Hello, everyone! I am the author of Life of a Wizard, Life of a Mobster, Paradox Factor and the Lost Heir trilogy. As you know, I like choice-heavy, stat-heavy games with brisk descriptions that gets into the meat of the story quickly. Don’t worry, all of my effort is going into finishing Lost Heir 3 before starting anything new.
I have some questions for you!
Have you played any of my games? If you haven’t, you may not be able to answer all of the questions on this poll.
Yes, all of them.
Some of them.
One of them.
None of them.
0voters
What are your thoughts about seeing the stat changes while playing?
I like to see my stat changes.
I want my stat changes to be hidden.
0voters
As you know, you can’t die prematurely in my games. I do this so everyone can see a full story. Your death never occurs until the end of the game.
Don’t kill me early. I may not play a second time.
I don’t mind dying early in a game. I promise to play again.
0voters
My works have more of a game feel to them than some others. The problem then becomes, how difficult should it be?
Your games are too easy. Make them harder.
I like the difficulty as it is. It makes me feel a greater sense of accomplishment when I succeed.
They can be a little too difficult, but I still enjoy playing anyway.
Sometimes it’s too difficult and this makes me quit in frustration.
0voters
I constantly strive to find the balance between Game and Story. Life of a Wizard was game heavy, but the story was simple. Lost Heir tried to remedy that with more story, but that comes at the expense of less choice in some areas.
More story. I don’t mind a little necessary railroading.
Continue with the balance you have found.
More game. I want to do whatever I want, even if that means less plot.
0voters
I have a unique style that doesn’t match the esthetic vision of the CoG titles.
I like CoG’s style. You should try to emulate it.
I like your style. Variety is good.
0voters
I have enjoyed writing a trilogy, but it’s a large commitment. The amount of work that goes into each successive title is staggering due to all of the possible choices that have come from before. Single episode stories are easier to maintain a balance, but they end sooner. Series take longer to write and stand alones can be created faster.
I like multi-episode games. Write another series, please.
I like stand-alone games with no sequels. Write another of these, please.
0voters
I enjoyed diving into all of the tropes associated with a concept like I did with Life of a Wizard and Life of a Mobster. But I also enjoyed writing a more traditional story like Lost Heir. What next?
For those who Like me on Facebook; I try to find the balance of not posting too much, for fear of spamming you, and making sure I post enough, to keep you informed. What do you think?
Post more stuff.
Maintain your present balance.
Post less often.
Not applicable, since I don’t follow you on Facebook
Did I earn a price for do The poll? I WANNA BETA MORE OF YOUR GAMES… So stop doing polls and more writing I vote for Life o a bard poisoner a erotica novel starring by Mara
I like what I’ve seen so far. The “Life of…” are quick little diversions that I’ve honestly played like two or three times. The Lost Heir on the other hand, sucked up an entire weekend, and I keep coming back to it. I hope you find your results helpful.
Reasons of why I like Lucids Game: Colorful and identifiable characters, bland but not dull MCs, good story that is easy to relate and not pretentious, and most importantly, choices made have appearent results and stats are constantly in check, making nearly every decision relevant and intriguing.
For the story vs choice poll I chose to keep your current balance, but beyond the increased work I don’t see a reason you can’t have a choice heavier story. If you can figure out how to do that without going insane I’d be happy
That said unless you flub things really hard I don’t forsee not continuing to buy your games.
Thank you for giving us a glimpse into your near writing future. I’d like to expand on the poll; I feel you can get more out of this feedback to follow.
In general, I enjoy all aspects of your stories and so with a question like the stats issue, the real answer is I enjoy both hidden stat increases and I enjoy watching stat progression. It depends on the situation and the particulars but you pull both option off quite well and I enjoy both approaches that you’ve used in the past.
Another false dichotomy above is your question of “Do you prefer a Life of title or a story based title” … I like both types of games that you’ve written but if I could have you write the next story “my way” I’d ask that you do a story based life of story.
I love the concept of becoming a gangster and wizard and thoughtfully enjoyed your takes on them both. My gangster being a member of the Lacrosse team and kicking butt is still one of my favorite images because my high school had a very strong intimidating Lacrosse team and I pictured my MC in that situation quite well. At the same time, I’d love a story approach to be grafted on the Life of concept because your stories are among my active favorites. (Your still actively writing and building them)
I’ve thought about this concept a lot and if you care, I can even explore an idea with you in private that I have if you are interested.
I also know that you were considering continuing your entry in the recent contest and I still hope you pursue this.
As to the publisher of games, I feel your talented enough to write for either the more structured CoG library or the Hosted library - I’d support you either way and don’t care which you formally go with. If you choose to go the progressive CoG formulaic route, I think you are talented to pull it off regardless if you have 100 RO or none.
