Thanks Rob. I hope you’ll have a chance to try out Apex Patrol soon.
Jim, I just played through Zombie Exodus. Interesting stuff, lots of choices and a few truly gripping moments such as the singing girl.
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Thanks for checking it out. I’m working on the follow-up chapters, hopefully to be out in a few months. Is Apex Patrol coming out soon?
I want to say that I really appreciate the gender neutral option. I was very pleasantly surprised to see it.
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Jim, Apex Patrol should be coming out soon. It was scheduled for December release but the Icon work came along too slowly to allow that. If you have contracted an artist to do the graphic design of your Icons, always try to keep apprised of their progress and ask politely for updates.
ScarletGeisha, I’m glad you liked it. The Gender Neutral aspect was suggested to me by one of my play-testers who would really rather not have gender get in the way of a good story.
Indeed, writing things in such a way as to be Gender Neutral didn’t actually take much effort. At some points there would be an *if statement for Male, another for Female and a third for Gender Neutral. In later parts I learned to simply use a $term to set an insert for Sir, Ma’am and Lieutenant respectively. For those portions it therefore took no additional time at all to include the Gender Neutral preference.
Have you noticed this option in other Choice games? I recall Choice of Dragon had a portion where you could skip over gender selection.
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Choice of the Dragon and your game are the only ones which does that. And hopefully soon, I will be adding mine to that mix.
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While only Choice of the Dragon includes a gender-neutral option, all official CoG games include a choice between male and female. Sadly, a distressing proportion of the user-made games suffer from testosterone poisoning and do not include this option. I’m very glad that you didn’t go down that route! Marine Raider is my favourite CoG, thanks in part to the fact you took the time to add that choice.
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This is especially plesantly surprising since the setting is that of a historical military operation (I mean historical as in it takes place in an older time, not that the operation happened because I don’t know about that), and most would assume male as mandatory.
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This game describes a singe combat operation and that is exactly the kind of setting where gender is unimportant, because soldiers in such a situation would care about survival and supporting each other, not about who is a man and who is a woman.
In a game which features lots of social interaction, not having to pick a gender would be much harder.
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Eh, just have everyone relentlessly refer to the player by an androgynous nickname. No pronouns required; problem solved.
I tend to think of gender as window dressing for these stories. It is a rare occasion where gender would definitively come into play and, as Bastiaan noted, those are invariably social. Historical social at that. And even then, there are always exceptions.
It seems to me to be far more useful to allow the player options in selecting gender. After all, it is in their imagination where a significant part of the story takes place and it would be unfair to restrict or penalize them for such.
As far as coding goes, having a few pronouns can liven the writing up and sometimes gender can shade character reactions, subtly alter dialogue or add humor. What matters most, of course, is that the Player;s choice adds to the story.
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ScarletGeisha, you mentioned you were working on a choice story? What kind do you have in mind?
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@AllenGies I completely agree with you. I’m glad you see things the way that you do, it makes your games so much better than they would otherwise be. A lot of people in the world could learn from you. Glad to have you around!
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My project is called Samurai: A Warrior’s Path. It is set in an alternate world where heterosexual patriarchy never quite got a chance to take hold, which allows me to have fun subverting gender tropes! The story traces a samurai from their childhood to their most legendary moment.
I have a thread here if you’re interested: http://www.choiceofgames.com/forum/discussion/199/samurai-a-warriors-path-in-progress-/p1
Needless to say, I will be looking forward to Apex Patrol.
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Canisa, You are very kind. Thank you.
No, thank you, Allen. Marine Raider is exactly the kind of game that needs to be more common, I’m immensely grateful to you for making it.
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I was able to get four and five commendations on this on two separate runs. Strangely, they were different commendations for each one. I want those last two but I can’t find them! Grr… Can I ask for help with that, or would that ban me? I don’t know the rules here about that.
Very fun game, though, clearly has replayability, the decisions are tricky, and it’s very engaging.
IIRC, you can actually get six commendations in one run (which the game actually mentions) if you take the exact right course of action.
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There should be seven commendations possible now. There used to be eight, but that was a programming error on my part. Should I list the possible commendations or is that too much of a spoiler?
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Let’s see, there are up to three for dealing with the Japanese base.
Another for taking a copious quantity of prisoners.
Another for capturing The Japanese Officer.
One for personal bravery.
One for not suffering any casualties.
In only one instance can you lose a commendation, and that is for damage to the Schley.
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I’m going to write more praise for Marine Raider. I actually liked that it was short: it is focused, a story-based puzzle. I loved the setting, the writing, and that many choices seem to have an actual effect. Also, it wasn’t too verbose, which is a bonus – these are games, not novels. The player is supposed to fill the blanks, in my opinion.
Marine Raider excels at all these points. Along with Choice of Broadsides, it is my favorite Choice game.
Please make more short, focused games with excellent writing!