Category:Choice-based

Choice-based

A "choose your own adventure" game is a simplified subset of IF where, at the prompt (or page end), a short list of choices is always explicitly presented to the player to choose from to advance the story. The game is not parser-driven. The choices might be numbered, lettered, or clicked on with the mouse cursor.

Because crafting CYOAs is absurdly easy,—any set of webpages with links connecting them could claim to be a CYOA—the IFWiki cannot and will not document or even attempt to list every CYOA out there. We will consider documenting a CYOA work if it satisfies at least two of the following conditions:

• It's in the IF Archive.
• It was an entry in a instance of a recurring IF competition, including LOTECH Comp.
• It was written in a major IF authoring system (Inform, ADRIFT, TADS, Hugo, Alan) or Adventure Book.
• It was written by an author who has also authored non-CYOA IF.
• It is non-trivial CYOA. To be non-trivial, a CYOA must exhibit at least one of the following features:
  • The CYOA has a memory. The CYOA can automatically keep track of the player's score, the PC's stats and inventory, remember what key events have taken place so far, and so on. A CYOA that offers choices like "if you picked up the amulet, go to page 233" is cheating. A good CYOA should not offer choices that player shouldn't be allowed to pick.
  • The CYOA sometimes asks the player to type in a password (or other keyword or key phrase learned in the game) to progress.
  • The CYOA features a "trick" where the player must deduce that an option not explicitly offered is actually a valid choice for their current situation.

Also, any HTML/DHTML "riddle game" where the player is expected to look at the source code or type in URLs into the browser's address bar is explicitly denied a listing here.