The war is over and Troy has been defeated. After ten long years, you, the monarch of Ithaca, have set your sails for home. But many trials yet remain between you and the loving embrace of your spouse and son: Polyphemus the Cyclops, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens, the Land of the Lotus-Eaters…you and your companions will even journey to the land of the dead.
And what of those memories that chase you: the ghosts of those that you slew on the fields of battle? What songs will the poets sing of you—will they hail you as a hero or a murderer? Do you even want to return to your spouse and the burdens of rulership? What if you find love or peace somewhere along the way? Not all homes look the same.
A reimagining of the Odyssey by @natalia.theodoridou, author of the Nebula-nominated Rent-a-Vice.
Directions for beta-testing:
Email me, jason AT choiceofgames for access.
- Do not send me DMs/PMs through the forum mail system, Discord, text message, carrier pigeon, or anything other method than email.
- When you send your EMAIL, include:
– the game you want to test in the Subject line of the email.
– your forum-name
– your real name (first and last)
— if your family/surname comes first, please indicate that. I will assume that your given name is listed first unless you tell me otherwise. - Do not email me multiple times about joining a beta. If you don’t email me as soon as I post a beta, you go into a queue. As we post new drafts, I admit more people from the queue. Eventually, I will get to you.
When you have been admitted to the beta, I will send you a link, a username, and a password as a reply to your email.
When you have feedback to submit:
- Return feedback to me, preferably part of the same email thread/chain, rather than a new one.
- Please send screenshots or copy/pasted quotes as often as you can; it helps us track down whatever observation you’re making. In particular, the author may see things that you don’t, and/or the screenshot may contain more information than you realize.
- if you’re submitting feedback using the Bug/Submit button in the game, make sure you include your handle/name in the body of the email. The Submit button obscures your email address, and I can’t give you credit for feedback if I don’t know who you are.
DO NOT POST ASKING WHAT MY EMAIL ADDRESS IS. The first test to becoming a beta tester is inferring what it is based on the above paragraph.
Lastly, you cannot be testing two games at once. Send feedback on one and you can apply to another.
Tips on How to Give Feedback
I’m looking for “high level” and “low level” feedback. Not mid-level feedback.
Low-level = typos and continuity errors. A continuity error is when a character’s gender flips, or someone comes back from the dead, or you run into a plotline that just doesn’t make sense (because it’s probably a coding error).
For these low-level issues, screenshots are very helpful. If you see a problem, take a screenshot, or copy and paste the text that is in error, and email that.
“High level” feedback has to do with things like plot, pacing, and characters. “Scene A didn’t work for me because x, y, and z,” is useful feedback. “B character was entirely unsympathetic, because u, w, and v,” is also useful feedback.
“Mid-level” feedback describes things like grammar, style, word choice, or the use of commas. As I said above, I do not want mid-level feedback. In particular, DO NOT WRITE TO ME ABOUT COMMAS.
“I had a great time and saw only a few spelling errors,” is not useful feedback. In fact, it’s the sort of thing that results in you not being given access to future betas.
Some examples of useful feedback
In Choice of the Dragon, you get to choose what type of wings you have: leather or scaled. Someone wrote in and asked about having feathered wings. Great suggestion! Done!
In “The Eagle’s Heir,” someone asked about Eugenie. They said that the romance moved too quickly–because she only appeared in the last third of the game–and wished they could have had an opportunity to meet her earlier. So the authors added an opportunity to meet her and start the romance earlier in the game (in a scene that already existed).
In “Demon Mark: A Russian Saga” several people commented on how the PC’s parents were unsympathetic, so the authors added a choice or two to deepen the relationship with the parents in the first chapter, to help better establish their characters.
Similarly, pointing out a specific choice and saying, “this is who I imagined my character was at this particular moment, and none of these options seemed right for me. I would have liked an option to do X instead,” is also really helpful feedback.
Another useful piece of feedback: if you choose an #option and then the results of that #option don’t make sense. Like, if you thought an #option might test one stat, but it seems to have tested a different one.