Pixelberry Studios
NB: We have a guest review a mobile video game from Reader Suzanne! We love hearing about the things you’re loving that you think the rest of the Bitchery would love too! Below is Suzanne’s bio:
Suzanne grew up on a farm in Vermont and has used books to explore the world since words started sense. Now, thanks to two children, she reads lots of picture books and middle grade fiction in addition to tons of fantasy and romance. When not reading or raising two young valkyries, she is editing all the spreadsheets in preparation for opening an indie bookstore. She reads paranormal (still, yes), historical, contemporary and fantasy romance and has recently converted her husband to romance readership.
Did you enjoy the podcast a few weeks ago in which Bree and Amanda recommended video games with romantic (or just fun) elements? Of course you did. Now, just in time for ignoring your family during the holidays, I have another recommendation!
Choices, Stories You Can Play is a fun choose-your-own-adventure style app for iOS or Android and I have been having so much fun playing/reading. Right now there are three main stories, two with completed “books” and three with ongoing stories releasing new chapters each week.
- The Freshman follows you, a college freshman, and the romantic, social, and academic adventures of you and your diverse cast of suite mates. You play as a female character and your love interests are: a white football player (M), a black playwright (M) and an Asian social butterfly (F). You get to help your roommates fall in love (or not) and help your professor reunite with his daughter (or not). Book 1 is complete and Book 2 is currently releasing new chapters weekly.
- Rules of Engagement has a very romance-novel plot and is sometimes quite funny. You play as a set of four siblings on a summer cruise (perspective shifts during play) all tasked in their grandmother’s will with different challenges to complete by end of summer to receive their inheritance. One character has to keep a job, another has to get married, and another has to go on a date with the woman his grandmother thinks might be imaginary every week. The last sibling has to get out of her comfort zone and do things like rock-climbing, dancing, etc. Again we have a diverse cast of characters and love interests and it’s been really fun so far. As tropes go, there’s the inheritance trope, the forced-proximity trope, and the fake girlfriend trope… so far. Book 1 is releasing new chapters each week.
- The Crown and the Flame is more for the fantasy fans out there. Our main character is a female warlord/queen type, but the perspective shifts among her party of allies. It’s definitely less romantic and more “let’s take over the world and get rid of the bad guys.” Book 1 is complete and Book 2 is currently releasing new chapters.
The app is free, with two hour delays for earning new “keys.” You need 1 key for each chapter, so depending on how often you check in (or if you want to pay for more keys) you can read a few chapters a day. Completed books are around 15 chapters and follow a major story arc. The Freshman seems to have a 1 Book = 1 Quarter system, for example. Also worth noting is that you can buy extra options, like outfits and dates. These aren’t necessary and usually the story is fun and totally logical without them.
The company behind the app, Pixelberry, works hard to ensure that the games are diverse, fun, and high quality. And they have a conscience, too! They build their games to encourage empathy by presenting players with characters who are different from themselves and donate proceeds to charitable endeavors. They have two other games, High School Story and Hollywood U that I have not played but are apparently also good on diversity and empathy and might be better for the younger crowd.
From their website:
Pixelberry Studios has donated over $350,000 to The Cybersmile Foundation to help them tackle cyberbullying and online hate.
Pixelberry Studios partners with the National Eating Disorders Association to bring awareness to body image issues and eating disorders.
In summary, this is a fun, free app and if you decide to spend some money on it, your money will go to buying fun extra content for you and funding for nonprofits doing good work.
I was really pleasantly surprised and have enjoyed the new content as they add it. I’ve also been impressed with their handling of criticism. They heard from customers of color that their avatar customization had a limited skin tone range and they changed it and apologized. No “we didn’t mean to and its not our fault.” Just a really sincere “We messed up, here’s what we did and what we’re going to do in the future.”
Ultimately, I’d give it a B+ (sometimes it’s sad to say no to a date because you don’t want to pay for it).
Note from Amanda: I downloaded this game after reading Suzanne’s review and I can confirm it’s a lot of fun!
Choices is available on the iOS app store and Google:Play.
I’ll give this a try! I play games (SO recommend Bonza and MonkeyWrench for word puzzle fans!) which have video ads for other games including one called “Episode” which looks like a similar concept but I could never bring myself to try it because it looked SO sleazy. Like the scenario was “another girl is kissing my boyfriend!” and the options were “slap her” or “slap him”. Or “I’m pregnant! Do I tell him?” Or “You’re so sexy pregnant…do we have sex?” Like….what?
