Aug 20
2010
Announcing “Choice of Romance”
Posted by: Adam Strong-Morse | Comments (52)
Choice of Games is pleased to announce the release of Choice of Romance, by Heather Albano and Adam Strong-Morse! Play it on the web, or download the iPhone version or the Android version.
Play as a young aristocrat who comes to court looking for love… and catches the monarch’s eye. Will you find true love? Gain a crown? Lose your head? Choice of Romance is a text-based multiple choice game of romance, deception and court intrigue.
We hope you enjoy playing “Choice of Romance” and we encourage you to play it, tell your friends, and to recommend it on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our App Store ranking. Basically, the more times you download in the first week, the better “Choice of Romance” will rank.
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I’d love to download this for the iPod, but why does it cost $2? The android version is free!
@Trevor (and Erana): The issue is purely one of trying to increase our revenue so we can make more games. Our intuitive impression is that iPhone users are willing to pay for apps, but that the Android market basically doesn’t support paid apps at all. We might be wrong about either point of that, but we have to experiment to see how it goes. We’ll be posting a longer blog post about our thoughts about trying to increase our revenue soon.
Yaaaay! Keep up the good work. I check this site almost everyday looking for new games and am always ecstatic when i see it.
I noticed this first on the App store- if I recall, it was priced at $1.99 or 2.99. While I understand yall attempting to gain revenue, I am curious to see how this affects your initial downloads…
I’ve only completed the game once- as a kind-hearted romantic and lover of the King, but I am giving it another go as I type. Of all the progress made between this game and the previous Choice of titles, I feel that the sense of individuality to each chosen path is its strongest suit. Despite the fact that one very well can be a devious tempt(er/ess)that seeks political power, I didn’t feel like that posibility encroached upon the benevolence and earnesty of my character.
I’m curious to see how Part II will pick up from where I left off, but that’s in the bright future, isn’t it?
I played it about 4 times in a row to try and get all possible outcomes and I must say I’m very impressed with how you made it as equal as possible regarding gender and sexuality. The depth of the text was excellent. Kudos for another good game
@Adam: I understand where you’re coming from, and I’m all for making money! Haha 🙂 But when you distribute it so that one group has to pay and the other doesn’t, it seems like you’re catering to a specific group. I know that’s probably not your intent, but I think that’s how it’ll appear. Plus the addition of a price tag on a new game when the previous games have been free is bound to confuse some people. That’s how I see it, at any rate. ^.^
I’m not saying that the game isn’t worth the price, but I fear that it may have an adverse affect on the download rate. I’d suggest that you’d make it a free title initial, but from what I understand, paid and free apps are listed separately.
Perhaps if it were listed as, “on sale” or held a unique incentive for paying itouch/iPhone/iPad users. Such a move might strike up a bit of a controversy- If y’all played your cards right, it could be a good bit of attention. A nice little addition that would be considered a thanks to your patrons.
I would also suggest you play up your indie status a bit, especially in the fact that yall’re pretty much single-handedly trying to revive the multiple-choice text-based adventure RPG genre. Let’s face it: people like feeling like they have bestowed their support upon others rather than just buying a commercial product. In other words, make an app purchase a “donation.”
What a marvelous game! Looking forward to part two… and I hope we can pick up where we left off!
I loved the choices inherent in this game- there seemed to be a real investment in character, trying to figure out exactly what to do to gain favour with whom I wanted to get. Initially I paid more attention to Gabriel, but the final ball, with Torres being rather sincerely nice, made me feel quite bad about being so mean to him. I found myself at turns interested and caring about the other characters, though I do wish that skills such as magery were more important, or had more use in the final outcome. Still, a very enjoyable game, and I hope to see more coming from Choice Of Games in the future.
Not as exciting as the last two, but I loved it all the same. Only main disadvantage was that I felt the character personality was more along the lines of Perfectly Normal vs A Wee Bit Odd, which meant that when I repeated the game, even though I made different choices, it still felt like I was playing the same character, but with different skills, name and gender.
Aside from that one downer, was very fun to play. I am anticipating future games whilst gripping myself to this one.
I found a possible bug, not sure where to post it so I am putting it here.
SPOILERS BELOW!
During the Sahra Ambassadors audience before Queen, after the Queen gives her decision, I wanted to sway her decision to be “harsher towards Sahra”. Unfortunatelly, this option lead me back to the same choice over and over again, while all the others worked nicely and continued the story.
LOVED THIS GAMMEEEE!!!!!!
——–SPOILER———–
Okay so I can’t for the life of me remember how to gain Louis de Vega’s favor….its really frustrating. Any help?
Spoilers, esha, spoilers.
