Caves & Dinosaurs - OPEN BETA TESTERS NEEDED!

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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Hello,

My name is Pieter, and I’m looking for some people to test out my first Choice Script game, Caves & Dinosaurs! I am a little bit of a noob, and I hope I did everything correctly.

I used the ChoiceScript IDE and ran a lot of tests until it didn’t seem to break anymore. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there hiding in wait.

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This game is a little different than most of the other awesome Choice Script games on here–mainly because Caves & Dinosaurs is based on a choose your own adventure game print book that I wrote.

I started this project as a quick add-on for people who backed my KILL ALL PLAYERS TPK boardgame on Kickstarter. What was initially intended to be a <100 pages CYOA pocket book, quickly turned into >500 pages, with 70+ endings and 50 ways to die. If I hadn’t pumped the breaks, it might have ended up twice as long. While the print version will be for sale, I was hoping to host the Choice Script version on this site as the only digital version.

This game is based on my TPK boardgame KILL ALL PLAYERS. In K.A.P. you (as a DM) are competing against other DM players in order to see who can kill their party first. You can set traps, buff skill tests, curse items, and spawn some over-powered monsters.

Unlike the KILL ALL PLAYERS boardgame, the Caves & Dinosaurs story takes place from the perspective of the players who don’t know they’re actually inside a game.

If you like D&D or LitRPG, you will love this interactive experience.

There were many limitations, due to being confined to my book’s formatting. In the future, I plan on making a different full-fledged Choice Script game. This one, however, is geared towards multiple playthroughs and has very limited character creation. Some endings are really quick, while others are quite lengthy. Each run through will act as a little puzzle piece to glean more details into the broader picture and plot.

I’m not looking for low-level feedback (grammar, word choice etc.). Nor am I looking for plot or character development suggestions.

Mainly I’m looking for typos, bugs, broken scenes, and scenes that don’t match up with each other. If you find any problems, you can post it here or email me.

Here is the OPEN beta link:
https://dashingdon.com/play/pawikoff/caves-and-dinosaurs

Thanks for your help!

All the best,

Pieter

37 Likes
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-that is quite the impressive scene list :joy:
-“Adventures needed!! Must be healthy. No experience necessary,” should be “adventurers” right?
-it feels less like a story, and much more like a game of chance. still very fun, but not as story oriented
-i found no typos, great job there
-at least the scenes I found, everything made sense
It certainly is not your traditional choice script game, but I found it fun to go through all the different paths. Great job and good luck!

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No kidding. I really look forward to writing a game with a lot less scenes lol For this book it seemed like that was the easiest way accomplish my goal. Thanks a lot for trying it out!

-Pieter

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Haha! This is really fun! The writing is snappy and easy to read, and it really gives the feel of childhood choose-your-own adventure books! I’ve only done about four playthroughs–two with DPS, one with Trapper and one with Healer. And of course, I died in all of them. I’ll keep on playing and will definitely let you know if there are any scene bugs!

As a side note: I also adore the illustrations you included! They’re wonderful!

Edit: I was poking around in the code to see how you did the SAVE mechanic, and I found it really interesting! So technically you never used the *finish command in any of the scenes? That’s very creative! And also echoing previous sentiments: that’s a whoooole lotta scenes! Wow!

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I played this a few times already, I was wondering is there a way to play the healer? I was able to play the rest of the group, even though most of the time I died, or not so happy of an ending. I survived with the trapper and dps. I just been trying to unlock the healer ( several times) and failed. Just curious. Any way it is interesting and I do enjoy it.

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As someone who once toyed with creating a game called You’re Gonna Die! that would feature dozens of colorful deaths, I am super enthused at this. However, I would caution that there’s a reason I never went through with it: I am not sure how many people will appreciate a game that can be this punishing, given the lack of save states in most ChoiceScript games. Still, I’m rooting for you, mate.

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There are two ways to be the Healer. At the Mud Puddle you have to help the person in the back make drinks and at the Crab’s Revenge you have to help clean up the mess after the guy crashes into you.

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Yeah, I wasn’t sure if it would be popular or not, but it was fun to code just to see if I could. :smiley:

On an unrelated note, one of my favorite games is Demon’s Souls.

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I was thinking about starting everyone off with 1 SAVE. Yes/no?

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No. I like the difficulty

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I seem to be racking up SAVES on almost every turn, so not sure why I’d need a freebie.

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Okay. I wasn’t sure if people wanted a little more control over picking their character in the first part. Thanks for the response.

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I’m loving the idea of a D&D type game, and the artwork for the dice is gorgeous. But the fights seem to be a little… thin gruel?

Was hoping for more of a multi-step battle with/without the die rolling visuals. Fights that I saw all seemed to be of the one-step “you die instantly” variety.

I know you said you’re going for a “tons of crazy deaths” thing, but still, insta-death feels a bit jarring, especialy because not much forewarning going on (hint of danger, etc).

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Welcome @PAWIKOFF . Congratulations, the game is fun.

Unfortunately, in my very first run, the game got stuck loading after a few pages (I had just chosen "buy him a new meal”). I was playing on my phone so I don’t have more debug info.

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Great job on breaking it! I feel like you should get a prize or something :smiley:

It should be fixed now.

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Someone messaged me about saving their game. So, I added a save/load password feature to the game. --edit n/m it’s not working the way I thought it would…

-Pieter

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