my birthday is coming uppp!!! 29th of sept 
im thinking of doing a slice of life but maybe not…
what topics do you guys like most??
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I would definitely reccomend checking out this thread here: Interest Check Thread
It’s full of what people are considering working on, and it might give you some inspiration about what niches are already flooded and which ones are wide open!
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Did I say that it is a good idea to check out the What genre is the most successful in Hosted Games thread? That place is a good litmus test of how popular your story will be.
For more on what constitutes slice of life, check out the Slice of Life stories thread. The interest check thread is full of ideas, but what’s important is your originality, your thoughts.
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They are always the same 3: Fantasy, Superheroes and Sci-Fi. Romance is one of a kind, since you can put in every other possible genre.
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It is good advice. However if a person is like me with anxiety and depression and with low self-esteem I really recommend you NOT checking any threads with polls or popularity.
I had anxiety triggered moments with those type of threads.
Why? I dont like the popular games I sont make them. If you read those threads you will feel “Or you do X or you will be a disgrace nobody will care about your games”
I have stopped projects for that kind of threads more times I can count. It doesn’t help tons of people saying I will never play games without romance or I only care about X.
Reading that can be so depressing that can make a depressive person just stop writing. I am talking by pure experience
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I’d say “Paranormal/Supernatural” (ex. vampires, werewolves, etc.) instead of Sci-Fi. Space Force Captain was the exception, rather than the rule.
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Slice-of-life is a big category and could be anything from contemporary romance to coming-of-age, to workplace drama, to school/college life, so it is worth thinking what you love about this particular slice-of-life idea and focusing in on it.
Go for what’s calling to you and brings you joy! This is what I said on one of the linked threads and I stand by it:
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hello everyone, sorry to chime in with a question but I think it’s important…
what’s the status of dashingdon and moody in the future (2024 and up)? what do we use to show our WIPs?
because I don’t see any official comment about this, while I believe they should make an announcement
And for the September goal, I gotta admit I kinda doubt choicescript sometimes, they lack features but has good market penetration, it’s quite a dilemma but I’m convincing myself everyday to stick around and make the best of what this scripting language offers
I just wish I’m on the winning side, that’s all
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There is no winning side, there is no need to convince yourself each day to follow a system. this is not a cult. Systems are tools, many writers here work or has work in several platforms.
And an advice if you focus too much in fame market and money you will lost all the good things about writing. This is not accountant work.And chances of getting rich from this… Well, you can ask professional pens in forum about it… It is not as glamourous as it looks like. This is about passion.
This is not a place to talking about dashingdon Please asking in a correct thread and show respect for someone that pay a server from his own pocket. for years.
He has been really helpful with my jam and with lots of activities.
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Hi, everyone.
For a first-time author, the “litmus test” is finishing a manuscript and submitting it for publication.
What engine you use, what genre you write, and even details such as length and features should all be secondary to your goal of finishing a project.
Being part of Hosted Games has many benefits, such as them dealing with the multiple store-fronts for you. Market penetration is a bonus, but many hundreds of independents go the solo route each year, so doing everything on your own is possible.
The thing is, doing everything on your own can be exhausting and overwhelming, too. Marketing, audience retention, social media, and so on all can lead to burn out.
Dashingdon is in the process of working with a couple of others right now and hopefully those others will be able to step up and all will end well.
I know some of those involved, and everyone involved is a good soul, so I have complete confidence in what is going on.
I don’t expect an announcement to be made until everyone involved is ready. To announce things before they are ready to be announced would not be fair to anyone involved.
What alternatives are available, I am not sure. I plan on crossing that bridge, if needed, when the time comes, and not before.
Publishing, either through Hosted Games or by self-publishing is being on the winning side.
As a reader, I much prefer engines such as Choice Script and Unity over Twine, but Twine, when done right, presents a pretty game.
Everyone should be supportive of the author’s individual decision whichever platform they publish on, or if they go with Jams or other competitive choices instead of working on their static library.
Patchwerks works best within the imagination, and I feel that Choice Script facilitates that the best.
Now for an early update on Patchwerks … Spike, as a once seen npc character in the Common Route, is officially being retired from the story. Raphael and Emille, two core characters, and stars of the Dock Route, will expand their screen-time and presence in the Common Route.
