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Looking for a career as an evil overlord? A mad scientist? A megavillain, a wicked witch, a final boss? You’re not going to get there without hard work, dedication, and thorough education. In the space between worlds, between genres, beyond time and space itself, the Grand Academy for Future Villains trains the bad guys that every good story needs. I sat down with Katherine Nehring, author of Choice of Games’ latest release to talk about what influenced her writing. Grand Academy for Future Villains releases Thursday, September 14th. 

Tell me about what influenced your world creation for Grand Academy. What kind of a world is this set in?

The Grand Academy inverts that order: to be in-universe at the Academy is to be outside the universe of any particular story.  This is a world where the laws of narrative are far more important than the laws of physics–a world where it’s taken for granted that concepts can be prohibited (and confiscated, and smuggled), where acting too much like a protagonist means heroic things start happening to you, and where doing something memorably can be just as effective as doing it competently.

You and I both attended St. John’s College for undergrad, and Jason Hill did a graduate degree there. I see a few parallels between the Grand Academy and SJC. Were you drawing on anything of personal significance in your writing?

I’d never thought of this before, but both the Academy and St. John’s are worlds of books – adhering to this overarching meta-order, living by the rules of narrative (surely one can call SJC’s pared-down arc of Western thought a narrative!) And of course, that’s always in tension with the ‘real world’, with history and particularity and the need to go out and find a job at some point.

The Grand Academy has elements of every one of the schools I attended, going right back to high school (the arbitrary nature of the class schedule is a less-than-fond memory of trying to decipher when lunch hour was). DarkBoard is an only slightly more vivid version of the class management software I used in grad school; Professor Ulik’s brisk, career-oriented Evil Architecture class was definitely influenced by community college classes I took. But St. John’s, with its intensity, eccentricity, and constant narrative engagement, was undoubtedly the biggest influence.

There’s a great cast of weird characters here: the PC’s mother, Maedryn, Dr. Cerebrist, and Professor Mortwain were some of my favorites. Did you have a character you enjoyed writing most?

I had a lot of fun with all of them–probably the most with Aurion and Kinistra. Either one of them could be the focus of an interesting story of their own, I think (or several interesting stories; one of the delightful things about writing this as a game rather than a novel is the way their stories can go very differently depending on their relationship to the player character. For Aurion, there’s something that appeals to me about an overachieving underdog at a school for villains–he has all the markers of a protagonist, but he’s determined to rise to greatness in the realm of evil. Kinistra, on the other hand, the player meets in one of the most classic of heroic ways: as someone to be rescued. And the ways in which you and she either thwart those tropes or fulfill them can have a big effect on how your story plays out.

What did you find challenging about the process of writing in ChoiceScript/our game design?

There was definitely a steep learning curve with ChoiceScript. It’s very easy to pick up, and can do a great many things once you’ve picked it up, and learning how to make those things engaging for players and manageable as a writer is quite a task! The editors were enormously helpful through this process, as were playing other Choice of Games titles, reading the forums, and going through my own game, over and over, until I could look at it both as a player and an author. By the middle of the editing process I was thinking in ChoiceScript, mapping out my daily activities as *choice and *if and *goto, setting my personal stats higher or lower. I’m not new to writing or to games, but I am to game-writing, and creating a game that worked was a challenging discipline. There was nothing I could fudge, handwave, or leave to the reader’s imagination: every loose end had to be woven in on a technical level or the game couldn’t be played at all, woven in on a narrative level or the game wouldn’t be fun to play.  This process taught me a good deal both about games and about writing!

Would you do it again?

In a heartbeat! Well, not a heartbeat. I need to nap for at least a month.

Short answer, Bernard Pivot-style Questionnaire:

Favorite color? 

Green. (A little-known rule of the universe, stemming from color-coded childhood possessions: all green things belong to me.)

Favorite word? 

Peal, apparently, as I learned in the copy-editing process. (I hadn’t realized I used that word so much!)

What profession other than your own would like you like to attempt? 

Alternate-universe me is an art conservator somewhere.

