OK, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks writing and coding an interactive fiction ebook & now need some people to test the application. This is approx. 20-30% of what will be the full game. I’m hopeful of completing the coding/writing by the end of the year & having it published as an ebook/app early next year
Straight off the mark… replacing ‘and’ with & is jarring for me as a reader. It also smacks of being lazy.
There’s a lot of grammar issues, stuff like question marks in the middle of a sentence. If it’s 20% of the full game I imagine it’s a short game?
It’s not a bad concept but I’m not drawn in at all on this one, maybe I’m nitpicking because of the & stuff but it really put me off, along with the ‘telling’ me what I’ve been doing et al.
@RVallant: Harsh but fair. And and & has been pointed out by a friend of mine, so I will be getting that changed. I didn’t realise it irritated people.
The grammar definitely needs to be smartened up. At the moment, I want to get a feel to whether the game ‘works’. I’m new to the genre & choicescript so I’m not sure how much depth there is to other games. I have played a couple though & think it will be a similar length to something like ‘The Race’.
I appreciate some of the text needs to be padded out in places. However, I’m also concerned about creating walls of text.
I know the game won’t be for everyone. I’m not sure how to address your final comment as I’m not sure how else to ‘tell’ a story.
Thanks again, you can’t improve something without listening to and (almost typed &) responding to criticism.
@AKNel1 - Fair enough. Basically one of the more common complaints I usually see on here (or elsewhere for CYOA texts/books) is that the author ‘tells’ the player what is happening and what the player’s character is feeling etc. These people feel it’s better to ‘show’ and allow the reader to make their own judgement call on a scene/feeling or whatever.
Personally, I don’t really mind how a story is told as long as its told well and it hooks me in. I brought it up as it was a bit more noticeable for me in your story. If it’s your first text in this genre then it’s not a massive deal it’s just something to consider, because here you’re writing for a player and not purely a reader.
At the end of the day it’s a learning process, so there’s no need to change it just yet but its something to try out I guess?
For the walls of text comment, in one of the topics I made about writing stories here, one small suggestion was an upper limit of 4 pages on Word as a maximum for ‘one page’ in game BUT this was on a different script writer. I’d have a go on Way Walkers University (here) and Eternal (http://chooseyourstory.com/story/eternal) as those two are both finished games I think hit the nail on the head for length in my opinion.
“You hit your opponent with a clothesline, knocking him to the mat.”
Showing would be
“Charging at your opponent, you extend your right arm at the last moment. You outstretched arm connects perfectly, knocking him to the mat in a vicious clothesline.”
Thanks again to everyone who helped out by play-testing the first demo. From this feedback I intend to make the following changes.
Make the characters more user-definable.
Introduce ‘kayfabe’ (heel/face or good/bad metre in the stats)
Sharpen up the story - short snappy scenes, better grammar.
Have metric and imperial figures for height and weight.
Make the initial fight harder to win.
Make the whole game longer (now you’ll get a 1 month contract with 6 fights and the 3 rounds of the Lord of the ring tournament - 10 fights in total.
Introduce descriptions for wrestling moves.
Have a wider range in the NPC wrestlers statistics.
accually for me this game is not fun at all, your writing and coding is good but the type of game it is not fun. so i think you should make a new game but its tottaly up to u this is just my opinion
@irule9344 Sorry to butt in here, but there’s a fine line between expressing an opinion on a game, and telling someone they should make a different game simply because it doesn’t happen to suit your personal tastes. I’m no wrestling fan either, but it’s important that we embrace diverse interests here as each new and somewhat ‘different’ game can help bring more new players into this niche hobby of ours–people who might never otherwise know these games even exist (in this case, actual wrestling fans).
I think you have a pretty good start here. I noticed a few grammatical mistakes, some of which seem to come from the implementation of ${ } (When I pick my name, the following sentence doesn’t work quite right; it needs a comma or a period or something to change its presentation.)
I like the quips when choosing your height and weight. One thing I remember is the game told me that it had seen smaller giraffes, and that was pretty funny to me.
I really like this game and idea something new other than kings , queens, and nobles
we have wrestling it could be a really good game and like @Vendetta said it could bring more players.
No need for an argument, I fully understand that the game won’t be for everyone. However from a personal point of view, sports are far more interesting to me than zombies, orcs, elves and saving princesses.
I would add to this that their seems to be enough support here and in a sports related forum elsewhere, for me to believe that it is a workable concept and people will want to buy it.
Of course I’m disappointed that you (irule9344) don’t like the concept. However, I will happily accept your positive remarks regards the writing and coding - perhaps I am doing something right after all.
On sharing your opinion – as I see it, the main point of the forums is to encourage writers to write good CoG games. Giving them honest feedback on how to make their writing better is crucial. But when your feedback is critical/negative, please try to give it in a way that isn’t simply discouraging. Writing a good CoG is really hard, as anyone who has tried it should know. Most people who start don’t finish. There’s no reason to make it harder by discouraging authors who are making the attempt.
In particular, as Vendetta said, if the only feedback you have to give is “I don’t like this kind of game at all”… take a second to ask yourself, does it help anyone for you to share that opinion? Personally, if I try a game and I think it’s just not for me (and is unlikely to be no matter what changes the writer tries to make), I just don’t comment on it. On the evidence, lots of other people will like it just fine.
@AKNel1: but wouldn’t wrestling with zombies be even more interesting?
