Cliffhanger: Challenger of Tomorrow—Punch Fascists in the retro-futuristic 1930s!

That escalated quickly!

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This was great, wildly fun, very immersive, and unpredictable in the best way. I thoroughly enjoyed my first playthrough. As an experienced creator of Fascist-punching-themed choice games, I salute and congratulate the author!

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Utterly fantastic. This really scratched an itch for a rollicking alternate history pulp adventure that I seem to be constantly looking for and rarely find.

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Congrats on the release, William Brown.

This game gives me the same vibes that The Watchmen and Rocketeer do; well done!

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I dont know how to recruit sonia or 44

I was one of the beta testers on this game, and in my opinion it’s the best COG release so far this year.

William Brown now takes his place alongside @Moochava, @Gower, and Kevin Gold as one of my favorite COG authors.

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1930s games forever! Now we just have to start thinking about crossovers!

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After reading these reviews, I’m sold.

Just finished it today. Here are my thoughts:

Elements I adored:

  • The writing itself. Wow, William sure can turn a phrase! I really enjoyed how he described the action, the settings, etc. You can tell he’s put his work in strengthening his craft.

  • The richness of the world. Talk about a fully-developed universe! I can’t imagine how much mental energy William put into world-building for this game, like seriously I can’t imagine. I’d conservatively estimate that one could spin off an entirely new game from any of over 100 references he makes to different individuals, settings, ideas, phrases, etc. I kept thinking, “Oh that’s a cool premise!” “Oh that is a really neat idea!”

  • The tone. I knew I loved the tone just from reading the Prologue. I even loved the little commercial snippets between Chapters. It really made reading this a memorable experience.

  • The MC. My MC was awesomesauce; I felt like I had a rich backstory and wasn’t just some newb young person.

Elements that I didn’t enjoy as much:

  • The number of characters. I just found the dozens and dozens of introduced characters as overwhelming. I know this type of pulpy story is going to focus more on action and a fast pace, both of which I liked, but I feel like the story almost totally sacrificed character development at the altar of action and plot. Honestly, I didn’t care about a single NPC because I didn’t get to know anyone in any substantive way.

  • There was a lot of telling versus showing. There were a lot of info-dumps about lots of places, people and things, many of which were rarely, if ever, mentioned again. Many times I felt like the story was telling me things instead of my character experiencing them. And many of these paragraphs were loooooong. IMO, the story would have been stronger with fewer characters and fewer locales, and more dialogue and character development.

Overall, I would recommend “Cliffhanger,” especially to those who love action and tons of MC-customization, and I’d rate it a 8/10.

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I rather enjoyed this one. I just completed my first playthrough and the ending was immensely satisfying, though I’ll refrain from giving away too much.

World building was top notch as usual. That really is one of your major strengths. There were a few concepts I did feel were a bit underutilized however.

The Abyssinian Empire was fascinating, but I feel like we should have seen a little more. Maybe acquire immortality for ourselves. We live the life to qualify, after all.

The other thing I wish we saw more of was the Soviet Union. It had by far the most interesting worldbuilding but we never actually get to travel there. After the revolution in Illyria, I feel we should have been able to affect Soviet politics. Princess Sonia may wish to reclaim her throne, but there’s also the immortal Lenin. Lenin hated Stalin. he’d definitely want to undo some of his crimes. Trotskyists were mentioned in Germany as well. I feel like a Trotskyist/Leninist rebellion/coup would have been very interesting. Maybe we could turn him into a cyborg, or invigorate him with occult magic. This could also help determine the Union’s role in the war. Perhaps Lenin would fight against the other empires.

This one’s a lot of fun, but I had two quibbles with it.

The Good: great pulp atmosphere makes for a very entertaining read. Unlike most COG entries, this one really makes you feel larger-than-life; you can play just about any pulp hero archetype, a rough-and-tumble soldier of fortune, a magician in the mold of Mandrake, a scientific adventurer, etc. The world design is entertaining and genuinely funny in its over-the-top descriptions; the protagonist inhabits a pretty way-out world, even by pulp standards, but the author has great fun with the crazily fantastic setting.

The story is pretty interesting too, and while it moves to a fairly preset conclusion, I felt like I had a lot of choice in shaping the kind of tale being told.

The Bad: I had two quibbles with the story. The first is that the numbered statistics which define the protagonist should have been explained to me as a reader. For example, there’s one opposing pair of personality stats called “righteous/reprobate” and a second called “idealist/unscrupulous.” It’s not obvious to me what the difference between the two is. The function of another stat, “Time”, is a complete mystery to me. Most COG games give you some explanation as to what the stats mean and I would have appreciated something like that here.

My second quibble is that the skill percentage system is a bit vague. I think the way it works is that having 50% in a skill like “action” is about average, having between 50% and 60% is excellent, and above 60% is outrageously superhuman. In practice I found this made for an awkwardly unintuitive system, because one can’t have below 50% in any skill, and while skill percentages supposedly go to 100%, getting above 60% in any one basically means that at a practical level you’ve maxed it out. I wish that the meaning of the number percentages assigned to skills had been explained a little better, or that a different system were used; maybe instead of number percentages, pulpy verbal descriptions like “bone-crushing brawler!” or “master of the mystic arts!” should have been used.

The Ugly: Not really a problem, but it’s worth noting that this is a fairly easy game, at least in the sense of being able to get desired outcomes. Fits the idea that one plays a larger-than-life superhero, but may not be everyone’s cup of tea. (Addendum: in my most recent walkthrough I deliberately made all decisions with the aim of failing skill checks. I still succeeded in defeating the main adversary at the end. I’m not even sure it’s possible not to triumph at the end, which certainly fits the genre but doesn’t make the stakes seem especially high.)

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Feels great that I can finally talk about this! Great to see this game released! Everything about it is exciting in my personal opinion, and the pulp ideas are always a joy to see!

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Whoever wrote that blurb does a hell of a job selling the game. I’m going to have to check it out.

This game was something else out of this universe I love the story lore and its characters and the fight with our nemesis just to put him on top of a pole to hang instead of fighting like a man or woman

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Outstanding worldbuilding.

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Small patch pushed addressing some typos.

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Question: Am I the only one who has the feeling that his stats should move but sometimes they don’t?
I’m probably not quite far, but for some. Choices ( after Dr. Zetas “death” I chose the plan part, having a flat in the Bronx, I next choose the Stealth approach but nothing changed. Also Science, History, etc. Haven’t changed even though I choose answers that are connected to the topic sometimes feel as if they should have a weight, but all I get is the next page instead of seeing something changing in the stats. It feels off, but maybe it is because I am used to it so much?

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So, who are the possible romance options?

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I assume Alexios, Devi, Jacob, and Mickey, because they’re the ones with relationship bars on the stats page (and none of the other characters who are equally or more prominent would be suitable ROs, for various reasons), but romance definitely isn’t a major focus in this game.

I thought the same until I decided to flirt with the reporter on a whim and continue doing so at every opportunity, and I got a romance ending with her. So…