As if books, ebooks, and manga weren't enough, now I've discovered apps with interactive(ish) stories. Coming off the heels of Hallmark's Christmas Movie marathons, I first started looking when I was craving a little romance in December. I've downloaded a few "otome games", just looking for some paranormal fluff, but I've been pleasantly surprised at how much depth has been in a couple of these. I'll get into my other favorites shortly, but I wanted to start off with probably the most diverse I've tried so far: Chapters.
Choose your story with Chapters, the interactive story game that lets you choose your path in every story. Read through pages and pages of fun interactive stories that fit your mood, from romance to suspense!
Choose your story from our top collection of romance, fantasy, sci-fi, young adult, comedy, and drama series! Chapters combines a unique style of choose your own story gameplay with fiction stories from our top authors that you simply can't put down!
YOU get to make the choices in each story. Decide on hard life choices such as falling in love, discovering secrets, or unraveling deep mysteries! Make your choices wisely; every ending is different!
Chapters Features:
- Choose your story! Dive in and start making choices that affect the overall outcome!
- Adventures start with you choosing your name and style to reflect your personality.
- All stories come with info directly from the author!
Chapters is a free-to-use app that features a bunch of professionally written stories. Each story offers a free first chapter, and then uses a regenerating ticket system for each following chapter. Once you're out of free tickets, you can either wait for them to regenerate over time (I believe it's 2 hours per ticket, with a 2 ticket cap), or you can pay for extra tickets or a $1 day pass per story. There are also some other promotions that garner extra free tickets for linking accounts, or hitting reading achievements. I hit 12 tickets after finishing a couple books, or reading for a certain length of time. I'm sure I'll hit a snag eventually, but so far I haven't paid anything and I've finished 4 full stories.
As you can see on the left, the app categorizes its stories under a few different banners. There's the typical Young Adult tag, Historical, Paranormal, and Fantasy/SciFi, but there's also intensity tags Red Hot, Sexy, Simmering or Sweet, as well as situations such as Neighbors, Office, Sports, and more. So far I've stuck to the YA and Fantasy tags, but I do notice that one of the stories I've read is not mirrored on the Love Triangle tab, despite it kinda sorta having one? Meh, oh well.
As with most free-to-play apps, there are a few different currencies which can be paid for or generate over time. Chapters has 3 currencies. First are the tickets I mentioned earlier. Then there are maple coins, which generate automatically as you use the app. You generally get a login bonus for 10 per day, plus there are various daily tasks that award coins such as reading chapters (first 5), selecting free choices, commenting, etc. . Once you hit 40 coins, you can trade in for 1 diamond.
Diamonds are the currency for making choices in the stories. In stories, most choices are free to choose, whether it's what emotion you're feeling, or minor changes in dialog (sarcastic vs flirty vs serious). Diamonds come in when you have the option for extra romance scenes, during fights, or most often when you're approaching the ending. The 'best' choices (ones that typically involve kissing or more) are typically 17 diamonds, the 'better' choices typically cost 12, and then the free choice often just advances the plot. There was one ending which cost 27 diamonds, which was marked specifically as "Bonus Content", but I've only run across that once so far. There's also the option to skip an ad at the beginning of each story chapter for 5 diamonds, but you can skip these so quickly I don't see it as worth the cost.
Diamonds are purchasable, but I've yet to do so, opting instead for the tried and true free-to-play method of watching ads. Each time you finish a new chapter, the app offers you an ad in exchange for 2 diamonds. You can also choose to view an ad in the "event section" for 2 diamonds, which has a 2 minute cooldown. Well, 2 minutes up to 10 or 12 times. After that, it starts giving you longer cooldowns, ranging from 12 minutes to 24 hours. I'd prefer if it gave you an actual countdown of how many ads you can watch in a given time (hour/day), but it's not too bad. I generally just click a few ads throughout the day for a few days, get my diamond count up in the 200s or so, before starting a story.
