is there any way possible to keep Extacy or Rio as Manager/Romance if you turn Heel durring your comback? i have played through a few times & havent been able to get a romance as a heel
@Winterborn Thank you! And I’ll probably send them some proposals this week for my next project. 
@alleykae Yes, straight female only gets Ecstasy. I was flirting with adding Jaws’ son as a second option, but the game was already so big, and I didn’t have time @-@
@Derack and @alleykae Ack, sorry about that. Because Es sex and orientation completely adjust to yours, ze has unique variables that I sometimes forget to use. (The Betas will attest to how bad it was in the early draft.) Thought wed cleaned em all up but apparently not. It’s a priority on my update to do list.
@Dolphinzgirl I’m so glad you felt that E was integrated well into the plot! I enjoy romances in games but most of them are just so… Fast. So I spent a lot of time on the romances, but the trick was, to make them great and seem integral but also make them totally optional – that was difficult.
As for mixing things up, I’d love to day I’d planned it from the start, but except for that initial flashbacks in Chapter 2 and 5, most of the narrative tricks I used came from the fact that I’d vastly underestimated how hard it would be to keep up the tension during the kayfabe matches where no one deviates from the script. The end of the Chapter 9 final fight would have been less dramatic, for instance, if I did it from the players pov, since hed/shed be thinking of JJ the whole time he/she was finishing off Frost/Skinner. 
As for the ring scene, you raise a valid point, and I’ll see what I can do
@Lobo420 No, being with Ecstasy precludes the heel path - E is a big pop star, and cant afford the controversy. E would never impose but a player in a relationship with E would put E first, I think. As for Madison, it’s not being a heel that locks her out - shes only available if you not only stay a face, but keep kayfabe, in your feud with JJ.
We’re there any inspirations from real wrestlers for some of the characters?
@chikilamco it was the only double take that didn’t make me laugh or curse (does that make sense?) It just felt odd to me.
@Katigirl64 I understand. I’ll see if I can tweak it a bit for female PCs in a future update. Thanks for bringing it up
@Derack Whoops, sorry I missed that. I wouldn’t say inspired by wrestlers, insomuch as they were inspired by the roles wrestlers play in the eyes of the Internet Wrestling Community. Prototype is sort of a combination of how people who hate Cena (good catch on the Prototype name) and Triple H (hence the “Paul”) view them, and more of the latter really, since for me Prototype represents the bad elements of old school wrestling, with its steroid physiques and rampant misogyny. (Elements which are still present to some extent today, sadly.) Solitary plays the role of the anti-establishment Best in the World that CM Punk played in 2011, but extended to contemplate what’d happen if he himself became an institution, like the Undertaker (hence the limited fight dates). In other cases, it’s just that certain elements of a wrestler inspire a part of the character – Sagramore was inspired by the class of British wrestlers who were active before the WWE ascended (if you can find the book “The Wrestling”, it’s an excellent look at that era), but his male version always sounds like William Regal in my head. Most of the characters there areat least informed by characters I’ve seen in wrestling, or were made as a reaction TO them.
(The exception being Frost, who is inspired by King from the Tekken series :P)
I thought Prototype was like a heel Cena and I saw Solitary as the CM Punk with what you said and the long title reign and like what you said with the Undertaker. I swear I picture Sagramore as William Regal haha
I was disappointed that you couldn’t keep your patroness honest by coming clean to Solitary. After all, she tells you to your face that she’s only using you, and it’s quite obvious if you pay attention that she’d never use a straightforward honest plan when she could use a machiavellian scheme instead.
Then you could conspire with Solitary to make the challenge directly between you and him, which would have left Prototype out in the cold, and then you could fight JJ and then Solitary just like you wanted.
What’s the boss lady going to do then? You’d be one of the most popular fighters in the roster, if not the grand champion, it would cost her money to retaliate.
And she strikes me as a lady in love with the almighty dollar.
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Huh. Alex seems to be the person whose character I’m having the most trouble communicating. Just saw this under the Slammed TVTropes entry:
“Xanatos Gambit: Alex Dobbs’ response to Paul’s coup d’etat is to run with it, since it’s not her ass on the line. If Paul wins, then she gets rid of Solitary; if he loses, she loses nothing, and she has another champion lined up to challenge Solitary’s reign. She even points that you and JJ are also not at risk, but in this case she’s incorrect.”
Did anyone else see it that way as well? Alex was the mastermind behind Prototype’s actions at the start of Last One Standing – her involvement was the only way that scheme worked. The only element that she wasn’t a part of was Prototype holding JJ hostage at the end – granted, she does run with JJ’s injury if it happens.
I can’t seem to trigger the JJ romance option. I did everything to increase the relationship in the opening flashback (went to his place, didn’t call the ambulance, didn’t throw the match.) I went home when the option came up (do I need to do something specific there?) Otherwise, I tried to be friendly while also focusing on the fight between the two of us. But when I get to the end, the “All I wanted… was you” option is grayed out. What am I missing?