On the issue of payment: I’m all for making iPhone users suffer 😉 but I don’t think Android users would pay for a game, so you probably made the right call, although I don’t know much about the Appstore. As for giving paying iPhone users more features: that just wouldn’t be fair to Android users and people who play your games on the internet.
It’s a fun little thing. I especially liked the risk present at the end if you choose to go with the Queen, and the various ways of managing that.
One thing I would have liked to see are negative consequences sprouting from earlier decisions. It seemed as if each branch of romance were perpetually open to me until fairly late in the game, no matter how much I disregarded each suitor. I understand that being perpetually desirable is part of the genre, but I think it would have been character-developing for some of the suitors to be easily turned off by mistreatment or signs of another relationship (though I see that you did implement that dynamic when it comes to marriage!).
On my first play-through of Broadsides, I messed up considerably in the beginning few scenes, and this resulted in my end as some low station I now forget. I liked that I could find myself in progressively higher stations as I replayed and learned what each option did.
I, too, would have also liked more than two situations that checked for your magical abilities. I know the magical system is largely there to compensate for gender tension in inheritance, as well as the production of offspring in same-sex couplings, but it honestly does sound neat and it would be nice to explore it.
This is a really enjoyable game.
SPOILERS
I had two issues though, the first being there is no real option to end up with no one. Even if I reject all of the advances I am still presumed to be interested in the Queen/King and end up as their consort.
I was hoping beyond hope that by acting subtly and by ensuring that the outcome he wanted was the one achieved I’d be able to seduce Don Luis de Vega. Then we could off the Royal family and act as regents for the Tomas. 🙂
Okay maybe not that obvious but I would have liked the option to pursue more romantic interests, or to just spurn them all. I’d have liked to get to know the daughter better too. Hopefully there will be those sorts of options in the second part.
END SPOILERS
I understand you need to make money out of this , but many users wont pay £1.19 or how ever much it is in $’s, so may I suggest that you do a week or so free, then, the people who got it free would show it to there freinds, and they would want it and may buy it but at a lower price, i only really pay for apps at £0.99 at most
@Simon
I’m not talking giving them a whole new segment or anything. Just something cosmetic, as an in-game acknowledgement of, “Hey, you bought our game!”
Like a random guy periodically swooping into some of the social events and saying, “Thank you!”
Then again, my idea of giving people something extra on the paid version goes hand in hand with the idea of making it a donation.
Its just that I really like what yall do and I really want to see you succeed. But there is no forum, no wikipedia page, and the only press I can see that you’ve gotten from pages of Googling is on a gay gamer site. I’m not sure of how one goes about getting the attention of the press in video games, but you’ve got a unique situation here with the whole, “Publish your choicescript titles” thing. More attention creates more content. You just need more people to talk about you.
Among other places, I suggest trying to get the attention of Escapists. Try to do something to get the attention of Kotaku, or even take an image of a funnier moment in a Choice of Games and put it on one of those “lolgames” sites.
I’m going to go yammer at Susan Arendt on the Escapist IRC now about you. :V
I said I would pay for a game like this! And I will! (once I buy a gift card). 😀 Great game!!!!! I LOVED it!
@Erana: the JayIsGames.com folks have reviewed each game, so far, and I think Choice of the Dragon got a post on io9.com. Generally, however, I agree—press is light, so far, and it’d be great if there were more visibility. Escapist IRC sounds good….
Someone could create a Wikipedia page. 🙂 I think the Wikipedia rules stipulate that the Choice of Games staff can’t, actually.
I was just wondering if there is any timeframe with in which you plan to realize chioce of the vampire. I really enjoyed chioce of romance. I especially enjoyed having the chioce to frame and replace the king consort
Choice of the Vampire has been submitted to Apple for approval; once it’s approved for the iPhone, we’ll release it on all platforms simultaneously. I hope that will be in roughly a week, but we have no control over Apple’s schedule.
I LOVED the game. Any idea when Part 2 will come out? I can’t wait for it!
I don’t believe the games have quite enough notability for wikipedia yet. Someone could try posting on tv-tropes though and adding entries there. I’ve heard quite a few webcomics get a lot of traffic through that way and I can’t see why it wouldn’t also work for this sort of game.
I suggest someone make a choice of mafia game, theres so many mob stories u can use
I added this site as an example on the choose your own adventure page a while back, but never made a full page for it.
This game was okay but I didn’t like it quite as much as Choice of Broadsides or Choice of the Dragon.
My first play through I thought that it was too expository, and many choices seemed to be the kind that only add flavor but have no real effect. Subsequent plays felt less expositional, so maybe that’s not a fair criticism.
I seemed to end up at about the same point at the end of four games, even if I made different choices at the beginnings of the games, but then my choices near the end games were very similar.
As with Choice of Broadsides, my first game seemed to end most successfully, which is kind of interesting in my view.
