April 2025 Writer Support Thread

What do people usually do with WIP games once they have a significant amount of content or nearing completion?

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Do you mean the author, or what are you referring to specifically?

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I mean as the author. What do authors usually do? I understand that the purpose of posting a WIP is to get general feedback on the game, for playtesting, and of course for the warm glow of creating and giving a nice game to everyone. I’m interested in knowing what authors usually do after this step!

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hijacking this post because i’d also like to know :')

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Well, the main thing most of them want to do at that point is finish the game. :slight_smile:

They’re also likely to be doing a lot of testing, both actual playtesting and using tools like Quicktest and Randomtest to make sure there are no game-breaking bugs, among other things. They may try to interest potential testers in playing (or replaying) the game when it’s finished.

If they’re planning to publish via Hosted Games, they’re probably either creating or commissioning the required art assets. They may also be asking questions about the publishing process, either of authors who have already been published or of HG staff.

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Thank you, that’s wonderful to know! How much of the game do authors generally provide as a WIP? I’m curious if it’s common to put out the entire game as a WIP, and then publish it via Hosted Games. Or do authors usually leave out a portion of the game from the WIP?

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It really depends on the author how much they put on the (public) WiP thread, or even if they create a WiP thread at all. That part of the process is optional.

However, if you want to publish a game, you will have to run it through a beta process on the forum first. This has to contain the entire game. It does not have to be posted as a thread on the forum, though. (This is known as a ā€˜public’ beta.) It can also be run through the forum’s DM system. (A ā€˜private’ beta.)

This is what Choice if Game’s website has to say about it:

This is one of the more recent forum threads on the topic:

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Thank you Cecilia_Rosewood! I’m really glad that ā€œfull public betaā€ is one of the acceptable options. I’ve always wanted to do this but my worry was that it would interfere with the Hosted Games workflow. It turns out that not only is it allowed, it is encouraged!

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I took a couple of days off, and now this got too long, so here's it under cut.

I do what I’d want to play. That means I don’t operate on ā€œis this sufficiently difficultā€ scale, but on ā€œis this sufficiently enjoyableā€ scale. I don’t see any point in making good outcomes harder to achieve, if people find achieving them easy when they gravitate towards making good choices that lead to the good outcomes.

(I do want to make them work for their bad outcomes though.)

…at the stage where you think it’s ready?

I haven’t, but that’s an intriguing title I approve of so much.

Those are great!

I like writing the build-up, I hate writing the payoff.

Drag it through the mud! That could fix your build-up problem. :face_with_tongue:

I read ā€œa werewolf weekā€ :sweat_smile: and I’d really prefer to avoid that. I don’t have time to be stuck as a wolf before Easter.

…I read ā€œfor your porposesā€.

That’s it. I really need to clean my glasses today.

What’s a benefit of putting the stats-to-show in a choice? Couldn’t you just put them in a regular text block? (Or wait, can you run randomtest with it showing only the choices, but not the fulltext?)

Don’t sit on games, they make poor chairs!

…I’m having an urge to make a stat named ā€œBatā€. And maybe give an achievement ā€œI Am The Nightā€ when you hit 100% on it.

Deus ex machina!

It’s an abandoned off-brand Vault-Tec Vault and the character in question hooked into the system to prevent it from killing everyone when they set shop in it. :face_with_tongue:

Which means…

No, MC. You are not.

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Bingo.

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On an unrelated note, it always amazes me that I can easily bash out 5k words in an evening when writing a game, but at work I spend the entire day to write 1k words. Granted, the 5k words tends to have consistency issues or plot contradictions, but those are easy to fix. It also feels much easier to write choicescript narrative than it is to write fan fiction!

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…plot contradictions aren’t always easy to fix though. Especially if you don’t catch them early enough. Best to stay on a lookout for those, otherwise you might find yourself 1 mil words in and then realize the only way your plot works is if everyone (including your worldbuilding rules and/or physics) is acting ridiculously out of character!

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After a very difficult week, including an urgent flight to handle a health emergency in my family, I am back in the game. Still shaken, but the worst has been averted.

I didn’t manage to get any work done last weekend, and I’m not sure if I can move myself to action this weekend. My current plan is now to fix bugs and typos, as well as implement small changes, on my previously-set easter weekend deadline, while postponing the other changes.