The last purchasable content is the VIP membership, the diamond card, and the Ad-Free option. Having not purchased any of these options, I'm probably not the most knowledgeable about them, but I'll do my best. The VIP membership is $10 and earns you 3x maple coins per action, 2x diamonds per ad, a 4 free ticket cap (instead of 2), and a reduction on ticket generation time from 2 hours to 30 minutes. The diamond card grants you 10 diamonds per daily login, plus an automatic 60 diamonds for $10. The Ad-Free option costs $1, but since clicking on it automatically brings up the payment screen, I don't know the specifics, like what time frame you're dealing with. Ultimately, unless you're wanting to invest in supporting the app, none of these paid options are required to use it.
As far as stories go, I've stuck primarily to YA, paranormal, and fantasy. You can see on the left some of the stories I've picked out, primarily based on the genre and descriptions. Like I said, I've read 4 full books and read a couple other free first chapters, and so far I've been pretty impressed with the variety on display. Sure, everything's romance, but there have been quite a few different scenarios at play. From typical high school love triangles, to stumbling into a nanny position for a hot CEO, to a hot and cold relationship after being persecuted for murder, to finding yourself in a paranormal ménage à trois, these stories have a little something for everyone.
Besides the professional/published stories, the app includes a community section full of user-made fiction. There's a tutorial on how to write your own stories, making them in the style of kind of a text convo. But not having anything of my own to post, I haven't fully explored this part yet. Neither have I really delved into the stacks, but there seems to be A LOT to browse through once I'm done with the main content.
In the profile section (which I assume is viewable by others once you start in the fiction writing portion of the app), there's a customizable avatar/scene, collectible story art, and achievements. Achievements, seen right, are gained as you use the app more, whether it's through advancing through chapters, reading during certain times of day/night, or sharing content. Achievements gain you maple coins and diamonds, depending on the difficulty or prestige of the task. So the more hooked to the app you get, the more it rewards you...to a point.
The last way to earn diamonds is to have friends sign up with your invite code... Yeah, okay, that's one of the reasons for this post, but not the only one! It really is a good app, guys, and one I'll be continuing to explore with or without your gifted diamonds... But if you did want to sign up, my link code is right there... ;)
Oh, and last free feature I've found are semi-regular 24 hour passes. So far, I've gotten a free 24 hour pass every weekend since Christmas. These are restricted to one story each, but so long as you've got some free time Saturday or Sunday, and you've saved up your diamonds throughout the week, this is my recommended way to use the app.
Okay, okay, but what about the stories themselves? Well, like I've said I have finished a few books, so here are my general thoughts on each of their stories and choice mechanics. I do actually own the print/ebook versions of 2 of these stories, so I may come back to them in the future for full-fledged reviews with comments on their Chapters versions.
When new neighbors move into the creepy house next door, Maddie begins to become curious about them. After a terrifying accident, she learns that her new neighbor, Damian, and his family are vampires. Knowing the secret, she is now put in danger. And so is her best friend, Dustin. A vampire wants him dead. But can Maddie stop this from happening? Or will Dustin end up dead?
Probably my biggest peeve for this story was that the player-character, Maddie, starts off the story with her "best friend, Dustin" as her boyfriend. But as soon as the vampire moves in, she just cannot stop flirting with him. As much as there was choice in the story, I couldn't manage to let the vamp know I wasn't interested, or I was taken. Spoiler(?): Dustin gets broken up with for lying about something, leaving Maddie with absolutely no guilt and a green pass to start dating the vamp that she's been flirting with since day one. Yay?
Yeah, I'm really not into love triangles that have a new love interest appearing after a relationship has already been established. I realize there's supposed to be no 'possession' to relationships, so you can't really steal someone away from another person. But when there's no clear communication between the girl and the established boyfriend that maybe things aren't as set as they could be, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth when they start experimenting with other guys before telling their significant other. Loyalty is important to me, and this just soured my whole enjoyment of the story. And then to have an ending where you could suddenly choose to go back to your former boyfriend with absolutely no consequences...no thanks.
