Game Report: Episode

Episode is another choose-your-own-adventure game app, kinda in the spirit of Choice of Games and Heart's Choice. But it doesn't restrict itself to text to tell stories; instead it uses a combination of text, pictures, and cartoon-y animations. The book 50 Years of Text Games describes it pretty well, in passing, in its chapter on another game, Choices: The Freshman:

At the same time [as the popularity of the mobile game Kim Kardashian: Hollywood], an app called Episode (Pocket Gems 2013), which let players build their own interactive romance stories, was becoming another unstoppable hit. The app featured 2D characters who could be posed and animated like paper dolls to illustrate dialogue-driven stories; the company described it as "an interactive animated television show" and a "modern, mobile-first Choose Your Own Adventure." Episode also became wildly popular, especially teenage girls able to play through huge libraries of stories built by their peers.

The "huge libraries" are pretty impressive, effort-wise. Episode now has over 100,000 stories. Writing an Episode story ain't easy. When I see the phrase "animated like paper dolls," I nod my head and don't think about it much. In practice, it means that where a text story author might write "Chris paced nervously," an Episode author needs to enter in something like

• Move Chris' "paper doll" from screen coordinates (20, 30) to (50, 30) while playing the built-in walk animation
• Pause the walk animation, mirror-flipping Chris' "doll"
• Now move it back from (50, 30) to (20, 30), resuming the walk animation
• Pause the walk animation, mirror-flipping Chris' "doll" back to original
• Repeat

…then stare at resulting scene, decide it doesn't look quite right, tweak the numbers, stare some more…

I get tired just thinking about writing one scene, let alone one story's worth of scenes, let alone 100,000 stories; but that just goes to show I'm not millions of teenaged girls starved for creative outlets.

By the time I found Episode, it was ~10 years after it started. Things have changed. There are now two tiers of story:
Community: written by anybody (with the gumption to painstakingly move Chris' paper doll around the screen)
Episode Official: Stories guided by Episode's editorial team: hand-picked authors team up with pro editors, artists, etc

Those Episode Official stories are important because they make the money. It's free to download the Episode App; it's free to play the games. How does Episode make money from all this? Episode games can encourage readers to spend money. A game might present you a choice:

If you want the main character to wear a proper gown to the ball, you'll spend 19 gems, and those 19 gems will set you back about $1.99.

In recent years, the Episode Official games have pushed the gem choices really hard. In an Episode Official game, you know you're approaching a gown-or-potato-sack decision because the characters all start discussing the importance of fashion. When you've clicked through this not-so-interesting dialog a while, you finally get the gown-or-potato-sack choice. When you choose the potato sack, the game immediately asks "Are you sure? It's pretty smelly" and it repeats the gown-or-potato-sack choice, only relenting after you refuse a second time. If you're playing an Episode Official game, you can also expect icky choices like

You and I, dear reader, see these choices and have the sense to put down that Episode Official game and find something else to do with our time. But Episode keeps cranking out more of those games. I guess they've figured out that these icky choices are their best business model; they've got some customers who who will spend 19💎 to help a fictional dog and not quit the game, but instead keep going.

OK, so avoid the Episode Official games, stick to the Community games. Some of the Community games are pretty darned good. OK, I don't like 99% of them; but there are 100,000+ Community Games, so figure there are 1000 good ones. They might nudge you to spend some gems on a choice, but they won't have the Episode Official icky borderline-abusive-manipulative editorial voice.

The best games play to the medium's strengths. They don't try to convey everything with dialog; instead, they animate the characters to use gestures, body language… but since there's just these pre-made animations to choose from, a game author/director has to get creative. Like, maybe there's no great animation for a swimmer to wave to people on shore, but an author might play a dance-move animation and conceal the swimmer's legs and it'll look like they're waving. It's very constrained; and interesting art comes from interesting constraints.

Here are my faves:

Competitive Edge by Piccalilly

The main character is an aggressively competitive over-achieving college freshman. She landed at the same university as her high school rival. It's pretty funny; the game often presents you with three bad choices, because you're steering a character incapable of being humble, keeping quiet, etc. But things tend to work out OK for her nonetheless.