Following that, I’m planning to write an additional chapter, incorporate feeback, roll out the updated game, and see how much interest it draws on the second round. This might take a while, since I see nothing but stormy economic times in the months ahead. (But I’ll be happy if I’m proven wrong.) From there, I’ll make an assessment and decide if I will submit the project to HG, leave it on itch or return the game to the storage bin.

I managed to get pretty thought out and detailed feedback on my first round of beta testing for Scarlet Sorceress. More quality, less quantity compared to Dragon of Steelthorne. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. To everyone who had shown interest so far, thanks again. I’ll see what I can cook up for the next round.

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Today is the national day of Finnish language, and I want to celebrate by writing something. I’ve been spending five hours to try and decide what, but to no avail so far, which is annoying.

But still, it’s a day worth celebrating.

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I started using something like:

*if (character_approval >=1)
                *set character_approval - 1

Early on just because I know not only can characters be haters, but there are so many players that like to be haters too (definitely not me, no way). :joy: But then also I wouldn’t actually have to track if there are more or less positive reactions than negative.

Unfortunately the only Finnish word I know, maybe, is salmiakki. Love that stuff.


Currently I’m feeling some writing paralysis because I’m so, so, so, near to the end of this branch. It’s almost like I’m incapable of moving because I’m staring at the light at the end of the tunnel rather than crawling my way there. Maybe I’ll just do more reading today and come back to it tomorrow. :smiling_face_with_tear:

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Yeah, I’ve wound up doing something along those lines now. Just plugged it at the start of a next chapter so I didn’t have to go through every single instance.

I’m not looking forward to whenever I go back to check whether you can raise relationships to reasonable levels, though ><

sometimes you gotta just throw the stuff at the wall. writing it badly can get you ā€˜unstuck’ to write it well. I relate to the feeling a lot, though.

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Hey there, my friends, I could really use some of your sage advice.

Lately, I’ve been diving into Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, and honestly, the deeper I go, the more obsessed I get with that world. It just hits different compared to your usual fantasy fare. Like, the best way I can describe it is that it reads like a dream. There’s this hazy, distant quality to everything. It’s mysterious, set in a far-off land (unless you’re from Britain, I guess), and it feels like a completely unique kind of fantasy.

Here’s the thing though, I really want to write something inspired by that vibe. I want to channel those same feelings onto a Word doc, capture that mythic, fading world feeling. Just a little something to kill time while I keep putting off what I actually should be writing, you know how it is. But I keep hitting a wall. I know this flavor of fantasy is different, it feels different, but I can’t quite put my finger on why. Beyond the dreamy atmosphere and the distant setting, I don’t really know how to break down what makes it tick.

I saw a review online that said the world of the book feels like ā€œa story set in a land long past its golden age, fated to decline.ā€ And yeah, that’s a solid starting point. But it still feels like there’s more to it that I’m not grasping yet.

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At the very least, it should be easier to plug in a +1 every here and there – or even just make their friend/romance goal levels lower, than to do checks and balances! So you’re already done with the hard part!

You’re right though. :sob:Just gotta push through, and maybe, just maybe it’ll end up half-way decent? That might be asking a lot lmao.

One nice thing about Arthurian-inspired stories is that there is a lot of them! You could potentially seek out Arthurian novels/media and use those to help narrow down your list of like/dislike. Does one do it better than another, to you, personally? If yes, what parts called to you and if no, what parts took you out of it? Having that kind of data on hand might help you sort out some thoughts and feelings!

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It’s brilliant. Check it out if you get the chance.

The vast majority of the advice in the book holds up 17 years later, and will continue to do so. I especially like that the advice is framed as ā€œobservationsā€ rather than ā€œrulesā€.

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Feeling really good about Star Crystal Warriors Go so I thought I’d post here. I’m doing a clean-up of the earlier chapters to make sure personality stats and skills are fairly balanced. I know these numbers are small for this forum, but I’m proud that I originally signed on to bring the game up to 150K but am now up to 188K and on track for around 220K by the time I write the endings chapter.

One thing I’m thinking about is the magical girl transformations. In manga and shows, transformations are a big deal, but right now we focus on them in the early chapters and then skip through them with a brief mention later on. If you were reading a magical girl anime, would you want more emphasis on the transformations? I.e. not copy and paste text, but specifically mentioning the changes, lighting, reaction of enemies, etc.? Or do you think that would get tiring after a few chapters? I personally kind of want to add in more of it, but I’m interested in suggestions.

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