I’m happy losing if you can fail forward, especially if there are different and interesting outcomes from failure. For example when playing Overboard, you’re going to fail (a lot!) and each failure run is fun to play out as you desperately lie to people and try and cover your tracks.
In Lies Under Ice, I linked skill growth to failure —the main way to improve skills is if you use them and fail at them— so players have the choice of only doing what they’re good at and always succeeding if they want, or they can try things knowing they might fail but that they’ll be more likely to succeed in future, opening up more possibilities. Both routes can work.
I like to be challenged. I like to have real consequences when I make bad choices. When I’m playing a game and I get destroyed, I have to regroup and determine what I did wrong or what I didn’t do right. If you win all the time, winning loses all meaning. You play harder if you know defeat is only a mistake or two away. You play for every inch.
I only really like to lose if I felt like I earned that loss. For example if I’m on a time sensitive quest and I keep stopping to get cats out of trees and home orphans then I’m not really surprised when the village I’m supposed to save is burnt to the ground. Losing can be fun but only when I know there’s a way to win. When I know next time I can change my strategy to win. If I just lose and there’s nothing I can do to change that I don’t care for it.
There’s also achievements to factor in. If there is an achievement for a particularly epic fail, I will get it. It will not be part of my canon run, of course (assuming said epic fail isn’t a game over), but the achievement makes me feel like I win when I lose. I don’t think it changes my answer though.
I think it really depends on what failing/losing means, failing a stat check means that I’m locked into a bad ending? Not ideal. Dying means I’ve got to completely restart (in a game where it isn’t a sort of loop mechanic,) just means I’m more likely to get bored.
But I’ve seen it done well in a range of games! Shepherds of Haven has an interesting choice where you can choose to fail a check against a demon and get possessed - it leads to some really interesting interactions/consequences as whilst the MC is unaware you are not and explicitly chose for that to happen but given it makes certain aspects harder and gives the side you’re fighting against an advantage that’s got to be a failure/losing situation.
Another one is Wayfarer where there’s some character reveals/plots/interactions that you cannot access if you succeed all the fight stat checks and solve the mystery. It is only if you get hurt and have to rest instead of continuing to investigate that you can find the letters from your mentor that your RO/friend/reluctant ally/almost enemy is keeping from you which unlocks a really good scene in the next act. I know a lot of players fail the fights on purpose to unlock the more angsty romance route. There’s also the fact you can not solve the mystery and end up fighting the man who hired you and slaying his pet monster which unlocks more interaction with another characters backstory and with your RO/Friend. Searching the wrong building can get you a precious artefact even if you fail your quest.
And then you’ve got Disco Elysium where you play a character so down in the dumps and with so little expectation of success that you can play the entire game failing and losing and still have a really brilliant narrative experience and still finish the game.
Failure in IF games isn’t inherently bad but for me it’s the difference between leading you onto a more scenic route/alternative route and closing the door on you completely. I’m more than happy to fail at stat checks, have my characters get hurt and die but I don’t want that to be all that it means. I want character consequence for failing just as much as I do for success. If succeeding leads me to one door I want failing to lead me to another instead of it ending up in a binary pass x to go forwards and if you fail you’re either stuck on a bad ending path or the game ends completely.
this has probably already been said…my biggest problem with failing in most published IF games is no saves…there are a cpl of games ive bought and failed past the halfway mark that i havent picked back up because its so incredibly annoying to click all the way through to where i failed…but in general i dont think its a bad idea…just at least do a chapter restart
I think it is possible, just really, really annoying and difficult to implement. I’ve actually being thinking about if there is a way to release sections of a map (with the parts not available still blurred out) as you go and highlight the path you’re on and the areas you’ve seen, and those that you haven’t gone into yet (or were locked off by the choices made), but the only way I can think of to do it, is to have to produce huge numbers of different maps with each possible way of getting to each point in the map at different stages in the journey to sub in. Once it gets beyond a certain complexity, I think it just becomes too time consuming to be worth it.
In the past HG authors had to build their own saves into games. This has changed recently so you’ll probably start seeing them being included in some games moving forward.
More than fair. I understand that a lot of people don’t enjoy reading the story of a leader who struggles and fails early on, let alone play it with themselves in the protagonist role. That’s a 100% reasonable entertainment preference! I’m even more sympathetic to anyone who doesn’t like detailed management mechanics in their text-based games; the Rebels 1 winter survival mini-game is (on the kindest possible account) pretty close to the edge of what can be fun in text. I’m sure your discord has confirmed that you have plenty of mule-loathing company.
With all that said, it isn’t hard to survive Rebels. No pathway through the winter will kill you, and if in Ch 4 you pick the sane and reasonable path that almost everyone who’s not a fanatic or traitor-suspect is pushing you to pick (i.e. run and hide) you’re pretty likely to both survive and bring most of your band safely through to Game 2. But people understandably set their sights on other success criteria, like crushing the army sent to defeat you…and yep, aiming for that does set you up for failure.
My intent with Rebels has always been to have the failures lead to interesting places. Losing the Ch 4 battle and fleeing with Yed alone into the Xaos-lands will open up opportunities from G2 onward that a Ch 4 victor doesn’t get.
Of course Rebels does also have a fair few endings where you just die horribly. My genre expectations were shaped by Fighting Fantasy (for IF) and George RR Martin (for bleak fantasy) enough to guide me away from the typical CoG “no bad endings” guideline. And that, too, is something people can reasonably dislike. It’s a reason (along with its sheer length) that Rebels was one of the first games to code in chapter checkpoints, so that a loss can be remedied without a full reread.