I’m a big fan of your work, but I found Lost Heir required too much stat management to be fun. (For me. Obvs loads of others love it.) The other Life of… games had more outcomes that rewarded moderately good stat management as well as a few more demanding ones like Archdruid. Maybe it’s that Lost Heir was based more around playing to particular classes, with mutually reinforcing stats where it’s easier to get off track? Anyway, I vote for a return to rather less demanding stat management.
@Lucid I find this rather helpful in thinking about what the (outspoken, at least) populace tends toward. And it seems as though epic, story-driven adventures are what the majority like.
Aye, you do have a style… but I don’t know if I’d consider it entirely unique (from my personal point of view). Life as a Wizard and Choice of Kung Fu seem similar in style to me. The Lost Heir and The Hero of Kendrickstone are of a similar vein. Like two different dishes served in the same multi-course meal. You know they’re different, but still seem to belong together in some way. Same goes for The Lost Heir and Samurai of Hyuga.
The Lost Heir can be challenging in places to get ‘good’ results, but that’s fine- the difference between ‘decent’ results and ‘good’ results is like Sabres o I and Guns o I, and if the game doesn’t have bad endings, I like this approach. I have to wonder how you deal with the spill-on of multiple endings adding more work for the next book in a series, but I’m sure it ties off at points, too. Anyway, thanks for the poll; I find it insightful, too.
Having played some of your games, I think you found a good balance of things in the Lost Heir trilogy - just enough story/railroading with still enough gameplay/gameplay mechanics and the like for one to not feel too tied down by said story/railroading . That said, I’m still more of a proponent of standalone games (the longer and extensive, the better though, of course) than multi-episode games, because I generally find them to be… Problematic in many ways, both for the author and the readers…
As for the MC’s stats… More often than not I prefer to be able to see them, especially so in a game like Lost Heir where there’s so many stats that without being able to see them (or at elast the resulting boosts of our choices) it would be fairly difficult to say in which direction the main character is developing…
I just wanted to comment so that I could say that your games are the reason I made an account here, Lucid. I personally have really loved the Lost Heir trilogy so far, and it would be great to see more series from you.
Please don’t emulate CoG’s style, you’re story games are so much more unique, better than most official games. As the old saying goes, ‘you can’t fix what isn’t broken’ .
Thank you, everyone, for the amazing response! I held off from posting anything so as not to bias the results. There are some very interesting tidbits of information here. Let’s see! -cracks knuckles-
I am blown away by this first question. I know that a lot of people here have played, but I didn’t expect 98%. I suspect that this may be skewed by Non Response bias, since more of my fans would do this poll than people who don’t know me, but still. Thank you!
93% like to see stat changes. I included the option to hide stats in Lost Heir, but now I see that this was done for a vocal minority. I’ll have to think about what this means for future titles.
I wasn’t sure where this would go, but there is enough split to make me want to stick to my current style. I also suspect that this is similar to the ‘back button’ debate. Many people may think they would like it, but upon having it, would find their experience lessened from it. Early deaths are dangerous, especially to anyone who would rate the game after only one play through.
This is interesting to see that 6% think too easy and 8% think too hard. It seems that I should make things a little easier, but not by much. That’s a hard balance, but I’ll try.
People like their plot. That was my biggest goal when going from Life of a Wizard into Lost Heir. LH1 may have still felt too loose, since it was building the story. LH2 may also, to some degree. I think LH3, with all of its explanation and results, will feel like it has the most story. Tricky, but I’ll see what I can do.
90% like my style. That’s very good to hear. I knew I’d get a few extra votes just because our forums are so friendly, but with an anonymous poll with this side of a margin, I think this is amazing. Thank you! I try to make games that I’d like to play, so it’s good to see that others like it too.
This was another surprising result. 65% of people like series. You guys like the more difficult options. I suspect that my next title will still be a standalone, but after seeing this result, it makes me start thinking about another epic.
63% would like a normal story compared to 37% for another Life Of. This may be connected to the previous question. People like long games, after all. The risk of a Life Of is that it intentionally confines me to a specific genre or plot which may not be popular. But then again, it may draw new fans who read things other than what I have already wrote. We’ll see.
and 10) This was surprising to me. I knew that Facebook wasn’t very popular, but I didn’t expect to here that 60% don’t use it. I’m curious as to why 15% don’t have me Liked yet they use Facebook.
Thanks again, everyone. This is great stuff and I’ll be thinking about these results a lot as I think about new titles.
very interesting, not seen a topic like this before. btw I have facebook but don’t like you as just to many things too like just counting the pages/groups etc that actively ask me to like them
I vote for Life o a bard poisoner a erotica novel starring by Mara 
