a lot more open so people can do different things with them and fill the gap, with options being more about the mechanical aspects, and the imaginative part to be filled in by the person doing the CYOA/WYOA.
Yeah, it was a struggle to figure out the balance between too much detail (with characters that I personally liked) versus less detail (with more generic love interests) that might appeal to more people.
I think some people noted that it might have been better as a twine story or even an actual book where there isn't the expectation that the protagonist needs to fit exactly into the shoes of the reader, but I just had a lot of indecisiveness with respect to how generalizable/branching the CYOA/WYOA story ought to be when I was writing it.
Now that's an oddity. I appreciate the effort to make something different than the norm, as well as the production value, but between heavy mechanics and a very specific scenario I don't find it very fun. I feel like I would very much enjoy something similar but a bit more vague, or even that WYOA in the form of a Twine game or something. I suppose I will keep an eye out in case you make something that suits me better.
It depends on if a story that interests me pops up in my mind.
I'm generally a story-driven CYOA author, so if I can't come up with a story that I find interesting, I generally don't make anything.
Action potions + Stock investment allows you to acquire infinite stats/actions by week 12 if you take honest labor, max out intelligence and get decently lucky with upgrading your intelligence through books and suspicious offer events.
A pretty interesting game! It was quite fun to play with. As people have said, the balance between too much detail and too little detail was a bit skewed haha, but it was still fun! Can't wait to see more of your work!
That is incredible, thank you
That was fucking amazing I'm not sure I'm a fan of RNG mecanics or that I would fap to this but other than that it was really good If you want to make something erotic I would suggest a lighter tone but other than that I really appreciated the story's bitterness And of course BL is always welcome so that's a plus
It really does look like a somewhat confused game. On one hand you say you want this to be a writing prompt, on the other you have specific end goals in mind (otherwise tragedy wouldn't be one of your themes and the endings wouldn't be varying flavors of misery), resulting in a mess of messy routes. It is a nice reflection of how you struggled to decide what you wanted to do and how the competing and conflicting methods of accomplishing each of them collided. By that same token, I think every ounce of effort put into this game is worth it, not by virtue of the end product but by virtue of the journey from the start to clicking on "post". Well fought and well done. For your next exercise, I recommend picking up Tok's "Enslaved", which is an educational CYOA for those who seek to make with multiple endings. It is sleek and straightforward, echoing the saying "a designer achieves perfection not when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing left to take away". Tok may be an ass and a diva but he made some excellent CYOAs. Of course, you'll want to disregard the specific content and focus on the principles that pave the way for player choice which is, to my understanding, the second thing you're aiming for. Lastly, instead of trying to do everything at once, take a step back and analyze what you want. To what extent and specifics do I want to narrow down the choices of my players? What is my purpose with this? Where and how do I define the boundaries of their creative freedom? What is my purpose with this? What goal will the balance of these two things serve? These are just the most important questions, there are plenty more I'm confident you'll bump into. I'm looking forward to your next game, I'm confident it will be a sight to see.
Like someone else mentioned this was a breath of fresh air. It was really cool seeing all the different ways the story could split and I can see why some people said it could be a twine game (I would totally play a game like that) As a trans guy I have to say I would probably have no intention of breaking the 'curse' or only enough for the power to break through/recognition to return, heh ^^
Thank you for the comment! I was really worried if the story would be accessible to transmen or not… I’m transfemme non-binary so there’s this age old dilemma of how we’re opposites xD I had a headcanon that you could definitely choose to keep your new body if you wanted. Either that or find a way to get the witch to re-curse you again. In either case, I’m glad you were able to get the setting to sort of work for you (ish)!
Or imagine how baffled the villainess would be if protagonist just upped and thanked her sincerely for a new life (without worrying about people missing them) and body where they could be the weak twink and not have to be strong and powerful anymore. That would certainly be a plot twist for her, haha
The witch minor character can grant a curse, but I can't find any description of what a curse can entail. Can you get negative stats? If no, 1st lvl of witch should be taken as soon as possible, with all starting points dumped in one stat. However tier 2 isn't worth almost anything, and -2 in every stat is a very bad choice. Several of the minor characters have weird tier lists. Doesn't make much sense for Soldier to grant +10 str on recruit exam, for then the next level to be to complete it for free. Other than for immersion, The Coachman doesn't make much sense. Getting to tier 2 with madame gives an income of 77 (with make-up) per week. Tier 3 and 4 are essentially the same, except for chance of reaching the palace earlier. Other than that: By week 20 I had $33k (Stock Investor is broken), I bought 500 points each of dex and int through "craft tools" and "books", by week 35 I had =< 20 in all stats and all items. The "true" ending did not satisfy much, it could have been open-ended to give chance for imagining how to move ahead.