Dove, who is the undisputed “screen hog” of the Common Route up until this point, has no comment on the matter and is just happy that the author has kept her front and center for the material that she shines in currently.
This week I have began making the first of many changes inspired by the heartfelt and most welcome feedback I have received for the past few months.
We’ll see how far I can get this month. Needless to say, there is a lot to do, and my plate is full.
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There is an announcement from dashingdon here. Dashingdon’s ChoiceScript hosting is not run by CoG and is not an “official” thing. ChoiceScript games can be hosted on itch as long as they don’t have buy/donate buttons (unless a contract has been signed with HG about it); I understand that CJW’s save system is functional on itch as well, though I haven’t tried it.
My advice is to experiment with lots of IF tools because there isn’t a single perfect one that does everything as desired with perfect ease. (Even ink, one of my favourites, doesn’t do that.)
Twine has much more potential for attractive games, and also ugly ones that hurt my eyes or aren’t mobile-friendly or accessible; it has built-in save slots and back buttons; customising takes a lot of work and development of knowledge if you don’t know CSS or Javascript already; you can use text in more varied ways to make the effects you want. ChoiceScript has very little customisability and no built-in saves, is highly accessible to play, is much better at maths out-of-the-box, and has automated testing and far better and more informative bug-spotting behaviour; if changing how the game looks is very important to you, you won’t have such a good time with it but in other ways it excels.
That’s even before going into what Eiwynn says above about marketing and such, and what Mara says about money, both of whom are correct in my experience and observation. (I am lucky enough to be having a successful ChoiceScript career commercially; back in the day I published quite a few Twine games in a now-dormant magazine which paid me for them; I didn’t “market” my self-published Twine games commercially as the landscape has changed a lot since I made them, and I wouldn’t really have considered it anyway - perhaps they might sell if they were in an collection or something but as it is, they’ve made $6 in the last nine years. Either way, writing with the aim of quick fame or money is extremely unlikely to be successful or fulfilling regardless of tool/platform!)
All of which is to say that different scripting and tools suit different projects and people.
What an essay! Anyway, I put up Chapter 2 of Honor Bound yesterday. I don’t think I’ll ever get to a point where I’m not nervous about putting stuff out there but I am very pleased with the helpful feedback so far.
Yesterday was also my first day back to my usual work routine. It was nice, if strange, doing a longer stretch of writing and getting back into it. I’m wrestling a little with figuring out one of my characters, Raffi, who is very clear in my head but sometimes more tricky to translate into a written description.
In other news, I was reminded of the video Show People Things Before They Are Ready by Olivia Wood of Possibility Space and freelance, formerly Failbetter Games. I remember when I first saw this, it shifted how I thought about WIPs - my WIPs specifically. The minute I start feeling anxiously protective is the time I know I need to show my work to someone I can trust to both reassure me and tell me where I may be going wrong.
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Started to re-write some of my tiny projects, been on writer’s block for months but now I’m starting to feel like writing again. Also, for anyone who uses a spelling checker, which is better or has a more user-friendly use, Grammarly or Quillbot? Honestly, I can only afford one program, and searching the web usually leads to a rabbit hole. So, has anyone here ever used those programs and I just really want to use it as a spelling checker and nothing more.
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Welcome back @lupiesoldier –
What text editor or IDE are you using, because most of them, now, have dictionaries that you can plug-and-play with for spell checking. Even programs like CSIDE have basic dictionaries in them (I understand that @CJW is expanding on his in the next version of CSIDE).
Regardless, I would recommend: https://hemingwayapp.com/ for editing outside the dictionary tools listed above. This is a basic, but solid editor for style and simple grammar. It is totally free as a stand-alone.
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Ah, the very pitfall that most people are bedeviled by. Being on the “winning side”. People with my condition, who usually perceive things through a black-and-white lens, and who are so afraid to lose, that they think too much, do this. A lot.
In reality, there is no true winning side, for everyone has different strengths and weaknesses- every character, every platform, every strategy, etc.
Now for other pitfalls/challenges that people (including me) make:
- Creating an IF to get likes/numbers/interactions rather than just because it is your interest.
