If you’ve used social media recently, you’ve likely come across at least one ad promoting a storytelling app. From Choices to Hooked, this new sub-genre has grown considerably, often stealing the spotlight with bizarre ads promoting stories about romance, murder, and more. However, despite their initial similarities, these apps vary wildly in genre, style, and—most importantly—in quality. While some apps provide a rich reading experience, others lack story and are more focused on encouraging the user to spend money. In order to determine which storytelling apps are actually worth the storage space, I downloaded five of the most commonly promoted apps and gave them a full month of use. I will be reviewing them based on the quality of the stories and of the app itself to decide which of these apps are hidden gems, and which are better left uninstalled.
Hooked: 3/10. Hooked is an app that specializes in telling stories through the texting format. It does this by having the reader click the screen, causing the text to appear in small chunks, similar to reading a text conversation. It also has short form shows as well, but for this list I will only be reviewing the written stories.
The minute I installed this app I knew that this app would not be great. In order to access ANY of Hooked’s stories the user must subscribe to pay five dollars a WEEK! To put this into perspective, Netflix and Hulu both cost less than ten dollars a MONTH. I subscribed to the free trial so I could at least view the content, but this was already foreboding.
The stories on Hooked are fine. They aren’t anything special, but they aren’t terrible. The unique formatting helps the stories that focus on scarier elements stand out, but it falls flat when there are more contemporary plots. Simply put, Hooked is not worth paying five dollars a week, and I cancelled my subscription before I was charged.
Galatea: 7/10. Galatea is an app that functions a lot like a Kindle, with an expansive library of stories for the user to read. Unlike many of the other apps on this list, Galatea is not a choose your own adventure style app—rather, it just provides the stories as is. The stories on the app can vary in quality, but overall they tend to be written professionally and offer several stories that I personally really enjoyed. There are occasional oddities in the stories that may confuse readers who are more used to professionally published work, but overall the stories are coherent and often fast paced.
The stories featured tend to focus on the romance genre, specifically paranormal romance, and a majority of the stories on the app surround werewolves or some other creature. I’m a fan of paranormal romance, so this wasn’t an issue for me, but readers who are unfamiliar with some the the common tropes of this genre may not enjoy it.
One area that will make orbreak one’s enjoyment of this app is the adult themes. The romance on this app can be very spicy and sex scenes are pretty common. This doesn’t effect the rating of the app overall, but it is important to know going in that explicit content is the norm, so those who are uncomfortable with them can avoid it.
Where the app lost some points for me, however, is their built in monetary system. When reading a story the user can only read one ‘chapter’ every six hours. If the user wants to keep on reading they can either pay five dollars a month for unlimited reading or buy coins to unlock the next chapter. Due to these intensives, the app can be difficult to use without paying, and since there is no in-app way to earn coins, the monetary system is designed exclusively to get more money.
However, I was able to use the app successfully without spending much money, and I do feel that many of the stories on the app are worth the wait.
Is it Love? Drago: 1/10. Is it Love? Drago is one in a series of apps, all titled Is it Love?, that have been regularly advertised. Since I didn’t want to play every app in the series, I downloaded the one that they seemed to advertise the most. This means that, unlike the other apps on this list, Is it love? Drago only tells one story.
The app tells the story of a young witch who has been hired as a nanny for a little girl while she’s in college. The house where she works also has two mysterious men who live there, and the young nanny must grapple with her attraction and curiosity as she discovers the secrets of this family. As a choose your own adventure style game, the user must guide the nanny and make choices that shape the ending.
To call this story a Twilight ripoff would be disrespectful to the Twilight books. The “mystery” element is completely pointless, especially because the logo for the app makes the answer painfully clear, and this leaves the reader frustrated as the nanny acts oblivious to the obvious red flags. The vampires also behave uncomfortably throughout the game, often just staring quietly at the character and never answering her questions and just overall being boring. The dialogue is also very stilted and it reads like a first draft, ruining any enjoyment that the reader could gain from playing. Truthfully, while I did attempt to play the game for a full month, I did not progress through much of the story because I had to constantly stop due to the writing; so while it is theoretically possible that the story improves, if I wasn’t writing this article I wouldn’t have completed the first chapter.
There is a coin system at play in the game—specifically, the user must pay coins to access each line, and after you spend them you either pay for more or wait 24 hours for more coins. This is a manageable system where the user can choose to be patient and get through the game without paying, however it doesn’t hide the overall flimsy storytelling of the app.
Choices: 7/10. Choices is a choose your own adventure game that has tons of different stories to choose from. The user selects a story from the many available and then reads it all the while making choices that effect the outcome of the game.
This was a difficult app to review due to the massive diversity presented by the stories available. While it does have some common themes, like a heavy focus on romance, the overall quality of each story varies wildly. In the end, I had to split the difference in my rating as it neither exceptional nor terrible.
In a similar vein, the monetary system for this app is also neither exceptional nor terrible. Diamonds are needed for certain choices and to style the playable character’s avatar, but it is possible to earn more as you play and they aren’t necessary to use the app successfully. Overall, Choices is a broad app that has its hits and misses but is generally a solid storytelling app.
The Arcana: 10/10. Lastly, we have The Arcana, a choose your own adventure game set in a medieval fantasy setting. The reader plays as the apprentice to the magician Asra who has lost all their memories except for the past three years. The apprentice is hired by the countess, Nadia, to catch a man named Julian who murdered the count, Lucio, three years ago. In this fantasy mystery, the reader can choose between six different paths, each with a character that they fall in love with. Each path also comes with a good and a bad ending, depending on the readers’ choices.
To say that I love this app is an understatement. Every character is meticulously written with unique and dynamic character arcs that make each romance plot fascinating. The amount of detail included in both the artwork and the storytelling also creates a reading experience that is unparalleled by any other app on this list. While the focus of the app is on the relationships, the plot of each route also receives a great deal of effort and care, making the stories told on this app truly magnificent.
The game does have a coin mechanic, but the coins are only used to buy extra scenes within each chapter and do not affect the story in any way. It is fully possible to complete every route without spending any coins. There is also a mini-game where the user can earn coins, so the user could do that as well. All in all, this is a fantastic storytelling app that has set the bar high for others like it.
The Spellbinding Shelf 