that’s what i meant with thinking of endings of one installment as branches, not endings.
like, okay, you did X Y and Banana, does this combo allow to continue? if yes, you start at that point tll the tarting points come back together at point 1
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I hope not, because Pon Para is amazing. I playtested it and can’t wait for the sequel.
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Pretty sure Kyle holds the only two games in one year record, : D but I suspect next installment will be in 2020…
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He still has an amazing output
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I still hold out hope for Choice of Vampire 3.
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Well, last I heard, I know Jason tries to make sure he has the time to continue working on it. Be it 5 or 10 years, I’m sure he’ll create a masterpiece that everyone will love.
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Going by jason’s twitter… he is in the middle of writing it and it seems to be going decently?
Mnnn…
We have some writig workshop threads on here… gimme a moment
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Some of the game, i meant Tin Star… already conclude with a grand ending for every possible route that the MC had play through, leaving absolutely inpossible for a sequel… more ever, it is also impossible to continue with 10+ sequel stories based on those epilogue … i would rather write my on happy ending marriage story with Carrie or Maria as my own sequel 
Other story which i hope to have a sequel are Heart of the Houses, where i still have unfinish relationship with Oriana with fate of the world hang in status quo
And Slammed ! Where i really wish to be part of the next revolution of the wrestling world that run concurently with the current real situation, and i feel there is more story to the marriage life with Evelyn Esctasy , on how to help her in her singer carear … or if i romance Maria/Madison , how i can help her win the Mexico presidential election and battle criminal syndicate there …
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Sequels for HG and COG are…weird to me. I don’t really like the idea of “Everything your MC just did, doesn’t really count because they chose to do this instead.”
Then you have things like Samurai of Hyuga which are awesome at not making a players choices feeling invalid by the continuing story. It keeps the player feeling satisfied or intentionally bad with their players. Very little of it has any magic reset buttons to the narrative.
I was kicking around the idea for an eventual sequel in a few thousands years when I finally get Rokusuppo done. The MC would move on to become a school teacher while being the cities strongest fighter. Police are cracking down on gang crime and things start getting tense.
And in my head…that sounds awesome. In theory. In execution, if I ever wanted to do something like that, it would have to be done in such a way that the actions the player did aren’t negated by a sequel. Even if in theory, that seems like it would be a cool thing to do, a standalone title can be good in it’s own right since it’s not removing choices from the player.
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That’s when you have authors that don’t want to write sequels to a game, but to their story.
Thankfully he majority of authors at CoG/HG, in my experience, aren’t like that. Cause, sorry, but if you can’t be arsed to continue all the stories (except the funky endings) why are you writing a sequel
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If you think from the start to branch your story in more parts (from Book 1 to Book 2, etc.) what you say is “easily” (I mock myself here for the expression as is not easy at all) done.
But take a one shot story (a single game), as you said the creative process could be long ( Aside the case of 2 Games in one year (=D ) between the time you start and finish the project the writer could come up with different situations (rewrite entire chapters, introduce new routes, etc.) all to give an end (or more than one) to their story.
So if you release your work and after some time (few months? One year? Maybe 2 years? ) may be for the fan demands or because you come up with new ideas. You decide to “continue” the story but in the meanwhile you are already gone to do different stuff and forgot the details of your previous work. Well how much you can retrack your own routes/branching ? (I’m pretty sure any writer had these moments when they totally forgot " put here your favorite imprecation Oh right I put that in there, what do I do now with this? ")
Ps. Good news to know about Choice of the Vampire 3 
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That my friend is why waiting for the Sequels made new fanart and fan fiction come to existence XD (good pick I totally forgot Slammed!, was a touching story for the rivalty with the childhood friend and the pass of the torch mentor moment with the old wrestler)
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Yeah … i would think in Slammed ! The most intriguing for future sequel is the Maria/Madison romance because like i said, what would it be if our wife is a mexico president and how would she wants to protect us from her enemies?
However , of course Evelyn or JJ romance got their challenge as well in future , like how do MC keeps a celebrity wife/husband happy and deal with their fans…
And Paul Prototype, surprisingly in reality had turm his fortune around, really marry the owner daughter and handling the business with many people respect of him… who would had thought that ?