On the positive side, it did have some LGBTQ+ representation when Dustin starts dating a guy after your breakup. Too bad the guy turns out to be paranormally manipulative and super evil. Yay inclusion?
Choose: A quick death... Or slow poison...
About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She'll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace—and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia.
And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly's Dust—and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.
As Yelena tries to escape her new dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and Yelena develops magical powers she can't control. Her life is threatened again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren't so clear...
As soon as I saw this title in the app, I dove in immediately. Not only was Poison Study something I recognized and found intriguing, but it wasn't the super obvious romantic fare I'd come to expect on this app. It was legit published material, one I actually have sitting on my shelf at home, and I was excited to see how the app worked around a fantasy novel, which generally is not as dialogue-heavy. Overall, I thought it worked well.
I used one of those weekend day passes I got, so I went through the whole 37 chapter story in one night. And I saved up more diamonds for this book, so I did make a few purchased choices throughout. There was one side story I wished I could have afforded better choices, but ultimately I didn't think it mattered to my character's happiness or main romance, so I ended up with some cold parting words in the end... Still, I was pleased with the variety of options I had with non-paid choices, especially getting to be more snarky with the love interest instead of lovey-dovey all the time.
One thing visual novel fans might find lacking is the absence of additional artwork. Chapters does a good job at showing characters' expressions during dialogue, and has a pretty good stock of backgrounds, but it doesn't have any additional artwork during fights or love scenes. We're just left to normal reading during these parts, which is fine for traditionalists going in for the reading experience, but will no doubt underwhelm those familiar with other visual novels.
Still, for what I got for what I paid, I wholeheartedly recommend Chapters' take on Snyder's story. No idea if they'll have any of the sequels on the app in the future, but I wouldn't mind seeing Yelena again. In fact, I'll be interested to see just how much my choices matched the original when I eventually pick up the book proper.
(Also yay for surprise LGBTQ+ inclusion that doesn't paint them as evil!)
Starting over sucks.
When we moved to West Virginia right before my senior year, I’d pretty much resigned myself to thick accents, dodgy internet access, and a whole lot of boring… until I spotted my hot neighbor, with his looming height and eerie green eyes. Things were looking up.
And then he opened his mouth.
Daemon is infuriating. Arrogant. Stab-worthy. We do not get along. At all. But when a stranger attacks me and Daemon literally freezes time with a wave of his hand, well, something… unexpected happens.
The hot alien living next door marks me.
You heard me. Alien. Turns out Daemon and his sister have a galaxy of enemies wanting to steal their abilities, and Daemon’s touch has me lit up like the Vegas Strip. The only way I’m getting out of this alive is by sticking close to Daemon until my alien mojo fades.
If I don’t kill him first, that is.
I'll admit, I kinda dug the protagonist in this one: her natural personality seemed to lean towards the snarky side, her free clothing choices tended toward my own style (you can pay for prettier/sexier outfits in most of the stories), plus she's a blogger who does book reviews! It was kinda cute how they referenced other stories on the app as books she'd been reading/reviewing.
On the romance front, rather than feeling like I was fighting with the story to punish bad behavior, the story actually seemed to know how dickish our love interest was being throughout and let us act accordingly. Granted, it's still a YA romance, so you aren't allowed to completely kick him to the curb, but I did enjoy the ability to tell him off for being an asshole when he's being one.
Yeah, unfortunately, the love interest was pretty much a big jerk throughout the story. Condescending, rude, thinks he needs to protect you all the time... Even when he's right, it's really annoying. His best trait is being fiercely loyal and protective toward his family, and he even that can't cover all the times he makes them miserable for their safety. Okay, so he does have some damage in his past that sorta kinda pushed him to this way of acting, but we'll see how that pans out.
This one actually has its 2nd book on the app, which I've just started, so it'll be interesting to see where it goes. Plus, I got Obsidian as a free read on Amazon, so I can pick it up and compare some time in the future...