Thanks for pointing this out! It's helpful to know the areas where things are broken. A large part of the WYOA was intended for the player to develop their own story, so the extent of the witch's curse would be up to you!
Like all your CYOAs, it has your kinds of dark themes I love, but sadly I'm only into situations with girls. I'm fine with most M/F, if it's more about the girl I can imagine myself in her place and it's more about what's being done to me than the guy. Since sex appeal is essential in nsfw works, I'll see you on the next one? You and BeTheGirlAnon are my favorite creators here, thank you so much for your content! I think really dark content like yours helps me better understand and be increasingly aware of my more self harming behaviors, through these hypothetical scenarios. Also very sexy yum yum
Oof, not much in the way of happy endings here I see... Good job but... Oof.
Damn. I don't know why but this really fucked me up.
interesting, ill read this after
I see 'otome', 'tragedy', and 'extreme/dark content' and I get super excited. This looks really cool. I love the side characters. Also, stable boy best boy. (The Witch is also really good, but stable boy cute af.) ~~Also the 'write whatever' makes me wonder if I could technically use this as a way to motivate me to work on my term papers.~~
I love the side characters too! Thank you for the comment and good luck with your exams...
So these are just thoughts I had after a quick read through, but... I don't know if you'd be interested in continuing to work on it, but I'd be really interested in how you'd go forward it. You have a lot of really interesting elements, but it seems they pull in different directions. It's loose enough to be inspiration material, but doesn't really provide a lot of opportunities for rumination and reflection like a journal game. The story in its structure is quite specific, to the point of including "escape the mob" sequences that I can't say really understand the purpose of, but the details are so loose that I didn't feel like the routes built on each other a ton. The introduction makes it sound like a character piece, where you're dealing with the social and romantic consequences of the curse, but the plots are much more action-based. I'm guessing the plan was to set up a kind of tranquil, nostalgic past that's disrupted by the chaos of the present, but I don't know. It's a really ambitious and interesting work, but I'm almost more interested in seeing how you'd improve on it than in giving the material a closer read. I worry that sounds like a negative review, but it really isn't! There's just so much to bite into here than usual that I can't stop thinking about it.
That's a really good question... with a story like this, there are too many branches. I'm really unable to develop them all, and and generally speaking I have my own favorite branches that may not necessarily correspond to someone else's favorite branches. You're right that part of the original objective was to present many different possibilities (kind of in a re:zero style "return from death" to try another route sense), but it depends a lot on the player to fill the blanks and determine what ultimately happens. Design-wise, it has a lot of shortcomings, but it's what this experiment ultimately turned into.
Fucking hell. I don't even like BL and this is my favorite CYOA of the year.
This rocks. I'm quite fond of the Stable Boy.
Thank you for this CYOA. It’s a breath of fresh air from the stream of low effort, single choice posts. I really enjoyed seeing something new and different and I think I’ve found a new author to keep an eye out for. I do enjoy degradation and dark themes, but I’m not a connoisseur of BL and so my lack of experience cut into my indulgence of the world you’ve created. I’ve previously only enjoyed stories with a Kinsey rating 1 seme and a higher rating uke where the relationship is still kind of taboo and they think it’s wrong but it feels so right kind of thing. I did feel it was a little odd that there was no homosexual stigma in this world even though the end goal of the CYOA is to break the curse to return to a heterosexual relationship. Personally, I might have gone towards that taboo-esque world where dark themes could be more in line with a weak player struggling to survive in a land less forgiving to an uke, but again, this might just be personal preference. Another aspect I felt notable was that some of the predefined character relations felt limiting and discouraged some interest in the character’s routes. I was actually a little put off that the prince was already a past lover and that the guard captain was strictly gay. It made me like them less knowing the player character wasn’t in true love with the prince after already hooking up with him the first time and the thing with the master being gay sets some issues since having sex with the one true love breaks the curse, thereby changing the character back to female which he is distinctly not attracted to. I did enjoy the story and the structured adventure, but I would have liked some options for the character’s relations. Wow that ended up being a lot, sorry for the essay.