The Ruby Tiara by Wincy Writes

Vicious palace intrigue. No, more vicious than that.

Switch by Alusza:

A playboy college student has been cursed: He's been transformed into a lady. To restore himself to his old form, he must heal seven hearts he broke. For each broken heart he heals, he turns back into a dude one day a week. Despite these transformations, he's trying to maintain his school life and a budding romance. Wacky hijinx ensue.

Wow, that's not a lot of recommended games, considering that I had are 100,000+ to choose from. I suspect that "100,000+" number includes not-yet-finished games. My recommendations above are all complete, but my reading list on the app includes many many not-yet-finished games. It takes so much effort to crank out content for this platform; I suspect many authors get a few chapters in and give up. There's one game Magicka: Clubhouse of the Cursed, set in a fairy-tale world about a support group for people suffering from curses. Like, what if the Frog Prince and Sleeping Beauty and all them came together to help each other deal with their feelings and even break each others' curses? That's an awesome idea for a story, an awesome idea for a game, an amazing idea for a story-game… and the six chapters I read were great but dammit, the author hasn't updated the story in over six months. How long until I see a seventh chapter? Will we see the end of the story before the heat death of the universe?

There's some good stuff here; just don't get your hopes up about more chapters coming out in those not-yet-finished games any time soon.

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Game Report: Choice of Games, Heart's Choice Games

Special note to my parents: Though this blog post is about video games, you might be interested. Specifically, Choice of Games has a couple of games ("Tally Ho", "Jolly Good") that are kinda like reading P.G. Wodehouse novels.

Playing a Choice of Games game is something like reading a choose-your-own-adventure book. Each screen of the game shows you some text to read. At the bottom of the screen there's a Next button to go to the next page screen; and maybe above the Next button there's a set of choices. Depending on what you pick, different things might happen on the next screen and further on in the book game. E.g., here's a screen from the game "The Bread Must Rise," in which you direct the actions and attitude of a contestant in a necromantic baking competition. Towards the bottom of the page, the game prompts you to choose a character motivation. This motivation can affect future wording, perhaps even plot direction:

There's a lot of text in these games; some have a few illustrations, but most get along with just text. When I play these games, I tend to compare them to other choose-y games I found via the book 50 Years of Text Games; those other games have plenty of art: they suggest some of the book's action by superimposing portraits of the characters on an art background showing the setting. In those games, you read a little text, but infer a lot of the story from the art. You might think oh, I bet these text-only games seem drab compared to those with art. But as you play more of these choose-y games, the text games have more variety. I have a theory about this:

In a game with lots of art if an author tells the publisher "This scene is set in something like a bakery, but with necromantic magic, like with skeletons and stuff" the publisher doesn't already have appropriate art on hand. The publisher might say…

• "Your 'necromantic bakery' is going to look just like the professional kitchen art we commissioned for our restaurant game, but we can put a green filter on it to make it spookier."
• "It will take our artists a while to finish the art for the necromantic bakery, necromantic subway station, necromantic hair salon,… Hmm, when I add up the budget for these, and compare with the size of the market for necromantic baking games, I demand that you get the hell out of my office."
• "It will take our artists a while, but that's OK, we were going to serialize your novella-length game out over the course of three years anyhow."

The art-heavy games tend to have a lot of same-ol' same-old. You think to yourself, There's that generic restaurant kitchen again. Or you might think Ho-hum, yet another epic struggle of brave rebels against overwhelming odds; but I understand why the publishers wouldn't risk the art budget to try some niche-ier ideas.

