@fairygodfeather
Thanks a tonne
I admit, the idea of playing a game about wrestling wasn’t that attractive to me. But after reading all the amazing reviews you got, I decided to give it a try.
And I don’t regret it. At all.
It’s wonderfully written plot, full of lively and likeable characters, and unexpected turn of events. The romances, (or romance, since I played as a straight female) were what romances should be every time, fully integrated to the plot, and thus very enjoyable. There were a lot of her/him mistakes with Evan but they weren’t detracting me from fully enjoying the game. I can’t relay them here since I played it on my phone as a Google app, but I’ll try to catch them when I’ll play again on chrome if you want.
The one regret I do have is that my favorite part, the JJ feud, would have been really interesting to experience as a romantic interest for a straight female, but the gender swapping makes it impossible, she’s automatically a girl when you’re a girl.
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@Lanawinst I actually liked that the best (in my eyes) romance of the game was locked to just gay characters. It’s so often that we’re the ones who need to do without, where heterosexual characters get a multitude of options, gay ones have to make do with scraps.
Now, I do understand that that means female characters just have the one romantic option. I think the only solution to that would have been to allow for a gender-swap of Madison Rio. I’d be curious if that was ever suggested.
I thought the story and rivalry with JJ was about friendship first and foremost, with the romance being something of an easter egg. I was so glad that the romance was there, when I was playing I figured the relationship with JJ was just head-canon, my character’s crush was just that, unrequited love, so I was glad when I saw that there was actually the possibility of ending up with JJ. It’s difficult to get, (especially if you want the best end with the epilogue), only available right at the end, it’s only a few minor changes to the friendship route.
I think JJ and the main character need to be in the same league. It wouldn’t be the same if they were different genders. There are differences between the female and male route.
I end with Rio and ecstasy and i hate greatly something about gender and romance you are gay or straight deal with it no opportunity to be bi or wait until know characters you could romance so if you choose romance straight well you barely have two options all game are doing for gays no problem i choose lesbian being my self straight but i preferred a bi option to see the dynamic of gender fighting a Rio ecstasy fight when one of them from different gender could be interesting
@FairyGodfeather I do think that the fact that the best romance is available to gay characters is a great thing. I know how it feels to be left out, I’m not a straight male, and female PC are not that far ahead in the content allocated to them in nowadays games, even if it does get better. Now, the fact that it is locked, well, I am not going to complain about it at all, the game is great and I’m all for having content for everyone, but I do still wish I could have accessed it (who doesn’t want more awesome content after all even if what they already have is great? ), especially in a game that include a lot of gender/sexuality swapping.
In my experience, there’s 2 ways choice of games usually go about characters: The first way is to have the characters, their sex, their likes/dislikes, sexuality, all that makes them, well, them set in stone. It allows to deepen and have more believable characters because they don’t change to fit the MC, but that usually mean less open content.
The second way, that has been chosen here, is to have swappings depending on who the MC is going to be, which is awesome because it lets everyone enjoy the same content but can be sometimes feel less achieved, which isn’t the case here. So, seeing that swapping were used, as Evan becomes Evelyn to allow you to romance her if you set your MC as gay, and since it wasn’t a matter of JJ’s character always been set in stone, as the male version exist, I did saw no reason not to have it.
Now, your comment about having to be in the same league is right. Not that the story couldn’t have been adapted to fit it, but I do realize that it probably would have required more than just a swap. Point taken 
Oh, well. the relationship dynamic with JJ is already awesome as a friendship so I’m already a happy gamer thanks to that.
You can only get the showdown with Paul Prototype if you’re female. Especially that crowning moment of awesome when you can punch him out in one. I’m glad that’s the case too. I hadn’t realised it initially but I just think it’s brilliant that he gets his comeuppance that way.
I do understand where you’re coming from.
Even though JJ’s gender can change, their relationship with the protagonist is always set in stone. That relationship involves them being in the same league, which involves them being the same gender. They’re also mirror images of each other, I think if they were different genders there’d be a little less of that rivalry going on because they’d be on slightly different paths.