So there you have it. I've been having a lot of fun with Chapters, and I think it's an interesting way to market fiction in this time of attention-deficit phone-users. What do you think? Want to give it a try? I'll be back with a couple other apps I've found to have some great reading experiences soon...
Choose your story with Chapters, the interactive story game that lets you choose your path in every story. Read through pages and pages of fun interactive stories that fit your mood, from romance to suspense!
Choose your story from our top collection of romance, fantasy, sci-fi, young adult, comedy, and drama series! Chapters combines a unique style of choose your own story gameplay with fiction stories from our top authors that you simply can't put down!
YOU get to make the choices in each story. Decide on hard life choices such as falling in love, discovering secrets, or unraveling deep mysteries! Make your choices wisely; every ending is different!
Chapters Features:
- Choose your story! Dive in and start making choices that affect the overall outcome!
- Adventures start with you choosing your name and style to reflect your personality.
- All stories come with info directly from the author!
Chapters is a free-to-use app that features a bunch of professionally written stories. Each story offers a free first chapter, and then uses a regenerating ticket system for each following chapter. Once you're out of free tickets, you can either wait for them to regenerate over time (I believe it's 2 hours per ticket, with a 2 ticket cap), or you can pay for extra tickets or a $1 day pass per story. There are also some other promotions that garner extra free tickets for linking accounts, or hitting reading achievements. I hit 12 tickets after finishing a couple books, or reading for a certain length of time. I'm sure I'll hit a snag eventually, but so far I haven't paid anything and I've finished 4 full stories.
As you can see on the left, the app categorizes its stories under a few different banners. There's the typical Young Adult tag, Historical, Paranormal, and Fantasy/SciFi, but there's also intensity tags Red Hot, Sexy, Simmering or Sweet, as well as situations such as Neighbors, Office, Sports, and more. So far I've stuck to the YA and Fantasy tags, but I do notice that one of the stories I've read is not mirrored on the Love Triangle tab, despite it kinda sorta having one? Meh, oh well.
As with most free-to-play apps, there are a few different currencies which can be paid for or generate over time. Chapters has 3 currencies. First are the tickets I mentioned earlier. Then there are maple coins, which generate automatically as you use the app. You generally get a login bonus for 10 per day, plus there are various daily tasks that award coins such as reading chapters (first 5), selecting free choices, commenting, etc. . Once you hit 40 coins, you can trade in for 1 diamond.
Diamonds are the currency for making choices in the stories. In stories, most choices are free to choose, whether it's what emotion you're feeling, or minor changes in dialog (sarcastic vs flirty vs serious). Diamonds come in when you have the option for extra romance scenes, during fights, or most often when you're approaching the ending. The 'best' choices (ones that typically involve kissing or more) are typically 17 diamonds, the 'better' choices typically cost 12, and then the free choice often just advances the plot. There was one ending which cost 27 diamonds, which was marked specifically as "Bonus Content", but I've only run across that once so far. There's also the option to skip an ad at the beginning of each story chapter for 5 diamonds, but you can skip these so quickly I don't see it as worth the cost.Diamonds are purchasable, but I've yet to do so, opting instead for the tried and true free-to-play method of watching ads. Each time you finish a new chapter, the app offers you an ad in exchange for 2 diamonds. You can also choose to view an ad in the "event section" for 2 diamonds, which has a 2 minute cooldown. Well, 2 minutes up to 10 or 12 times. After that, it starts giving you longer cooldowns, ranging from 12 minutes to 24 hours. I'd prefer if it gave you an actual countdown of how many ads you can watch in a given time (hour/day), but it's not too bad. I generally just click a few ads throughout the day for a few days, get my diamond count up in the 200s or so, before starting a story.