There's a lot less constraint on these text-heavy games. You want superheroes? It's a lot easier to type the word "cape" than it is to draw folds in fabric. In Choice of Games and Heart's Choice (Choice of Games' romance imprint), I've played in Pulp-era science fiction, swashbuckling pirate action, 1001 Nights-ish fantasy, Edwardian-era farce, spooky vampire crypts, two undersea mermaid cities (not much alike), two modern-fantasy magical bureacracies (not much alike), the moon, Mars,…

I guess that's why, out of the various choose-y game systems out there, Choice of Games has my favorites. It's got a lot of variety! I'm not into ⅔ of it, too weird, not my kind of weird. But it has some games that are right up my alley.

I'll point out some of the specific games that I liked. There are over 100 games within Choice of Games, figuring out what you want to try might seem daunting at first. I hesitate to go overboard with my recommendations, though. A skilled critic can discern between underlying craftsmanship and the critic's own taste; I am not such a skilled critic. When I say "I wasn't into that Battlemage game; it had too many battles for my taste," you know just where to stick that review. That said, some recommendations:

Choice of Games:

Cliffhanger: Challenger of Tomorrow

Pulp-style science fiction.

Elite Status: Platinum Concierge

Rich-people problems require rich-people solutions, and you do your best to provide them. Attempting to save your soul is optional. Tragedy (unusual; most of these games are adventures, romances, and/or comedies)

Tally Ho,
Jolly Good: Cakes and Ale

Edwardian upper-class comedies in the spirit of P.G. Wodehouse

The Daring Mermaid Expedition

Undersea mermaids, pirates,… I'm not sure how much I liked this because it was good and how much I liked this because it was my kind of weird. But I'm sure I liked it plenty.

Creatures Such as We

Moody piece about getting/not getting what you want, set on the moon

The Dragon and the Djinn

Swashbuckling magical adventure in a fantasy world not quite like the 1001 Nights

Choice of Kung Fu

Swashbuckling magical adventure in a fantasy world not quite like imperial China in those movies from my youth

Social Services of the Doomed

You are a government bureaucrat in a modern fantasy world investigating mysterious phenomena

Heart's Choice (Choice of Games' romance imprint):

Belle-de-Nuit

Swashbuckling nonmagical adventure on the streets of old-timey Paris, where you are a duellist for a brothel

Forbidden Magic

You are a government bureaucrat in a modern fantasy world investigating mysterious phenomena

Along with Choice of Games and the romance-ier Heart's Choice, they have another category of games: Hosted Games. As near as I can tell, just about anyone can post a game here. Like, I think when the publishers are deciding whether to publish a story, if they like the story, it goes on Choice of Games or Heart's Choice; if they don't much like the story but it's not illegal/hateful/grounds for a lawsuit, then it goes on Hosted Games. I tried reading two games there, got a few pages into each, and gave up. Those two games were pretty bad. There might be some fun games in there, but I'm not sure how to find those diamonds in the rough; that "rough" is rough.

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Book Report: 50 Years of Text Games

It's a history of text-centric computer games structured as 50 essays about 50 games, choosing one game published each year 1971-2020. It's pretty interesting. It took me a long time to get through this book. When I was reading, it went quickly. But I kept wandering off play the games it described.

E.g., the book only mentions the game Ditch Day Drifter in passing, but I figured it might be the closest I could ever get to participating in Caltech's Ditch Day. And maybe the game felt more like something you'd find in Zork's Great Underground Empire than in Pasadena, but it was still pretty good. And there's a few hours gone to play a game that was a few sentences in the book.

In recent years, a lot of text games have been something like computer-enhanced Choose Your Own Adventure books; except they've concentrated on storytelling. The original CYOA books couldn't have much story; each book was kinda short; and whenever the reader made a choice, the book needed a whole set of pages reflecting the outcome of that choice. So maybe each version of the story, you were just reading eight pages. But thanks to computers' nigh-infinite storage, a "book" can hold a lot. And maybe a book doesn't need totally-distinct "pages" to reflect the effects of choices.

Maybe in one scene, the reader's presented with a choice:

Adopt Chunko the Wonder-dog?

