Analysing CYOA's (28/10/2013)

* As we looked at text adventures last week our focus this week will be CYOA books. Therefore, we started by listening to a presentation named "You Find Yourself in a North-South Corridor".

* CYOA books are mapped more like flow charts, as the player gets numerous choices as opposed to the linear choices in a text adventure game.

* Our lecturer will hopefully get some CYOA book writers to come in to talk to us about the books they have written.

* When we do map a CYOA book we should list the number you turn to, not the whole description, otherwise it will take you forever. Just make sure to list 'Death' or 'Victory' underneath the ones that need them. We don't have to map the whole thing, just enough to get an idea of the whole thing.
We can if we wish also map it as a grid, which was a method used in the past.

* If we wish, we can split the player's path drastically in order to give them freedom and choice. These split paths can then always link again at the points vital to a connected story.

* We were then asked to read some CYOA books that the lecturer had brought in in order to analysis them.

I read the book 'The Forest of Doom' where it asked me to roll stats using dice.

• Skill - 8 (Roll 1 dice and add 6)
• Stamina - 17 (Roll 2 dice and add 12)
• Luck - 9 (Roll 1 dice and add 6)

I also made the following notes.

• It was a lot of fun to play and introduced to me a system in which you rolled stats for yourself. Thus this is something I could always include in my game, providing I feel it fits the game play I wanted. However, it also asked to draw a map which I felt was too finicky to constantly go back to, thus I will definitely not include this in my CYOA book. 
• It also had a long introduction like the one I have so far written at home. Therefore, I may wish to make the opening shorter in order to provide more player decisions, as I am only limited to around 4000 words.
• Another feature I liked was that you could be evil at the start of the game by trying to kill the wizard you were meant to talk to. However, he gives you only the one chance not to. If you still try however, you get turned into a frog and your adventure ends. I quite liked this choice, as it gave the player the option to be mean, but also gave them a warning. Thus not punishing players who might make such decisions straight away.
• Although the dice helped to vary the book and give the player a chance at surviving, I don't think I will include it in my book as sometimes it could get too tedious. I wish to keep my story more narrative driven so as to allow readers to feel as if they are the hero in the story.
• The very start of the book gave the player the option to spend their gold on a whole list of items they could buy, therefore I may wish to introduce a cool feature such as this in my book. Though, if I wish to keep my game simple, so that the player doesn't have to list everything they have and remember only a few things for journey purposes, I may wish not to include this feature and instead keep the starting choice of three distinct items. This would give players reasons to replay the game and talk about how their playthrough was diffrent to others. 
• One thing I found clever was the fact that if you rescued a stranger from a rabbit snare you then had to turn to another page to show that you had traveled. Only then, however would you discover that the stranger was a thief and stole some gold from you. Thus stopping the player from just looking ahead at the consequence and not just redoing their action which I know many people, including myself have done before. 

 * I also got some of my friends to play the CYOA book I wrote when I was younger named 'Gold Lord'.

• They thought the writing was simple and cute, as a lot of my spelling was easily mistaken for other words, especially since the elf king wanted a 'co-co egg' and therefore they thought it was a child wanting chocolate and not the egg of some animal I had made up. 
• They really loved the fact that the story was simple and fun as it didn't over complicate matters and allowed them to jump right in without too much hassle. 
• They also liked that I included how much health you started off with, although I don't think it really matters since there are moments that kill you no matter what.

* Overall, I am glad that I got to play a CYOA book today, as it made me realise that I may not be able to sadly include as many characters as I wanted due to the word count and wanting to keep a good pace in the narrative. Therefore, I plan to think of some more story ideas in order to make sure I find the perfect balance of story telling and game play.