I would like to see the ability to woo suitors of both genders in one game, that would be kinda cool.
SPOILER
Choice felt like extras, on ALL my playthrus no matter what choices I made throughout, everyone still came to the house at the end and no options were closed. After all I was really rude to Carlos WHY would he propose? And I never spoke to de Mendosa whats with the visit?
Side story of the speech seemed interesting but didn’t go anywhere. Disappointing.
I quite enjoyed the game, though like other players, I’m a bit puzzled at how all the romantic leads kept wooing me even if I insulted them/never talked to them etc.
My main problem was with the end game with the king, which I only discovered on the sixth or so playthrough when I decided to play as not interested in love or marriage at all. You get shoehorned into the king’s favourite’s role anyway, and if you’re not very cautious, you end up causing the consort’s death, and marrying the king.
You’re not given an option to refuse the king because you don’t like him. The text just says you’re refusing him to make him want you more. When you finally refuse all the king’s presents, and refuse once more to sleep with him, the game then makes your character give a tearful speech about how much you wish you could be his lover, but you can’t while he’s married.
Then, things get worse. Your uncle comes to you with a plan to unseat the queen, and you aren’t given a choice to tell him you like your position as it is. You’re given that choice if you’re the king’s lover, but if you’re the king’s chaste favourite, you have to start planning how to remove the queen.
Now, I picked the choice to study the matter further, and then there’s a choice to give up the plan THEN, but why must the single woman be assumed so desperate that she’d plot the queen’s demise?
Romance is pretty great!
I have to say though, that I agree with Ammie and others in that the players actions towards certain suitors should have had more of an effect the storyline. If I’m completely rude to the king, I feel that the king then should either: loose interest in the player, or get mad (or both).
I too was a tad bit surprised at the price tag. I’m not saying it wasn’t worth it, and I’m definitely not saying that the authors don’t deserve it, but it was a bit of a surprise. All the others have been free, so instead of $2, maybe you guys should start at $.99, and work up from there.
On the other hand, though, I was quite impressed by the social interactions and the text itself. The whole “king/queen in disguise” scene seemed like something that monarchs would/may have done. I believe there are some movies in which a monarch does something similar. ( The Illusionist, is one such film). Anyways, scenes like the “king/queen in disguise” made Romance feel more realistic/credible.
SPOILERS
In the description of Romance, it says … “loose your head?”. CAN you actually “loose your head”?
I’ve played Romance more than a few times now, and have managed to:
1. Elope with Gabriel
2. Marry Torres
a. And become the king’s/queen’s favorite.
b. Become Torres’ faithful (and incredibly bored) partner
3. Fallen to my death
4. Become the kings favorite.
a. Not kill/discredit the queen
b. Kill/discredit the queen
Which brings up another question: can you fail in discrediting the queen? I’ve tried my very hardest, but I can’t seem to loose the trial.
I’m not normally someone who plays for all the different endings, but Romance was intriguing, and I came across several different endings in my attempts to “loose my head”.
Just curious.
Anyways, Romance is a great game. Keep up the good work!
I really liked this type of game, and as far as i can tell you guys pretty much have a monopoly right now(on quality games at least).
I do believe constructive criticism is better than praise though, so i’ll give you guys my 2 cents:
1. Why do you not have a forum?
A forum helps crystallize the community.
A forum will get you more/better structured opinions and discussions on the games
A forum will help people trying to create their own games and will potentially give them the opportunity to discuss ideas/implementation and even form teams.
2. I really like your games now, but i think I’d start loving them if you gave more weight to ALL the choices and the skills.
The feeling i got from this last game is that you are making sure no one is left behind till the last few choices, maybe so that you don’t lose players because they get frustrated with “losing” 3 choices in? While that would be a valid concern if you were designing, say, zombie flash games, where the average player is a 13 year old who wants to blow stuff up, I don’t think it applies here. I’m pretty sure these type of games are enjoyed by a more patient audience an I believe they would enjoy the added realism.
In this game, as opposed to the others, there are a satisfying number of possible final outcomes(though more is better imo 🙂 ), but the path to them seems too linear and forced. For most of my replays i don’t even need to pay attention to the first half of the game. In fact, the only thing i noticed that influences the final outcome before Torres’ proposal is whether or not you gain the approval of the queens’ adviser.(I’m guessing the skills matter too)
Anyway, I’m sure this is a lot easier said than done, but yeah, I’d love more breadth and for the choices and skills themselves to have ampler consequences, also, don’t be afraid of putting in “early lose” options.
P.S. The writing is awesome and if I’m not mistaken, you’ve also put a bit of research into this.