Which would you not want to attempt? 

I’m glad that electricians and tax lawyers exist; I’m very glad I don’t have to be one!

Personal choice for genre dormitory at the Grand Academy?

I think I’m going to have to go with the player character’s mother and say Science Fiction. “Taking over the galaxy” has a nice ring to it.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Cryptic riddles and perplexing puzzles await you as you solve the Dryad’s Riddle. In a world where wit and wisdom are worth more than silver and gold, you must embark on an adventure of a lifetime. Test your mind to it’s limits and escape the land of dreams. It’s 33% off until August 25th!

The Dryad’s Riddle is a 70,000 word interactive fantasy novel by Avery Moore, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

• Choose your own name and play as a man or woman.
• Explore a world of fantasy and meet a collection of weird and wonderful characters.
• Use special hints and cheats whenever you get stuck.
• Over 50 riddles and puzzles to be solved.
• Three different endings to be discovered depending on how you play.

Avery Moore developed this game using ChoiceScript, a simple programming language for writing multiple-choice interactive novels like these. Writing games with ChoiceScript is easy and fun, even for authors with no programming experience. Write your own game and Hosted Games will publish it for you, giving you a share of the revenue your game produces.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Master the art of dancing with a weapon and unearth the secret of the temple, bringing love and carnage to the world. “Survive” an assassination attempt. Learn about the warrior’s honor of the Knights of the Temple. Allow those who tread the line between Light and Darkness show you their beauty. Embark on a night patrol mission with a militia officer that will lead you to the depths where the seeds of doom are growing. Finish your quest with honor and explore what your heart desires before going back to where you belong. It’s 50% off until August 25th!

Knight of the Fellowship is a 50,000 word interactive fantasy novel by Ivailo Daskalov, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

• Play as a man or woman, gay or straight.
• Master the techniques of lightning-quick blows and dodges, heroic leap charges and blade whirlwinds.
• Learn about the honor of the Knight of the Fellowship.
• Allow a dark lady to show you her beautiful side.
• Choose between eight optional romances, or end up alone.

Ivailo Daskalov developed this game using ChoiceScript, a simple programming language for writing multiple-choice interactive novels like these. Writing games with ChoiceScript is easy and fun, even for authors with no programming experience. Write your own game and Hosted Games will publish it for you, giving you a share of the revenue your game produces.

We’re proud to announce that Trials of the Thief-Taker, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for Steam, iOS, and Android. It’s 25% off until August 17th!

In London, 1729, before they had police, they had you: thief-takers, hunting criminals for cash! Fire a flintlock and sip gin in the age of powdered wigs. Will you grow rich catching smugglers and highwaymen, show mercy, or become a crime boss yourself?

Trials of the Thief-Taker is a 140,000-word interactive historical adventure novel by Joey Jones, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

As a thief-taker, paid by the court or hired by the victims of crime to recover property and, for an extra price, bring the culprit to justice, you’ll stalk your prey across the misty commons and narrow rookeries of 18th-century London. Lead a gang of unwashed ruffians (or stalk the streets alone) as you apprehend highwaymen on lonely roads, and root out crooks and counterfeiters in inns and coffeehouses. Through cunning, force, or suspicious connections, you will find your mark.

You may strike a blow for justice, making a name for yourself and bringing good people to your cause. Or you can create the crimes you intend to solve, stealing the goods you’ll be paid to recover, bribing prison guards to let your associates go, building your criminal empire while everyone lauds you as a hero.

Be quick or cautious, proper or disreputable, generous or mercenary…it’s all in a day’s work for a thief-taker.

Load your flintlock! There are thieves to take.

• Play as male, female, or as a woman disguised as a man; gay or straight.
• Make your way through a world ruled by manners, harsh laws, and lurking treachery.
• Run an empire of crime or establish the first police force…or both at the same time!
• Capture, befriend, or romance corrupt officials, escape artists, courtiers, highwaymen, smugglers and grave-robbers.
• Immerse yourself in Georgian lingo: learn the difference between a cove and a swell, a blue pigeon and an ark ruffian.
• Play the high-stakes dice game Hazard in the gaming houses of Covent Garden.
• Make your way with your silver tongue, a good horse, your street smarts or with two fists flying.