Did I mention they are a lighthearted comedy of manners, so the humor level is cranked up to eleven? The scope is huge- there is a lot going on in that series, and you will need multiple playthroughs to see everything. (This happens also in the Keeper series, but dubious implementation make it a rung lower.)
Putting my reader hat on, if it’s a guaranteed fail state, then sometimes I would take the hit and bite the bullet and just move on. I rarely outright restart the game if I ‘chose wrong’. I like a game for what it is- its content, and this is a minor bone to pick. I always code dive to see what’s behind the hood, and this includes the fail states, some of which are interesting enough to be worth a read if you do so carefully.
Putting my author cap on, it needs to ensure that the story remains cohesive. And to increase replayability, I have what you call ‘small’ and ‘big’ failures, measured in terms of scale, impact, character relationship progressions and so on as my yardsticks. So expecting or wanting readers to fail at certain points, if it helps progress the story, like that unwinnable fight in my other WIP, then it’s a yay for me.
Now creating a good fail state, on the other hand, is a lot harder. You need the consequences to be realistic and reasonable, yet the stat checks not be so outrageously difficult or else you’ll have too devastating fail states. You also want players to explore ‘that other route’. You can’t cover the entire range, though.
Stats-wise, I ensure that you can use every weapon/armor in a variety of situations, so that no one thing gets too overpowered or too useless, this is the same for stats. Then again, there are secret bonuses for particularly impressive acts that you clear like the Ultimate Armor, in which in order to obtain it, you have to enter a place without any armor, and the chances of failure are way higher than with armor.
And mind you, I always look at the flowcharts for gamebooks. Always. I need to be sure what I’m getting into. Those are far more randomized then the majority of CoG stuff found here.
So you’re not one of the puzzle sort? I understand. I also find it hard to connect with your works, I must admit. Probably since I want to read your stuff and give you feedback, but I’m not sure how you would react to it…
Unexpected turn of events indeed. You get things you’d never knew existed!
It’s interesting- if you don’t want to become a knight and your interests- political, romantic, etc, are with the others factions like the Underground or the Fae, this could very well be the preferred route.
That also encourages the player to take risks more often, to know that you’re going to fail initially but you do get a chance to hone your skills later on.
Flowcharts are really useful. Normally writers use them in planning and design, but readers never get to see them, since they’re hidden away in the vault.
Ergo, transitioning from these gamebooks to IF is not easy. I followed a similar route, and am still trying to find a good and supportive group in which to hang out. I guess this is the place, but I have no idea what the future holds…
Thank you everyone for your comments, the discussion has been really fruitful!
Did you get it from Nexus mods? I need this. I’m sick of constantly failing dice rolls because my luck sucks balls.
On topic, I hate failing in games unless it’s an “unwinnable” situation that occurs to further character development, set up something cooler and more badass, or the like. Failing because my MC’s related stat is one point lower than whatever is needed is enough to make me rage quit, especially if my MC dies. Games with “game over” fails are immediate put into the “this game can fuck off and die” category for me.
For IF, I particularly despise stat raisers, because you’re forced into wasting all of your choices on boosting your skills instead of interacting with other characters, which–for me–is the whole point of IF. If I just want to hop up and down in place for an hour to up my athletics skill, I’ll go play Oblivion. I don’t need that crap when the game is all text.
WeMod has an option for all dices to be nat 20s, you can either download their app or get a trainer from Fling, they’re the same thing; I recommed WeMod though if only because there’re Fling copycat webs that can mislead you.
Anyway, I don’t mind failing if I know beforehand I’m gonna fail, no random bullshit that because I rolled bad I fail something I’m proficient at, also I prefer when it’s not so much a fail as a narrative driven motive, like in Juan’s game a tale of heroes, there’s a point in which you fight dream-you and you cannot win, no matter your choices/stats because the plot demands it.
Generally, no- I usually just edit my stats when I want to enjoy myself or abuse the cheat menus if available.
This doesn’t always work though, sometimes even with max stats some IF make you about as useful as a glass hammer. I just enjoy my power fantasies.
Only when it is a choice I can pick. Meaning, like say in Wayhaven games? I can pick that my MC has the Talking Skill and still later pick the fight skill and fuck it up. Why? because it’s fun to play a klutz for the Lolz.
But outside of that? nope. My years of ‘Game Over’ Screen are way behind me. I’m retired nowadays…
Honestly, this is a mood. I think in recent years I have gotten over being “challenged” by my media. My life is challenging enough as it is, I don’t need it in my fantasy as well. I want my fiction to always have a way for me to come out on top, even if I have to slog through shit to get there.
I have never paid attention to achievements, either in regular games or in CoG properties.
This feels similar to Baldurs Gate, where you can miss a lot of the companion interactions and story if you don’t long rest often enough, except there you can make a choice to rest, rather than being forced to rest by failure, which is what makes the difference for me I think. I hate being forced to be a failure in order to see content.
As much as Rebels is one of my all time favourite CoG properties, this annoyed me when playing it. I really dislike being given options and one of them just being incorrect. I understand the themes that were being portrayed, but (as I mentioned above) our real world is hard enough without me needing to steep myself in it in fiction as well.
Yeah, I use WeMod for all my cheating purposes in games.
Reading through responses has helped me clarify my feelings a little. While I don’t need a traditional “power fantasy” novel, I do prefer novels that center the player experience over telling a challenging story. It’s also why I’ve drifted to romance as a genre for traditional novels over recent years, given that a defining trait of the genre is the happy ending. I understand why certain authors might not find that engaging to write, but i definitely find it much more engaging to read.
