I don’t post and to be honest mostly use the account mostly to check up on some of the projects/books I am interested in, release dates, lurk around once in a blue moon give my 2 cents.
Now with all of that out of the way, please tell in the the buyer if you are making book/game series or a individual book/game, while when I started buy Choice/Hosted this never felt like a problem nowadays I see a lot more, and being honest I have no problem in buying has the books of a serie release but reading/playing is another story
I agree with @Milliardo06 that it would be nice to have as a tag on titles, like “gender-choice”, “non-binary inclusive” etc.
It’s not always easy to tell and I think there is some fatigue among some readers with big giant series that won’t be finished for years (No? Just me?) and sometimes you just want to easily see at a glance what your options are for WIP titles or games where you know you’ll be getting a full and complete story in one-go.
Sometimes you just want to scroll through a list and not have to dig or ask questions to find out if you are going to get smacked with a “To be continued!” at the end of the book.
The problem starts when I have to ask for 95% of the books I buy and the 5% are the ones with labels.
I can understand the sentiment(the fatigue) and in some cases I feel it is because of the surprise ““To be continued!” at the end of the book.” If you know that you are reading the first part of a series you have different expectations than if you are reading a standalone project.
For some reason they just don’t have the tag. (For Fernweh tho, I guess it’s cuz book 2 is still a WIP and still unpublished?)
I do agree that the authors should mention that it’s part of a series in the summary tho. We do need them especially for published titles so that we know to expect some things in the future.
For the forum WIPs, yeah sure, I guess it’s ok to have a tag for them. The ones it would be super useful for are the sequels of the already published titles. But with the amount of dead WIPs floating around the forums, some of which are first books of a supposed series, seeing that tag would be a kinda heartbreaking reminder of its death…
Currently, only the games with published sequels are labeled as such, I think. I agree with this that a series tag would be nice. I remember playing I, the Forgotten One and had no idea that it is part of a series untill I finished it .
Only the series in which more than one game has been published are treated as series in the apps. I assume the Keeper series not being tagged as a series was simply an oversight; the Hero or Villain series was also not marked as a series at first, although that was fixed when the game received a major update. I’ve assumed that the Keeper situation would be remedied when the next game was released.
In the case of something Fernweh (or The Golden Rose or A Mage Reborn), the author chose to make it clear in the title that it was intended as a series opener, but that’s left up to the individual author’s discretion.
One thing I think would be good for authors to include is whether a particular game, even if it’s part of a series, does offer a satisfying standalone experience. There’s a big difference between ending a game with a cliffhanger and TO BE CONTINUED and ending a game in a way that wraps up the major threads of the plot while still leaving the potential for more to come.
While that would be nice,I think what people sees as satisfying is too varied.
I for example think fernweh did have a fine enough ending even if the final boss for book one was a little out of nowhere, and the you cannot leave town stinger fubctioned well enough as a stinger,
Meanwhile golden rose really do feel like a prolouge to me, that suddenly ends, but not everyone agree with these feelings,so i think it would be dangerous of the author to promise this cab stand on it own
I guess I should have said “meant to offer a satisfying standalone experience.” Sure, your mileage may vary as to whether it actually does - heck, there’s no guarantee a story that actually is standalone will stick the landing. But it’s not too hard to distinguish a game that at least attempts a resolution from one that deliberately ends on a cliffhanger.
And i think that writers should try the whole function as stand alone, but also series since it would relieve them of havibg to continue if life and writers block suddenly get in the way.
Only one time did I miss a ‘gender-locked male’ title, not realizing til I bought it. After that, I read the intro page often than not. Titles I’m familiar with, I don’t.
A few books with series made it obvious. The Keeper series does not. I do need to catch up on that eventually. Finished first book once, long before second. Gotta go through 1 to recall some things.
Ironically, Royal Affairs isn’t part of a series in any way that really matters. The others take place in the same universe, and occasionally (rarely?) have characters pop-up or events mentioned from the other games, but they’re otherwise completely disconnected.
Well, it matters in that they take place in chronological order (and I’d been getting people asking which one happens when). But yeah, they don’t have the same MCs so aren’t direct sequels to each other in the same way others are.
Absolutely. This makes a big difference to me in how annoyed I get at being surprised with the revelation I’ve been reading the start of a series.
The same for me, though I, the Forgotten One felt like it did what @AletheiaKnights is talking about above, in that I felt it wrapped up all major plot points in a satsifying way, with a denouement for each major thread, etc. while establishing that, yes, one major thread was solved but in such a way your solution was going to be temporary, so it will reappear as an issue again in the future.
So I, the Forgotten One didn’t bother me finding out it was part of a series at the end of reading it because of that. I guess it really is the books that end on a cliffhanger or don’t adequately resolve the major threads of the plot in that book that really bother me.
Definitely agree. As an author, you should know what the driving question or mystery you introduced at the beginning of your game is. That’s your hook and your premise. That hook and premise should be resolved with some satisfaction and a denouement at the end of that book.
There is a writing technique that I’ve seen discussed by authors who write series where they know the story is going to continue (in traditional media), and it involves having A, B, C, and D plots. They always resolve the A and B plots in each book, and then in the next book, the C and D plots become the A and B plots for that book, and new C and D plots are introduced.
I feel any annoyance I’ve seen with surprise series in Choicescript games is when the A plot that the author set up as the driving question at the beginning of the book isn’t resolved at the end of the same book. I would say that’s not a series—that’s the author splitting ONE book into multiple books, and is not good practice IMHO. There may be a limit on what we can write and keep our sanity, but there is no limit on the word count you can cram into one Choicescript game.
Haha. This is true. But also easily solved by authors’ planning accordingly.
Planning and plotting out a Choicescript game is extremely important I feel, more so than when writing a traditional novel. Knowing what all the major plot points you need to hit are, where they’ll fall, where they will branch, and what plot points they lead to can help you pre-emptively prune back scale if need be, while also giving you a clear destination for your writing that will ensure the readers are going to get a satisfying conclusion.
I personally like to write scene goals for each scene, so I know what I am trying to convey to the reader with that scene, be it a certain atmosphere, demonstrating something about a character, passing on certain plot information, an emotion I want to leave the player with, etc. This helps give me a checklist for when I write the branches of that scene, to ensure that each one still conveys all those same things, albeit in a different manner.
If you follow a system like this, you can start with a road map that gives you an idea of how much gas you’ll need to reach the end of the road trip, so you don’t have to stop in the middle and tell everyone riding with you that the trip will be continued in two years.
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