So I wrote a game for the IF Comp last year, got the date wrong, and I’m finally entering it in the comp this year. On Monday.
If anyone has time to playtest it between now and then, please do! I’d be very grateful. It’s finished and polished (except for one optional chapter, which I swear will be done, like, real soon). It’s a little different to the usual ChoiceScript game in that there’s only one romantic option, there are only two choices at a time, a lot of stats are boolean and/or hidden, and it’s written in first person.
It’s clockpunk (pre-steampunk) in which you play a mad scientist who gets a reprieve from likely execution. You travel around late-1700s France and Europe, plus a bit of Africa and Asia if you choose those options.
Arg! I was just reminded that public beta testing isn’t allowed before the IF Comp!
If you’d like to beta test it, just DM me and I’ll send you the link.
I’ll update here when I know if I’m disqualified or not, lol.
UPDATE: Yep, I’m disqualified. That’s what happens when you break the clearly-stated rules :-/
I’ll do a bit more work on it (more beta testing is always welcome) and then do a proper HG beta.
I hit a small infinite loop, when talking with ravenmaster if you share knowledge then try to kill him it loops back to the share options. Great story btw.
This was a fun adventure, though my playthrough ended rather abruptly with a mysterious nameless woman. After heading from Sweden to Metz to reopen the laboratory, the game started thinking he had a companion.
She vanished for a while, the reappeared at the end of the game…
When Charbon shot him, Nameless Woman took the bullet, the protagonist grieved and then the game ended after deciding where he’d move on to next.
A couple of other things I noticed…
After choosing to deal with the Charbons by bribing people, the main character gets misidentified as one of them (I stuck with the default name).
This just struck me as a bit odd, since a few pages back he was activating swathes of silver coins and giving them away, so why would he need to buy activated silver from somebody else?
Thank you for the very excellent help you’ve all given me, and so quickly! As you can tell by the number of terrible errors, I really really need and appreciate it.
I played some of this game when it was planned for entry last year. Highly recommend what I have seen of it. If you’ve got time to read this before Monday, it’s worth your time to offer to beta test IMO
So I absent-mindedly posted the link publicly, both here and in two other places, so I cunningly managed to disqualify myself from the IF Comp. Sad but true.
It’s not really a big deal, as I’ll publish it as a Hosted Game soon enough. I’m very sorry to all my betas though—and still grateful to have a MUCH better game.
I’m halfway to being an absent-minded genius though…
Sucks that you were disqualified! You can always say you “totally would have won” and “they just wanted to make it a fair fight for the other contestants”!
That’s a bummer! You know, Dungeon Detective 3 was disqualified this year too for missing the first deadline. You guys should get together and host a ‘Revenge of the IFComp’ competition later on!
Thank you will and Brian. I like your attitudes. And yeah, I’m sure the mods were motivated entirely by the desire not to dishearten all the other entrants by my sheer magnificence.