We hope you enjoy playing Trials of the Thief-Taker. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. The more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Diamonds are pouring out through the Iron Curtain, but somebody talked – your entire spy ring is either dead or disavowed. Everything ties back to what happened a decade prior in Africa, and you have to find out where it ends. The mission isn’t over.

Diamant Rose is a 87,000 word interactive cold war novel by Teo Kuusela, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

• Experience an exciting romp through the deadly world of espionage!
• Play the part of a French intelligence agent.
• Evade enemies, find old friends, manipulate those closest to your targets.
• Shut down a major operation funneling Soviet diamonds past the Iron Curtain.
• Will you focus on revenge, or redemption? Your future depends on your actions.

Teo Kuusela developed this game using ChoiceScript, a simple programming language for writing multiple-choice interactive novels like these. Writing games with ChoiceScript is easy and fun, even for authors with no programming experience. Write your own game and Hosted Games will publish it for you, giving you a share of the revenue your game produces.

In London, 1729, before they had police, they had you: thief-takers, hunting criminals for cash! Fire a flintlock and sip gin in the age of powdered wigs. As a thief-taker, you are paid by the court or hired by the victims of crime to recover property and, for an extra price, bring the culprit to justice. I sat down with the Joey Jones, author of Choice of Games’ latest release, Trials of the Thief-Taker for a short interview. Thief-Taker is out this Thursday, August 10th. 

I loved the 18thC world of Thief-Taker including all the lingo and historic details in the game. Tell me what inspired you to write this period piece. 

My interest was first piqued by reading about the thief-taker, Jonathan Wild. He self-styled himself the Thief-Taker General and took it upon himself to publicly break up gangs and recover stolen items. He even pioneered some modern policing methods like separating suspects during interrogation. Behind this exterior he personally organised the gangs of London and had hanged on false charges anyone who got in his way. He got rich on the fees offered for thief-takers as well as the proceeds of crime. I thought this two-sided nature would make for a great premise of an interactive story.

What kind of research did you do before or during the writing?

For the initial research I buried myself away in the local university’s library, spending a week writing out lists of intriguing period elements I wanted to include, like smugglers, a masquerade, and highway robbery. During the writing I had a guide to the period slang, the ‘cant’, which I referred to throughout.

What did you find challenging about writing with ChoiceScript?

I found it quite straightforward to get to grips with, though there were some tricks that I wish I’d learned sooner! I discovered *gosub and *hide_reuse quite late into writing after developing a mess of workarounds with temporary variables.

Are you a fan of interactive fiction? Any favorite games you’d like to share?

Very much so! I’ve been writing interactive fiction for ten years now, having started with co-writing the philosophy text adventure The Chinese Room. I recommend Jim Munroe’s Everybody Dies. It’s a tightly written illustrated parser game with multiple perspectives. I can also recommend Hana Feels by Gavin Inglis (he also wrote For Rent: Haunted House and Neighbourhood Necromancer for Choice of Games). It’s an interactive story about a young woman dealing with self-harm played entirely through dialogue with significant people in her lives. The characters are superbly realised and the handling of the subject is sensitive and engaging. Of the CoG titles I’ve played, I particularly enjoyed the philosophy of art conversations in Lynnea Glasser’s Creatures Such As We.

What are you working on next?

I always have half a dozen projects on the go. I’ve got a picaresque puzzle game, a one-room game where you play as the room,  a procedurally generated dystopia generator, a game where you organise zoo animals in a revolution, all in various states of completion. It’s quite possible I’ll do another game with CoG!

Short Answer, Bernard Pivot Questionnaire 

Favorite color?

Burgundy.

Favorite word?

Peckish.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

It’d be fun to do something completely different like marine conservation.

Which would you not ever want to attempt?

Insurance salesman.