- Not getting the amount of interactions you expected from the get-go or not seeing it increase as much as you hoped.
- IF becoming more popular and the potentiality of your work being read by more people.
- Announcing a project before having planned or written part of the story.
- Promising mechanics or features without knowing whether it will possible/make sense/feasible to include it.
- Not setting expectations about the content of a project when announcing it (or soon after).
- Expecting too much from ourselves as creators.
- Believing their story isn’t new enough.
- Starting an IF without having done any research about how to create one.
- Starting a big project without testing the waters of IF creation.
- Just making stuff up on the fly and throwing it on the board without thoroughly reviewing it.
I probably made some of them when doing Maverick Hunter: Scandalous Mission.
So, as part of my contribution to both communities, I have decided to submit this piece to the Bring Out Your Ghosts jam, the spiritual successor to the Bring Out Your Dead jam which ran sometime in 2016:
Now, you may be wondering why I joined Brian, author of My Friends are My Power and the author of Veil Prophecy in this expo. I wanted to achieve the closure that I had hoped for so long. Please be assured that this project has never officially been abandoned. My current situation may be too stressful for me to do major updates. If possible, I would like to continue with this project. But also, I want to let it out into the world for further feedback, as well as to test the market. From what I received, I am thankful for your support.
In the future, I may do the same thing, but this time a Mega Man X-style Elite Status: Platinum Concierge instead. In other words, promote both (Keiji Inafune and Emily Short’s) franchises. All the best!
Edit: There is about a week left for submissions. Those interested can put their stuff there (I understand Hannah had The Wedding Party for the previous iteration, and so I’m sending my stuff in).
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I’m using Notepad++ I haven’t used the CSIDE as of now but I think I’ll check them out. I’ll check that hemingwayapp. Mostly I just want a spelling checker but having a grammar checker is also a bonus if it can do that. Thanks for the info and help.
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One of my older projects from my high school days was dug up. It’s a peculiar experience reading what I wrote in the past; I know being embarrassed, cringing, etc. is a sign that you’ve grown but sheesh, far too many times I wondered what I was thinking.
Yet, I can’t bring myself to hate it either. I went through some dark days in high school and those projects helped a lot, no matter how questionable their quality is.
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I have a 250k game shelved @Eiwynn saved the copy from my depressive destruction of my copy.
That game will heavy weight my soul forever and it is my biggest failure.
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@RockmanX thank you for the inspiration about Bring Out Your Ghosts: I had forgotten the timing on it.
I have put something up: Valentine’s, an unfinished sequel to Aquarium and Thanksgiving, a couple of dating sims I made in 2014 and 2015 that turned out to be too complex and too bleak for me to go much further on. I have no idea whether it will mean anything to anyone, given how long ago the other ones were, but if anyone fancies playing a small chunk about a miserable con artist trying to scam a rich person, there it is!
In other blast-from-the-past news, I finally put up Heretic Dreams and Teeth and Ice, a couple of fantasy-horror games I originally published with sub-Q Magazine in 2016 and for some reason didn’t archive on my itch page until now. These are completed and of course much more polished!
- Heretic Dreams: No one knows you swallowed the power of a god, but it will break you apart as you guide your mining party to icy disaster.
- Teeth and Ice: a selkie claws back their skin.
It’s my firm belief that we learn from every project, whether finished or unfinished and whether we feel good about it or not. Even if what we learn is “I really don’t want to do that again”. I have at least three long-lost ChoiceScript projects that never went anywhere and several Twines, not to mention many novels.
In other news, today Honor Bound’s average playthrough length went past 50,000 words. I’m really pleased, though intimidated; I’ve realised I need to go back to an earlier chapter and add a scene that I didn’t do before. Which is always a bit weird to do.
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Remembering old ghosts is being actually painful for me right now. But I think this is helping me today to practice my therapy to overcome anxiety.
Yes I have failed and have lots of ghosts. But I still trying so that should count for something.
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Excuse me if this sounds rough, but holy shit, this makes me happy. I absolutely love Aquarium and Thanksgiving. Love the way they are written, the characters, the setting and everything else. So even if it isn’t finished it was a delight to read Valentine’s.
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