CYOA Horror Stories

[ThisAdamGuy]

I mentioned in another thread that while I don't like the FNAF series, I admire the way Scott Cawthon was able to string people along for eleven games and counting by hiding little details in the background that observant people could piece together to discover the full story. I've wanted to do something like that for a while now, but how you hide another story in the background of a book was a puzzle I didn't think had an answer. Well, there was one thing, but everyone told me nobody would buy or read it because of his microscopically niche it was. That idea was for a CYOA horror story.

Obviously it wouldn't be called CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure) since that's trademarked, but it would operate under the same principle. You'd read the story non-linearly, flipping to different pages depending on what choices you want the main character to make, with the story coming to an early, gruesome ending if you make the wrong choice.

Here's what I'm imagining: instead of one story in the book, there would be four. Three of them are storylines you can access just by reading the book normally, the plotlines splitting depending on what choices you make early on. But there's also a secret fourth storyline that, if this were a video game, would be called the "true canon ending." None of the choices you make in the other stories will lead you to it, but there will be clues hidden throughout them that, if you follow their instructions, will lead you to the page where the fourth story begins. The obvious downside is that this isn't a video game, so I'd have no way of locking people out of the "true ending" if they didn't earn it. All they'd have to do is flip through each page individually until they found it. But I still like the idea and think it has potential.

What do you guys think?

 

[l8rose]

Neat idea, I always enjoyed CYOA which is probably why I like choice rich Visual Novels.

While you can't do something like that with Scribble Hub, you could always check out game engines like "Choice of Games" or "Ren'py" if you wanted to put out a novel that would lock into certain routes. There is a metric butt ton of CoG novels on Steam.

 

[Rezcore]

The fuck is a chocolate onion... sounds gross

 

[ElijahRyne]

I mentioned in another thread that while I don't like the FNAF series, I admire the way Scott Cawthon was able to string people along for eleven games and counting by hiding little details in the background that observant people could piece together to discover the full story. I've wanted to do something like that for a while now, but how you hide another story in the background of a book was a puzzle I didn't think had an answer. Well, there was one thing, but everyone told me nobody would buy or read it because of his microscopically niche it was. That idea was for a CYOA horror story.

Obviously it wouldn't be called CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure) since that's trademarked, but it would operate under the same principle. You'd read the story non-linearly, flipping to different pages depending on what choices you want the main character to make, with the story coming to an early, gruesome ending if you make the wrong choice.

Here's what I'm imagining: instead of one story in the book, there would be four. Three of them are storylines you can access just by reading the book normally, the plotlines splitting depending on what choices you make early on. But there's also a secret fourth storyline that, if this were a video game, would be called the "true canon ending." None of the choices you make in the other stories will lead you to it, but there will be clues hidden throughout them that, if you follow their instructions, will lead you to the page where the fourth story begins. The obvious downside is that this isn't a video game, so I'd have no way of locking people out of the "true ending" if they didn't earn it. All they'd have to do is flip through each page individually until they found it. But I still like the idea and think it has potential.

What do you guys think?

So like a VN, or one of those old Goosebumps books.
I tried writing something similar, except that the comments and general interaction were what decided the route that was to happen. Unfortunately I got very few of them and dropped the story.

The Thread Tree (Interactive Story)

An archive of the events surrounding the before, during, and after of the Thread Tree incident of 1547. You are part of the Detective department. You are looking into the Thread Tree incident of 1547. You can send memos to the archive department, the exorcist department, the monastic...

www.scribblehub.com

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I've seen something like this done. I believe it was in one of the Steve Jackson Solo Games, which were, I guess more like the Lone Wolf and Cub books than true "Choose Your Own Adventure" as you had a character sheet and mechanics for taking (and inflicting) damage, but it's been about 35 years since I read it - and I didn't catch the "background story" but realized what it was and that I had seen bits of it, things that did not make much sense in the main story, after someone else mentioned that there was one.
It is a difficult type of thing to write, as you have to keep multiple threads in mind (sure you can have a LOT of decisions go to a "generic" death paragraph - but even then, you have a LOT of branches, some of which may seem nonsensical when they loop back together due to the progression of events) - I know people who have tried just with CYOA stories and burned out on the effort; it is apparently easier to do it as a game book with stats and such (and without a hidden story). Sadly, one of the pioneers in the genre, who created a line of these books for TSR Hobbies in the 80s, passed away about ten months ago or I would suggest going to him (the late James M. Ward) for advice.