I think they’d have a different dynamic unless the world was one where there was complete equality and the women were fighting alongside the men. But in that case, Paul Prototype wouldn’t have worked and you couldn’t have become the first female champion.
I also think that with the characters being opposite genders sexual tension would automatically be assumed. What’s that ridiculous quote about men and women being unable to be friends? I think it would change things. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be an interesting story, I just don’t think it’d be the same one.
I do think that you’re right in that it could have been a possibility. That with straight female characters having just the one romance option it’s not entirely fair. I think Madison would have been the easier character to switch though to make things more equal.
I think the entire game would need to be rewritten if it was JJ. It would be a lot of work and for what? The romance with JJ is extremely difficult to get, it amounts to one kiss, two short sections right at the end of the game, and a few amusing pieces of dialogue. It’s not as fully implemented as the E. Ecstasy romance, or the Madison Rio one.
@Lanawinst Thanks, I’m always glad when someone enjoyed Slammed! despite not being a wrestling fan. I think @FairyGodfeather hit most of the points as to why JJ as the opposite sex from the player character just didn’t work with the story I wanted to tell, the primary reasons being the need to be competing against each other in the NCAA finals, and the desire to save the mixed-gender fights for the Prototype finale (and, to a lesser extent, the Scaffolds match). I always viewed JJ primarily as the Rival, and not really as a love interest – I only added in a possible romance because I’ve been in enough fandoms to know that would be a pairing that people would make in their minds, whether I made it official or not. 
As a writer, I’m not really a fan of gender swappable romantic interests (as opposed to regular NPCs, like Sagramore/Lady Sagramore) at the moment. Coding issues aside, I haven’t yet been able to master the art of thinking of a character as a duality of possible sexes – in my mind, most characters I create have a set and specific sex. I made an exception with Ecstasy primarily because EE had a very clear role to play in my mind, that wouldn’t change much depending on sex/orientation – but even then, the pronoun issues should give a clue that I had a hard time thinking of EE as him/her. For me, as much as possible, the male and female versions of a character should almost be completely different characters, so I’d rather just actually make them different characters than do a gender switch. That being said, of course, time constraints do apply, so male and female EE aren’t very different, though I did try to do certain variations when it would have been weird not to (such as the “Be a man” line during the El Ala challenge.)
As for the straight female romances, in my original notes, Alex Dobbs was meant to be male and/or gender-changeable, and romancable, but the female Alex worked so much better for me that I left her that way. And the romance aspect just didn’t work out in the end (the only way it seemed possible would be after your final match, but that didn’t leave it enough time for me to flesh it out, and Alex doesn’t have the benefit of the potentially sexual tension the player has with JJ). So I didn’t have the time to put in an a different romance branch for them, alas. (As you may have noticed, there’s a lot of work that goes into each romance branch, so I’d have needed, like, a month to add even a Rio-level option.)
@MaraJade Unfortunately, I just don’t feel that I know enough about bisexuality for me to feel confident implementing it in-game. With homosexuality, while I’m certainly no expert, I at least have a grasp of some of the stereotypes and cliches that I wanted to avoid. As for locking you into a sexuality before you know the potential romantic options, I simply view that as the same as many other choices you make on your first play through, when you still haven’t read the whole story: to direct you down a particular path, and intrigue you as to what might-have-been. My simple hope is that if a player feels interested in what would happen if he/she chose a different orientation, then they’ll play through the game again.
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I love what Choice of Games does with gender, it’s one of the things that actually drew me into their games as opposed to the other options out there. I love how my opinion of a character can change if nothing more than their gender and pronouns are changed. I love that the genderflip means that there’s a female version of Henry the 8th seducing her way through all the young nobles.
I like Black Magic from Heroes Rise, for instance, far better as a male character than a female. I think as male he’s far more subversive, whereas as female falls into some typical tropes. But Torres the merchant in Choice of Romance, I prefer as female. I find her far more endearing than her male counterpart, despite the dialogue being exactly the same.
