Thanks! I haven’t seen I-land, but it seems to feature far less death. 
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the concept is good. but restarting from start is tedious and not fun. the punishment too severe for a game without survival clue before life-death choice point and the lack of save point system made it even worse.
this kind of quick death game won’t end up well without save game system.
it looks like you got this game idea from some visual novel type games. and so far the only VN type game with many bad ending(like FSN) always got save system to compromise severe punishment of dead end.
this kind of games need to at least provide clue(like mystery novel) to survive before life-death declaration/point. alternative is just make checkpoint system if you dont want to create save system
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Thanks, the checkpoint system is an interesting idea, though I’m not sure how to implement that.
I wanted this game to be like a CYOA version of Dark Souls - punishing, but engaging enough for players to want to get to the end anyway. It’s not meant to be completed by everyone who plays it, making it feel more like an achievement when a player does get to the end.
There are some context clues as to which choices will lead to death, but there are also those where it’s simply a 50/50 chance of survival (which is intentional). I like to imagine people playing the game with a pen and paper, marking their path to the end with trial and error, but I get that not everyone enjoys that type of gameplay.
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well i understand you try to make this punishing and yet rewarding at the same time. but one thing that need to remember about souls game, you died but you never restart your game. dying in souls game is part of the progress. imagine dying in souls game forces you to defeat again bosses/npc you alrdy defeated… thats what happens to this game. player alrdy defeat previous ordeal(life-defeat) choice and then died at the next. then players forces to repeat previous button clicks which not as interesting like retracing path in souls game and reaching destination as efficient as possible. i don’t think it works for this game. repeating button clicking and forced to make eliminatiom method in determining the correct choice is not rewarding at all. and i doubt i can get the feel of accomplishment from that.
to make a feel of accomplishment by punishment and reward in text is to creates many clues for the correct answers before giving out a test(if there is no stats system in the game) or just makes the game like any other using stats and statcheck system.
checkpoint would be similar to bonfire of souls game. even soulsgame make dead player restart from these bonfires.
good luck
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I’d argue that clicking through a text game is easier than retracing your steps in a Souls game, even with bonfires.
Fifty does heavily rely on memorization, which is intentional as memory and its recollection is a big part of the story’s twist at the end. I understand that dead ends are frustrating, but I hoped to mitigate that by giving the player an achievement for every death as a small reward.
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I don’t want to be cruel or anything like that. But in my opinion, your game deaths feel pointless and random. Each one felt like “Oh, no I have to start AGAIN!” It is not the writing that is good. It is the effect of mechanics lets in the player.
The mechanisms of restart again and memorize doesn’t go well with text-only and with a replay of the entire thing.
I think you maybe need to create a story mechanism to not restarting something like a course that gives you extra lives in exchange for something like a limp loss or damage from time.
Your story can be a great original creation if you add something to alleviate the core problem of the engine for a soul like. If not, most public will feel frustrated with it. I am trying to be honest.
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That’s a valid perspective, but the game is kind of meant to be frustrating. The point of hard reset is that most people who play the game will not get to the end, much like not all of the survivors will make it out of the island (unless you discover the secret ending 
).
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Making a checkpoint save system for a game like this is really simple. There’s a couple of guides available on the forum. This was just the first I managed to dig up:
Keep in mind, people are playing a game to have fun, or at least get some sense of satisfaction from completing it. No matter how fitting the feeling of frustration is for the theme of the game is, it is not fun. People won’t pay for something that will only frustrate them. (Unless you’re writing highbrow literature, which this isn’t.)
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Thanks for the checkpoint link, but I probably won’t implement it. It just doesn’t fit the tone of the game. Dead ends wouldn’t mean much if the consequence for death is too mild.
It’s okay if people don’t buy the game; I just want to tell stories I want to tell, regardless of the monetary benefit.
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I do enjoy the setting a lot, reminds me of a few manga/wa I have read mixed in with a bit of Lost. Love a lot of the characters too, especially Kansas. Unfortunately for me the story is just getting drowned out due to game mechanics. By the third playthrough I had lost complete interest in the story and was just trying to figure out how not to die all the time so I wouldn’t have to start over again. Too many rock-falls-everyone-dies scenarios for my taste.
Using death in a game is fine but how you implement it is important. If you just suddenly kill the player out of no where with no warning all the time, you will lose player engagement. Death should be an obstacle for the player to overcome or a consequence of poor decisions. Just my opinion.
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I like this game quite a bit. I got Utah’s bad ending without cheating, but then I read the code to figure out that there was an achievement check to get Utah’s good ending. I’ve never actually seen an achievement check used in a choicescript game this way, so it was rather interesting. But this means that Utah’s bad end is required for all other good ends; maybe this could be clued in some way?
Maybe as a balance between challenge and player-friendliness, there could be checkpoints at the start of each chapter, or even every other chapter? In non-text based video games, there are other factors like music and graphics and fine-grained gameplay that make the re-playing process more enjoyable, but in a purely text-based game, re-reading in quick succession is more tedious than anything else. As far as I know, nearly all replay-heavy visual novels have a fast-forward feature, and plenty of them have unlimited saves.
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Yeah, Utah’s bad ending is required to access the good endings as that’s the ending which sheds light on the island’s true purpose.
There is a hint at that on the game’s final screen: “Have you gotten a Good Ending yet? Learning more about the island may reveal more than just its secrets, it may even get you a “better” outcome.”, but it is perhaps too cryptic.
True, there aren’t any graphics or music to help with the replaying process, but since it’s a text game the replaying process itself is extremely quick and shouldn’t take more than a couple of seconds. All the player has to do is memorize their choices or to keep track of them in some way, which doesn’t seem too difficult to me.
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well i didnt say reclicking in this game is harder isn it? i just say its more boring because there is absolutely no variety possibility in that. while souls still get some variety in how you tackle that.
retrying in this game is nothing more than reclicking the exact choice you made before(except the last choice you die) which is not much different than relying in autoclicking app. i don’t think you need that needless reclickicking because there is no purpose in it. retracing in souls game makes you more effective and efficient in playing the game everytime you did it which also makes you even morr prepared for the boss ahead ehile retrying in this game only made you efficient clicker ehich i think is absolutely no need to happen.
it’s completely different game.
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The purpose of retracing your steps in the game after death is three-fold:
First, it is absolutely necessary to make the deaths feel meaningful for a story like this and the possibility of getting a Dead End creates suspense for the player as they make their way through the game.
Second, it plays a narrative role as it requires memorization to avoid deaths and the big reveal at the end of the game has a lot to do with memory. There is also a symbolic meaning behind most of the deaths being the result of a 50/50 choice.
Third, it fits well into the story of the game that is all about survival, and just like the fifty survivors, most of whom won’t make it to the end, the same goes for the players, most of whom will not get to the end of the game because of the challenge. That’s vital for the game’s identity.
The bottom line is: permadeath stays.
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