I mean, yeah, if I’m deciding between a 500-page-book for 50€ and 200-page-book for 30€, and I like both equally and I have enough money, I’m probably going to get the longer one (it’s cheaper per page, and I’m more likely to be able to get the cheaper one too at a later date), but that’s quite a rare situation in any case… I’m more likely to get food instead, at the price point books currently are.
Also I usually don’t have length as the main deciding point on what I buy. I won’t get a game that doesn’t look interesting, no matter how long it is. I also get short games that do interest me.
But I also don’t like writing short stories! I mean, on purpose. If it just ends up being short because I ran out of plot, then that’s fine.
I truly wish IF was more mainstream (though I feel like it’s unlikely to become so, unfortunately).
I’m not surprised doorstoppers with romance in popular genres are the mode, since they’re inherently going to be popular with the demographics who are interested in IF in the first place, but it would be so cool if the scene was large enough that niche works (unpopular genres, ‘shorter’ works, works without romance, etc) could reliably find sustainable audiences if the quality was there.
It is not from this forum. But I am having a racist sending me on discord pm of racist right wing leanings and something about Latino being rabbits rabies.
The funniest thing is he is ranting about being a sigma bloodied American… With the worst grammar I have ever seen. stuff like PEOPLES and my favourite MOMORIES several times! Like it is not a simple error.
I have reported it to discord but I am having fun. Like that dude makes me feel like an English Oxford cathedratic. And He believed that I was a Latino American so I might have improved my English more than I thought. However, that people don’t have enough brain power to be a judge about it.
I’ve been on vacation in the mountains in Utah and thought I wouldn’t get any writing done, but it’s actually been easier here than at home, since it’s nice having more family around. I’ve also gotten help with brainstorming from different people (which is useful, because this chapter has 7 different romantic scenes that all play out differently).
I’m up to 23.8K words. I probably won’t reach 30K by the 31st, but that was the stretch goal, so getting close feels good.
I’ve been fine-tuning the title for my scandipunk project, since my current working one sounds like a Viking age story rather than sci-fi Nordic Noir it should.
I wonder if the 150k word requirement for a Steam release is a hard requirement or not. I could easily pad it out to 150k by unhoisting sections and duplicating stuff, etc, so it’s not a big deal either way, but it would save me some work!
Daria: A Kingdom Simulator got an initial steam release despite being 125k words, so HG does make exceptions. (But Lucid is a legendary HG author, so there is that.)
That said, if you’re aiming for a steam release, trying to hit 150k words would give you better chances than submitting a game below that and hoping that HG waives the requirement for you. If you can bring it up to 150k words or more, I recommend that you try to aim for that.
Yes. There’s a lot of HGs regardless of length that don’t have a steam release. They only get one if COG thinks they will sell ok there. Longer games increase you chances but no guarantees. Generally a bad idea to pad games out for the sake of padding them if it makes the game experience worse.
Anyone want to exchange feedback for feedback? Is that a thing we do here? I should have the next chapter uploaded by Friday, which means I’ll have the weekend to read and catch up on what everyone else has written.
I wrote two stories about my experiences with Choice of Games:
I haven’t re-read these but I expect the first one is kind of grim and sad compared to how I feel now. I’m working on a third CoG game and things are great now, I have a consistent flow and pattern and have been getting about 6,000 words a week during the summer. My biggest advice to people just barely starting out is to realize just how huge these games are. 200K might feel small as a player but that is a year or years of work for most people. If you know what you’re getting into and have backup plans for handling burnout and/or your game turning out to be crap, it’s great. If you don’t know what you’re getting into, trying to make a 10K or 20K small game, like for a competition, can be a good way to get a feel for the entire process from start to finish.
For what it’s worth, I would have liked a cute Christmas story about Mrs. Claus waaaay less. Nisse aren’t cute. They are insanity-causing gods, and pretending otherwise is doing a disservice to hundreds of years of folk tradition.
It’s been attempted. If you find someone to exchange feedback with, go wild.
You write the Alice game, right? I’ve been meaning to read that anyway, I’ll happily provide feedback. If I haven’t posted anything by Sat/Sun or so feel free to give me a nudge over DM.
No worries about feeling obliged to read my thing either, I have some downtime for reading over the next couple of weeks anyway since I just dropped a chapter and am square in ‘waiting as feedback / bug reports roll in’ mode.
