Funny thing is, I cringe every time I see “it is a series” used as an excuse for leaving a book’s plot unsolved. I wouldn’t go as far as saying everything should be self-contained - I see no harm in saying you might need to read books 1-4 to completely understand what’s going on in book 5 - but I do agree on that you shouldn’t be required to read book 5 to understand what’s happening in book 1. Books shoild be complete plots.
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I first read A Game of Thrones around 25 years ago, and I’ve accepted the first three books for the incomplete masterpiece that they are. Guess I’ve gone through all five stages of grief to acceptance. (Or maybe a sixth stage: emulation?)
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Wow, the diss towards A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons. 
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Those two need Martin to throw together a good conclusion to justify their existence. 
But even if the series never finishes, the first three books are great.
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I think the number of series that are likely to be unfinished are probably contributing to the general feeling towards choicescript series.
Shadow Society was cancelled, Community College Hero is on infinite hiatus and Sword of Rhivania’s author has gone radio silent, all within the past year or so.
Even when authors give reasonable explanations for why they’re no longer continuing the series, every time a series does cut off, I do feel a bit more skeptical of the next series I’m on the fence about.
Nothing against the authors, just that recent trends regarding multiple works within a short time frame are maybe why people are more likely to feel this way.
EDIT: Another part may be that since so many series also had a recent release, it makes the wait for the next book feel even longer; Hosted Games has a bunch of partway finished series in its catalogue, but since many that will continue have had recent releases, it feels like theres going to be multiple years of nothing for people who are fans of current works (aside from maybe Samurai of Hyuuga?).
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I agree with the sentiment that even if a book is part of a series, it should be a complete story by itself as well.
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what? I though it was being edited… 
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Unfortunately not - here is the post from the author.
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A small thing ig, but seeing the greyed-out options for choices my MC can’t pick because of a previous choice I made or stat I don’t have enough of drives me fucking INSANE lmao. I get why they’d chose to do it that way, but I do wish more authors just used the *if instead of the *selectable_if for stuff like that, just because it always bothers me every time I see it.
A more general complaint, but… I’m really not fond of how comedy tends to be written in most comedy-centered IFs? Not all of them are bad, mind you - I enjoyed Tally Ho just fine when I played it, for example - but a lot of the time it seems people think ‘comedy’ and immediately default to lol random type humor, with potentially some extra references to sex sprinkled in, and it’s always just… the most boring unfun thing?
To illustrate what I mean:
Imagine a basic scene in a… idk, non-comedy focused, more slice-of-life oriented game. The protagonist gets out of their home, goes to the bus station and accidentally misses their bus. There’s the potential for a brief moment of comedy, but overall, it’ll get resolved pretty quick and the plot will move on.
Now in a comedy IF, that same scene will have the MC running out of their house, then coming and going at least 10 times because they keep remembering ‘woops, I forgot something’ every time they get close to the bus station, there might be a weird snarky fourth-wall breaking moment in the narration where it randomly comments on… idk, the woes of capitalistic society for some reason, and then when you actually get to the bus station, the driver might flip you the bird and purposefully drive off without you, making your mc cuss them out as they go.
All of these things can be funny individually, but when piled up all together it just completely saturates the reader and I always find myself getting burnt out on it within the first chapter or so. ‘Weirdness’ doesn’t necessarily equate to ‘funny’, and when everything in your story is lol random and weird, then even that weirdness loses its novelty and becomes mundane, and you have to start finding a new way to make your readers laugh. But from what I’ve seen, most comedy IFs just… don’t?
Idk, it always just feels like the best/funniest bits of comedy I’ve seen always come from the IFs that aren’t marketed as comedic. Idk if I’m the only one who feels that way, though.
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No, I agree. Comedy needs to have proper setup and payoff to land consistently. If all you’re doing is delivering punchline after punchline, without any setup, people will eventually get bored due to sheer saturation, even if the punchlines are funny individually.
There needs to be contrast for comedy to be funny.
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Oh my god, yes, for whatever reason, the whole Herald/Harold/Barold thing in Fallen Hero Retribution was the funniest thing ever, maybe because it contrasts the seriousness of everything else.
Two words: Food Truck
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I haven’t played that one yet, but there is a scene in Breach: the Archangel Job that always makes me giggle whenever I think about it. It starts off as a classic chase scene, but very quickly devolves into high-stakes chaos, with everything going wrong - or at least getting even more chaotic - and blood and guts flying everywhere, to the point where at one moment you can fire a bazooka inside your car to try and hit the other cars chasing you, and accidentally smoke bomb yourself and all of your allies with it. Oh, and there’s a cat that accidentally jumps on the car at one point.
