CHYOA

A Smorgasbord of Stories

Though interactive pornographic fiction is relatively unknown, that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth checking out. Nonpornographic choose your own adventure fiction has never been hugely popular compared to traditional writing, and the same is doubly true of erotic interactive fiction. have always CHYOA is something of a lone wolf in the field, but with over 13,000 stories and new ones being uploaded every single day, it’s more than enough even on its own. The stories on CHYOA range from quick five minute experiences to sagas longer than your average novel. Without physical limitations and with the ability to be frequently revised and updated, some of these stories can reach a truly gargantuan size. Many of the longest stories even approach three thousand chapters long—in a sense, they’re almost a complete textual world to explore at that point, rather than a straightforward or even a path-branching book. When you enter the site, you’ll be greeted with an almost overwhelming series of choices and options. Thankfully, the site has a beautiful modern layout that stands in stark contrast to the aesthetics of its sister site, while retaining the straightforward usability of Literotica. The most obvious choice right off the bat will be a list of recently updated stories. However, like Literotica, CHYOA has no barriers to entry, so many of these stories will be subpar at best. For this reason, you’re far better off checking out either the featured story of the week that appears on the sidebar, or scrolling down just a bit to reach the list of the ten highest-rated stories on the site. Beyond these top-quality selections, CHYOA really does a fantastic job with their detailed and well implemented category system, covering everything from typical straight-forward sex stories to fantasy and sci-fi fetish porn. Among the standard selections are basic erotic stories in the “Erotic Couplings” page and the types of stories you would expect any porn site to have—MILF porn, lesbian porn, and the like. Erotic literature isn’t just for fetish and taboo porn, and CHYOA has enough vanilla porn to satisfy anyone who is just looking for a passionate or erotic story. That being said, the site also doesn’t shy away from the strange and the different. They have a massive mind-control section featuring stories with advanced technologies, mind-altering viruses, and magic spells that warp their victims' minds towards invariably sexual ends. There is also a vast collection of stories containing various degrees of nonconsent and other legally and morally suspect sex acts that are much more properly explored in erotic fiction than in traditional porn. Unfortunately, the categories can not be combined for the purposes of CHYOA. This is particularly disappointing because in many cases it is clear that the authors intended to have multiple elements contained within their fiction, but due to the limitations of the site had to select only one representative category. This doesn’t hurt the porn itself, but it is a bit frustrating when, for example, a lesbian MILF mind control story has to select only one of these three themes for the sake of fitting into the site’s system. One unique and incredibly enjoyable aspect of CHYOA is the ability to customize the names of characters and other variables into certain stories. Whether you use this to insert yourself and your crush directly into the action of the story, or to populate its world with your friends and lovers, in either case it hugely adds to the immersion and overall enjoyment of the story. There are also tags that can be either clicked and then filtered through or used as search terms. These can be useful additions to your navigational toolset, but shouldn’t be relied on too closely. Just as there are no barriers preventing poorly-written stories from being uploaded to CHYOA, there’s nothing in place to ensure that tags are used accurately or fully. And even some well-written stories might be poorly or incompletely tagged, so relying on them to accurately describe a story’s contents might be misleading, or, worse, might cause you to miss a well-written story entirely. Once you do settle on a story, the main body of the work will take up most of the page, but there are also some other areas that you should pay attention to. As mentioned earlier, there are categories and tags that can here be clicked to jump elsewhere, but you can also click on the author of the story to move to a page containing a brief bio as well as links to all of their works. You can even click to see a story map showing all of the branching paths, although Pornsites.com recommends avoiding this until you’re done exploring the story if you’re worried about spoilers.

Finding Your Way Around

Upon entering into a page for ay tag or category, you have several options to refine your search results using the sidebar to zoom in towards the perfect story. One of the most useful options that Pornsites.com found is the ability to filter things to only see the customizable stories—if you’re in love with the idea of being able to insert yourself and the people you know into the stories you read, this will ensure that you’re able to do it with every story you read. They also have the typical filters that you’ve come to know and love from most porn sites—you can filter by release date and length, as usual. But there are also several options unique to this medium. You can elect to only view stories from a certain point of view—first, second, or third person—as well as choosing to only see stories from a male or female point of view. CHYOA also hosts a long and detailed guide to the site, both as a reader and as a writer, as well as a forum for the discussion of stories and other related topics. All of this can be done quickly and easily due to the fantastic website design employed by CHYOA. The site itself is beautiful, and not marred by any advertisements or extraneous features. Whitespace is used to incredible effect, and navigating the site is as simple as it is enjoyable. This is only possible due to the fact that the site is supported by donors through Patreon, so if you like what you read, be sure to return the favor and show your support.

Nearly Flawless Interactive Erotica

CHYOA is nearly perfect. The design is modern and unobtrusive, allowing the excellent stories to shine. Though the catalog isn’t quite as vast or varied as Literotica’s, it’s growing quickly and already has enough stories to satisfy even the most dedicated reader. That being said, it isn’t perfect. There are a fairly large amount of poorly-written stories to wade through, though if you stick to the right sorting methods these are easy to ignore. And it would be great if they added the ability for stories to be placed into multiple categories, but again, this is by no means a deal-breaker. But these flaws can easily be forgiven. Finding an excellent story (or ten) is never difficult, and the choose your own adventure style can be incredibly immersive, erotic, and enjoyable. Plus, the site is completely free and doesn’t have any ads—so there’s nothing to lose by giving it a shot.