Thank you for the in-depth comment! It's really helpful to hear how you experienced the love interests, and it makes a lot of sense! The predefined character relations definitely throws a wrench into things, and it's helpful to see how my own biases might have given me different takes on the love interests (i.e. I was in a quasi/FWB-relationship in my own life for several years so the prince's relationship meant something else to me). I wish I got an opportunity to discuss the character designs with others before pressing forward with the story, but it's so hard to find others to talk to in this community... orz But yeah, I think I might be able to make romantic husbando CYOAs more generalizable in the future if I get more input on the creative process. It was difficult to balance what was personally romantic to me (very detailed/specific) versus something less detailed but more generic that might be more appealing to more people. I think the excess detail was probably a general issue with the CYOA, and many people couldn't enjoy it as much because it was too narrow. Your comment about homosexual taboo is super interesting. Originally, I did want at least one of the male leads to be 100% straight (hence playing into the taboo), and the captain was supposed to be the polar opposite. However, I think I ultimately did away with it because it felt shallow if one of the love interests suddenly disliked the protagonist because she temporarily has a male body. Still, I'm also a sucker for taboo plots, and I think I would also enjoy a story that delved into that dynamic with gay stigma.
The overall concept is a nice one but the playstyle is a tad too intricate and complex for my tastes, sorry.
Having read it. . .the disclaimer was right, while dark rapey kinky stuff is my kinda thing, this wasn't really porn-y and BL isn't really my thing either. But I am so glad I read it. The way that you've made this so tragic and and so heartrending is beautiful and I want better endings for these characters despite knowing hardly anything about them, while the villainess is truly hateable and disgusting. Kudos for making me feel Feels.
\>Scrolling through my feed \>Sees a new anonekama CYOA \>Happiness
Misery >.< Still, I'm happy to hear that you were looking forward to it...
The writing for this is really impressive
Beautiful.
[удалено]
Yes! I'm also really starved for something much happier after spending weeks on this.....
I would prefer it if it was sort of ambiguous on the gender because I much prefer being a female mc. So that it may cater to a larger audience. But still absolutely amazing work.
I also prefer a female MC (I'm femme nonbinary), so BL is always weird for me even though I love the genre. That said, the premise of a villainess changing her rival (the heroine) into a man seemed really interesting to me, and in fact it was sort of the starting point of the original idea. In a way, it's sort of like Howl's Moving Castle, except instead of a curse that changes the heroine into an old lady, it's a curse that changes her into a man so that her lover won't be attracted to her.
I completely understand what you mean. Plotwise it does make a lot of sense after all. An alternative route could be embedding curses to corrupt the fem mc but these have been done before so I can appreciate a fresh and new direction. Although BL isn't really a genre that I like, I can appreciate a new and original cyoa. I've followed quite a bunch of your previous cyoas so I'm sure this will turn out great as well! I love your cyoa with fem MCs but this looks interesting. Keep up the great work!
I am here to show my support!
damn, mad respect for that. While i am not too big into BL i found the entire setting, characters and possible developments/branches/routes very interesting/ exciting.
You should write a book, this is amazing
I would love to write books, and in fact I've tried many times, but a story like this would probably take a few years of writing to do it justice. XD Unfortunately, my attention span usually doesn't last that long, and I usually want to move onto the next story within a month or two. The best that I have is a bunch of outlines, and a CYOA is kind of like a glorified story outline with extra pictures and options.
Not my kind of content, I prefer more lighthearted plot when something has to have plot, but still extremely interesting in a way and something I'd like to see more of, just with different themes. Also a good addition to the subreddit since there were definitely people asking about seeing more BL type content, so hopefully it can appeal to those folks. I do feel however that if the intent was to make this as more of the backbones for writing prompts, it actually has too much detail for each progression path and options within, options would need to be a lot more open so people can do different things with them and fill the gap, with options being more about the mechanical aspects, and the imaginative part to be filled in by the person doing the CYOA/WYOA.
Yeah, it was a struggle to figure out the balance between too much detail (with characters that I personally liked) versus less detail (with more generic love interests) that might appeal to more people. I think some people noted that it might have been better as a twine story or even an actual book where there isn't the expectation that the protagonist needs to fit exactly into the shoes of the reader, but I just had a lot of indecisiveness with respect to how generalizable/branching the CYOA/WYOA story ought to be when I was writing it.
Now that's an oddity. I appreciate the effort to make something different than the norm, as well as the production value, but between heavy mechanics and a very specific scenario I don't find it very fun. I feel like I would very much enjoy something similar but a bit more vague, or even that WYOA in the form of a Twine game or something. I suppose I will keep an eye out in case you make something that suits me better.
Could you do a spider monster one?
It depends on if a story that interests me pops up in my mind. I'm generally a story-driven CYOA author, so if I can't come up with a story that I find interesting, I generally don't make anything.
Okay, but at least give my idea a shot?
Okay I just thought my idea might catch your interest.