Actually, if I remember something I heard about from the Lone Wolf books, they did pull a story running through the books thing, probably similar to the Five Nights and Freddie's thing, but I have never read any of those; know people who were huge fans but have personally only seen three of them, and two were polybagged with collector's price tags on them.

 

[Nolff]

The fuck is a chocolate onion... sounds gross

What

 

[Ai-chan]

I mentioned in another thread that while I don't like the FNAF series, I admire the way Scott Cawthon was able to string people along for eleven games and counting by hiding little details in the background that observant people could piece together to discover the full story. I've wanted to do something like that for a while now, but how you hide another story in the background of a book was a puzzle I didn't think had an answer. Well, there was one thing, but everyone told me nobody would buy or read it because of his microscopically niche it was. That idea was for a CYOA horror story.

Obviously it wouldn't be called CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure) since that's trademarked, but it would operate under the same principle. You'd read the story non-linearly, flipping to different pages depending on what choices you want the main character to make, with the story coming to an early, gruesome ending if you make the wrong choice.

Here's what I'm imagining: instead of one story in the book, there would be four. Three of them are storylines you can access just by reading the book normally, the plotlines splitting depending on what choices you make early on. But there's also a secret fourth storyline that, if this were a video game, would be called the "true canon ending." None of the choices you make in the other stories will lead you to it, but there will be clues hidden throughout them that, if you follow their instructions, will lead you to the page where the fourth story begins. The obvious downside is that this isn't a video game, so I'd have no way of locking people out of the "true ending" if they didn't earn it. All they'd have to do is flip through each page individually until they found it. But I still like the idea and think it has potential.

What do you guys think?

You can call it a game book. It's been called a game book for decades, with titles such as Lone Wolf, Sagard the Barbarian, Fighting Fantasy, Bio of A Space Tyrant being among the earliest successes. Many of the earlier visual novels are also like this.

As to the hidden ending thing, you can simply write every page in chapters. You know how people make choices and they go to the corresponding pages, right? Now make it so that you wrote everything in the chapters. You go:

You have completed the 3rd storyline. Flip to 332 to start the fourth storyline.

But then, at some point, your readers feel something is strange. What's the deal with the rhyme "Look up, look up. Ignore the door. Twelve crows will eat you up. Guts splattered all over the floor." And they ask the question, "Why twelve crows?"

At some point, they get the answer, and that is twelve crows, six crocs, seven corpses and three hags. Of course there is no page numbered 12673, so you add them up and get 28. So you flip to chapter 28 and get the secret true ending with twelve crows, six crocs, seven corpses and three hags.

Technically, anyone can cheese the story and can reach this secret ending by reading chapter by chapter. But it's a gamebook, why would anyone do that?

I've seen something like this done. I believe it was in one of the Steve Jackson Solo Games, which were, I guess more like the Lone Wolf and Cub books than true "Choose Your Own Adventure" as you had a character sheet and mechanics for taking (and inflicting) damage, but it's been about 35 years since I read it - and I didn't catch the "background story" but realized what it was and that I had seen bits of it, things that did not make much sense in the main story, after someone else mentioned that there was one.
It is a difficult type of thing to write, as you have to keep multiple threads in mind (sure you can have a LOT of decisions go to a "generic" death paragraph - but even then, you have a LOT of branches, some of which may seem nonsensical when they loop back together due to the progression of events) - I know people who have tried just with CYOA stories and burned out on the effort; it is apparently easier to do it as a game book with stats and such (and without a hidden story). Sadly, one of the pioneers in the genre, who created a line of these books for TSR Hobbies in the 80s, passed away about ten months ago or I would suggest going to him (the late James M. Ward) for advice.

Actually, if I remember something I heard about from the Lone Wolf books, they did pull a story running through the books thing, probably similar to the Five Nights and Freddie's thing, but I have never read any of those; know people who were huge fans but have personally only seen three of them, and two were polybagged with collector's price tags on them.

It's actually offered for free now. You can read all of the original series at https://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Home

There are 20 of the Kai series (full series), full series of Combat Heroes, full series of Grey Star, full series of Highway Warrior and 9 books of New Order (written by Joe Dever's son). Also, Joe Dever, the author, passed away a few years ago.