(Also, I’d just like to say that this is the best interactive fiction piece I’ve ever had the privilege of going through. The amount of layering and complexity that this work has is truly astounding. )
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@Brushbender You need to have your love=“none” so you can’t be in a relationship with Ecstasy or Rio. You also need to have established your character as homosexual. (So Ecstasy should also be the same sex as you). Have you done both of those?
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I believe so. At any rate, Ecstasy became my manager, and wanted a relationship, but I turned him down. There was never anything romantic on my end.
@brushbender You should have the prerequisites then and I’ve no idea what might be interfering with them. @Chikiamco will probably know if there’s other places the love flag or the flag for being homosexual can be switched to interfere with that choice being made.
@Chikiamco Oh! Found the error. If you go through the kayfabe face route, in c10kayface3.txt it sets *set love “kaymadison” which means that you can’t romance JJ at the end. I hope that’s a bug.
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@bushbender No, that should have triggered. Did you get Madison as a manager? Ugh, that is a bug – characters who are attracted to women have an opportunity to set the love flag back to none, but I didn’t make that automatic if you’re not attracted to women. Good find @FairyGodfeather , and my apologies @bushbender if that’s so – will definitely have that fixed.
@stsword I see where you’re coming from. If I gave the impression that Alex is all about the money though, I’ve failed – what she wants is control of her main championship back. Solitary knows this, so telling him wouldn’t be news, and he’s arrogant enough not to have felt the need to conspire with you about anything until his back was against the wall. If you’d known the details of the Lawgivers endgame, that’d have done the trick, but just telling him that Alex is building you up so that he’ll choose to fight you or JJ? Solitary wouldn’t care – all he’d see is that you or JJ might actually pose a challenge, and are popular enough to main event RoV.
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Yeah, I got the impression that Alex’s primary motivation was control, not money. She didn’t seem all that concerned about money anywhere. She was extremely manipulative and devious though and seemed to like pulling the strings of everything, having it all under control. And Solitary is that one thing she can’t control, because of that deal he has. I did think her reasons for getting rid of him was to get rid of that one person who she couldn’t do anything about. She doesn’t sweat the minor details, but in the bigger picture she likes to know everything that’s going on.
@Chikiamco Double check. I’d to open up everything individually to find that, (since I don’t think there’s an easy way to do it on the chrome store) so I might be wrong. Since you actually have the files, it should be easier to make sure.
Yeah, I did check, and even if this isn’t the bug @bushbender encountered, it’s still a bug to be squashed. The kayface route wrecks havoc on the “love” variable, but I’d thought I’d gotten everything sorted out…
I think your scene at the start of chapter 11 makes it clear that Alex is masterminding things. However there’s so much text there and so much else going on. Maybe you need to throw in a choice or fake choice when Alex reveals herself to slam home that she’s the one who’s been pulling all the strings. It gets easily lost otherwise, but people will tend to remember choices more and things they get a chance to react to…
The bit…
"Alex. Alex Dobbs.
*page_break"
Put in a choice instead of that page_break to make it clear that Alex has been behind everything and having the player react to it. Even if it’s just highlighting things it might help. Although better to ask someone who was confused.
Just finished my first playthrough a few hours ago. It was AMAZING. :3
@Ninjasplaycardgames2 It is, isn’t it? Have you left any reviews on it? What were your favourite bits?
Ok, I was avoiding this one but @DavidGil persuaded me to dip my toes in the water.
I’ll just come out and say it;
Finally, (The rock has come back to… etc) COG has a game rich in quality and depth that deserves to be featured on the front page. Recent efforts have been good, but never quite ‘there’, with maybe the exception being Kung-Fu. Even that needed something extra though.
Anyway, fantastic game, very lengthy (finally!), the writing was excellent throughout. Minor issues; There’s a girlfriend/boyfriend gender recognition issue, the text is calling a male character a “girlfriend” in the romance paths when describing from the point of view of the girlfriend (thus it should be ‘boyfriend’ I guess.)
Also, there were several times I had to re-read to understand what the point of the text was. I think partially this was down to some hitches in the formatting but it wasn’t a major issue. The one thing I still have issue with though is comprehending the bloody stats… But I’m over it.
Anyway I got;
No. 2, Vallant
Last Week: -7
Awards Received: Feud of the Year: Vallant and JJ Havoc
Match of the Year: Vallant versus JJ Havoc, Ring of Valhalla XVI.
Poetic Justice Award
Fan Favorite Award
Best Submissions Wrestler Award
Best Technical Wrestler Award
And to be frank I’m happy with that. I did want a bit more fallout on prototype and whatshisname, Solitary and Horns I guess. But I’ll deal.