Virtue's Erasure is a book in Pixelberry's Choices: Stories You Play series. It was released in September 2025 and is ongoing to this day.
The book opens with a woman named Violet celebrating her graduation from Hartfeld University at a local nightclub. Because it's a special time in her life she decides to go wild. After doing plenty of shots and flirting with several attractive people, Violet stumbles out of the nightclub while drunk off her ass and flags down a cab. She gets into bed and sends someone named Indigo Valentine a text (the contents of the text are unknown). She scrolls through her phone to find a picture of said person. It is at this point that the other character, Indigo Valentine, is customized. Once they've been customized, Violet smiles to herself as she looks at their picture and closes her eyes. The screen fades to black...
"VIOLET! WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF?!" screams the person who turns out to be the main character, Indigo Valentine.
Tropes:
- Adjustable Censorship: The Content Filter allows you to choose whether or not you would like to censor violent scenes, strong language, or sexual references. With all three settings set to "censored", the book will have roughly the same level of violence as Wake The Dead or Crimes of Passion and a similar level of sex references and language as most Choices stories that are rated 17+. Uncensored, the book easily hits the equivalent of an AO (Adults Only) rating. Despite this, the book is still marked as 17+.
- Bisexual Love Triangle: If Blake and Indigo choose to remain just friends, Indigo will instead be torn between their two longtime friends Navy (male) and Scarlett (female), both of whom they've started developing feelings for.
- Bowdlerization: Can be self-inflicted via the Content Filter. For example, if the level of violence is set to "censored", the scene with Violet's suicide is just a black screen with the details described.
- Breaking Old Trends:
- This is the first Choices story to have difficulty settings. Easy is for those who just want to enjoy the story, Medium is the developer's intended way to experience the story, and Hard is for players who like a challenge (and boy, will they get it).
- While plenty of Choices stories feature Content Warnings, this one features a "Content Filter". Strong language, violence, and sexual references can be marked as either censored or uncensored in the relevant menu. However, if changes are made, they won't take effect unless you either replay the chapter (unless it's the first chapter, where you are given the option to activate the content filter).
- The main character's gender and appearance can be customized, but their name can't, something that has never been seen before in a Choices story (Most Wanted and The Crown and the Flame had protagonists with set names, but they couldn't be customized in any way).
- Call-Back: The book brings back the Nerve score system from It Lives. Unlike that series, however, the Player Character is the only one with a Nerve score.
- Character Customization: Indigo's appearance and gender can be decided when you switch to them in the second half of Chapter 1. Indigo's future primary love interest (or close friend, depending on their sexual orientation), Blake Winters, can be customized when you meet them, as male or female, and either Black or White.
- Colourful Theme Naming: The Player Character, the Decoy Protagonist, and their first three love interests are respectively called "Indigo" (the 6th colour of the rainbow), Violet (the 7th and final colour of the rainbow), "Blake" (can mean either black or white), "Navy" (a dark blue colour), and "Scarlett" (a deep red colour). Additionally, indigo and violet are the last two colours of the rainbow and right next to each other, reflecting how close the two characters are (or were), before the former's suicide.
- Darker and Edgier: This book has some of the most disturbing scenes you will ever see in a Choices story.
- The first such visual occurs in Chapter 1 when Indigo walks into Violet's room to find that she killed herself via pills and alcohol; if uncensored, her dead body will be shown sprawled over her bed with an bottle of pills in one hand and an empty bottle of whiskey in the other. Additionally, this book Starts with a Suicide (of which the aftermath and the other character's tearful reactions are shown), something that would never happen in a canon Choices story.
- One route deals with the main character experiencing a guilt-induced hallucination of their dead best friend or girlfriend. While a few Choices stories have a character faking their death or being falsely assumed dead, none of them have had a presumed dead character turn up alive, only for them to be a guilt-induced hallucination.
- One chapter involves browsing the Dark Web while playing as Mel Gray. Only the Deep Web has ever been mentioned in a canon Choices story, and even then, only once as an offhand remark.
- Choices stories rarely have true "game overs" beyond "You have died" and then clicking again to restart from a checkpoint (with Endless Summer having a Non-Standard Game Over for No Fair Cheating and Murder at Homecoming having the Game Over message "Your investigation has failed" that covers both dying and getting caught snooping). This story has a whole bunch of game over sequences, often with accompanying visuals.
- Decoy Protagonist: Violet. After they arrive home after celebrating their graduation, they send a text to Indigo Valentine, who turns out to be the main protagonist.
- Developer's Foresight: If Indigo and Violet were best friends, the former's Nerve score drops from 100 to 25 after her suicide. If they were in a relationship, Indigo's Nerve score will drop to 0, because losing a girlfriend hurts worse than losing a best friend.