“Family Bonds” or “Dog the Bounty Hunter”?

I watched a bit of Dog the Bounty Hunter. I find it interesting how it sells itself on the chases, but so much of the show is about heartfelt conversations with unlucky people who’ve made some bad choices.

We’re proud to announce that The Hero Unmasked!, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for Steam, iOS, and Android. It’s 30% off until August 2nd!

Impersonate your identical twin as the Swashbuckler, masked champion of justice! You have two weeks to rescue the REAL Swashbuckler and marry the mayor before superpowered criminals take over the city.

The Hero Unmasked! is a 300,000 word interactive novel by Christopher Huang. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

As our story begins, you have everything you’ve ever wanted. Your TV news show is the highest rated in the city, and you’re engaged to the mayor, with two weeks until the wedding. But when superpowered criminals kidnap the Swashbuckler, you realize the awful truth: the person in the ransom video is your identical twin, and everyone thinks it’s you!

Now, you must draw the Swashbuckler’s laser sword and wear the Swashbuckler’s mask to bring down three of the city’s most wanted super criminals before time runs out.

How is this going to work? Can you keep up the charade? Do you want to? When you meet the Swashbuckler’s sweetheart, will you remain faithful? To whom?!

Who is really behind the mask?

• Play as male or female, gay or straight
• Infiltrate high society events and root out criminal hideouts
• Uncover the true identities of Caledon City’s superpowered criminals
• Disarm a bomb and save the city’s finest from destruction
• Maintain the masquerade as you learn about the Swashbuckler’s secret hero life
• Find romance with a journalist, a pyromaniac, or a vampire
• Become a powered hero in your own right

We hope you enjoy playing The Hero Unmasked!. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. The more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

Hosted Games has a new game for you to play!

Famous archaeologist Dr. Lucius Thayer has gone missing in the Amazon jungle, and the CIA has asked you to find him. Unfortunately, you’re not the only one interested in Dr. Thayer. Enter a world of ancient mysteries and modern dangers, of suspicious cults and nefarious secret agents. Remember, you’re not paranoid if the danger is real.

The Spy and the Labyrinth is a 40,000 word interactive fantasy novel by Lewis Manalo, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Your choices determine which document you read next in your ongoing search for clues. Through your investigation of the articles, journal entries, and letters in the missing archaeologist’s files, you will discover the game’s rich story and complex characters. Multiple playthroughs will uncover secrets you previously missed in this engrossing tale of supernatural horror.

• A unique narrative experience!
• Horror and espionage collide in a captivating adventure!
• An expansive world, steeped in centuries of real – and imagined – history.
• An intriguing cast of international characters.
• Uncover new secrets with each playthrough!

Lewis Manalo developed this game using ChoiceScript, a simple programming language for writing multiple-choice interactive novels like these. Writing games with ChoiceScript is easy and fun, even for authors with no programming experience. Write your own game and Hosted Games will publish it for you, giving you a share of the revenue your game produces.

What’s this? Front and center on the main shelf of your local comic store sits the first three issues of the Hero Unmasked! storyline from The Swashbuckler! As it begins, you have everything you’ve ever wanted. Your TV news show is the highest rated in the city, and you’re engaged to the mayor, with two weeks until the wedding. But when superpowered criminals kidnap the Swashbuckler, you realize the awful truth: the person in the ransom video is your identical twin, and everyone thinks it’s you!

The Hero Unmasked is Choice of Games’ latest release, coming Thursday, July 27th. I interviewed author Christopher Huang over email.

Tell me about what influenced your world creation for Hero Unmasked. What kind of a world is this set in… Are there really superpowers? Is there magic? What about the vampire factor?

The world is almost exactly like our own. Almost. I generally feel more comfortable with more realistic fiction, and the idea that everything could actually be happening the next block over. And if we’re in what is essentially the real world, then … what if you discover that what you always considered a minor talent is actually a superpower?

