Goals for March:
Thanks for making a fun game to play, and good luck with your goal!
Goal of the month is to finish Chapter One. Let’s go big or go home. I hope everyone else achieves their goals as well!
Submitted an 8 page screenplay for another contest yesterday. Currently no immediate project. Trying to decide if I want to keep on my screenwriting kick and finish my second feature or take a break and work on the selfpub alternate history short story collection.
I…have no goals. Normally, I fix my writing schedule every two weeks, but this week, I’m giving myself a mental-health-and-general-chaos break until Wednesday. We’ll see if things calm up or down by then. Either direction is fine.
I too have no goals… well I mean I have goals, but as soon as I write them down life ALWAYS has a funny way of coming up with some crappy way of distracting me. It’s a bit like choosing a path full of fake choices.
February was very productive though, not so much in word count but around 2000 lines of code for a short skiing game I was inspired to write. Hopefully it’ll be ready before the next winter Olympics 
I saw in last month’s thread you said the title was previously used for a Sims thing? I think that’s absolutely fine, 100% fair game. Now, if it were a Hosted Games title, there might be reason to worry. 
I guess my goal this month should be to do the beta reading stuff, again… But maybe I should add a bit more structure to the plan beyond “do the thing (at some point)” so that I might actually do it this time. 
I’ve developed a clear plot outline spanning across ten ~ chapters for my novel game. Aiming to wrap-up Chpt 3 and advance with Chpt 4 this month.
That’s really impressive! My personal record for a single day has been ~ 6k constructive words. Though that figure can fluctuate greatly and inconsistency is something I’m grappling with.
There were several days in 2026 whereby I had intention, time and space but wrote 0 words anyways. I’m not proud of that but trying to go easier on myself, we’re just human after all. On review, some were clear cases of writer’s block and other days just got straight-up distracted.
Hi everyone, I’m new in town. 
I don’t really post much but I made an account when I got a contract with CoG so I could browse the forums a bit and get a feel for what goes on around here. I’m currently writing my first ever story using ChoiceScript.
I’m thinking about posting a WIP thread for my project, but I thought I’d post here first to say hello and introduce myself somewhat. I’m also not sure when a good time might be to post one! For those who’re interested in such threads, how much do you usually like to see before diving in? Is there an amount that feels like it’s “too much” makes you think you’d rather just wait for the full game? How polished would you want it to be? (At the moment my stats page and glossary is entirely non-functional and placeholder, and the startup settings aren’t explained anywhere, for example!)
I’m also curious, for those who usually read WIPs, how much it influences you to go on to buy the game when it’s released, or even if it ever has the opposite effect? Do you also beta-read for those games or not? For those of you who’ve posted your own WIP threads, what do you find them to be helpful for? Would you say you often get genuinely useful feedback or is it more for motivation and to interact with people who are interested in the project?
Apologies for all the questions! Just trying to get a feel for things. As a tribute, I shall offer my own monthly goal like everyone else. I’m pretty terrible at estimating how long things will take me, so I don’t usually set myself deadlines, as they’re often just vehicles for disappointment, but I’ll make an exception this once! 
I would say that a sensible low stakes goal for me this month (which includes at least one week off) would be to finish the “scene” that I’m currently working on in Chapter 2, which is, effectively, ~12 branched mini-scenes leading into a shared conclusion. It should be the penultimate scene of the chapter with only one more (longer, but more linear) to go after it, notwithstanding a few bits of connective tissue here and there. Hoping to finish the whole thing by 19th April–at least that’s the date I gave my editor. 
Welcome!
Not… really? I like diving in head-first. I check the genre and such and not much else before trying the wip, because I’m a firm believer of the story needing to speak for itself and I want to see how it measures up. But I know I may be the odd one out here.
I mean. If it turns out to be something I really like, I’m obviously going to buy it ASAP. If it turns out to be something I have no interest in at all, I won’t buy it. If it’s somewhere in between, I’ll decide based on how I feel like during the launch week (although I may still get it later at some point if I don’t buy it then).
Not really, no. I don’t have the time or the feedback skills.
I haven’t posted my own WIP thread, but I read a lot of them, so I hope you don’t mind me answering this one: I’d say it depends on what kind of feedback-givers you get. People can help you sort out coding errors, typos, continuity issues, and such. You may also get suggestions on where the player wished to be able to say or do something different… those are a good thing in my book, but your mileage may vary. But like I said, it depends. Not all threads get much useful feedback.
Okay, first goals then replies to other posts. 
February sucked for a lot of reasons. So my March goal is the same as February: finish the chapter I’m working on.
I thinknit should be fine to keep that title. Lots of books, movies, and games have simmilar or even the same titles. And I think its a good title for the game you described.
At the very least a summary of the plot and genre. Personally I like to have a list of ROs. I dont need lots of detail, just enough so I knows names and whose compatible with my MC. If you mean more how long should the demo be, I would say 1-3 chapters based on how long they are and how long the game is.
I’m way more likely to buy a game I played as a WIP. I rarely buy games I haven’t at this point.
For me its a lot more motivation based. Ive had some readers point out bugs and typos which is great, but I rarely, get feedback on narrative design, pacing, choices, flow, ect. In fact I can only think of one and it was suggested via Tumblr not here, but I also have a way widen audience on Tumblr. (I have a gender locked game with genderlocked ROs and that makes it a lot harder to gather an audience on the forum.)