————————-SPOLERS AHOY ——————————-
Yes, it is actually possible to lose your head, happened several times while attempting to kill the king(is it actually possible to kill the king directly-not by discrediting him?) I tried the magic route with a magic skill of 91 but failed and the poison route both directly and through bribery and all attempts ended in my and my uncles beheading and bringing shame on my family.
I’ve managed to(in order)
1. Get killed while attempting to murder the king with magic.
2. Discredit the king and take his place
3. Become both Torres’ husband and the queens favorite for a season(during which Torres got a nobility title and land), after the season is over i retired to my estate and lived a pleasant/lonely life(Torres’ dies shortly after)
4. Become the queens favorite, then die falling while trying to poison the king myself
5. Become the queens favorite, then get beheaded while trying to get the king poisoned through bribery
6.Becomes the queens’ favorite and win her adviser’s acceptance, then making my intellect/power known by becoming as much involved in matters of the state as possible.
2 and 6 had the “continue in part 2” message.
/me agrees that a forum would be a good thing.
Wonder if they will make some type of zombie one or something… Srry I love stuff with zombays XD
Spoiler Alert
This definitely seems more linear than other games. I consistently rejected everyone in an attempt to see if there was a mage focused ending, insulted Torres, rejected her at the dance, and she still asked me to marry her. I also rejected the queen except to accept her gifts, failed at getting a witness but won the trial, and ended up marrying her.
Oh also, Vega came up and threatened me even though he seemed satisfied with the courts decision.
BUG / SPOILER
Really neat game, but there are several bugs.
First, at least in the male version, there are sometimes wrong pronouns in the text, suitable only for the other gender.
Second, far more annoying, there’s an actual bug towards the end, when you develope a plan to stay in the queens favor. I tried to get involved into the state business (with high booksmart) and got two contradictory results in the same passage (She’s impressed by your intelligence/Alas, you are not intelligent enough).
————-[Spoilers in this post]—————-
I really liked this.
I think what sold me on it was the point where we hit the Masque scene at the start, at which point my girlfriend and I looked at each other and said “hang on, this scene looks familiar: hang on a second we’re *Anne Boelyn*, aren’t we? A lesbian wizard Anne Boelyn.”
I particulary liked the way it managed to reflect ideas from real world history in a fantasy setting, like using the king’s infertility as evidence that he was practicing black magic to parallel Catherine of Aragon’s infertility being cited as evidence that the King’s marriage was incestuous.
if you whant to lose youre head try to get some one to pioson the king/ queen then pioson them
(spoilers)
Haggis:
I’ve successfully killed the king with magic and gotten away with it before. I believe you need both high magic and high subtlety.
I looked through the choicescript and saw, with surprise, that there *was* a “no proposals” ending that could occur if your relationship with the king is poor (under 50%) and your relationship with Torres and Mendosa are both worse than your relationship with the king. In practice, however, I’m not sure that combination of numbers is even possible.
@Daniel Hemmens
I thought the same thing! Except then I went, WAIT A MINUTE! What happened to Mary? Is she supposed to be Magdelena? If so she’s doing a really crappy job in her affair with the King.
Also… I would appreciate it if it would figure out whether we’re into girls or guys. I for one, want to like GUYS! It confuses me when I’m talking to a guy and it goes,’….she laughs as she says this’ or some such sentence.
Monarch-moocher, passionless patrician, or penniless poet? Seems the last choice is the “winning” choice. The first leads to evil, while the second’s doomed to boredom…A great game though!
Is it just me or does every person who plays the guy part still feel like its a woman character hes playing? i like the game itself , but even tho i’m a guy , i still feel like im playing the woman’s part considering women are courting me , whereas in the setting you are explaining in the game is of times when the npc’s playing women courting the guy are playing the role of the opposite sex.
Ammie – I managed to get an ending with no proposal! If the king turns you down, you then move onto a potential new prospect where another family wants to ally with you, but you turn it down because your aunt expects you to marry the elderly father rather than the cute son. So, no man for you!
Amazing game, I think I played to just about every ending.
I CAN’T wait for the second installment
i which they made a second part
Re: Simon: Basically you say that others should pay for your fun. How’s that fair? If Android users get it for free simply because of the assumption that they wouldn’t be willing to pay for it, anyway, then I don’t see why it would be unfair to give a little bonus to those who are (assumed) willing to pay for it. I would agree that it’d be unfair to not offer Android users the paid option, as well.
When does part two come out?
Please hurry and get part two I want to see if I end up with the king!!!!:-)
Loved every single Choice Of games.
Part two for both Vampire and Romance, where are you ?!
When is
The choice of romance second part out please respond
I’m still rather disappointed that there’s no option to play a woman who might actually like Torres. So what if he’s older and awkward. That’s adorable!
I agree. Torres was my favourite.