Tokyo Wizard also has a save system… I also wish I would’ve just fine it at the very end…
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Okay a few more games had save points than I thought. I understand what you mean about no-saves adding consequence to choices, but I think save points would be a happy medium between no saves and saving at will like ‘Long live the Queen’.
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I don’t want to go off-topic here, but this got me really curious! If you have a spare moment would you mind PMing me about why this is the case? I’d quite like to hear more about people’s processes within CSIDE, especially if it’s helping
to combat situations like this.
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Saves will make game being accused of being shorter in addition to the innumerable flaws that have weakening storyline and become the game linear as people only will choose the supposed “RIGHT CHOICE” then restarting banished the perception of scale of what are you playing skipping great chunks of game make people thinking game is far shorter and with less content that it really has.
Maybe a solution for that is directly put a linear playthrugh with the min max mode already selected so the people that want a direct way to the supposed “real” way could played it.
This is not directed people here in forum that want save I understand most of you do for skip time in replaying. I could understand that even if for me undetermine the point of reading that is of course read. I know I am in the minority though
I am talking about casuals. I have heard some people saying I would want read rhe story but i don’t want to choose myself.
I hear you, I really do and I see how that could be the case for many people, but I personally don’t agree with you - I both work and have a partner since 7 years and I still find time to read because it’s always been a passion of mine, and I have alot of dear childhood friends who share that interest (plus playing d&d, wrinting novels and stories in general and goof around), sure it’s less often then when we were kids but if you really like something you usually have the money and time for it.
To specifics when it comes to gamelenghts:
I usually don’t bother paying for anything that is less than 200’000 words, that’s because I love to read and rarerly find myself ‘captured’ so to speak if the story don’t include a number of elements (romance, adventure, preferably a chance to use your brain a little and that I overall don’t feel ‘snubbed’ because the story’s to short and therefore to my sad experience often feels “lacking” when it comes to the ending, as if the writer is just trying to wrap things up Keeping within a wordframe or rushing to “get it over with”. 200’000 - 400’000 word stories is often good for the money in my experience.
I must have bought, read and played 20-40 games of this sort in the last couple of years not including the “DelightGames library” which i’ve read the most of already before CoG showed up, not forgetting a ‘sort of stand alone game’ available on googleplay called “Kai Chronicles”, 12 books all free and very very very oldschool d&d but I liked it and I feel that many CoG stories are based upon a similar if not refined system, which I love.
But to point I’ve spent countless money on books and games and this sort of entertainment, as long as the prices stays where they are I’ll gladly give up a cup of takeaway starbucks and a muffin to buy a book/game instead.
It’s just something I do, and I’ve also found a lot of writers I like through storygames like this and therefor bought their published books (book-Series, as I said, I like to read and if it’s a good story why would I want it to end? At least quicker then it has to.)
So with that said, keep writing good s**t and I will buy it, including a bunch of my friends. Peace!
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Some stories are “too short” because it feels ‘rushed’ from a point in the story in a way which could happen for plently of reasons - maybe the author feels stressed to ‘get it out to the waiting fans’ and stresses to get it done, or sometimes stuff happens in life that makes the author ‘dissconnect’ a little from it’s story and don’t feel like writing on it for the moment, and if it’s rushed by any in that state then maybe it becomes less of a masterpiece then it could have been if the author were given more time to fall in love with it again and dive into it wholeheartedly a couple of weeks later. Take the TV-series Game Of Thrones for example, we are all waiting on the last season and I don’t think anyone is really complaining about their productionteam taking an extra year of production to ‘get everything right’.
Back to topic and a conclusion including a tip one can take or leave:
I personally think that an acceptable waiting time for a second installment to a good story is around 1 year, 2 years at most. If it takes any longer then that I as a reader personally forgetts and looses interest in the rest to instead get hooked up in something else. But that’s not saying I can’t fall in love with a story again on a later time when it has a preferably long middle and good long end.
And to the compliment I almost forgott!
I think that real good stories always will have a lot of backlash for being too short, but that’s often because it’s so good the reader simply never wants it to end. All the best stories could go on forever in some readers mind.
And when it comes to specifics 250’000 - 300’000 words could be a good standard lenght for both a first book and later installments. It shouldn’t have to be longer then that if you can relase a second and third (all get it) installment every two years or so. That should be managable. ^^
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I find the criticism that a game feels “rushed” very frustrating. I hear it often, but at no time does someone ever give enough specifics for us to do anything about it.
The beta is specifically the time for feedback like that. For players to play a game and say, “hey, this specific moment needs more room to breathe. And this one.”
Without that, the situation isn’t going to change. If you feel our games are rushed, sign up for the betas and give us specifics, because generalities get us nowhere.
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This is also one that has me puzzled. I’ve gotten it from my own games, but generally speaking I tend to think that my games finishes when the story in my head finishes. Should we just be adding more “filler” at the end to drag the story on? But then maybe people would complain about the pacing, and whether the story drags on… (I also had those complaints, which just leave me ultimately puzzled…)
But, I guess you just have lots of different type of readers…
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You know, I have some sense of what they mean. In particular, that there are specific moments that move too quickly, that lack enough “transitional sentences,” as English teachers used to say.
