For me? Actually yeah. I think it was the ceremonial name that really tripped me up and the feeling that the baby might be a sacrifice. Now that you mention what it is I do get it, but at the time I wasn’t sure.
I am sorry you feel that way. My intention was neither to be demoralizing, nor to make fun of you but to try and give some constructive crit on what I thought was an ambitious story. Looking at other comments in this thread, I can see there were others who also had positive things to say, not all negative and comments that the rewrite felt like it was improving.
Putting your writing out there is hard. Putting some distance between yourself and what you are writing and realising that criticism of one is not necessarily personal is another. I’m not hating on your work at all. In fact I put in time that I have very little of to try and be helpful and balanced in critique but it seems it was not taken that way. For that I am sorry and I should have just kept out of it. I’ve personally had significant criticism of things I have written in places that were NOT these forums. It is not a COG forum phenomena, it is what happens anywhere there are writers critiquing each other’s work. I’ve actually gotten to the point where I’m hoping people will tell me where they feel things are not right. It can be more useful that positive feedback in some ways. Some of the people I have been most grateful to here over the years have given me negative feedback where it is needed. I have had the time to develop a thicker skin though. (You can look up my response to my first game being published and ripped to pieces in many of the initial app store comments if you think I don’t know. I get it, not having everyone like what you’ve put a lot of time and effort into can be hard at first.)
Although it can seem like all that is happening in some of the popular game threads is cheerleading which can be hard when your (and I’m including my own stuff here, not your as in only your work) game isn’t getting the same level of excitement across the board, the purpose of these forums was originally to get things up and published to do as well as possible as a saleable product. The key is deciding whether or not you agree you agree with feedback given, and taking what you will from it especially if multiple people are commenting about the same things and acknowledging that there might be things that could be improved.
But in saying that you’re not obligated to defend your writing or to change anything based on other’s personal opinions. I said this in my post. but it is also worth noting that if you decide to go your own way, it may make your work an outlier and that may or may not be ok depending on what your goals are. If you wish to write primarily for yourself and that makes you happy, then do so. What others think may not matter if this is something first and foremost for you, and if you like what you are creating then this is not a waste of time regardless of if and where you release it into the wild. As you say, converting this into a book might be a viable alternative, as might hosting games you create on an alternative site where there is a lot more variability in what is presented there like itch.
One of the reasons why I chose to comment was I am also not considered a popular author and it seemed like you were at the point of giving up in another thread, so this was an attempt to to give some balanced feedback to support your ongoing work if you decided to continue with it. I don’t think your game is bad and not worth continuing with (if I thought that I wouldn’t have commented at all!), but if you wanted to continue to work on a game here, telling you that it is absolutely perfect in every way and would be a best seller as is would not have been helpful in the long run. I can tell you from experience that the app store feedback is not always kind or constructive and can be far harsher than anything you’ll ever see on these forums. But, the thing is you can write whatever you want for HG. I have, and I often I go into knowing full well they will probably be not well received as the majority audience for such work isn’t there. I could change my focus and try to write a long, linear superhero game with a blank slate MC and 9 RO’s, but at present at least, that’s not the game I want to write. So that’s on me to deal with the fact I’ve chosen not to write to the expectations of the people buying work here and I need to acknowledge that. Yeah it can be demoralising sometimes that there is a narrow expectation window, but that’s the way it is. There are alternative places to write and post your work if you feel HG is not right for you. Good luck.
