The Collar

Editorial Meh

The Collar is an old CYOA text game (circa 2014) centred on a mind-control / corruption premise, re-released here with AI-generated images added by an unknown third party — not, by all accounts including a comment from the author himself, the original creator JoeForest. As a piece of writing the game is modest at best: reviewers note it is a very early work, tamer and rougher in craft than the author's later output, and opinions on the story range from mildly charmed by the concept to bluntly dismissive. The mind-control mechanic is noted as inconsistently applied, and the text carries old typos unchanged. As a creative work it lands in forgettable territory — a thin, dated short-form CYOA that holds little beyond its central kink premise. The AI imagery universally draws contempt: characters stare into the camera, scene descriptions are ignored wholesale, the titular collar barely appears, named characters turn up in wrong scenes, clones of the protagonist appear where only one person should be present, and clothing choices have essentially no effect on the visuals. The images are widely described as careless slop that actively undermines what little the text offers. If you want the experience this was nominally adapting, the original HTML-only version from 2014 is functionally identical and without the distraction.