Website / Choose Your Story

Choose Your Story, or CYS for short, is a website where people gather to create interactive stories, otherwise known as story-games. While the site is primarily used for the creation of said story-games, it also has its own forums, where people gather to discuss everyday stuff unrelated to the stories. While it is free to create an account, the site has been known to mercilessly suck up the souls and free time of its members.

Some of the most popular games on CYS are:

Fantasy Games:

• Eternal: A Dark Fantasy game by End Master in which you play as a young man reared to do the bidding of an unseen emperor. You will fight against and alongside orcs, elves, kobolds, and other fantasy creatures. There are three main paths and thirteen epilogues.
• Necromancer and Death Song: Twin games created by the same author that made Eternal. In Necromancer, you play as a young mage school student who sucks at all forms of magic, with the exception of one: the forbidden art of necromancy. Fight demons and enslave the souls of the dead as you work to become a master of Death itself. In Death Song, on the other hand, you play as an aspiring musician who must either join the army or a band of mercenaries in order provide for his family. Soon, though, you find yourselves against legions of the undead, lead by a fledgling necromancer. Despite your best efforts, you soon learn that there is no way you can beat death.
• Rogues: Yet another fantasy outing from End Master, and a Stealth Sequel to his story Innkeeper, wherein you play as the son of the previous game's protagonist. Starting off in a small village where you con and pickpocket travelers with your twin sister, you're eventually forced on the run and, over the course of twenty years, grow into a proper rogue.
• Unbroken: A fantasy game by Ninjapitka, in which a young warrior in a religious order must discover more about the secret behind his lineage, and the conquering empire rising to power.
• Dungeon Stompage: A fantasy game in which you play as a young man or woman whose village is destroyed by an evil necromancer. Descend into the necromancer's lair to avenge your family and foil his plans to resurrect a centuries old dragon. Whether you eradicate the necromancer's foul magic or claim it for your own is up to you.
• Winter, After The Harvest: A dark fantasy game, in which Winter, a young noble engaged in his studies, must make a dangerous journey home to claim his inheritance.
• When the Music's Over: Can a disillusioned ex-hero find a way to reclaim his heroism and sense of purpose in order to make a difference in the world?
• Secrets of the Crag: An open-map RPG dungeon crawl game, where you fight deadly monsters, discover the dungeon's secrets, and learn magical spells.
• Gunslinger: Play as a gunslinger in a fantastic version of the Wild West in this dark fantasy game by Ninjapitka.
• Blackbirds: By Ninjapitka. A time of change is upon the world, with powerful nations like Alteran and Magda exploring the New World, a newly discovered continent.

Science Fiction Games:

• Ground Zero: Nuclear war is about to break out, and you are just an office worker. Will you buy a spot in a public shelter, purchase your own private shelter, or continue working as if nothing has changed and hope you survive armageddon and whatever comes after?
• CYBERMONKEY: A short, silly, high-octane ride through a cyberpunk future where your bullets are few, your friends are fewer, and the long tentacles of the law are slithering up your pant legs.
• Secrets of the Grass Planet: As you explore the so-called "Grass Planet," known for its expansive prairie environment and bronze-age civilization, you will find that not all is as it seems.
• Diplomat: Play as one of Earth's leading diplomats responsible for handling first contact and shaping Earth's alliances with other alien races in the galaxy.
• Homo Perfectus: A series of games written by SindriV, where you play as a member of a genetically engineered race of superhumans.

Modern Adventure Games:

• Dead Man Walking: After waking up in a subway with no memory of the past week, you must persevere through the zombie outbreak that has sent the city into chaos to save your family.
• Through Time: A game in which you play as Jacob, a 28 year old man who finds himself waking up ten years in the past, meeting people whom he recognizes but can't exactly remember. It's unique in that it plays out like a visual novel with a path for each character you meet.
• Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?: A modern adventure where you play as a repentant cop killer who must work constantly to keep his evil alter ego in check. Things get very difficult for you when your best friend, who helped you to cover up your past crimes, calls in a favor.
• Bestist Frend Jane: A seven-year-old boy with an abusive mother sets out on a cross-country journey. He does so to fulfill the dream of his murdered best friend. It also happens to be largely based off a true story.
• Dreamtruder: After accidentally stumbling into a stranger's dream, you are thrust into the dreamworld's "Jungle", where you must defeat the surreal challenges it prevents in order to prove your innocence.
• Private Game For Natalie: A thoughtful anniversary gift exploring the possibilities of what could have been in the narrator's relationship with Natalie.
• Blow Your House Down: You take mysterious guests into your cabin to provide them with shelter during a hurricane. But it soon becomes clear they may not be who they seem.

Historical Games:

• Price of Freedom: Innocence Lost: Play as a child sold into slavery who is bought by a man who runs a school that trains children to fight as gladiators. Make friends and slay your enemies in this historical action thriller. The story was recently updated with new content, and a part two is in the works. It is heavily stat-based, but the quality of the story is by no means lacking.
• Hastings, 1066: Aftermath: Play as Aethelwulf in the wake of the battle of Hastings, and shape the future of England with your choices.

