Great question, Mark! I'm going very interactive-- rarely more than 6 messages before a moment of user engagement, to keep it feeling like a real "chat" with the character-- although the branches are very small, really just for banter rather than having the player/reader control narrative outcomes. My main thinking is that if there are too many character messages in a row, the player might lose the thread of the story or conversation if they look away from their phone and too much content comes in while they're distracted... I'm hoping that by having such frequent check-ins the story won't get "ahead" of the reader. Of course, it might also be my impulse to write this way because I'm a playwright, so my default style is writing two-character dialogue, lol ;) It'll be interesting to see how different tactics feel when published!

Great to meet some of the other makers here! I'm Megan, a playwright and game story writer from Oakland, CA. Can't wait to see what y'all create with this tool :)