So superpowers do exist, but they are exceedingly rare; or perhaps they are under-reported. Not everybody realises what they can do, and those who do, might choose not to do anything with what they have. Magic also exists, but is even rarer still: you pretty much have to have either energy-based superpowers or a few centuries of dedicated study in order to work “magic”. It’s to the point where most people don’t consider magic to be a serious concern. Of course vampires are also super-rare and often thought of as myths. That’s how you’d see them in real life, after all.

In a way, the rarity issue is all a bit of a throwback to the time when every superhero was pretty much the only one of their kind in their city … before crossovers started to seem like the rule rather than the exception. The idea of the superhero league is cool, but there’s also something to be said for the romance of the lone-wolf vigilante, I think. A long time ago, someone gave me a copy of “Batman from the 30s to the 70s”, and it’s really interesting to see what Batman was like back when he was “the Batman”, and Robin hadn’t entered the picture at all. He had much more in common with the likes of the Green Hornet or the Shadow: people, possibly with an exceptional ability or two, but essentially living in the real world and dealing with real world crimes.

Are you a big fan of comic books? What are your favorites?

I have to admit … no. I appreciate the comic book as an artform, but it’s not something I’d go out of my way to collect and read, especially as it seems that most franchises are so bogged down with backstory that it would be like starting “War and Peace” at the 2/3 mark. At least, that’s the impression I get.

Otherwise … I think I’ve always been fascinated by “Cloak and Dagger” (though I’ve only ever come across one or two issues of their comic) and I remember really enjoying the stack of “Warlord” comics my father passed on to me once. I also like the humour of “Asterix.”

What kinds of social issues did you have in mind as you were writing Hero Unmasked? Or is this just a fun romp?

It’s meant to be just a fun romp. That said, it’s always possible that some news story or other might have influenced my subconscious … I have had the experience of looking back at my own work and finding messages that I never intended.

What did you find challenging about the process of writing in ChoiceScript/our game design?

Keeping track of variables! Coming from parser-based interactive fiction, where it’s possible to overload a game with too many variables … I may have almost injured myself trying to keep the number of variables down, perhaps unnecessarily. And then, I’ve gotten a little used to having variables anchored to objects, whereas here it’s more a question of remembering which variable is associated with which story element, and remembering to keep similar variables consistent with each other in terms of usage.

There are a number of things I’d do differently if I were starting over, I think. For one thing, I’d store the names of the romantic interests in variables more distinctly differentiated than {Lover1} and {Lover2}.

Are you a fan of interactive fiction in general? Any favorites you’d like to share?

Oh, yes! I’ve been dabbling in interactive fiction half my life now; my first entry to the annual IFcomp was way back in 1998. So many to choose from … but if I had to pick just one right now, I think I’d go with “Augmented Fourth”, by Brian Uri!. (Yes, the exclamation mark appears to be part of the name.) In it, you’re a musician who’s given an enchanted trumpet, but you start with just one song/spell on your repertoire: “Ode to a Duck”, which conjures a duck out of mid-air. That should give you an idea as to what to expect. To my knowledge, Uri! hasn’t produced anything else since then, which is a shame. I really enjoyed the whimsical humour.

What else are you working on now as a writer?

I’m undergoing developmental edits for a novel slated for publication sometime in mid-2018: “Murder at the Veterans’ Club”. The link is https://www.inkshares.com/books/murder-at-the-veterans-club, though developmental edits have introduced a few changes since that page was first set up.

Proust/Pivot Style Questionnaire Questions

What is your favorite word?

“Ecclesiastical”? I’ve sure I’ve recently decided on something else as a “favourite word”, but it won’t be the first time I’ve forgotten and reverted back to “ecclesiastical”.

Your favorite color?

I like sepia tones: browns and beiges with a bit of grey mixed in. But that can get a bit drab, so a splash of something bright in the middle is usually quite welcome.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

I think I was meant to be an accountant. I just picked up my third “volunteer group treasurer” appointment a couple of weeks ago (they’re going to really love me at the bank) and I wonder what it would be like to do this professionally.

Which would you not like to attempt?

