ChoiceScript is simple tool that creates beautiful stories of choice-based gameplay along with nuanced stat-tracking systems. I personally have written two games with it: the award-winning Creatures Such as We and the upcoming The Sea Eternal. While I loved making those games, I struggled a bit when teaching myself this system, and I knew I probably wasn't alone in my frustration. So I wrote this tutorial, the tutorial I wish had existed when I had started out learning from scratch.
This tutorial covers everything from visualization of the medium, to descriptions and examples of every command, to help interpreting errors, to several basic templates, to tips for writing, editing, and testing.
Every command and its examples are sorted by complexity and usefulness. Along with the regular examples are examples of common mistakes that can break the game. The examples use a toggle side bar, allowing users to easily skim to easily for a quick overview of concepts, while also allowing users the ability to drill down further into more specific concepts. Furthermore, the section with basic templates has a link to a dropbox folder with downloadable versions, so that users can easily apply the examples to their own games.
There are two ways to navigate this guide: you can go through the tutorial, which starts with high concepts and basic commands before getting more complex, or you can jump around with a list of commands and concepts to go directly to what you want.
I hope this helps inspire more people who want to get their stories and games out there to go for it and that this tutorial gives them the tools and help they need to get what they want done. Happy designing!
An example of a tutorial page. There's an example on the left, a quick navigation pane on the right, and the description paragraph at the top has been minimized.
An example explaining Quicktest error messages. Observe the quick navigation pane on the right, and the descriptive example on the left.
A piece of the full list of commands, provided as an alternative to the walkthrough tutorial for quicker navigation.