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Community College Hero 3 will come out in 2020.
For me, starting with a trilogy was the right move. It lets you grow closer to the characters, deepen the world, and toss in more plot twists as opposed to trying to cram it all of this in one release. I guess for me it came down to, I spent about 9 months brainstorming the world, characters, plot, etc., …do I really want to just move on after releasing one game?
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I like games where there’s a companion game in the same world - The City’s Thirst worked well for me. Writing wise, it’s something I’ve thought about a lot. In Blood Money, a sequel with the same PC wouldn’t work unless the sequel forced you into specific previous choices (since you can die, as well as do a number of other things that would make major changes to account for in a sequel) which I wouldn’t want to do. I’m considering various companion games in the setting of Blood Money or Creme de la Creme for the future, though, and if I did that, I’d probably aim for a series with the same PC. It’s definitely a larger-scale challenge in terms of planning, not to mention requiring you keeping momentum for the same character and world over a long period of development time.
The important thing is making the story feel complete while a) being open-ended enough for sequels to be feasible, and b) not being so open-ended that you can’t draw threads together for the next one. So there’s a lot to think about - kudos to anyone who does it, especially for their first game!
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Interestingly, I think Choice of Romance did a good job with this. Like, if you chose not to pursue a romance with the King/Queen, then no sequels for you, but otherwise you had two whole other books to play. Def don’t think most people would be satisfied with that sort of thing for other stories, though, writing or reading.
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Yeah, I think it depends on the story. With Choice of Romance, at least it makes it clear that the goal is to romance the monarch, so there is that single path that’s the preferred route. I’m not sure that would be a common approach for CoGs these days though.
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I think it depends on how you design your story. I like what @ThomB does with Sordwin. I actually enjoy it more than when I was playing Evertree Inn. One reason is because it’s a mystery-solving type of story so you could expand it into series by putting the MC into different mysteries. Of course it can get boring if there is no character development. And that’s where the author’s skills will shine. As long as there’s progress, be it with the character development (skill wise and personality wise) or relationship between characters, sequel can be great.
Samurai of Hyuga is also a great example as you get the powerful Ronin in first story in which they are pretty much above everyone else and don’t really care about other people. But in the 2nd and 3rd stories you see how they start to care about other people and have more consciousness on what they are doing.
Now sequel is bad if the MC is just the same as they are on the first story, meaning there’s no character development at all.
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I rarely write with the intention of making a sequel. I’m more of a “we told this story, let’s move on” kind of person. That said, I do have plans to write a reality T.V. story that will probably/hopefully have more seasons depending on reception.
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I think sequels to these types of games are especially challenging, since rewarding the player with the payoff of significantly different outcomes makes direct sequels daunting at best. It’s especially difficult in that I usually feel like these games are normally meant to be replayed, but with a game that has a direct sequel, you have to fret over what your own cannon playthrough is.
The way Fallen Hero was handled, where everything is heavily colored by your relationships that your cumulative choices shine, even given the relatively static plot, seems like a great way to set up for a sequel. You’ll still have your state information, that can continue to be used in the same manner.
By contrast, WC1 seemed focused primarily on a single choice, and the rest, seems to be personal expression. With that choice made, I’m having a hard time comprehending what direction WC2 would take from there. But it’s certainly a universe filled with opportunity.
While I really enjoyed Psy High, the idea of a sequel though is quite surprising. If it takes place after Psy High, that suggests a cannon outcome. If it occurs before it, then there are limitations of scope. From the description, it sounds a bit like a separate game set in the same universe (or a similar AU), which strikes me as quite a sensible approach to the whole sequel concept.
As for games that could use a sequel, the only one I’ve played that I think would work well as a series is Sixth Grade Detective. It was quite strongly episodic and relationship heavy. With the premise of basically taking place in class, in a new year, after a summer off, you could probably start fresh, as a stand alone game, with slightly altered character creation. I wouldn’t say no to a spiritual successor to Choice of Alexandria either, exploring some other culture / time period. Other games I really enjoyed like Hollywood Visionary and Choice of Robots I have no idea how to conceive of a sequel to. They each seem to tell a very specific story with mechanics unique to their time frame.
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