Politics. I wouldn’t want to be in any position where my personal decisions could seriously affect countless lives. I don’t think I’d ever be ready for that much responsibility.

Marvel or DC?

Flip a coin? Well, I guess I’d have to go with DC simply because it stands for “Detective Comics”, and I like my mystery fiction.

As part of our support for the Choice of Games Contest for Interactive Novels, we will be posting an irregular series of blog posts discussing important design and writing criteria for games. We hope that these can both provide guidance for people participating in the Contest and also help people understand how we think about questions of game design and some best practices. These don’t modify the evaluation criteria for the Contest, and (except as noted) participants are not required to conform to our recommendations–but it’s probably a good idea to listen when judges tell you what they’re looking for.

If these topics interest you, be sure to sign up for our contest mailing list below! We’ll post more of our thoughts on game design leading up to the contest deadline on January 31, 2018.

One of the most consistent patterns we’ve noticed in how players receive our games is that players prefer longer games. Because of that preference, 5% of the score in the contest is based on length and coding efficiency. In today’s blog post, I’m going to discuss what we mean when we talk about length and how coding efficiency fits in to the same category.

At Choice of Games, we use two measures of a game’s length. The first measure is very straightforward—total word count. Take all of the scene files, run a word count tool, and you get a measure of the total length of the code that the author wrote. For these purposes, we don’t distinguish between pure code (e.g. *choice, *if, etc.) and the text that is displayed to the player. Total word count is a useful tool, but it’s also limited. It can’t distinguish between a mostly linear game, where every player will see most of the words in the game on every playthrough, and really bushy games where every playthrough is very different. For that, we use average playthrough length: how many words does a player read on average on a single playthrough of the game. Our standard method for measuring average playthrough length is to run about 100 randomtest playthroughs set to verbose mode—so randomtest prints out everything a player would see—and then divide the total word count of the 100 runs by 100 to produce an average.

We have a clear minimum for length based on both total word count and average playthrough length that we aim for: we aim to have all of our games have a total word count of at least 100,000 words and an average playthrough length of at least 20,000 words. That’s also the minimum length for the contest. We also find that, in terms of reader reception, the longer the better—that’s why there isn’t an upper limit or even guideline. To put those into context, in traditional fiction, a 20,000 word piece is a long short story or a novella, and 100,000 words is a reasonable length for a novel. In other words, we’re looking for works that have total word counts comparable to novels and average playthroughs similar in length to a novella.

We also look at the ratio of the average playthrough length to the total word count. Here, the sweet spot is about a ratio of 0.2 to 0.4. A ratio of 0.2 would be, for example, a 100,000 word total length game with an average playthrough of 20,000 words. If the ratio is much lower than that—for example, an average playthrough of 20,000 words for a game with a total word count of 200,000—that usually indicates that the author is spending lots of time and energy on content that only a fraction of the readers will ever see. That typically produces a game that feels very bushy, but that feels short despite representing a very large investment of the author’s time and energy. Conversely, a game with a very high ratio of average playthrough length to total word count (for example, a game with a 60,000 word average playthrough length and 100,000 total word count, a ratio of 0.6) generally is a game where player choice doesn’t affect much. Most games feel exactly the same, because a majority of each game is exactly the same regardless of player choices. That’s deadly in interactive fiction. As a result, we want to see a ratio that’s in between, that indicates that player choices matter but also that the author isn’t reinventing the wheel for every possible outcome, writing an epic novel that feels like a short story.

These length standards can’t be applied purely mechanically. Some games are written in a way where the average playthrough length given random choices is much longer than the average playthrough length a human player actually encounters. “Traps” or loops that a randomtest playthrough gets caught in that an actual human player would avoid can cause misleading average playthrough length numbers that require some adjustment. The most notable examples are games that include “are you sure?” choices, which we generally discourage as a matter of style anyway, or puzzles. For some games, we have to make an adjustment in the functional average playthrough length to take that sort of thing into account. Total word count isn’t affected by coding like that, but coding efficiency makes a big difference to total word count.

