Making Good Choices
by Andrew Shvarts, Head of Design
Andrew is the Head of Design at Candlelight Games and has worked as a games writer and designer for over 14 years.
Branching choices are the heart of our games, the gameplay element that puts the interactive in interactive fiction. But as anyone who’s tried to create a branching narrative knows, they can be very tricky to execute correctly.
Provide too much branching, and your story will quickly become unmanageable; provide too little and players may feel like their choices don’t matter. To navigate this, you’re going to want to make every choice count. And that’s where the P.R.O.M. method comes in:
Provide compelling options
Respect player agency
Offer rewarding branches
Make it feel like it matters
Provide Compelling Options
When it comes to crafting a choice, you want every option to feel meaningfully distinct and compelling, representing a different way for the player to engage with the story. This can be easy if the choice represents a clear narrative deviation, like which LI you want to romance. But for instances that aren't quite as obvious, you'll often want to provide different ways to approach a situation, even if you arrive at similar plot outcomes.
Consider the following choice in a scene where the player is a new kid at school being menaced by a bully:
All three of these options amount to “talk your way out of it”, so choosing between them doesn’t feel particularly interesting. Instead, try approaching it from the perspective of different role-players, such as an assertive player, a deferential player, and a flirtatious player. Then you might get something like this:
See how this is immediately a lot more fun and compelling? The choices are also all clear on what kind of roleplay they represent, and what the player might expect their character to do. Which brings us to…
Respect Player Agency
There’s no worse feeling in a narrative game than making a choice and feeling like the game cheats you out of it, or having your character do something wildly different than what you intended. Internally, we refer to this as a “cab or bus” choice.
Back in the day, there was an unreleased mobile game that had a scene where a player could choose to take a cab or a bus. But if they chose to take a cab, the game told them, “There is no cab. You take the bus.” It was not a very good choice. If you offer the player an option like “Fight the bully”, the player should actually fight the bully, whether they win or not.
Offer Rewarding Branching
The player should always feel rewarded for choosing an option. That doesn’t mean the outcome always has to be positive, but rather that the resulting scene is unique and interesting. This could be some funny dialogue, an emotional reveal, a moment of roleplay, or a lasting consequence. But one way or another, the player should always get something worthwhile out of making that choice.
Make It Feel Like It Matters
There are different ways a choice can "matter". Sometimes the choice directly impacts the narrative, like deciding if an antagonist should live or die. But other times, you can achieve the same effect by letting the player feel the impact of their choice emotionally.
To go back to our bully example, let’s suppose it goes like this:
If the player chooses to fight, they land a solid hit, earning the bully's respect before he shoves them and walks away
If the player chooses to insult the bully, the crowd around them cheers before the bully angrily shoves them and walks away
If the player chooses to flirt, the bully is genuinely confused and seemingly considers it, before angrily shoving them and walking away
You’ll notice all three branches end in the same place, but the player has had an impact on the other characters in a way that feels unique to their choice and makes it clear how they affected the status quo within the story.
Bringing It All Together
As we said in our Philosophy of Narrative Design post, narrative design is all about emotion. And that’s what all of this adds up to: creating choices that translate to strong emotions that shape your story. By following the P.R.O.M. method, you can ensure that all your choices leave your players laughing, crying, and coming back for more. ♥️