Building Successful Practices
Here are the patterns and techniques we’ve noticed in the most commercially successful games on Dorian, and how to optimize your game to match! These aren’t hard rules, just what we’ve seen work already– so if you have a new idea, try it!
Completion Rate
Your completion rate is shown for any of your released episodes, and is the percentage of people who finished your episode. It’s your most important stat to tell if your game is meeting reader expectations– and your Episode 1’s completion rate is the most important of all!
Make an Incredible Episode 1
Your episode 1 is the hook that’ll tell players if they should keep reading or not. Your completion rate for episode 1 matters the most! Here are our top tips for ensuring players that read your episode one turn into devoted fans.
Exciting hook - Open with a clear, exciting action moment that sucks players in and grounds us in the world!
Have an early compelling & easy to understand choice - this is an interactive game, so players need to interact early! Let them make a fun, clear choice within the first 15 taps.
Avoid lore dumps - Readers don’t have a reason to care about reading lore. Stick to character intros & actions and only spatter in lore in small bits later once players are hooked.
Show your LI faces - Readers are here to gaze at your beautiful characters! Rather than long stretches of narration, make sure you’re mostly showing off LI dialogue to highlight them.
Set a clear player goal - Player goals that tie plot to interacting with the LIs are often the most successful! You can tell players their goal by making an in-game mission statement, or even break the fourth wall to tell them they need to earn a certain amount of points by the end of an episode.
Premium tutorial - Teach players about bonus content by giving them an example for free, and making it an excellent one.
Relationship system tutorial - Show players how to increase their bonds with LIs, and the bonus content they’ll get when they do.
Lead up to one great premium - Sell players on a LI by the end of the episode, and show off one tantalizing paid premium choice.
End with a cliffhanger! - Write something surprising or dramatic that’ll make readers desperate to find out what happens next!
So you’ve launched an episode 1– how do you optimize?
You can check your analytics for each episode in Live Episodes to see dropoff percentages at every node. These are the moments where your players are losing interest or are frustrated. On the left— see the dropoff rate at the top, and the percentages of people choosing the premium option vs not.
An example player goal screen when it’s set within the narrative (left) or when it breaks the fourth wall (right).
Why do readers drop off?
Very long nodes without choices - this is an interactive medium, and players want to engage!
“Unfairness” in story or game– for example, if it’s unclear why a choice they made missed out on increasing LI bond
Reversal of expectations what they expected from the choice was not what happened
Long narration without character art
Lack of action - give the player main character energy!
How to Write Effective Premium Choices
Premium choices let fans support you for the content they most want to see– which means you need to understand your audience’s desires, and make it clear how they can achieve them!
The Choice
When writing the choice itself, you want to lean into your wildest dreams here to design experiences that readers will go feral for. We see that choices that focus on either romantic escalation or physical intimacy perform the best currently, and premium choices that only related to plot do not do well.
Example: You need to avoid some guards while escaping a castle with Nadia.
You could write some options like “be sneaky”, or “just run for it”. But those don’t tie us to any of our relationships in an exciting way! Instead consider something like “Kiss her to hide my face!” We advance our relationship with her and get a swoonworthy moment.
Best performing premium choices.
The Lead In
Lead-ins are the lines right before a premium choice that tell a player exactly what they’re about to get into– they need to be informed to know what they’re about to buy!
Example: In this screenshot, it wouldn’t be clear what’s exciting about “Go in the door” as a premium… without the line on the left before it. With that lead in, now we know something intimate will happen in there, and we’re excited to choose!
The Bonus Content
The content itself needs to deliver on the promise you made in the lead-in & choice option. Make sure your descriptions are visceral and exciting, and also deliver the fantasy you alluded to in the lead up. Here’s more to consider when writing exciting bonus content:
Length: If it costs over 20 hearts, it should be over 20 lines.
Additional choices: Choices within bonus content keep the player engaged (though we don’t recommend adding additional premium choices within a bonus scene)
Add choice memory: Having LIs remember the special scenes players paid for and mention it later makes them feel seen!
Add relationship bonds: In premium content, generally the player should be rewarded with a relationship increase!