• [ Yes, give Chunko a home ]
• [ No, I have enough problems ]

Depending on which button the reader chooses to tap, different things might happen. But maybe the author doesn't need to write totally-different stuff. In a dramatic confrontation with the sinister Master of Horridness, the author might write a little paragraph:

Chunko the Wonder-dog barks at the sinister Master of Horridness. "Bark! Bark, bark!" The Master of Horridness hisses and clutches his cape closer.

The author can specify that if the reader adopted Chunko, that paragraph should appear; but not otherwise. It's a little flourish that might give the reader warm fuzzies, but doesn't require writing two versions of the whole narrative.

These games have caught the eyes of writers who want to use them for actual storytelling. And so they write these games: you, the reader can make choices about how the story will go, guiding the protagonist. And so you're trying to "win" by working towards a compelling story, navigating the path of narrative. To jump nimbly as Mario, you must master timing; to choose wisely in a 16-chapter genre mystery story, understand that your prime suspect in chapter three is a red herring, with maybe a 50-50 chance of surviving the next four chapters.

Anyhow, I've been reading/playing a lot of these games. When I slowed down, I'd go back to reading 50 Years of Text Games, make it about three pages further—and them, bam, I read something that made me return to the games.

For example, after I played a few too many romance games with a billionaire/prince love interest, I got pretty sick of them. The billionaire would whisk my character off on a private jet flight to Rome for a plate of penne; and I, the reader, was supposed to ignore the whole climate-change implications of private jet flights and think This character has earned a life of luxury by dint of their sweetness, and if the glaciers must melt to drive this point home, so be it.. It made me want to re-word the classic @dril tweet

Food: 200 CO₂ lbs.
Data: 150
Housing: 800
Monthly pasta jaunts: 3600 CO₂ lbs.
Utility: 150
someone who is good at the ecology please help me, my planet is burning

After I played one two many games with that plotline, I avoided anything else with "billionaire" in the title or blurb.

When I saw the blurb for the game Elite Status: Platinum Concierge "How far would you go to make a billionaire's dreams come true?" I noped out of there in a hurry.

But then I was reading 50 Years of Text Games again, and Emily Short came up again, and I decided to seek out some works. And it turns out she co-wrote that Elite Status: Platinum Concierge game. So I played that game after all. And it was good; she didn't treat billionaires as over-the-top wish-fulfillment machines. That story had some gnarly choices.

Writers want to exercise writerly techniques. Some literary devices don't mesh well with games. In a plain ol' book, an author might build suspense by revealing information to the reader unknown to the protagonist. Perhaps a chapter shows the sinister Master of Horridness making evil plans with his minions, the Horrid Horde. Oh no, the protagonist is unaware of this looming menace! In a game, this feels weird. The reader gets this "inside info," and then makes choices on behalf of the protagonist, who's unaware.

You're heading out for a walk. Want to wear your motorcycle helmet?

• [ Yes, oddly. I would. ]
• [ No, don't be ridiculous. ]

You, the reader, might choose differently if you watched the Master of Horridness planning to drop a piano from some rooftop: oddly, a helmet seems like a good idea, hmmm. But how to explain why the protagonist donned the helmet? Unconscious psychic powers? Monumental good luck? Aliens?

Things get weirder when you combine story, game, and capitalism. The book 50 Years of Text Games covers both art-for-art's-sake highfalutin' works and commercial games. These days, a lot of the commercial text-y choose-y games are free-to-play, but make money by charging the reader for extras.

So after you read that scene in which the protagonist has a tense conversation (replete with fleeting glances and significant pauses) with Cragfield the brooding, good-looking local landholder, you might see the choice:

See that same conversation again, but from Cragfield's point of view, including exclusive interior monologue and innermost thoughts?

• [ Yes (10💎) ]
• [ No ]

If you choose Yes, you'll spend 10 gems, available at your device's app store for perhaps a dollar. And thus you'll get to find out that Cragfield is secretly obsessed with you and also with memories of some mysterious figure in his tragic backstory. (Well, you probably already guessed that if you've ever read a genre romance story. Presumably, spending 10 gems on the scene also yields some more-specific insight.)

