I’m new here, but I’m hoping to finish outlining my story and begin actually writing the first chapter.
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Meanwhile Im thinking about the end of both of mine. One would reach its peak in stakes while the other is a buildup to a new status quo.
A vampire president, factions like masquerade, vampires vs aliens, ditching transhumanism for vampirism and more. Whichever I decide to use.
The other one you can have 2 children in and likely to have a sequel. That one is less clear for ending but I know FOR SURE the MC and their siblings will be the new managers.
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…I just realized there may be more content on the branch where the mole sends you on a wild goose chase than on the one where they won’t… and that is otherwise the suboptimal branch. I need to redesign something.
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That’s always a possibility. Most games aren’t hits. But plenty of unlikely games have been. When Wayhaven was first published, “super-tropey supernatural romance in a threadbare genre fiction skinsuit” had never done well on HG either. Ditto for “super-weeby and railroady text rendition of anime” before Samurai of Hyuga.
They’re both good games that found massive audiences, despite the fact that it’s possible to slap uncharitable descriptions[1] on them. Instead of talking down your own work, publish it and see how it’s received!
A bunch of overall successful CoG/HG authors – Cataphrak, Jim Dattilo, Lucid, Kyle Marquis – have cast wide nets and written in lots of different styles and genres. Some of their games have flopped. They’re still star authors.
So put your work out there. The downside risk is negligible. Having a game that doesn’t sell super well just is not a big deal as you seem to fear for your future prospects (and still less for the HG platform). If some published authors have actually “pressed” (rather than just advised) you not to publish, that’s not cool.
And YA-ass rebel-v-eeeevil-empire fantasy that’s mostly distinguished by its “Civ 5 in text format” interlude? That hadn’t been a hit before Choice of Rebels. ↩︎
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Out of curiosity, were those published authors writers of interactive fictions, or traditional novels? It feels like there might be a big difference between what does well in the one compared to the other.
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I would expect dramatized depictions of sports, but also introspection, possibly melancholy, and themes around determination and reflections of life through the pursuit of sports.
It might not do much as it is but it does still give us clues about the PC and the world/their place in it. If there’s a “veritable smorgasbord” they can choose from for breakfast, that could suggest that they’re living quite comfortably (and/or just recently stocked up on breakfast foods). And the options of cereal, toast, and omelette are standard western-style breakfasts; that could either say something about the setting or the PC’s personal preferences. With some adjustments, you could use these choices to show even more about the PC—are they living alone or can they steal their roommate’s waffles? Do they scramble an egg, whip up some homemade pancakes with fresh-cut fruit, or just grab a granola bar on the way out? etc. etc. I know this is less about food specifically and more about the “filler” choices in general but a few support threads ago, someone did share a video about food as worldbuilding which I found very insightful and is clearly still on my mind.
Yeah! I love your example with the PC’s mood. There really is just so much we can do with these choices.
So as part of my effort to get into writing properly, I looked at all the books I have yet to read and decided to get through them, make a real study of it. There’s a lot so I figured it might be best to divide them into categories and choose one per category to get through at a time—one book on craft, one narrative, and one ChoiceScript interactive fiction story (WIPs included). For the physical books, I’m starting with Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound & Sense (10th edition, Thomas R Arp and Greg Johnson), as well as Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien. (Naturally, I ended up doing the IF reading first lol)
I concur with everyone encouraging you to go ahead for publishing, but I certainly can! I do want to properly send feedback for the other WIP I read before I start yours, out of a sense of fear that I’ll forgo that step entirely if I skip over it now. But I remember already reading an excerpt from Scarlet Sorceress back when you submitted a chapter for the Short Games Showcase, and I can say that I believe in the story and in your writing.
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Another victory I can share with the CoG community.
Lily Adventuresses! has bagged another nomination, as it’s a finalist for this year’s GameOn Awards, organized by the Game Developers Association of the Philippines.
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Am I right in thinking you only submitted your WIP in 2025? If so, it should be noted that that is a relativly short amount of time compared to projects who have started at a much lower word count. Many WIP’s will literally be on the forum for many years so it may look like they have recieved a lot more feedback but it’s actually just been several years with more oopertunity for new eyes to look at it.
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Yes and no. I originally had a WIP thread for an incomplete draft last year, but I finished it privately and later opened up a new thread to beta test the completed version. The current WIP thread was up since March, when I first made the full beta publicly available.
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Today’s random question: should achievements that are granted automatically when completing an act/chapter/part/section be hidden or visible?
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Personally. I am making them visible, but they are some merits to making them invisible. As I am doing something with my achievements and I can’t have it all be spelt out from the start.
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I mean yeah, they’re referring to how that particular section ended, so mild spoilers if one can decipher.
I have currently “You Can’t Go Home Again”, “Shaken, Not Stirred”, and “The Courier Protocols” (the last one referring to an in-game term).
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Apropos of nothing, I now know far more about the 1794 Battle of Fleurus than any living human being should.
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It feels weird when other people like characters I write. Like I’m disconnected and every character felt like exposition for me writing them.
Even weirder when they mention a character you only encounter once. Plenty of those.
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Today’s random issue: I got an urge to describe medieval-ish food, so I ended up sketching a scene where a knight errant takes shelter in a remote farmhouse, eats a meal, and deduces they’re facing a famine because they’re cooking with animal feed… but I’m pretty sure the average reader won’t be able to pick that up. 
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Thus is the woes of trying to balance intrigue with making it obvious and clear enough for a majority of readers to also easily pick up on while not feeling like you are expositioning them to death. Its doubly bad when someone doesnt notice the intrigue and thus gets mad at a plot hole they made by not noticing.
Good luck though. Seems like an interesting way to show but not directly tell theres a famine. Particulalry if theres a reason to not immediately ask in character.
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Honestly, this is gonna come off sounding awfully cynical, but if you need players to understand a thing, hammer it home with as much force as you can.
There will be maybe one in ten players who are reading close enough to get the subtext through understanding the context cues, the rest won’t unless you hit them in the face with it. The ones that do will post about it on this forum in the WIP threads and send you fanmail. The ones that don’t will leave shitty reviews and complain about it on social media.
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Personally, I’m of the opinion that if someone doesn’t pay close enough attention, hitting them over the head with what they need to know might still not be enough. I’m not saying all things need to be subtle, but imo, as a reader, I’d rather have the author leave hints and clues than be offensively explicit about what they’re getting at. It makes me feel like the author either doesn’t trust the reader, which to me is worse than me not picking up on something.
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I’ve written online mystery stories for several years, some being short 10000 word stories while others were over 250000 words. I followed this motto at first. Of my audience (who commented), 20-30% would catch onto the mysteries. The rest needed me to be more direct.
I agree so much with these replies. When I now write mysteries, I intentionally slow the pace down (which has its own issues) and draw a reader’s eye to it–for the most important mysteries.
For the mysteries that aren’t so critical, I do keep them subtle and trust. Most of these mysteries have drawn out explanations at the end of the story, using brief glimpses of past scenes/lines to help with readers who miss those clues and call plothole. It helps (and frustrates readers who call this an infodump).
I feel you. Good luck! 
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Personally when reading they spoil the next section for me, like I’ve just made a huge decision and am on edge for what the ramifications of that are, when up pops an achievement right away that says HEY THIS WORKED GREAT YOU SAVED EVERYONE (not so literally but you get me). It takes all the tension of the next part in going to read away.
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