Anyway I’ll give Choices a try, it looks a lot more smartly constructed.
I’ve been playing since the start and I agree it’s a lot of fun! My favourite scenario is the one not mentioned above, the police procedural Most Wanted. Still waiting for Book Two of that, it seems it gets no love from either the devs or the players but I really liked the mystery as well as the UST between the two playable leads.
I’ve got a feeling you might get them to hookup in the bonus scenes that you unlock with diamonds/paid options, but never tested it.They did announce on Facebook that three (3!!) new stories are coming out this month, and one of them has a horror theme, so I’m pretty excited about the new content. It’s a solid game, I just wish they had the option to buy an entire episode for a few bucks, instead of using diamonds to unlock single choices
Oh, and by the way: you can choose all the characters’ names in Rules of Engagement, and while I kept most of the default ones, I totally named the cheating ex-boyfriend Dick. Just saying.
Thank you SBTB and Suzanna – my sister, her friend, and I all downloaded this and are LOVING it. I highly recommend this to people who like the ”choose your own story” format and enjoy a little bit of cheesy, especially for the romance storylines.
Sorry, sorry. I meant Suzanne. 🙂
You are welcome! Glad you are all enjoying it!
CHOICES is but an awesome app. Just downloaded it last night and will share this to friends. The app will make you feel that you are the character in the story. The choices you are making there will affect what’s going to happen next and will also help you define your character in real life. This app is educational, will exercise your ability to decide, will make you more conscious and logical on decision-making because of its possible outcomes and appreciate the importance of the thought that our life is not a matter of chance but of CHOICES. Kudos to the brilliant Ms. Suzanne and SBTB!
Love the app idea but very sad that if you want to get through the book with nice clothes or more fun as your choice, you’d end up spending about $40 plus dollars on just one book. I did this with the first book and was disgusted in the end. They should sell the keys and diamonds in bulk for a cheaper price and not $1.99 per choice. I will get through the series that I am reading then I will delete the app. If I had known before I got started, I never would have started. I would give this app a C-.
Hi Janine, I agree that the bonus stuff is too expensive. I usually turn down the fancy clothes and I don’t think it ruins the story too badly. I have bought diamonds in a bulk pack a couple of times, though. It’s much more cost effective that way. I have never paid for keys because those just require me to wait a couple of hours. If you exit the story at the buy screen, you can go to the little + next to your diamond bank and it’ll give you options for bulk purchase. Hope this helps!
When I originally reviewed the app, there were only 4 stories (the three above plus a crime one). The new stories seem to require A LOT more diamonds and I have to say, I’ve been displeased. I would probably rate the app lower now, too.
I played this for a while but I disagree in that playing without the bonus/paying options don’t ruin the fun. It does ruin it in my opinion and you lose out on a LOT of things. If they made it so that you could buy them in bulk for a lot cheaper AND enabled one to earn a certain amount every so many hours, then I would consider reinstalling it.
This game is awesome. I do agree that the bonuses are expensive….but we have to wait for about 3 hours for 2 keys to come. If we play with a key that has already come in half the time, the game reloads and we have to again wait for three hours for a key instead of 90 minutes. I like the books of The Freshman and the Haunting At Braidwood Manor. Can we get a book 2 of Haunting at Braidwood Manor? I would like to share it with all my friends.
I love love LOVE Choices: Stories you play. It’s like a novel and a videogame combined and is boatloads of fun. I like Rules of Engagement best of all. when DOES chapter 21 of book 2 come out? Waiting!
Among everything else, I like the fact that you can name the principal characters in RoE anything you wish. My names for the cast
HEROINE Adrienne
BRAINY TWIN Jordyn
PARTY TWIN Irene
BROTHER Martin
AUNT Virginia
COUSIN Samantha
EX FIANCE Silvio
BUSINESSMAN Gordon
PRINCE Rocco
BARTENDER Owen
PET LIZARD Iggy
PET KITTEN Moosh
CAN’T WAIT FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER! 🙂
I actually really enjoy turning down all of the “cute” premium outfits in Choices because sometimes you get snide comments about your clothes from other characters and it is great. Missing out on scenes is a bummer though. Also we have styled our avatars in the Freshman identically. Yay!
I loveee choiches, my fav is the freshman and now the sophomore. If I ever meet Chris in real life… I do not buy anything I just don’t think I need it. There is still plenty of fun without extra diamonds.
I just really want to be able to dyke it out with Kaitlyn without paying for it.