The last purchasable content is the VIP membership, the diamond card, and the Ad-Free option. Having not purchased any of these options, I'm probably not the most knowledgeable about them, but I'll do my best. The VIP membership is $10 and earns you 3x maple coins per action, 2x diamonds per ad, a 4 free ticket cap (instead of 2), and a reduction on ticket generation time from 2 hours to 30 minutes. The diamond card grants you 10 diamonds per daily login, plus an automatic 60 diamonds for $10. The Ad-Free option costs $1, but since clicking on it automatically brings up the payment screen, I don't know the specifics, like what time frame you're dealing with. Ultimately, unless you're wanting to invest in supporting the app, none of these paid options are required to use it.As far as stories go, I've stuck primarily to YA, paranormal, and fantasy. You can see on the left some of the stories I've picked out, primarily based on the genre and descriptions. Like I said, I've read 4 full books and read a couple other free first chapters, and so far I've been pretty impressed with the variety on display. Sure, everything's romance, but there have been quite a few different scenarios at play. From typical high school love triangles, to stumbling into a nanny position for a hot CEO, to a hot and cold relationship after being persecuted for murder, to finding yourself in a paranormal ménage à trois, these stories have a little something for everyone.
Besides the professional/published stories, the app includes a community section full of user-made fiction. There's a tutorial on how to write your own stories, making them in the style of kind of a text convo. But not having anything of my own to post, I haven't fully explored this part yet. Neither have I really delved into the stacks, but there seems to be A LOT to browse through once I'm done with the main content.
In the profile section (which I assume is viewable by others once you start in the fiction writing portion of the app), there's a customizable avatar/scene, collectible story art, and achievements. Achievements, seen right, are gained as you use the app more, whether it's through advancing through chapters, reading during certain times of day/night, or sharing content. Achievements gain you maple coins and diamonds, depending on the difficulty or prestige of the task. So the more hooked to the app you get, the more it rewards you...to a point.
The last way to earn diamonds is to have friends sign up with your invite code... Yeah, okay, that's one of the reasons for this post, but not the only one! It really is a good app, guys, and one I'll be continuing to explore with or without your gifted diamonds... But if you did want to sign up, my link code is right there... ;)
Oh, and last free feature I've found are semi-regular 24 hour passes. So far, I've gotten a free 24 hour pass every weekend since Christmas. These are restricted to one story each, but so long as you've got some free time Saturday or Sunday, and you've saved up your diamonds throughout the week, this is my recommended way to use the app.
Okay, okay, but what about the stories themselves? Well, like I've said I have finished a few books, so here are my general thoughts on each of their stories and choice mechanics. I do actually own the print/ebook versions of 2 of these stories, so I may come back to them in the future for full-fledged reviews with comments on their Chapters versions.
Dusk Until Dawn
By Jordan Lynde
By Jordan Lynde
When new neighbors move into the creepy house next door, Maddie begins to become curious about them. After a terrifying accident, she learns that her new neighbor, Damian, and his family are vampires. Knowing the secret, she is now put in danger. And so is her best friend, Dustin. A vampire wants him dead. But can Maddie stop this from happening? Or will Dustin end up dead?
Probably my biggest peeve for this story was that the player-character, Maddie, starts off the story with her "best friend, Dustin" as her boyfriend. But as soon as the vampire moves in, she just cannot stop flirting with him. As much as there was choice in the story, I couldn't manage to let the vamp know I wasn't interested, or I was taken. Spoiler(?): Dustin gets broken up with for lying about something, leaving Maddie with absolutely no guilt and a green pass to start dating the vamp that she's been flirting with since day one. Yay?
Yeah, I'm really not into love triangles that have a new love interest appearing after a relationship has already been established. I realize there's supposed to be no 'possession' to relationships, so you can't really steal someone away from another person. But when there's no clear communication between the girl and the established boyfriend that maybe things aren't as set as they could be, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth when they start experimenting with other guys before telling their significant other. Loyalty is important to me, and this just soured my whole enjoyment of the story. And then to have an ending where you could suddenly choose to go back to your former boyfriend with absolutely no consequences...no thanks.
On the positive side, it did have some LGBTQ+ representation when Dustin starts dating a guy after your breakup. Too bad the guy turns out to be paranormally manipulative and super evil. Yay inclusion?
