My Hitchcock-ian Oz parody game beta, “Northwest by Northeast Oz” is now complete. Update/edit: 4/7/16 after earlier post toward end of March (I am removing the beta from the site below but still want your comments to remain.The link will not work any more. I hope to post a Beta 2.0 on Dashingdon’s site. The game is currently under review by the game company. TTYL.)
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It’s really good keep at it
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Thank you very much. I greatly appreciate your positive feed-back.
Beta testers for the game I created, I already see one major glitch’bug in the beta version of my game. You can actually see the ending from one of the larger paths taken in the game at the end of another part of the game. To keep from having spoilers, ignore if it seems like the final ending for the game has been reached and some anti-climatic, random ending comes about that seems tacked on and has new choices appears. I will have to fix this for the final version. Additions and corrections will be made.
I think I fixed the glitch/bug with the extra ending and did a re-upload. I did not see the same issue during play through.
Great game! I love that you can personalize it. 
I have enjoyed playing it multiple times with different choices. It’s like a new game each time. I haven’t noticed any glitches, but I’ll let you know if I do.
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Thank you very much, Karyn.
I finally got time to play it earlier today and a little last night. The game has a good layout and good story. The only thing I might have liked more was more pictures and illustrations to help offset the text some, but that may or may not be possible.
Other than that, I didn’t run into any noticeable bugs myself, and the game play was great. Really liked the choices given.
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So, I was playing this mobile phone (android os, if that matters) and it was a lot of fun! I was really enjoying it. After chapter 7 though, screen started going black whenever I would make a selection. Sometimes clicking on the screen again would make the text appear and sometimes it wouldn’t. And sometimes it was not the whole screen, but just chunks of it that went black. Not sure if this was intended for mobile phone use or not, but I thought I would let you know.
I closed the window and opened it back up from your link and it started me back at chapter 1. Is there a way to save progress so that you can continue the game later?
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Thank you for your suggestion, Landon. After the beta release, I am working on adding approximately five new photographic “illustrations” from the revitalized Land of Oz theme-park in Beech Mountain, North Carolina where I had permission to take photographs during a stay at the rent-able Dorothy house there. I think there were approximately 10 or so in the game previously. There will be 15 total upon completion. I wanted to show the story through imagery and written plot for the most part as it is a text adventure game comparable to the Infocom classics. With the graphics, it is more like a very early Sierra piece. However, I do appreciate the need for more graphics for visual learners and a visual generation.
Next, L. Frank Baum’s work is in public domain, but the 1939 M.G.M. film “The Wizard of Oz,” which is now distributed by Warner Bros., is not. Therefore, though this is a parody, I did not want to use any images that looked too close to the M.G.M. Oz concepts. That eliminated the Horse of a Different Color they have at the park and the ruby slippers, etc.
Finally, I did not have model releases for actors who were in many of my shots from the theme-park, so I could not include those. I also wanted continuity with the style of the settings and the photography, so I did not want to use shots other than those taken during two trips to the revitalized theme park.
I hope the additions of the new images, images I was limited in my selection for because of the aforementioned reasons, will enrich what is mostly a text-based and button-based choose your own adventure-style game. Thanks again!
Thank you for your feedback. As your questions regarding platforms are a little too technical for my programming and creative writing background, I have forwarded them to individuals at the Choice of Games company. I can answer your question regarding saving progress. I have not determined a way to program in saved games. However, whenever you “die” within the game, I did use the concept of the silver slippers or somebody else’s magic allowing you to back-track auto-matically to just before you made your fatal mistake or perhaps even a few scenes back to help you out. I programmed in goto statements back to certain labeled scenes that happened before a mistake was made, etc. I hope this helps. Thanks again!
P.S. to previous
I heard back from an administrator at the Choice of Games company regarding your questions, “Treesynger.”
Here is his reply (please see my reply too where I do try to provide back-tracking within my games… regarding mobile platforms, if I understand the admin’s reply correctly, until my game is no longer a beta and is bundled into an app, you may have difficulties with it… Nevertheless, I have been able to play it all the way through on many paths on my Samsung Galaxy III with Verizon and o my ASUS IBM compatible laptop):
Hi Ron,
When not bundled into an app, ChoiceScript isn’t really designed for use on mobile devices. So, if a phone freaks out during beta testing, there’s not much support we can offer.
We don’t believe in checkpoints–they’re counter to the design philosophy that inspired ChoiceScript–which is why there’s no support for them in our code.
Thanks! This was also a Samsung Galaxy. And I did experience being transported back - out of the spider cave. Weee!
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Looking forward to playing the app, btw. That was fun! Like being a kid again. I used to love those Choose Your Own Adventure books.
Cool. I am glad you were able to experience being able to take steps back, etc. I guess we will never know what caused the problem you mentioned as it works on one but not another. However, I see below that you are looking forward to the app. I certainly hope that having an app created is part of the Host Game process. I am uncertain. I will let you know. Next, I loved those Choose Your Own Adventure books nearly as much as the classics and a lot of traditional children’s literature I read as a kid too. I played a lot of adventure games from Infocom and Sierra as well. I played around with reading hyper-text books while pursuing my degree in English and continuing to submit fiction to different markets, etc. I’ve been a published author since I was very young. Well, I must be going. Thanks for all of your positive feed-back and replies.
This game has an excellent story line. When I first played the game, I was surprised it reminded me of the classic choose your own adventure books. Please ad more graphics to it.
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Gregory,
Thank you very much for your compliments and for taking the time to beta test this game. As per the classic Choose Your Own Adventure books, that is exactly what I would describe this genre of somewhat retro yet modernized gaming to be like too. I will be adding five more photographs from the Land of Oz theme-park in different places, including a couple of new scenes. I wanted to use just ones from there because of continuity yet was limited with my choices because I could not use ones that required model releases or that were too close to the 1939 M.G.M. “The Wizard of Oz” film. One can parody written concepts but using direct visuals of copy-righted concepts can cause one to violate copy-right law. As you probably know, the L. Frank Baum books, however, are in public domain, works based on them are protected, and parodies, such as the Hitchcock parodies and written Oz parodies are protected by law as well. Finally, I am enhancing the characterization of the main character throughout the narrative, am, again, adding additional scenes, and am editing the game over all;right now, I am up to the Emerald City again with changes, etc. Thanks again for your willingness to try the game.
I had taken down the beta version while the company reviews my submission.
I tried to add new files to the Dashington site to replace the beta I deleted before, but the site will not allow me. Please note that the Choice of Games company is putting a 2.0 beta of my game through review and that I should know more regarding its status in a couple of weeks. Thanks for your time, consideration, and patience. Thanks to those who agreed to do beta testing on the initial beta version.
If your interested in a another game to make, I might have an idea for you.