B:TAJ is just a super hilarious game in general imo, peppered with all these little quips and comedic details that I love, and comedy isn’t even actually one of its main tags. And I have to agree, what probably makes it work and stand out so much is that it contrasts with the tone of the rest of the game, which is actually pretty serious.
YES!
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This isn’t so much an issue with the games as it is everything surrounding them, but I seriously dislike how there’s the expectation that all games have incredible romances, even if that’s not the focus of the game. It feels like these days, people won’t even look at a game if there’s no ROs, which is kind of sad to see as someone who wants to write a CoG but has no interest in writing romance. There’s exceptions to this, of course, but by and large what most people are looking for (and what gets most people talking) is romance, rather than plot or world building these days.
Edit: of course people having their preferences is fine, nothing wrong with that. But I do still have my feelings on the subject that I’m going to express.
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I’m definitely someone who loves a good RO, hands down. But a lot of the time I play a WIP and I’m just left thinking, “Why is there a romance here?” Especially for games that are more simulation/management based as opposed to a character-driven narrative. It can feel shoe-horned in, like the author didn’t feel confident in or invested in the romance at all and only put it there because the ROs become a marketing hook.
Is there an inadvertent pressure from the community to always have ROs because the romances are so popular? Definitely. We need good romance-less games in order to get good romance-less games, and a game with a poorly-written romance is worse than a game with no romance at all.
Also, I don’t love how RO has become shorthand for “major character you can build a close relationship with,” because even if you choose to play a game completely platonically, it still implies that the Potential For Romance is the most valuable and meaningful kind of relationship you can have. Characters who are, for whatever reason, uninterested in romance with you are not presented with the same complexity, depth, and consideration by the game or the fans, and I think that’s a shame.
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For me personally I don’t need a game to have incredible romances it just has to not actively drag the game down and make it a chore to play through
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considering the majority of games out there give you no romance, I kinda understand why peoples are hungry for them in choice of games.
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Visual novels have already found ways to integrate romance as an essential part of the story.
- Blank slate characters.
I get that they’re popular for a reason. Maybe other people are just more imaginative when it comes to filling in the blanks.
But I want the characters in the story I read to acknowledge my character as an individual outside of the actions I take within the game.
I want to feel like I’m stepping into the shoes of a person, rather than operating a puppet.
That’s why the best games imo are the ones like ITFGO and Fallen Hero - not because of the angst, but because your character feels alive and the world around them understands how to react to them consistently.
I’m working on something myself with this in mind, but it’s a bit early to share the WIP.
- 90% of stats
Idk I’m just more here for the book aspect rather than the game aspect. I find myself min/maxing way too often when they play a heavy role. Yes, I’m terrible to play DnD with.
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There are some authors who get way too stat happy to begin with.
A running habit I’ve fallen into glancing at the stat sheet prior to a game and periodically checking how influential they are + how often theyre tested and referenced.
That combined with the blank slate protag drives me up a wall, and I think highlights a problem not just IF writers fall into, but most…er, ‘playable’ fiction in general: Player Characters are characters in the story, too.
Making a blank smear of a character that can be freely painted onto lessens the experience overall, imho. You’re trading the players spot in the story for generic modularity.
Itfo, fh, even video game properties like cyberpunk and bg3’s origins, they benefit directly from having an established character the players can customize. Since the authors know who the player is piloting, they dont have to generify interactions to allow for everything, and they can make things feel more meaningful and consistent.
This as opposed to a title like skyrim, which, while a great game itself, isnt really known for the character youre playing being great. The only time it really made me feel like I was seriously a part of the world and not just in it were the interactions with Serana allowing the dragonborn to flesh themselves out a bit, and the ending of dragonborn. Those are the few times that game has npcs directly try to emotionally connect with the pc.
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Skyrim is basically a sandbox game, where the lack of focus on the player character is understandable. Comparing it to a genuine RPG like Baldur’s Gate 3 is skewed, comparing it to an IF is pointless. You cannot make a sandbox in ChoiceScript.
Which is all the more reason why hardly anyone likes blank slates in Interactive Fiction. There are people who want such characters for the purpose of self-inserting, but most of those readers simply don’t understand what it actually means for the character to not have any traits or identity of their own. Even they will be happier with a PC who’s something regardless of player choice, which makes stories with a defined protagonist more likely to succeed in terms of sales and reviews.
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