Choose: A quick death... Or slow poison...
About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She'll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace—and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia.
And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly's Dust—and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.
As Yelena tries to escape her new dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and Yelena develops magical powers she can't control. Her life is threatened again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren't so clear...
As soon as I saw this title in the app, I dove in immediately. Not only was Poison Study something I recognized and found intriguing, but it wasn't the super obvious romantic fare I'd come to expect on this app. It was legit published material, one I actually have sitting on my shelf at home, and I was excited to see how the app worked around a fantasy novel, which generally is not as dialogue-heavy. Overall, I thought it worked well.
I used one of those weekend day passes I got, so I went through the whole 37 chapter story in one night. And I saved up more diamonds for this book, so I did make a few purchased choices throughout. There was one side story I wished I could have afforded better choices, but ultimately I didn't think it mattered to my character's happiness or main romance, so I ended up with some cold parting words in the end... Still, I was pleased with the variety of options I had with non-paid choices, especially getting to be more snarky with the love interest instead of lovey-dovey all the time.
One thing visual novel fans might find lacking is the absence of additional artwork. Chapters does a good job at showing characters' expressions during dialogue, and has a pretty good stock of backgrounds, but it doesn't have any additional artwork during fights or love scenes. We're just left to normal reading during these parts, which is fine for traditionalists going in for the reading experience, but will no doubt underwhelm those familiar with other visual novels.
Still, for what I got for what I paid, I wholeheartedly recommend Chapters' take on Snyder's story. No idea if they'll have any of the sequels on the app in the future, but I wouldn't mind seeing Yelena again. In fact, I'll be interested to see just how much my choices matched the original when I eventually pick up the book proper.
(Also yay for surprise LGBTQ+ inclusion that doesn't paint them as evil!)
Starting over sucks.
When we moved to West Virginia right before my senior year, I’d pretty much resigned myself to thick accents, dodgy internet access, and a whole lot of boring… until I spotted my hot neighbor, with his looming height and eerie green eyes. Things were looking up.
And then he opened his mouth.
Daemon is infuriating. Arrogant. Stab-worthy. We do not get along. At all. But when a stranger attacks me and Daemon literally freezes time with a wave of his hand, well, something… unexpected happens.
The hot alien living next door marks me.
You heard me. Alien. Turns out Daemon and his sister have a galaxy of enemies wanting to steal their abilities, and Daemon’s touch has me lit up like the Vegas Strip. The only way I’m getting out of this alive is by sticking close to Daemon until my alien mojo fades.
If I don’t kill him first, that is.
I'll admit, I kinda dug the protagonist in this one: her natural personality seemed to lean towards the snarky side, her free clothing choices tended toward my own style (you can pay for prettier/sexier outfits in most of the stories), plus she's a blogger who does book reviews! It was kinda cute how they referenced other stories on the app as books she'd been reading/reviewing.
On the romance front, rather than feeling like I was fighting with the story to punish bad behavior, the story actually seemed to know how dickish our love interest was being throughout and let us act accordingly. Granted, it's still a YA romance, so you aren't allowed to completely kick him to the curb, but I did enjoy the ability to tell him off for being an asshole when he's being one.
Yeah, unfortunately, the love interest was pretty much a big jerk throughout the story. Condescending, rude, thinks he needs to protect you all the time... Even when he's right, it's really annoying. His best trait is being fiercely loyal and protective toward his family, and he even that can't cover all the times he makes them miserable for their safety. Okay, so he does have some damage in his past that sorta kinda pushed him to this way of acting, but we'll see how that pans out.
This one actually has its 2nd book on the app, which I've just started, so it'll be interesting to see where it goes. Plus, I got Obsidian as a free read on Amazon, so I can pick it up and compare some time in the future...
So there you have it. I've been having a lot of fun with Chapters, and I think it's an interesting way to market fiction in this time of attention-deficit phone-users. What do you think? Want to give it a try? I'll be back with a couple other apps I've found to have some great reading experiences soon...
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