- Driven to Suicide: Violet overdoses on pills and alcohol after coming home from her graduation party, to the horror of her life partner Indigo. Played with later on, since she faked her death in at least one route.
- Faking the Dead: Near the end of the Body route, it's revealed that Violet faked her suicide so she could start a new life. To a lesser extent, the Mixed route has Violet's (genuine) suicide attempt fail, and her doctor falsifies her death and takes her home to look after her themself.
- First-Episode Twist: Chapter 1 reveals that Violet (the game's Decoy Protagonist) is either the ex-boyfriend/girlfriend or best friend of Indigo Valentine (the Player Character). It's also revealed that Violet intended to kill herself (or at least make it look that way in the Body route), after it was initially left ambiguous as to whether it was intentional, or whether Violet simply partied too hard and didn't think her actions through.
- Game Over: Ironically, usual failure displays a "Chapter Failed" message (with the description below it varying depending on the circumstances), while failing a chapter after the Point of No Return has been reached displays "Game Over" and the description below it being much more ominous.
- Gender Bender Name: Indigo (the main character), Blake (the gender-customizable love interest), and Mel (whose full name is Melvin if male and Melanie if female).
- The Ghost: Blake mentions their ex-partner Perry at several points throughout the story, but they are never seen.
- It's All My Fault: Ironically, if Violet commits suicide and tells Indigo not to blame themself, Indigo will believe that Violet is just trying to spare their feelings. This is why Indigo sees Violet at the end of Chapter 13 while visiting her grave, it's not Violet, but a guilt-induced hallucination.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Downplayed with Mel Gray, who is well-intentioned, but them falsifying the death of somebody who attempted suicide to "protect" them is rather misguided, and it would realistically get Mel in a lot of trouble with the ethics board.
- Multiple Endings: There will be multiple routes with more than one ending for each, with the route depending on the choices that Indigo makes in the flashback sequences and their Nerve score.
- Body: Violet intentionally faked her death in order to start a new life away from Indigo. Body points are earned through flashbacks during choices where Indigo is (or comes across as) an uncaring partner towards Violet. If Indigo's Nerve score is high, they will forgive themselves and try to move on with their life, if it's low, they will fake their own death to spite Violet, seemingly not caring about the other people in their life.
- Spirit: Violet did commit suicide, but not because of anyone in particular, she felt that the world was better off without her. The Violet we saw from the end of Chapter 13 to the end of Chapter 23 was actually a guilt-induced hallucination on Indigo's part. Spirit points are earned through flashbacks during choices where Indigo helps Violet through her problems and brushes off any notion that she is a burden. If Indigo's Nerve score is high, they will have the strength to seek help from a therapist, if it's too low, they will have a mental breakdown and have to be committed.
- Mixed: Violet attempted Suicide by Pills and alcohol, but she was revived at the hospital. Upon hearing Violet's story (that she felt that the world was better off without her at least partly because even her partner doesn't seem to want her aroundnote ), her doctor, Mel Gray told Indigo that she had died, while they kept her in a makeshift hospital in their home, wanting the poor girl to recover without Indigo causing any more damage. This route requires roughly an equal number of both Body and Spirit points. If Indigo's Nerve score is high, they have the option of either trying to contact Violet, apologise for the events of the story, and help her recover, or leave her where she is and move on, with Mel Grey preventing Indigo from ever contacting her again. If Indigo's Nerve score is too low, Indigo will cut ties with everyone they knew, leave town, and never return.
- Promoted to Love Interest: Chase and Monique are not love interests at first, but after the events of Chapter 7, one of them will comfort Indigo, who will have the option to flirt with them. If their relationship score is high enough, they will reciprocate, and you will have the option of kissing them. After this, their romance route unlocks (the romance route can still be unlocked if Indigo doesn't kiss or flirt with them, but it will happen a bit later on, and only with a high enough relationship score).
- Relationship Values: Each character has a relationship score marked out of 100. Some dialogue changes based on characters' relationship scores, and having a high relationship score with each character will provide benefits later on in the story.
- Sanity Meter: Indigo has a Nerve score (returning from the It Lives series). They lose most or all of it upon seeing that Violet killed herself.
- Second Episode Introduction: Chapter 2 introduces Blake's close friends, Monique and Chase.
- Time Skip: The rest of Chapter 1 takes place six weeks after Violet's suicide, with Indigo's friends convincing them to go out with them to take their mind off what happened.
- Unintentional Period Piece: Inverted, there are enough references that the player will easily realise that the story takes place in the mid-2020s (the timeframe the book was released in).
