Here's a dropbox with a LOT of CYOA's:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9ijwopa42ke49q1/AAA40vUS2BzstD9eHyyBLTr8a?dl=0
Here's some CYOAs from 2016
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B03PxmupuDVLN1lNdjFxdlN3SVE
Yet another CYOA archive:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0Bwl-aJm3wG4nN2w1TGJCSVlQZ2M&usp=sharing
Here's Beri's OC (genie cyoa+)
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bxbrh3Q2CTiyfjM3SjU2TWNJQ3VpZ2pWYk0xRUJ4LVZYRkgyTTlwUTQwZjZhN0FNTTJ3LUE
Slut Life Anon's Folder
https://mega.nz/#F!AYwlHJBK!xVrJUD4PSAJACtDY3g_Lgw!IAxFHCTT
Here's Liminal Phrenic's blog with most of his cyoa stuff theouterworlds.blogspot.com
Here's Spadesy's wordpress with most of his cyoa stuff feathersnake.wordpress.com
Here's Highlander's Traveller blog http://travellercyoa.livejournal.com/

List of Some Image Resources:
http://game-icons.net
http://www.pixiv.net
http://drawcrowd.com
http://digital-art-gallery.com
https://www.artstation.com
http://coolvibe.com
http://www.zerochan.net
http://danbooru.donmai.us
http://gelbooru.com
http://www.deviantart.com
http://fantasygallery.net
http://grognard.booru.org
http://fantasy-art-engine.tumblr.com
https://www.pinterest.com
https://www.google.com/imghp

Some Musings & Advice by a CYOA Author (read the FAQ first):
http://pastebin.com/qaL8nDD8


==CYOA FAQ==
Q: What's a CYOA?
A: It's like a cross between an RPG's character creation system and game of "would you rather". A more accurate name would be "Choice Games".

Q: What are they for?
A: CYOAs are there to spark your imagination, provide escapism, and occasionally act as writing prompts. You'll get ones as simple as picking a special magical soda to drink which gives you a neat perk to live with in life, or complex ones to create your own fantasy domains with a slew of customization options. Some of the more complex CYOAs could be used to generate characters for an RPG.

Q: Who makes them?
A: Anyone can. You can try to make one yourself, it's not that difficult.

Q: I want to make a CYOA. How?
A: You start with an idea, or crib a setting from your favorite book/game/chinese cartoon. It's usually best to start out small. Keep your big ideas in reserve until you have the skill to actualize them properly.

Q: What do I need?
A: You're going to need an image editor or DTP program. Paint or Word will suffice, but better looking CYOAs require better software.

Paint.net (www.getpaint.net) is excellent for novices. GIMP (www.gimp.org) is more powerful, but has a steep learning curve. Beware, as Paint.net has particularly dreadful text editing.

Scribus (www.scribus.net) is an open-source desktop-publishing software. It has solid text editing and layout functionality, but you'll need an image editor for any fancy graphics.

Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator are perhaps the ultimate tools for CYOA creation. They're fairly hard to learn, but they're powerhouses for a reason. The downside is that they're very expensive, although Photoshop CS2 (a very old version of Photoshop) is offered for free (https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/cs2-product-downloads.html). Photoshop Elements is also offered at a much more generous price, but it's essentially a stripped down version of the CS/CC series.

Q: I need images. Where?
A: See the links at the top of this paste for some neat recommendations. There's plenty of image sources out there short of using Google Images. The /tg/ booru (grognard.booru.org) is stuffed with character and setting art of all description, all neatly tagged and sorted. Other popular resources for images are DeviantArt or Pinterest. There's usually a character art thread running on /tg/. You can request stuff there. You can also try /hr/ and /wg/.

Q: Any tips?
A: Generally speaking, a standard CYOA should be about 1200px wide. Remember, most screen resolutions don't exceed 1366*768, and many readers browse using mobile devices. Try to aim for a resolution where most users will only have to scroll vertically.

PNG is the preferred format for image CYOAs due to it being a "lossless" format (the compression isn't apparent in the image quality). However, for larger and more colourful images, you might want to use the JPG format in order to fit /tg/'s 8mb file limit. Be wary that while JPG files are usually smaller than their PNG counterparts, the compression is much more noticeable in the image itself.

/tg/ supports PDFs. You can export PDFs from some programs, or use (http://smallpdf.com/jpg-to-pdf) to convert your images to PDF. Some people dislike PDFs. They have advantages: they're easy to upload, and don't take up a lot of space in the thread. However, they're awkward to scroll through when saved, take a while to load and process, and can cause difficulties for those on mobile devices. Typically, they downgrade the quality of your CYOA by a large amount when used to compress larger CYOAs.

If you want some thematically-appropriate fonts, try (www.dafont.com) and (www.google.com/fonts). Try not to go overboard; only pick really stylized fonts for titles and headers. The number one thing you must maintain in a CYOA is legibility; a basic, clean, and readable font is the best choice for body text.


Remember this: Good design will draw people to your CYOA. Good writing, thoughtful choices, and originality will keep them reading.