Lemma Soft Forums

People like my Mother and my brother say my VN is challenging because they constantly get dead-ended,

example:

You're unarmed, You have magic capabilities but you don't know how to use them, and you're fighting a thief, who's armed with your sword. What do you do?
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Attempt to use your magic?
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Stand down
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they both chose stand down and thats the wrong choice, does that mean I'm doing something wrong or does that mean they just made a mistake...

First question - why does your game have 'wrong' answers?

I'm not saying that to be snarky, there are perfectly good reasons for it, including "I want people to die all the time in my game". That's not necessarily a bad thing, you can make a fun game out of that.

However, if you make choices, you need to consider the possibility that people will pick both of them. If one answer is wrong and will instantly kill you, you need a reason for having that answer there in the first place. If every time there's a choice, one answer is wrong and will instantly kill you, it may not be much fun to play, unless the deaths themselves are pretty funny so people don't mind losing.

In the option you've presented above, both of those options sound risky. Surrendering might mean that the thief kills you. Trying to use your magic might mean that you blow yourself up. But both of those options also might work. Not fighting might mean that the thief becomes your friend. Trying to use your magic might let you defeat him.

Did you mean for it to be obvious that only one answer was right? You could rephrase it to make it more clear - you could change your options to 'Try to use your magic' and 'Just let him kill you'. Or, if this is supposed to be a big awakening moment, maybe you don't want to give the player a choice, maybe you just want the character to decide that he HAS to try using magic. Or maybe you want to give two choices of things that are both useless, to show that the player tries to do something other than using magic, and THEN in desperation have the character try using magic. There are many, many ways you can write the scene, depending on what kind of interaction you want the players to have with it.

Thanks! Your Advice was really insightful!