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mary-nesbitt-larking · 4 years

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Why I moved from Choices to Lovestruck (and you should too)

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me well that I was a BIG Choices stan. I ran three Choices blogs (begging-for-kamilah, ask-kamilah sayeed and ask-priya-lacroix) for a long time, fulfilling fanfiction requests and interacting with many wonderful people. During my time in the fandom, I made some beautiful friends and created brilliant memories that I wouldn’t trade for the world. Unfortunately, as time passed, I started to notice a decline in the quality of content that Pixelberry were providing, and after a lot of hesitation, I decided to remove the app and leave the fandom. I was very lucky in that a very good friend introduced me to a different app with a similar style. Lovestruck was something that I’d heard about on the grapevine but had no idea what it was or if it could possibly compare to the fun that Choices had given me over the years. After a lot of resisting and stubborn behaviour on my part, I finally gave it a chance and have never looked back since. Here are just some of the many reasons why you should too:

There are no forced love interests in Lovestruck. That’s right. You read that correctly. You choose your love interest BEFORE you start the story so there will never be any frustrating interactions with characters that you’re not interested in. Remember in Bloodbound Book 2 when you go to Paris with Adrian and Jax (leaving the only two female love interests at home) and you were forced to hold hands with one of them (until Pixelberry later apologised and altered the scene)? There is definitely none of that to worry about in Lovestruck. The person you’re interested in is the only character who will show interest in you, and the entire story will be centred around him/her/them.

Speaking of which, it’s time to talk about the fantastic level of LGBTQ representation in Lovestruck. Non binary characters aren’t just side characters. They actually have their own routes, as well as a huge array of adorable side characters. There are also demisexual characters, asexuals and of course, plenty of lesbians and bisexuals. Voltage (creators of Lovestruck) also very proudly celebrate pride month by releasing incredible LGBTQ content.

On the topic of representation, something that has to be applauded is the racial and religious representation in Lovestruck. You can romance Jewish characters, black characters, south American characters, Asian characters and I’m sure the list goes on. Choices fans might be sad to find that you don’t have the option to customise any love interests or MCs, but I think that this is a blessing.

Something that I find very cool about Lovestruck is that there are different stories for every love interest. For example, if you romance one person from a certain book, romancing another from the same book will get you a completely different story with a totally different route. It’s a stark contrast to Choices, in which Pixelberry- quite literally- copy and paste the same lines for all the available love interests.

And along the same lines of copying and pasting, it’s very refreshing to see that Lovestruck doesn’t reuse faces. I always found it terribly off putting when you’d be playing a Choices book and a love interest from another book would be your waiter or waitress.

One brilliant thing about Lovestruck is the way that they present the MC. Every MC has their own unique personality and backstory. Whilst that does mean “less choice”, it’s really refreshing having an MC with parents. With siblings. With a job. A life. An actual story outside their love interest. There’s one MC who discusses her experiences as a woman of colour, and I think that’s exceptionally important for the player.

On a superficial note, Lovestruck has GORGEOUS art. I did love the art in Choices too, but I don’t think it has anything on Lovestruck. The backgrounds are stunning, but it’s the characters who are gorgeous. Not to mention, we get absolutely beautiful CGs. This is something Choices sorely lacks. In the later books, the LIs and MCs even blink and move which I find gives it a more engaging feel. There are also MANY more facial expressions for every character in Lovestruck. Blushing faces, a neutral face, smiles, angry faces, sad faces, shocked faces, anxious faces... It’s not just the same standard five like in Choices.

Another superficial- but very cool aspect- of Lovestruck is that almost every outfit is 100% free. The MCs and LIs will change their clothes whenever appropriate and you don’t have to pay a penny. The only time when outfits will ever cost any in-game currency is if it will mean you gain a CG out of it, but in my personal experience, I’ve only ever seen this being the case for two books.

This is just a side note but something I love in Lovestruck is that adorable animals aren’t paywalled. They’re just there. Your love interest might have a cat- or a bear in one book- and you don’t have to pay to love up on them. They’re just another part of the story.

Still on the more superficial side of things is the music. I will totally admit, I LOVE the music in Choices and have a fair bit of it downloaded to my iTunes. But for anyone hesitant to move over to Lovestruck for the sake of the music, don’t panic! The music is just as brilliant, just as catchy and just as heartfelt.

One of the things that always stressed me about Choices was the in-game currency. Diamonds were expensive and unfortunately, every single chapter would involve multiple diamond scenes. In many books, the diamond scenes were so important to the story that to go without them would mean that huge chunks of plot were missed. The amazing thing about Lovestruck is that if you choose not to do the premium scenes (the currency is hearts) then it does absolutely nothing to the story whatsoever. The heart scenes are purely there to give you a little bonus but whether you choose to do them or not, nothing about the story or your relationship with your love interest will change.

