Is 2018 the best year to date for Hosted Games

Cool… i understand what you meant, and was actually making a point that our views are personal preference…although i think i also made it overdramatic ? Hmmm… the debate between cult classic and popular demand is always an interesting discussion :slight_smile:

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I’m going to risk being tarred, feathered, and thrown off the forum and say I enjoyed Cyborg more than Robots :stuck_out_tongue:

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I cyborg was truly an amazing and enjoyable game :slight_smile:

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Tin Star is without a doubt the single best Hosted game ever, and it is not even close. Slammed is another amazing CoG game but your mileage may vary depending on your opinion of wrestling. Whether like or understand wrestling, most people are still of the opinion that Slammed is very good.

Also I don’t happen to like Choice of Rebels, and Choice of Magics is written by the same author who wrote Choice of Robots. I still think Choice of Robots is slightly better, but you can see where the author has improved some of his techniques.

Also note that I did not say this might be the best year for CoG games, as I think there have been arguably better years in the past. There are some good entries but I feel there are some real stinkers in the lot this year.

I agree that I think Vampire House has more appeal, but I was generally just mentioning what I thought were good reads this year. I didn’t play GT2, because I never finished the original GT because of the RNG nature of things continually ruining my experience. As to DoD2, since I never read the original, I passed on the sequel. So both may be amazing in their own right, I just didn’t mention them because I will not comment on something I haven’t played.

That again speaks volumes about how good this year of Hosted games has been though. I have heard a couple of people rave about some of the other HGs as well, but never having played them, I couldn’t comment and hoped that like you they would drop in and comment on them.

Glad to see that there are even more great games this year than even what I mentioned.

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Yupe… both CoG and HG label seem to be doing quite well… and there are more titles coming before year’s end :slight_smile:

I agree that Hosted Games are getting better. What I’m really impressed with though are the recent CoG games. For a while I thought CoG titles had gotten very bland. It had gotten to the point where I wasn’t really even excited when they announced a new one. This past year, though, there have been several that I really liked.

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My overall impression is that interactive fiction (in all its forms) is improving as a whole over time.

To take a historical perspective, if you reread the old choose your adventure books… Well, many of them don’t stand the test of time. Then came fighting fantasy, lone wolf and the like, which were on a completely different level (but try to read them now… And don’t get me wrong, I still have them close to my desk for some sort of strange inspiration… But I mean the writing style and structure of many of them was… Well, better left to another thread! And I emphasize I still love them!)

So, CoG and HG… Arguably the top publisher of interactive fiction these days. I wouldn’t publish anywhere else.

Regarding CoG, obviously they have in house rules which are being refined over time, making sure to tell authors what works, doesn’t etc. But, even HG authors talk and discuss, in forums, private emails (I’m definitively not the best, but I’ve tried to learn by taking to other authors, Jacic, Eric, etc, read their works, see how they do things, what works, what doesn’t). So, I’m happy that there is a general feel that the average is improving! (And of course, some of the classics were published years ago, which we now see as games that set trends and ways of doing things!)

And, thanks for the mention of Highway Wars! Given that the ratings for it have been all over the place (an average of only 3.8 on Google) I was not sure that anybody was really considering one of the top games of the year. Anyway, it really made my day reading that! :slight_smile:

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I just check, Highway wars download in playstore reach 10k marks, which is the same standard as the top games… so i guess it is actually quite popular despite the ratings…

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Some of the paid downloads like Choice of Robots, Life of a Wizard, Psy High, etc, have 10k downloads on Android which is really impressive. 10k downloads for a free to download app isn’t the same thing at all, though.

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2026 is the best year to dat- i mean obviously 2018 is the best year to date i am not a time traveler coming here to see the absolutely boring nothing gonna happen 2019

seriously yea 2018 has been nice for hosted games
I mean Wayhaven Chronicles, and Kepler Colony arrived, then yea fallen hero and haze under windbrooke.

When you add in all the triple A and indi games that came out and the treasure trove from steam sales my wallet weeps.

@adrao What I really like about your stories is that feel like most of your choices have consequences. And you have more endings than just a different epilogue. The game book can end very differently depending on your choices. Now that may not be for everyone as there are definite fail states, and some choices don’t carry as much weight as others, but there is niche for the style you write, so keep on chugging along.

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Hm. While this is true, I’m surprised Choice of Robots isn’t higher–I’d heard it was the all time best seller, but maybe it made its money on iOS and Steam? Choice of the Deathless, Metahuman, and Choice of the Pirate are all in an even higher Android sales bracket.

You can compare the two, but that’d be done in its own (private) thread

Each year has had memorable entries, though I will admit some of what I consider the best written were last year and this year.

Something else to consider is that it seems like a lot more CoGs and HGs have come out this year/last year than previous years. This means we get more games to buy, while established authors also have had time to hone their craft.

I mean, I remember when you were sometimes lucky to get one game every couple months…

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Yeah, but all of those are free to download. To reach the 10k+ sales metric on Android is huge for a pay to download app, and most pay to download HGs and CoGs never reach 5k.

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