But because these stories are written in code, transitions are not hard to see without playing the game. And we as editors can’t play the game dozens or hundreds of times to try and spot those moments. That’s what testers need to call out.
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Yes, I do understand those, and I go to great lengths to try to include transitional sentences (though I do appreciate that this is a very difficult problem in games, and that I might be failing to include enough of them…).
However, I always thought that such reviews were getting at something else, like the game finishing too abruptly, or the ending now being long enough, or something like that… I guess that it is also possible that various people end up calling the game “rushed” for different reasons (further confusing us authors, as the problem might be different in each game… mmmmmm)
If I may take RaV as an example:
It is a good game with an interesting premise, but it goes a little like this:
Problem/obstacle/mystery comes up, one or two choices, it gets resolved, new thing happens, few lines of dialogue, its resolved, rinse and repeat.
It felt as if the game wanted the player to be done as quickly as possible (i like comparing this kind of thing to the knighting in The Court Jester).
For example, when we get a call from our ex, and can decide between answering it, texting back or ignoring it.
The scene if we keep talking felt too short to have made such of a dent in time that we could not have went “i should answer that” do so, get the bad news, tell the other npc, ask our question.
Instead this bit (and others too) felt haphazard and unsatisfactory, especially since it is bits like this that led to bad results (death etc), when there was the constant air of “but there still would have been time to do x too”.
But the game seemed focused on getting us to the next scene.
OpenSeason is another example:
There is already very little happening in the story, a lot of things are simply handwaved (if loa does not have definite clairvoyancy how could she know the fall thing so precisely, or what happened to miss boss if we saved her eg) or dont get acknowledged at all (loading a save with less than 100 legend points will still result in the game sayinf the old mc got it perfect (its in the code like this i believe) eg).
The majority of os is sociopolitical commentary that virtually halts the story, while the inbetween is written in a way that seems focused on getting to the next commentary. Where fighting skills mattered before, now it’s just a giant shrug ala “yeah, not your speciality, but eh it totally worked, now let’s talk about politics”.
The ending for Baroque is another example. After chapter 5 Iirc we get some flashback, then there’s the big reveal, we beat the big bad (or don’t ) and then it’s kind of “oh, yeah, this this and that happened, you also managed this. Godspeed and farewell, the end” giving (possibly) a sense of disorientation as the game takes a bit of a 180° turn post ch5 without much chance to take a breather and get one’s senses together.
Neither RaV nor Baroque are bad games, but they seem focused on getting the player to the climax above everything else from some point on.
I mentioned this in the finale/epilogue thread, but (sometimes) when I talk about a game’s ending being rushed (or not rushed, as in the case of The Harbinger’s Head), I’m looking at how the ending fits into the narrative and themes of the story. Tin Star is about the West – and so it, and all its characters, deserved an epilogue as big as the West. The Harbinger’s Head is a more personal story, despite its supernatural themes – and so while it quickly jumps forward to your death, it isn’t rushed because the narrative is all about you, the dullahan, and death.
Here’s another example of what I mean when I say something is rushed (for endings): the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Even ignoring that it’s a children’s story, the Hobbit is short 
narrative-wise and concerned with Bilbo’s journey to becoming a hero. It wouldn’t make sense to have a long epilogue and would certainly have complaints about pacing if it described Bilbo’s life afterward.
The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, is not just about Frodo, or the Fellowship, or even the peoples of Middle-Earth during the Third Age. Time-wise, it’s extends back to the creation of the world with the angelic Melkor and Sauron, and forward to how we’re currently in the Sixth/Seventh Age. Character-wise it has even God/Eru play an indirect role in the ring’s destruction. Sure, you could have the story end with Frodo and the other Hobbits return to the Shire… but it was never just about them, and to not explore how Middle-Earth is changing would make the story “rushed”.
Otherwise, I often think that if a scene within the story seems like it should explore the themes/characters/etc., but instead just skips to the next plot point, it feels rushed. Or, as mentioned, those transitional sentences and moments which, on their own aren’t too bad, but eventually add up to make the story feel like it’s just trying to reach the end and feels rushed.
Now that I’ve used the word so many times, “rushed” doesn’t seem like a word at all. 
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Awww…for what it’s worth I love Herald and all the complications Herald seems poised to add to my mc’s personal journey will make it a better journey in the end.
How long was “Wise use of Time” Jim? Cause I enjoyed that one too.
I do think that for the whole Zombie Exodus series you’ve set expectations you cannot crawl out from under without serious backlash, but that does not necessarily have to apply to other, future projects you might take on in my perception.
He says before it is picked up as a TV/on demand/Netflix series. 
Will play part 5 from the retirement home right there with you too, in all likelihood, Mara.
I don’t think I like being categorized as a “Steam” gamer, instead of a PC gamer and I’m a bit dismayed by how synonymous they seem to become as of late. However @Eiwynn is absolutely correct as far as I’m concerned, though I’ve never been interested in Half-life.
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I am a very rare abys. I have PC since 80s but I am not a PC gamer. I am a rpg pc gamer and only have 3 ggames on steam Morrowind Oblivion Skyrim. The rest I pay for gog as I don’t belive in steam policies and drm
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