(Wishlist it on Steam! It really, really helps)
Use magic to play games of royal intrigue, defeat your enemies, and achieve glory! Will you
kiss royalty, backstab nobles, or win tournaments?
Yesterday you were just a squire, but today you’re an aspiring battlemage! It was a good thing you went to the market for Sir Kelton the other day, or you would never have seen the ad on the wall. “Learn from home!” it said, “Full battlemage qualification by mail!” it said. And now it’s finally here: Your very first battlemage assignment from The Legendary El Cano himself! It’s a bit… open-ended, though. Should you solve it with elemental magic? Or maybe you should use an illusion to fool someone? You could try to raise something from the dead with dark necromancy. Or perhaps a healing spell would impress your legendary teacher?
And don’t forget the “battle” part of battlemage—you still need to learn how to use a weapon of some kind. While you’re deciding all that, there’s still the whole squire thing. You know, the thing that’s funding these magic lessons? Sir Kelton won’t be too happy if he catches you practicing magic, so you might want to act like you actually want to be a knight. Maybe win a tournament or two, or get in good with the royal family—maybe even try your hand at the game of court politics. Or if you really want to get on Kelton’s good side, prove yourself on the battlefield. A mysterious invader is on the border, and you could be the one to stop them. Every hero had to make their start as a squire, right?
Directions for beta-testing:
Email us, beta AT choiceofgames for access. (This changed several months ago, so take note if you haven’t beta tested in a while.)
- Do not send me DMs/PMs through the forum mail system, Discord, text message, carrier pigeon, or any 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 us multiple times about joining a beta. If you don’t email us as soon as we post a beta, you go into a queue. As we post new drafts, we admit more people from the queue. Eventually, we will get to you. When you have been admitted to the beta, we 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 beta@choiceofgames, 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 THE BETA 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.