I’m not sure what you mean by “play better that way”. I’ve never thought of any particular storyline as “needing” romance more, relatively to another. And I don’t even think that a story necessarily has to be “better” without romance, it can just be romance-free. Unless there’s a specific advantage to leaving out romance, the game is better with romance in?
But as a writer I’m well aware that there will always be a big chunk of readers alienated by lack of romance. That’s just a risk I take.
The grammar and writing style are very important to me, but I also want to see if it has anything unique to offer, romance isn’t the most important to me.
If the writing draws me in, I’m not too fussed about the genre. For instance, The Fielder’s Choice wouldn’t usually have been my first pick for genre, but the writing in the demo quickly engaged me.
Yep, same here though I do seem to like a different type of guy in many cases. So I guess that’s just a plea for varied gay and bi male ro’s more then anything else. 
Sorry badly worded. What I meant is some stories don’t really need romance, and in some cases it actually makes the game worse IMO if it’s been put there because it was expected, rather than because it suited the game or the author wanted to. (You’re talking to someone who didn’t have RO’s in the first HG I made.)
Things i look for are.
1: Character Driven
2: Good story
3: Well written Ro’s and character
My vote was “grammar, etc.”, and it’s more of a “obvious mistakes take me out of the story / hurt my immersion”.
But I’d like to mention “Frequency of choices” as a category (i know you can’t change the poll, just bringing it up).
I really prefer these types of games to be very interactive. I am an impatient person, and although I like world-building and character development, I often skip long passages and go straight for the choice. IDK if this is common behavior?
In my case, it depends. Is the wall of text about the tortured dark past of a NPC? Then chances are I’ll eat it up gladly. Now, if a story is taking its sweet time describing just how red the courtesans’ dresses are, how many shops a town has, and if their economy is mostly based around fishing macke-- 
An author that crams all that stuff somewhere in the stats page, is my hero/heroine.
The litteral very first thing I look for is stats
I never play games withought stats unless it has an interesting premise or a good story but the only one that was good enough was creatures such as we and when the bar is THAT high allmost nothing here can be as good
The second looked at thing is premise, if the premise is real life I hate it because it’s escapism and imagination that allow books to be so unique so imagining real life defeats that purpose for me
Hey all, a bit off-topic but after seeing so many people commenting about grammar I wanted to ask something.
What about intentional errors? For example a NPC that has low english knowledge and talks in broken english; would that bother you?
If it’s intentinal and just in dialogue it wouldn’t bother me. As long as it’s easy to read the action and story
Personally, I would be very cautious about using this. I just edited a story in which a character had a heavy English accent, so their dialogue went “loike dis bruv, which wos quite distractin’.” It can really pull readers (or at least me) out of the narrative and become heavy-handed, especially if it reinforces stereotypes. I think simplistic or broken English to convey certain things is fine, but too many intentional errors or words written to verbal pronunciation is unnecessary. Gollum, for example, had a very unique way of talking that had some intentional errors (“my preciouses”)—but not everything was an error, and he was still comprehensible. I think that can be a good balance.
When looking at WIP threads I’ll pay the most attention to how author sets up their OP page. Engaging, thought-out summary and carefully formatted paragraphs will most likely make me interested enough to click the demo link, while errors or huge walls of text will leave an opposite effect. So good presentation is the foremost important key for me here.
Genderlock is not a huge issue. Granted, it can irk me at times, but if the story is solid I can close my eyes on it. And finally, not having romance or custom MC appearance is totally alright with me, since that hopefully could leave more room for other aspects of the game being stronger, like world/character building, plot etc.
First thing I look for is Romance.
Second thing would be Genre though. If the Genre check passes(which it probably will there are very few I don’t enjoy) then I look at the summary and see if it piques my interest. That’s about it.
Not the only one—same here. Generally speaking, if I have a choice between two games or stories that I think are both quality stuff but one doesn’t have romance, I’ll prefer the one without. It’s one of the many reasons I adore Choice of the Star Captain so much.
The first thing I look at is Genre because I tend to like High-Low fantasy (really anything that lets me use or interact with magic in any way) settings a lot more than other Genres, but if the story has an interesting premise then ill check it out. Gender choice and RO’s also play a big role in what I read because I don’t like stories that lock me in place as the opposite gender (I’m a guy) and I’m always looking for more mlm relationships in anything that I read 
I mean no disrespect to anyone who does or might do this in the future, but to me, gender locking a character in something like a Interactive Novel, Visual Novel, Etc. is something that I cannot accept. Now, that doesn’t mean the story is bad in any way. But I’m someone who likes to self insert myself into things(Weird I know!), and if I can’t do that because I’m gender locked as a guy. I immediately drop whatever it is.
So I guess this also qualifies as something I look for? But I think this would fall under character customization.
Speaking of, how is high fantasy and low fantasy generally defined around these parts? My understanding has always been that high fantasy involves a secondary, fictional world (Middle-Earth, Narnia) whereas low fantasy has fantasy/magical elements set in THIS world (Harry Potter, Twilight). Occasionally I see tags going against my idea, so I just wanted to be sure!
Yes, this is what I meant by character customization, but can’t change the poll now! 
I think I will have to check out Star Captain, then.
I would define it pretty much how you did 
and I’ve never been partial to either but it is always interesting to see how magic works when imposed on our world.