Announcing the Choice of Games Contest for Interactive Novels

You don’t have to localize expressions. We love idioms and expressions particular to your world.

But harbor/harbour or armor/armour or traveled/travelled isn’t up for debate.

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Mary,

Just checking to see if this was unchanged. So when I beta test, CoG doesn’t care if it’s public or private?

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We don’t. See the rules:

Am I allowed to publicly beta test my contest submission? Am I required to beta test my contest submission?

We strongly encourage you to beta test your game, either privately with beta testers you choose, or in a public beta that anyone can try. (Our forum is a great place to recruit beta testers!)

Beta testing is not formally required, but it’s almost impossible to write great material without anyone else’s feedback.

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Sorry, I’ve had a long day. Can’t believe I missed that.

Meh. It might have been added since last you looked.

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Doesn’t @Cataphrak write in Canadian (British) English?
Is that a grandfathered exception by now or do all Hosted Games get greater leeway there?

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That was by special request.

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Thanks for clarifying, I was automatically using British English spellings until I saw this.

However, I’d rather use “mum” than “mom”. Is this acceptable?

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Will the contest piece be published as submitted or can it be tweaked after the fact? (i.e. new characters, more scenarios, etc.)

We’re going to judge based on what’s submitted, but in principle you could keep working on it afterwards.

But, really, you should be putting everything you have into the submission.

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So, I know I’ve flip-flopped a million times, but I’ve decided that I’m actually going to submit The Magician’s Task for the contest. Originally, I had planned on the story being 500k words, and this is still the case, but instead of writing it all in one title, I’m going to make it a duology. TMT will be the first installment, clocking in at 200k. I’ll likely finish it in early January, which is right on time.

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I keep meaning to ask, are saved points allowed in a contest entry or would that be discouraged?

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They aren’t really COG style, but I don’t think it matters much.

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Okay, Thank you! :blush:

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Awesome! I’m really enjoying the game so far. :blush:

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Quick question: The submission page includes spaces for our game files and any images associated with the game, but I don’t see a space to upload the outline. Are we not expected to submit our outlines? Should we submit them along with the game files? Will the form accept non-.txt files? Thank you.

I don’t think an outline is required.

Excellent! I don’t have to go through and translate all my weird outline shorthand and abbreviations. Thank you for the prompt reply.

For games submitted to the contest, should I identify the cliff-hanger place where, in a published game, the free content would stop and the user would have to buy the rest of the game? If so, what is the standard way of identifying that? Or is that something for a process much closer to publication?

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It would be nice if you did, but you don’t have to for the contest.

(We will solicit your opinion before publication if you don’t.)