I’ll echo a lot of the positive comments on here. Choices has expanded to include a superhero scenario, a royal wedding and they have folded in their hold High School story with updated graphics. The stories are definitely PG rated as far as content. This can be either a positive or a negative depending on how far you want a story to go.
The storytelling is excellent (although maybe too much emphasis on looking cool, which also fuels some of the in app purchases–on the other hand, what’s a dating app without closing and hairstyle options??). The stories are not carbon copies of each and they feel thought out, interesting and empathetic in that there is usually compassion for initially unlikable characters. While a lot of the romance stuff is created for female characters (with often same sex options within stories) there is a growing number of stories where you can choose the gender of the protagonist.
I also love the occasional quick time event, where you need to have paid attention and make a decision within a few seconds. The timings are generous enough to give me time to read through options and make a decision and it adds some tension to some of the events (like sporting or action events).
While the graphics are static they are well done and show a nice range of emotions. Although, I don’t feel the company ever had to apologize for their limited avatar choices, they have definitely shown that they are listening to critiques like this and working to make the app even better, and I absolutely commend them for constantly striving to put out a great and improving product for their fan base.
You can enjoy the app and pay nothing but in some stories it does feel like you miss out on significant content by opting out of the paid options. Also the cost of diamonds (which are used to unlock content), even when bought in bulk, feels significant (you can spend up to $100 on diamonds to read a story—although that will unlock a significant amount of content within the app).
In short, I really like this app, I like the company and I think its worth supporting. I just wish they didn’t push so hard for the paid content in some stories (The Freshman story offers less of the hard sell approach).
I’ve played choices and finished every book that is completed. My main issue is always the diamonds, I’ve spend a great deal of money buying them for the choice I want to make. It’s annoying paying and having the book end the same way as if I was not paying anything at all. $1.99 for 20 diamonds is bad especially when each choice is about 15-20-25 or 30 diamonds, with all that aside its a great game and it keeps you coming for more.
I haven’t been playing choices very long and it’s ok but you pretty much have to pay for everything in order to do stuff. It doesn’t seem to have as big a fan base as Episode. I don’t like that you’re buying clothes that you don’t actually get to see your character wear, you don’t get to choose facial features or see movement at all. This game definitely sucks compared to Episode. Episode has waaay more stories. Hundreds actually. It gives you 4 tickets every 3 or 4 hours, tons of genres to choose from, there are even remakes of shows or movies like Pretty Little Liars and Mean Girls. The graphics are amazing and you can even write your own stories and submit them for others to read. If this review was based on Episode I’d give it an A++ but Choices only gets a C-. They could do so much better than this.
What’s the story where a girl finds her friends stuff at her house and her boyfriend is cheating on her with a girl named Kelly?
I love the app however I am wondering what chapters and what choices can get the main characters pregnant. Can someone please let me know. Thanks
I played “the royal romance”, I really enjoyed the story; however, I spent a lot of money buying the clothes for the main character. I think it is better to sell it in bulk with a reasonable price!!
Overall I enjoyed it. But I wish there was an option where she could go home, start a great career and end up meeting a new guy.
The game is wonderful and exciting… But I was hoping pixelberry would kindly reduce the amount of diamonds expected to be used in performing an action… The diamond requirements are really high.
This should not cost more than buying a novel. Think the creators should consider how much more they would make in the long run by keeping the price reasonable. The product is not even close in worth to the price. People aren’t going to continue paying the amount this cost. You do know the library is free.?.. lol It would be a fun game I would throw five to ten bucks at a month.. that’s it!
Calling this game ‘Choices’ is a joke. ‘Money grab’ would be more accurate! Unless you spend your own money, from Chapter one of any book, you don’t get to make any choices, nor can you earn enough diamonds to open up scenes
or access any choices. Even when you watch the video ads to try & get diamonds, 70% of the time you get a message saying that there’s a problem and they will TRY to add your diamond(s) on later but they never do. I’m owed about 43 diamonds, to date, which Pixelberry flat out refused to give me, plus they messaged me that they NEVER correct for the games cheating anyone out of keys or diamonds! On top of that, the game, Perfect Match 2, crashed my phone both times I tried to play it & I had to uninstall it & reinstall again to play any other book. Absolute ripoff!! Cheaters!!
I love this game is a bit expensive but its perfect you can be anyone and change the game as u wish
I would like to know why they don’t carry over these expensive outfits that you purchase to every book series they offer instead of multiple books in one storyline. This is a VERY expensive game. I enjoy it but really can’t justify so many expenses.