Later on, perhaps you can choose to have the protagonist flirt outrageously with Cragfield, despite the offputting demeanor. Why would the protagonist think flirting would work? Extreme good luck? It might feel as though the protagonist somehow deserves good luck, since you, the reader, spent a dollar. But within the context of the story, it still feels strange.

Another literary trope: If the protagonist makes a bad decision early on, that's strong character motivation: They feel responsible; they want to fix the problem they created. If I'm reading a plain ol' novel and the main character makes a stupid decision, maybe I notice at the time, but probably I don't. I probably just ride along, enjoying the book. Later, when consequences emerge, I might think Aw, too bad that happened. Welp, better get to work fixing that.

In these games, on the other hand, I'm paying pretty close attention to the main character's choices. Often, I'm doing the choosing. If asked to choose between three bad ideas, I don't just nod my head and ride along. I notice I'm being set up. My eyes narrow; my hackles rise.

As motivation, it works in novels; but it backfires in these novel-adjacent games.

It can work. In stories or in games, maybe that character's bad decision doesn't just steer the plot. Maybe it shines a light on some aspect of their personality. I've seen this work well in comedies and a tragedy. A character in a tragedy or comedy might have some exaggerated trait: a tragic flaw or funny quirk. In the Episode app game Competitive Edge, the main character is hilariously hyper-competitive and arrogant. The reader often faces choices that might be summarized:

How do you reply to your rival's question?

• [ Over-the-top confident answer ]
• [ Over-the-top competitive answer ]
• [ Over-the-top narcissistic answer ]

The consequences of these choices are bad for the character, but darned funny for the reader. Later in the story, a meanie character manipulates the main character into an obvious trap; the reader sees it happening, but grins and goes along with it, well-trained by previous rewards. (OK, I grinned and went along with it. Your mileage may vary.)

When nudging the player to grin along with bad choices, consistency matters. In the Choices App game The Cursed Heart, at the story's start, we establish that the main character is overly trusting. Midway through the game, the main character misplaces their trust and falls for an obvious trick. It feels stupid: before this, the reader has been presented with choices, and can steer the main character away from traps. When I played I thought, Thanks to my paranoi expert guidance, the main character has overcome their naiveté. I'd only induced some momentary aberrations, but the game didn't make that clear until that jarring forced misstep.

The Choice of Games game "Tally Ho!" makes it safe to make bad choices, even if the main character isn't absurdly flawed. This game is a comedy in the style of P.G. Wodehouse; as such, it's about the upper classes in England. It's possible for the main character to face consequences for bad decisions, but quite unlikely. Meanwhile, the effects of failure can be pretty funny, sometimes funnier than success.

I mentioned the Choice of Games game "Elite Status: Platinum Concierge," in which you're something like a personal assistant to a few billionaires. In this game, you face situations with no good choices, only choosing who to harm. In this game, it works; it's a tragedy, and you expect a character in a tragedy to face terrible choices.

When one of these book-ish games works well, it feels like the player and the author[s] are telling a story together. When it doesn't work well, it gets clunky. When a heist game rewards you for making good choices with a bigger heist take, that's all very well. But then you have to second-guess your choices: do they make sense? Do they make sense in the context of a cinematic heist story? Should you knock out that palace guard by clonking him on the head? In real life, no; you shouldn't concuss someone. In a heist story… maybe? How realistic is this heist story? Maybe the story is light and glib, knocking guards out is totally cool, everybody guaranteed to be all recovered in the next scene. Maybe the story's more realistic and you should be worried about concussions. If you choose to handcuff the guard instead of knocking him out, will the game penalize you, lower your score for making a choice that doesn't fit the mood, taking things too seriously?

How well do you understand the story that the game's author wants to tell? Are you sure you want to be part of it?

Oh… the book? Right, that's what I'm supposed to be writing about. Yeah, I recommend it. It talks about the games; talks about changes in what each, uhm, artistic movement? Sure, let's say artistic movement. The book talks about what each successive artistic movement has tried to accomplish. It's interesting.

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