I think it’s worth considering trimming what you’ve got and starting after the failure point. A long linear section including a point at which failure always happens is a hard sell for players who enjoy feeling that their choices have real impact. It’s not a waste, because you’ve explored the setting and can potentially repurpose it later on (and have learned stuff as well).
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Can you redefine success so that the point isn’t stopping the big thing but making connections or saving little things? What do you do when the tragedy is beyond your control? So it isn’t about stopping the tragedy, but living with it?
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My advice - as someone who committed to making the first climactic battle of his first story a major defeat, is to allow the player to mitigate that foregone failure.
Maybe they succeed at some minor goal or at protecting someone else even as the rest of it falls apart? Give them little victories, ones centred around the characters you’ve let them come to know - and give them moments where they can use the skills and decisions they’ve cultivated to make a difference, even if it’s one that doesn’t change the outcome.
At Blogia, the Tierran Army will lose, but your own decisions as a player determines whether the MC comes out of that defeat a hero, disgrace, or something in between. It determines the fate of at least one major character, and it has implications which carry on and create fresh consequences as the story progresses.
Letting the player experience failure is fine. The problem is when that failure erases the consequences of the player’s choices. So long as the decisions and the differences which the player can make continue to reverberate across the story despite that failure, your players will not begrudge it.
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tried something new with this chapter: wrote it all first (which i’m close-ish to done with), saved playtesting and editing for the very end. now i’m finally getting to a point where i can start actually, really truly reading through it and editing.
i hate it. i hate hate hate hate HATEEEEEEE it. to be fair, i just started the editing/playtesting process literally last night (not even 24 hours ago now), but i am already prepared to chuck my laptop through a wall. or off a building. i feel like, i just ran one million marathons actually WRITING it, and now i have to run SEVERAL MORE marathons to actually get through all the editing and polishing and tweaking and whatnot.
hate it. hate it hate it hate it.
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After logging out from the forums for a bit, I’ve made quite a lot of progress on Skies Over Steelthorne, although I’m probably not going to be able to finish it on time for the Spring Thing contest unless I cut a lot of content… which is under consideration.
Wrote the final battle in the mountains, the battle for the Imperial Palace and Princess Zoe’s romance plotline. I could possibly finish up the ending scenes and two sidequests this week, and work on the rest after the Spring Thing.
The deadline is April 4 so…
- Reduce the scope, polish and submit it to the Spring Thing
- Forget the Spring Thing and take another month to finish the game
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voters
On another note, the Spring Thing prize list hasn’t been updated yet… or maybe that’s the final prize list.
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A delayed game is delayed once. A bad game is bad forever.
In my opinion, even a good IF needs a few months of polish to become a great one.
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Today I spent way too long (4.5 hours) hyperfocused on customizing the ChoiceScript syntax for VSCode so that I could have more variation in the colours and help a few things stand out a bit more. Who knows, maybe in the long run it will save me just as much time or more by preventing errors in the code? Or maybe not, but at least it looks nice. Figured I might as well show it off now that I’ve spent all that time on it… 
Before:
After:
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Also, we have one more week to the end of the month. Does anyone want to take over the next support thread? If you want to share any articles or have your WIPs showcased on the support thread next month, please leave a comment as well.
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Whoa. To think I forgot to post in this thread, because I was preoccupied with things. Anyway, time for a little update. Regarding Lily Adventuresses!, I’ll start working on the rest of episode 4 next month, because it’s part of an indie game mentorship and development fund program, and I would not formally start on the actual production until the admission into said program is formally greenlit.
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That’s actually a great idea I think! Would you tell me where you edited that? I think I wanna do that too - not at all for the purpose of procrastination naturally.
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Thank you to everyone that replied to my question on keeping my title or scrapping it – I really appreciate it. For my progress report sadly still on my never ending battle scene, though by neccesity of the real world and then my other wip calling, I’m gonna have to take a break before finishing it. Probably won’t get anything substantial finished further here in march due to lots of work and other real world stuff coming up, but in april I plan to try to get that update for “All the Way” posted, and then finish a few things for “Sense & Sorcery” with a focus on adding to the various RO paths, finishing “The Valiant Knight Update”, adding to the Introduction Ceremony in “S&S” and then maybe after that finishing the battle scene and further content for “The Throne of Thr’gran” update. Sorry I haven’t had time and energy to be active on here – best fortune on all your writing and coding, creators!
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I was on Steam earlier and decided to look at the page for my game, because I keep wanting to look. I have a hard time not looking at it at least once a day. I’m not sure if it is because of disbelief that it’s happening or what.
Anyways, I was surprised to see a curator did a review of it. Which was odd to me since the game isn’t out for another week. I was thinking it might have been someone from the forum who has played the demo. When I clicked to see the review it was tagged as not recommended and I was concerned. Then I read the reason: creation allows for male, female, or nonbinary. I laughed.
Luckily, those reviews don’t mean anything, I think. I hope.
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Never read your game’s reviews, ever, under any circumstances, for any reason, ever. That path leads only to madness.
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Started work on my own choicescript game recently, and I’m really enjoying working on it so far. It’s a nice use of my light programming knowledge mixed with a fun opportunity to test my creative writing skills.
My current project is tentatively titled Emperor of Venus, and is basically an homage to the serialised sci-fi of the early 20th century, e.g. John Carter of Mars, and Flash Gordon. Still working on the prologue at the moment, but I think I like where it’s going.
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If you really want to know what people think of your work, find someone you trust to read the reviews for you. They can pass along any that they think you’ll actually enjoy reading, and they can inform you of any cogent or frequent criticism in a constructive way.
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Alternatively, you can autocannibalise deeper into your own writing like a Sims 2 painting goblin!
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I’m a big Sims 2 fan, but you’re going to have to educate me about autocannibalizing painting goblins.
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I thought it was from the earliest lawless days of the internet but it’s actually as recent as 2013:
… which is older than a good portion of my students
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For the record, I did force myself to read negative reviews of my game when writing my content update. But, won’t lie, the mindfuck is real and terrible if you do that. A lot of reviews will be deliberately obnoxious or unhelpful, and you need to filter that out.
But with all that said, if you don’t have to, just don’t read it. A lot of writers do not read reviews at all. To steal a quote from one of them ‘It can drive you to drink.’ I stopped reading reviews once I was done with the content update, and never looked back.
Also, Steam isn’t everything. My game didn’t sell well on Steam, but it did much better on mobile platforms. (That said, I think it did sell enough on steam to recoup the $100 fee by now.)
tldr: Don’t read any reviews now. Go get a drink.
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It’s not out yet, so no real reviews yet. I’ll try to keep it in mind.
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