The core point of coding efficiency is that two different blocks of code can have radically different lengths, but produce the same results. For example, let’s imagine that we have a variable that records whether a character uses male pronouns (“he” etc.), female pronouns (“she” etc.), or neuter/enby pronouns (“they” etc.). The game then includes a 500 word paragraph that uses the character’s pronoun twice. One author codes this as:

*if (pronoun=”he”)
    Blah blah he blah. He blah blah blah…
    *goto NextBit
*elseif (pronoun=”she”)
    Blah blah she blah. She blah blah blah…
    *goto NextBit
*else
    Blah blah they blah. They blah blah blah…
    *goto NextBit

A different, more capable author codes this using the ${variable} syntax:

Blah blah ${he} blah. $!{He} blah blah blah…

These produce exactly the same results from the perspective of a player, yet the first example is 1500 words or so in length, whereas the second example is 500 words in length. The second version results in a much lower total word count but is in every practical way superior: it’s easier to read and understand, it’s less prone to error, and it allows edits to be used in each context without requiring making the same change multiple times in different places. The difference is all about coding efficiency.

Likewise, sometimes filling in a variable isn’t sufficient—but if a *if is limited to a single sentence, the rest of the paragraph doesn’t need to be copied. Compare this version of code:

*if Injured_leg
    You hurry across the plaza. Each step sends a
    shooting pain up from your knee, but you wince
    and force yourself to keep moving. You know that
    you to find and defuse the bomb soon, before the
    afternoon rush fills the area with innocent
    civilians.
    *goto FindtheBomb
*else
    You hurry across the plaza. You know that you
    need to find and defuse the bomb soon, before the
    afternoon rush fills the area with innocent
    civilians.
    *goto FindtheBomb

with this version:

You hurry across the plaza.
*if Injured_leg
    Each step sends a shooting pain up from your
    knee, but you wince and force yourself to keep
    moving.
You know that you need to find and defuse the bomb
soon, before the afternoon rush fills the area with
innocent civilians.
*goto FindtheBomb

Both versions produce the same output, but the second version is much more efficient. In general, any time you find yourself copying a large block of text and repeating it unchanged or only lightly changed, you should ask yourself whether there’s a better way.

Many other examples of coding efficiency also exist beyond filling in variables. It’s common to have text that should appear the first time the protagonist meets a character. By putting that in a *gosub structure, the text can appear once in the code for the game, but be used appropriately from multiple different possible points. The code for that might look like this:

You enter the room and see a woman in a severe
black suit near the bar.
*if (met_angela = false)
    *gosub MeetAngela
Angela approaches you and blah blah blah.
…
As you enter the subway car, Angela Northrop catches
your eye.
*if (met_angela = false)
    *gosub MeetAngela
Angela holds out a thumb drive. “You’ll want to look
through this.”
…
*label MeetAngela
*set met_angela true
You recognize Angela Northrop from the photos in the
case file you studied, but this is the first time
you’ve actually seen her in person. The file that she
is 5’6”, but she looks taller in person—something
about her posture, or perhaps it’s more about her
facial expression. Blah blah blah…
*return

By putting the reused text in a *gosub, we reduce the number of errors, allow for faster editing, and make the ChoiceScript code easier to read and understand. In some cases, we can even use the *gosub_scene command to reuse code or text that can show up in multiple different scenes—something that’s particularly useful when there are events that can trigger in multiple scenes such as needing medical care for injuries, or finding out about a big reveal, or meeting a character who can be introduced at multiple different times.

Even efficiency has its limits. Sometimes the effort to create efficient code creates incomprehensible code and introduces errors. If efforts to make your code more efficient start making it hard to read or make you wonder what you’re trying to do, you may want to consider using a little judicious cut-and-paste instead. Nonetheless, within reason, efficient code is faster to write, faster to debug and edit, and generally smoother. As a result, when we consider the total word count of a game, we’ll adjust our evaluation based on efficiency. A really efficient 100,000 word game may contain more actual content than a really inefficient 125,000 word game, and the actual content contained is our main focus.