I have a WIP thread, and I’ve found it very useful for feedback, though I didn’t start getting most of it until after I added Chapter 2 a couple weeks ago.
Hello everyone 
Been a fan of CoG and HG for years but have only just started to write my own. Still early days but I’m enjoying the process and very much looking forward to sharing one day in the future. Current plans to just stay consistent each day through the month and keep learning. Will definitely be following this thread for support and it’s great to hear others progress!
Good luck for March writing 
When first learning, what helped me out so much was:
Happy March, everyone. Anyone celebrating pi day later this month?
The only notable other usage I saw was as the name of a quest in the Sims; your WIP is the third result for the phrase.
HG is a US company and assuming US laws are the ones in question, titles aren’t copyrightable[1].
Names, Titles, Short Phrases
Words and short phrases, such as names, titles, and slogans, are uncopyrightable because they contain an insufficient amount of authorship. The Office will not register individual words or brief combinations of words, even if the word or short phrase is novel, distinctive, or lends itself to a play on words.
Examples of names, titles, or short phrases that do not contain a sufficient amount of creativity to support a claim in copyright include
- The name of an individual (including pseudonyms, pen names, or stage names)
- The title or subtitle of a work, such as a book, a song, or a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work
A title could be trademarked, but that’s mainly for distinct things likely to cause consumer confusion. E.g., ChoiceScript for Dummies, Artemis Fowl and the Sunset Conspiracy.
Plus a few non-obvious things that somehow managed to lobby for trademark protection, like “pattern magic” and previously “superhero” (DC and Marvel lost their trademark in 2024 and I don’t believe they’ve appealed the decision).
I doubt “gilded guild” is trademarked. In the very worst case scenario where it is and the holder comes after you, you’d just have to change the name.
I read a productivity book that suggested reframing goals as quests and side quests, to make them more fun. That may just be linguistic wank, but:
March Quests
March Side Quests
To that end, I have two questions of my own:
Would you find it a let down if a villain who was built up as a pure evil cackling megalomaniac supervillain turned out to be a pretty reasonable person, all things considered? Not a good person really, but one possessing sympathetic motivations, sympathetic goals, and debatably sympathetic means?
It’d be a genre subversion, which gives me pause. Subversions make things worse unless the new thing is cooler. I’m worried a subversion here would be lame and leave the audience feeling cheated. Pure evil cackling megalomaniac supervillains are popular for a reason, and I don’t know if “sympathetic cold pragmatist with a flair for theater who weaponizes in-universe preconceptions about cackling megalomaniac supervillains” is cooler.
Is there a way to avoid “if evil, why hot?” with villains? Not for every single person obviously, but are there ways to tip most people’s reaction towards horror and repulsion?
I’ve been working on a scene with a (different) villain (in the same story) that I want to come off as threatening and awful and not hot, but based on initial reception, I think I missed the mark.
How do you write a conventionally attractive villain who is terrifying and evil in a horrific and not sexually attractive way?
Or is it futile and I may as well give up now?
I was proud I’d gotten it done in February only to reach the end of the anthology and learn the text had been posthumously updated for modern sensibilities.
I don’t have any problems with modernizing a text (it’s not, in my opinion, any different than translating, localizing, or creating an abridged version), but I wish they’d mentioned it on the first page rather than the last. ↩︎
Hello everyone (especially my fellow newbies) and thank you @ChanceOfFire for the thread!
It’s my first time trying to write an interactive novel (I’ve been reading a ton tho) as well as participating in one of these support threads. I’ve been working on my project for a good month or so and have managed to reach 17k+ words.
I’ve also introduced the general idea in the Interest Check thread, but basically it’s gonna be a story about (found) family, magic and trying to find where one belongs.
My (somewhat) goals for March:
Thanks to everyone who read this and may everyone here reach their goals!
I certainly have a soft spot for these types. Although I tend to get a step further with them.
Not to give a non answer, but it really does depend a lot on how it’s done. From what you’ve described, the weaponizing precocieved notions bit would make them incredibly interesting to me, but it would also have to tonally fit the rest of the story themes.
I’m not sure you can. I think with the internet there will always be people who find any villans hot, but in general I think it helps if you give them some real world scale evil in addition to the large scale villain actions. Somtimes I think villans whose only acts of villanry are on a scale that most people would only encounter in fiction (mass murder, torture, ect) are easier to write off or romantisize than things we see everyday, so it might help to add something like being rude to waitstaff or hurting animals.
I think it depends on their goal and the explanation for why it makes sense for a pragmatic person to have decided this is the smartest way to achieve their goals.
Seems like a difficult trope to execute well - reasonable villain pretending to be a cackling maniac for pragmatic reasons is one thing (maybe they enjoy it, maybe they like being underestimated, maybe being cartoonish encourages their enemies to let them off lightly rather than feeling the need to escalate), but I think tricky to combine with them also having a sympathetic high conviction goal and also working as a compelling villain.That said, it would be super impressive if pulled off…
Imo this is all about framing and the explicit language used. If you describe a character as classically handsome, or beautiful, or whatever, the hotness-inclined reader is going to immediately infer a sense of aesthetic from everything they do.
But if you describe features that, objectively speaking, probably do add up to a pretty attractive person without guiding the reader to think of them in those terms, (eg. focusing on the ghastly expressions they make, the cruelness of their gaze), you might have better luck. Basically, I think this is about finding and conveying the ugliness of the person and their actions through the prose without accidentally cutting across that with beautifying language.
If that makes any sense!