Community College Hero: Releasing Soon

Loving it so far.

It’s got fewer choices than the CoG house style – more long stretches without a choice to break the narrative. If you submitted it to them, they’d doubtless ask for more.

I’ll need to play through more before really feeding back on the characters… But count me a fan.

@Havenstone
Planetary Quarantine had about 1/3 as many choices as most CoGs, but it was still published.

@derekmetaltron, that sounds extremely cool. I’m reminded a bit of how the Incredibles (one of my 5 fav movies of all time - seriously it was damn near perfect) seamlessly blended superhero and spy genres. That combination really has something for everyone, Your plot sounds very intriguing - I love you weaving in real historical events into the narrative. Will there be a WiP thread?

@Havenstone, do you mean if I submitted it as a possible official CoG they would want those changes or did you mean those changes would be necessary even if submitted as a HG?

I thought with submitted HGs, if the game ran without errors and exceeded 20k, they would generally agree to publish.

@HornHeadFan
I think it needs to be 50k+ for a HG and 60K+ for a CoG; 20K is actually the number of words you need to be able to reach on one play through of a CoG. I think Paradox Factor is an acception (at 27k) because of its nature.

Yes, I meant asking them to consider it for the official CoG roster.

@Havenstone
Oh, gotcha

HornHead, are you already an author?

Can you give us a hint of your dates with mob and stunner will be? Or do you want to keep that a secret?

OK, first, it’s excellent. :slight_smile: All suggestions I make are ideas on making a great game even better.

Not counting the action teaser, there’s a lot of backstory to get through up front before the plot starts. It’s enjoyably written, but I wonder if there’s a way you can space that out a bit more. As one radical suggestion, do we need to know the MC’s secret up front? Maybe you could hint at it in Ch 1, and then bring it out when they’ve already been at Speck for a while – no later than Nil’s first class.

I’ve also been thinking of ways to put a little more distance between yourself and Heroes Rise – and the simplest way might be to make “breathless excitement” only one of the choices for how you feel about starting your hero career and going to Speck. (The fact that the Heroes Rise MC was so wide-eyed and enthusiastic about everything was fun through Game 1, but began to grate on me in Game 2, when their whole-hearted investment in fighting villains via reality show kept snapping me out of it).

Alternative ways a young(ish) MC might feel about starting down the path of hero-dom – emotionlessly intense determination; anxiety-ridden obligation – could remove one of the main areas where CCH feels like it’s treading on territory already well worn by the HR series.

I enjoy almost all the characters very much. The one thing that’s rung false so far has been the Hedonist’s class – maybe I need to re-read the classroom scenes more closely, but I took away the impression that it’s 99% a chance for him to molest students and maybe 1% of anything that actually will help you defend yourself. Set aside whether I really want to have a harassing professor plot in my CoG – I’m certainly ready to see where the plot goes before passing judgment. But is it really likely that a college so (amusingly) focused on the legalities and liabilities of hero work would let him get away with being so blatantly predatory? Maybe his Power will explain that all. Anyway, hope we see some serious comeuppance there.

Yes please…I wanna get revenge on Hedonist xD he’s so creepy.

@StarWarsMaster, I’m rewriting Stunner’s date scene right now. Mob’s is finished though, and although it’s not overly romantic, it does give you a chance to grow closer, especially if you share his “save the world” mentalities.

@Havenstone, all good suggestions. I might move some of the exposition further up, and adding some “how do you feel about the program” options will be easy.

I enjoy Hedonist because readers hate him. I need a few of those characters, and really at this point he might be the only one i have.

I think I’ll make his harrassment more subtle to avoid questions like “why doesn’t someone just report him?” It will still be there though like an undercurrent.

Also, I wanted it to be apparent that the Speck program is desperate for professors and jumped at the chance when Savior offered Hedonist’s services. Now as to why Savior chose to send Hedonist to this rinky dink community college (and future competitor) now that’s a question I hope readers ponder.

@Samuel_H _Young, I’m honestly not sure. Even if you get your chance, it might be later in the series when you meet more of the Savior folks. By the way, are there any other characters you dislike?

Hornhead -
Hmm…I don’t like Hedonist or Uni, but that’s about it xD I like or love the rest.

Can we have a new link to mobs date please?!

I actually like Hedonist because my MC hates him… I also love that you give us the choice to think about Hedonist in all different kinds of ways, from ‘Oooh dreamy’ to ‘What? No. Just, no. And… why are you guys staring and drooling?’ I like the idea of more subtlety to him though. (: And, if you’d like some more input about dislikes, so to speak: I don’t particularly care for Uni, Stunner, or Tress, for various reasons, probably in equal proportion to Hedonist.

@Fiogan, tell me more why you don’t like those three.

@StarWarsMaster, I haven’t posted it yet.

Good reasons I think (EDIT I mean, reasons that are from good writing on your part, not bad writing)… and I should say, for some of them, it’s more that my favourite version of an MC doesn’t like them. I can picture playing a character who loves any one of those four characters, which would be fine as well.

So the MC doesn’t care for the following characters, listed below with explanations:
Hedonist: His effect on the MC’s classmates is what is so annoying, actually; my MC is very self-reliant and is fine with either telling Hedonist to get lost or working him for an A as long as she feels like she’s not trapped in one option or the other. (: I rather like Hedonist as a character actually because he’s awful in a way that interests me. I haven’t tried complaining to Tolly yet about him (or anything else) but I should, come to think of it.

Uni: Becahhhs she’s a cheatah! So this same MC is very off-put by the suggestion of cheating, ESPECIALLY because then Uni refuses to talk to you if you say no even though you tried to be nice to her afterwards… then I think also her big personality, super-socialness, and accent are all mildly annoying to the same MC (for the record, I quite like the accent personally).

Stunner: He’s probably my least favourite as a reader because he seems a bit bland and somewhat stereotypical - but that said, I rather figured you had more interesting material planned for him later in the game. Wombat’s extra was fascinating to me, for instance. Anyway, the MC doesn’t care for him because she feels he’s arrogant, annoying, small-minded, and obnoxious - I might say, this opinion was much stronger on playthroughs where we lost hunt-the-flag.

Tress: She just seems very normal and soap-opera-e… Not very interesting, to either me or my favourite MC, because she’s just nice, and normal, and has unusually ‘wavy’ hair. At least so far. (:

@HornHeadFan DG Hedonist and my own dumb hero nerd

I’m so here for morally ambiguous characters and anti hero antics.

@Fiogan, thanks for all the specifics. I especially liked you pointing out that Uni is a “cheatah!” :slight_smile: I am working on Stunner to make him more interesting but he will always be on the assholey side.

My favorite is now Origami and I’m writing a scene with her tonight that will be accessible if the MC does the first hospital visit with her.

Welcome! I quite enjoy most of the characters - Mob is a sweetheart, for instance, and Dirty Girl has a few unexpected facets to her besides just the anti-establishment side. I’m very interested to get some real information about Stoic… And as I’ve mentioned before, both Tolly and McCormick are also quite fun.

I’m glad we’ll be seeing more of Origami soon! I appreciated the first hospital scene with her quite a bit, especially after having spent a lot of time in hospital environments myself.

HornHead -
Origama is pretty awesome. I helped her in the hospital so I’m excited to see the new content with her :slight_smile:

Speaking of Origami, when I join Crook’s group I get this- “Stunner, Origami and a few others look disappointed in your decision but no one displays any overt hostility.” but Origami joins the same group?

ALSO I might have accidentally doodled a few characters from this game. Can I post those here? Is that a thing I can do? I don’t really know the policy on that sort of thing.