You’ve spent your whole life visiting the majestic Hotel Lexington, and now you’ve inherited it! The once-grand building is in disrepair, and rumored to be haunted! You’re the only one who can restore its former glory before it’s lost forever. The Lexington and its surrounding town stand at a crossroads: will they pursue modern luxury; or look to the past to recapture its faded splendor?
It’s time for you to roll up your sleeves and get to work renovating the hotel into the destination of everyone’s dreams! You get to choose how you’ll shape the Lexington’s future: will you create a luxury spa in the nearby hot springs; restore the speakeasy bar to its 1920s glamour; turn the kitchen into a foodie’s dream; or pour all your resources into making the guest rooms perfect for a romantic weekend getaway? Or, embrace the ghost stories and local history of spiritualism, bringing in a hit ghost-hunting TV show to make the Lexington a hotspot for paranormal tourism!
Or maybe you’ll have a few nights of passion in those rooms yourself. You need to court some investors, and wealthy Remington Peabody is certainly worth courting. With icy blue eyes and platinum-silver hair, this scion of a prominent local family loves to take charge in bed just as much as in the boardroom, teasing you with sensual massage, radiating magnetic charisma, and holding you tight with strong hands.
Or, there’s Sunny Thompson, star of the hit TV show Ghost Brigade: bright and enthusiastic and cheerful to match the name, with rosy kissable lips and an ever-changing hairstyle. Sunny’s a true believer in the paranormal, with a taste for grand romantic gestures like horse-drawn carriage rides - and playing rough in the bedroom.
Then there’s Manfri Booney, the hotel’s faithful concierge. They have courtly manners and a flamboyant style all their own: tousled black curls, crushed velvet jackets, cedar-scented cologne, sweet dimples, and an impish smile. They might spend their days fulfilling guests’ wishes - and as a medium, they keep the ghostly guests happy along with the living ones - but they’re happy to take the lead in the bedroom with scorching kisses.
And what about Della Rose? This hotel guest has loads of confidence and a devastatingly glamorous fashion sense: bobbed dark hair, jeweled headbands and fringed dresses, with ruby-red lipstick and sparkling emerald eyes. She loves dancing under the stars at a midnight picnic. But doesn’t she fit in far too well in the 1920s speakeasy bar? Did this drop-dead-gorgeous woman actually drop dead? The hotel is supposed to be haunted, you know…
This is a Heart’s Choice game. The PC is female. There are four ROs: one female, one nb, and two that genderswap (male, female, or nb). This game is rated 4 out of 5 chili peppers on the updated HC scale.
Directions for beta testing:
- First, read the Beta FAQ if this is your first time testing: Beta Testing FAQs - Please Read Before Applying!
- Then, email us, beta AT choiceofgames for access.
DO NOT POST ASKING WHAT THE BETA EMAIL ADDRESS IS. The first test to becoming a beta tester is inferring what it is based on how we describe it above.
Do not send DMs/PMs through the forum mail system, Discord, text message, carrier pigeon, or any other method than email. - When you send your EMAIL, include:
- the game you want to test in the Subject line of the email.
- your forum-name
- your real name (first and last).
Please indicate if your family/surname comes first as well. Beta testers’ names are listed in the game’s credits, which are accessed with the “About” link you’ll see within the game. If you don’t want to appear in the credits, or you want to be credited under a name other than your real one, please let us know.
- Do not email us multiple times about joining a beta. If you don’t email us as soon as we post a beta, you go into a queue. As we post new drafts, we admit more people from the queue. Eventually, we will get to you. Some beta processes last longer than others, and it may take up to a few weeks to reach the front of the queue.
- When you have been admitted to the beta, we will send you a link, a username, and a password as a reply to your email.
- If you have tested before, do not use the same password that you used to test any previous game. This game has a different password.
When you have feedback to submit:
- Return feedback as part of the same email thread where you were admitted. Copying beta@choiceofgames on that email is the best way to make sure your comments are seen as soon as possible.
- Please send screenshots or copy/pasted quotes whenever you can; it helps us track down whatever observation you’re making. In particular, the author may see things that you don’t, and/or the screenshot may contain more information than you realize.
- If you’re submitting feedback using the Bug/Submit button in the game, make sure you include your handle/name in the body of the email. The Submit button obscures your email address, and I can’t give you credit for feedback if I don’t know who you are.
A few more notes:
- You cannot be testing two games at once. If you are already testing one game, send in feedback on that game before you apply to another. If you apply for multiple games at the same time, you will likely be admitted first to whichever game has testing slots open up first, and we won’t be able to admit you to the other one until you send in your comments for that one. (From an admin standpoint, it’s easiest if you don’t apply to more than one game at once – applying to multiple games makes it more likely that we’ll miss admitting you to one of them.)
- If you’re admitted as a tester but realize you won’t be able to send in feedback for that game, please let us know! You won’t be penalized in any way - we’ll just take you off the list of testers for that game. But if you sign up to test a game and don’t send comments or withdraw, it will affect your chances of being admitted to future betas.
- There’s no standard length of time for a beta testing period to last, and we usually don’t know exactly how long a game will be in beta when it opens. The best way to know how long a beta will be open is to follow the thread for updates.
- It’s fine to send multiple feedback emails, but if you have a lot of quick comments, it’s easier to keep track of them if you bundle them into one email.
Tips on How to Give Feedback
We’re looking for “high level” and “low level” feedback. Not mid-level feedback.
- Low-level = typos and continuity errors. A continuity error is when a character’s gender flips, or someone comes back from the dead, or you run into a plotline that just doesn’t make sense (because it’s probably a coding error). For these low-level issues, screenshots are very helpful. If you see a problem, take a screenshot, or copy and paste the text that is in error, and email that.
- “High level” feedback has to do with things like plot, pacing, and characters. “Scene A didn’t work for me because x, y, and z,” is useful feedback. “B character was entirely unsympathetic, because u, w, and v,” is also useful feedback.
- “Mid-level” feedback describes things like grammar, style, word choice, or the use of commas. As I said above, I do not want mid-level feedback. In particular, DO NOT WRITE TO ME ABOUT COMMAS.
Be SPECIFIC in your feedback. General comments like “I had a great time and saw only a few spelling errors,” is not useful feedback. In fact, it’s the sort of thing that results in you not being given access to future betas.
Some examples of useful feedback:
- In Choice of the Dragon, you get to choose what type of wings you have: leather or scaled. Someone wrote in and asked about having feathered wings. Great suggestion! Done!
- In “The Eagle’s Heir,” someone asked about Eugenie. They said that the romance moved too quickly–because she only appeared in the last third of the game–and wished they could have had an opportunity to meet her earlier. So the authors added an opportunity to meet her and start the romance earlier in the game (in a scene that already existed).
- In “Demon Mark: A Russian Saga” several people commented on how the PC’s parents were unsympathetic, so the authors added a choice or two to deepen the relationship with the parents in the first chapter, to help better establish their characters.
- Pointing out a specific choice and saying, “this is who I imagined my character was at this particular moment, and none of these options seemed right for me. I would have liked an option to do X instead,” is also really helpful feedback.
- If you choose an option and then the results of that option don’t make sense. Like, if you thought an option might test one stat, but it seems to have tested a different one.