Below are recommended stats for episodes of branching stories.

Critical Stats

Gameplay Length

• Episode 1: 6-8 minutes
• Episode 2+: 10 minutes

Key Decisions: 1-2

Players will compare with others to see if your choices are meaningful. Meaningful differences between players will not only encourage them to play further but will also improve replayability.

Premium Choices: 2+

This is the primary way we monetize our stories and is the most critical component to include in each episode.

Choices: 25-35

• Prose: 1 choice every 10 taps.
• Dialogue: 1 choices every 15 taps.

Avg Options per Choice: 3

Most choices should be between 2-4 options.

• If your number of options is too low, you can layer in additional ones for flavor and tie them into playstyles
• You can also add options that do variations on existing options. For instance if “interrogate someone” is the best option and provides CLUES +3, you can add an option like “bribe someone” that only gives +1. Both ways don’t expand the scope of the story but they make the choice nuance more important.

Branchiness

Branchiness describes how much content a player sees on any given playthrough.

A branchiness score of 1 means that a player would experience ALL the content that an episode has to offer in a single playthrough, much like a linear story… but we can offer way more than that, right?

<aside> 💡 A branchiness score of 2 translates to the player seeing approximately half of the episode’s existing content on an initial playthrough. This gives them reason to come back and play again!

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