Mystery Games:

• Hunting The Ripper: Play as a detective in 1800s London trying to catch the infamous serial Jack the Ripper in this historical mystery game.
• The Murdered Official: Play as a detective of questionable competence in a fantasy kingdom attempting to solve the murder of Wanorn Polquin amid tensions with a neighboring kingdom.
• A Hunted and Haunted Halloween: You are trapped in a house with five strangers and charged with solving a murder. Can you solve the murder before each of you are picked off one by one?
• Edithe Zilonis: An undertaker meets a dead woman who is more alive than most of the living.

Games that have their own pages:

• Alpha Wolf
• A Very Special Choose Your Story
• Eternal
• Geek
• Ground Zero
• Imagination
• Innkeeper
• Necromancer / Death Song
• Paradise Violated
• Rogues
• Suzy's Strange Saga/ Tales from the Basement/ Love SICK/ TRASH/ Repression

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Choose Your Story provides examples of the following tropes:

Dungeon Stompage

• A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil: The antagonist, Mad Merodatch, is later revealed to have been an apprentice to Kragan Firehand, the benevolent old wizard who sends the character into Merodatch's lair to retrieve the Oblitterum Nomeno.
• Artifact of Doom: The Oblitterum Nomeno is one. Opening it prematurely will cause the character's soul to be ripped in two.
• Black Knight: There are two of these guarding Merodatch's throne.
• Doomed Hometown: Pretty much immediately after character creation, too.
• Downer Ending: All of the evil endings turn into this, all thanks to a certain succubus.
• Dracolich: Subverted, fortunately. Merodatch does come dangerously close to making one, though.
• Dungeon Crawling: The entire story-game is a trek into an abandoned Dwarven fortress that just happens to serve as the base of operations for an evil necromancer named Mad Merodatch. You fight ghouls, deathknights, and...a pile of human entrails?
• Evil Is Visceral: When you go to retrieve the Oblitterum Nomero from the book room of the Dwarven stronghold, it summons a pile of entrails that you must fight in order to claim it.
• Our Ghouls Are Creepier: If you take a certain hallway in the Dwarven Stronghold, you will have to fight a pack of ghouls.
• Optional Boss: The Specter. In order to find it, you have to move Merodatch's throne and make your way down a dark hallway into a small circular chamber with a coffin. Opening the coffin will release The Specter.
• Spell Book: The Oblitterum Nomeno.

Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?

• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Drinking before driving to work or even while you're getting pulled over for speeding isn't a good idea.
• Combat Medic: With certain traits, the main character can become one of these.
• Functional Addict: In fact sometimes you need to take certain drugs just so you don't go into a psychotic rage. Take too many however and you'll become the Addled Addict.
• Hearing Voices: One of your patients April, claims she hears God.
• I Fought the Law and the Law Won: It can happen, but if you think it through, they won't necessarily win.
• Not That Kind of Doctor: The main character is a nurse practitioner, as he frequently states, but this doesn't stop several people from assuming he is a psychologist or physician.
• One Last Job: The protagonist's friend Leon wants him to participate in one as repayment for his help in the past.
• Psycho Psychologist: The main character may not be a psychologist, but he does work in a psych ward. His past activities and current mental state suggest that he would fit in better as a patient than he would as a nurse practitioner.
• Shout-Out: The dwarf that oddly shows up to ask for symbol pieces is a shout-out to Baldur's Gate 2.
• Split Personality: The main character has this. He was able to force it back into his subconscious for several years, though, but only after killing a few cops and having to rely on the help of a rather shady friend to cover up his crimes.
• Storming the Castle: The plan to attack Serge at his place is this.
• Street Smart: The protagonist can be a non Book Dumb example.

Price of Freedom: Innocence Lost

• A Father to His Men: Rhode. It turns out that the only reason she is so vicious in training the new gladiators is because she doesn't want to see them die in the arena.
• Big Brother Instinct: The game gives you the option to act like this towards Alexius.
• Guile Hero: The reason Titus buys you and your brother in the first place is because of your education, which supposedly will make you into one of these in the gladiator ring.
• Made a Slave: Pretty much the premise of the game.
• Mercy Kill: The main character witnesses one of these while being shipped to Rome. It takes him a while to realize why it was a "mercy" kill, though.
• Take a Third Option: At one point of the game, you're forced to choose between ratting out Lula or letting Alexius get punished. You can choose a third option of taking the fall and the resulting punishment yourself, causing you to gain approval from both Lula and Alexius at the cost of a reduction in your stats.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Early on in the story, the character has the option of trying, to no avail, of course, to escape his captors at the cost of leaving his little brother, Alexius. Needless to say, if that happens, Alexius is not very happy with the decision.

Other Games

• The Make-Believe-Sandbox.
  • Downer Ending: More just a downer in general. Sachiko dies, and the story lets you get attached to Yuina before killing her too.
  • The Lost Lenore: Not one, but two.

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