And whilst we’re on the topic of heart scenes, it’s important to note that whilst Choices usually has 3-4 diamond scenes PER chapter, heart scenes only pop up around 9 out of every 12 chapters, and you will VERY rarely find anything that costs more than 30 hearts.

The system to earn these hearts is totally different to Choices. Whilst you could watch ads to earn diamonds a few times per day, plus playing chapters would gain you two diamonds, Lovestruck gives you “quests”. Every few hours, the quests refresh and all you have to do is read a certain amount of chapters of a specified love interest, and you get the hearts. It’s a win/win situation because the more you play, the more you get.

Not to mention, every day you get to earn a puzzle piece and when you complete a puzzle, you win a certain amount of hearts. It seems tedious at first but they add up fast!

And it’s not just hearts you earn, either! In Choices, you would use “keys” to read a chapter. In Lovestruck, you use “tickets”. Some quests mean that if you read a certain amount of chapters, you get given 2, 3 or even 5 tickets so you can just keep on reading!

Since I’ve addressed some of the Lovestruck mechanics, I just want to talk about how much I love that you can fast forward, rewind, autoplay (it plays hands free and there are three different speeds to choose from) and even choose the chapter you’d like to play. This is amazingly refreshing because when it comes to Choices, you have to start the entire book again if you want to get to a specific chapter, AND you have to click through it fast because you can’t fast forward.

Oh, and when you’ve played a chapter, a little heart symbol will appear next to it if it has a premium scene so you know whether or not you need to save your hearts!

I really want to address the smut scenes. I know that sounds like another more superficial topic but I think it’s pretty important. I think there’s something more “mature” about Lovestruck and smut. The sex scenes are tasteful yet somehow sexier. They’re not rushed at all. And Voltage aren’t afraid to include actual kinky moments.

More importantly, though, is that Lovestruck addresses virginity and handles it incredibly tastefully. It’s done in a realistic fashion, too. Sometimes, characters don’t really feel like having sex with their partner. Sometimes they want to at first but then feel anxiety. Sometimes they’re scared. Sometimes they want to stop half way through. Sometimes they have trouble reaching orgasm. All very real scenarios that are addressed tactfully and beautifully. The virgins (be they the MC or LI) in Lovestruck are realistic. They don’t just dive into bed. It’s a process. There’s fear along with excitement. There are moments of panic. It’s not just smut for the sake of smut. It deals with adult situations, something that I always thought Choices struggled with.

Actually, it’s not just sex. These character get anxiety, depression and genuine mental health problems. And it’s dealt with so perfectly, yet so realistically. They’re anxious when it’s appropriate.

I don’t want to bash Choices too badly, as I don’t think Pixelberry are an evil company, but some of the things they did- particularly towards the end- were unforgivable.

Hana Lee’s infertility and the way that it was merely glossed over was appalling. As someone who is also infertile, I can tell you that you don’t just “get over it”, even if your partner is carrying your child.

I’ll also never quite get over the fact that when you’re almost raped in Red Carpet Diaries 2, you have to pay 30 diamonds if you want someone to stay and comfort you. As a sexual abuse victim, I think that’s grotesque, and a glorification of rape.

I can safely say, there is NOTHING like that in Lovestruck, and just to reiterate, all the important plot points are FREE.

To bring this mood back up a little bit, something I think is really cute is that when you’re choosing the love interest you’d like to romance in Lovestruck, you can see sweet little facts about them, including their birthdays, their height and their personality traits.

Sometimes the stories cross over, too, and love interests will appear in each other’s stories. And the cute thing is, if you’re romancing an LGBTQ character, it will be canonical that whichever love interest crosses over will be in an LGBTQ relationship with MC.

There are also fun little side stories that you can play, and to really make things interesting, you can often play the same book but from the point of view of your love interest! These do usually cost hearts but not many at all. 15 hearts can get you things like 4 chapters, for example!

I just want to talk about how wonderful Voltage are as a company, too. You can tell this isn’t about money for them. They just want the best for their players and it shows. They are often asking the community what they want and bringing out polls, and they will always let us have our say.

There are also no false promises of stories being “in the works”. If a story is abandoned, they won’t lie about it. There are no “politician’s answers” from them. Just pure transparency.

The last thing I want to talk about is the writing style. Lovestruck’s style is worlds apart from Choices. To describe it for you, Choices feels like playing a fun app with cool stories. Lovestruck feels like reading a book, immersing yourself in a novel. And the style is unbeatable.

TLDR; it’s time to cut the apron strings and move on from Choices. Lovestruck awaits! Tagging @lovestruckvoltage because I love you and appreciate you.

#choices stories you play #playchoices #lovestruck #voltage inc #lovestruckvoltage

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