I love how the genderflips play with my perceptions of a character and of how a simple matter of pronouns can change my internal stories so much.
Now, I do also enjoy games with static gender options, but I’m glad that you did include gender flips in Slammed.
I’m glad Alex was female. I liked her female, I’ve a certain feeling that I would not have liked a male Alex Dobbs, although it would have been interesting to experience.
I do have thoughts about the lack of bisexual characters in choice games.
Just treat them like your gay and straight characters and you should be good. I can think of a couple of things you could have done to make a viable bisexual path.
Add in another option to that flirtation scene which sets your orientation. Although you are best to avoid the “bisexuals are all promiscuous and hit on everything that moves” stereotype. The most prominent bisexual character in a choice of game, The Monarch from Choice of Romance, fits that stereotype to a T, while the player themselves is locked from also being bisexual by the gender-switch.
Actually you might not need to change anything there, since the main issue is with your homosexual tag and that it locks out certain things as opposed to it being a player choice.
Remove your “if homosexual” prerequisites. Don’t have the if homosexual prerequisite to the JJ romance, don’t lock the Madison romance either. (Can’t remember if she is locked or not.) If the player gets to that point and decides they want to romance the character, just let them. Use that first flirtation to decide on E. Ecstasy’s gender of course. There’s that scene if you’re a face and if female a guy asks you to sign him and your friends comment that they didn’t think he was your type, that could be tweaked.
There may be a few other points the if homosexual comes up, I can’t remember. I think it would take mostly some tweaking here and there to implement, a few additional choices to ascertain if the main character’s straight or bisexual, but I don’t think it’d be too much work. And we wouldn’t let you implement it badly.
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@FairyGodfeather i agree totally with you
@FairyGodfeather I don’t know – it seems to me it’d affect outlook in a more substantial way than simply giving access to both homosexual and heterosexual romantic options. I mean, again, if it’s just a matter of seeing the other options, there are other playthroughs that’d achieve the same end, except for one with a male EE/Rio love triangle, which wouldn’t be different from the female EE/Rio triangle.
It’s not really a matter of coding – although, at this point, I don’t think I want to do anything more with Slammed! than fix the typos and maybe certain story rough spots, like the female PC/male EE epilogue. For the next game, perhaps, if I have the luxury of time to do research.
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Firstly this isn’t directed at you, just in general. I’d planned to at some point start a topic about bisexual characters in choice games, to start up a discussion, but I’ve always been sidetracked.
It’s not a matter of seeing the other options. I can easily do that through just choosing another playthrough. It’s a matter that Choice of Games have a policy for inclusion, yet they’ve somehow managed to exclude the possibility of bisexual protagonists in most of their games.
You can be gay, you can be straight, but bisexuality is erased.
In Choice of Broadsides you can choose either the same-sex romance, or the opposite-sex marriage, but you can’t be bisexual. Choice of the Vampire initially had you able to romance one or the other of the romantic options but not both. (Admittedly and thankfully that’s fixed now and romancing one doesn’t lock out the other.) Choice of Romance never has the option of allowing you to be attracted to both genders, it’s always assumed you’re either gay or straight, and the most prominent bisexual character is extremely promiscuous. Heroes Rise lets you be bisexual, but then immediately asks you to select the gender of your romantic interest, and being bisexual only comes up if you’re female and also want to romance Jenny. (And I don’t think the Jenny romance was included in the initial game either.)
It’s more that it’s something systematic of choice games that goes against their stated agenda. It’s about playing games. that claim to be inclusive, yet you can’t play as a bisexual character.
Bisexuality is discriminated against too, and yes it does come with different issues than being gay does, there’s also some of the same problems. There’s also the whole belief that bisexual isn’t a proper orientation, just pick one, you’re not really bi, you’re just a closet-case, in denial, sort of thing.
So, well it’s a matter more of principle than it is of accessing all the content. And it’s not even a matter of principle directed at you. It’s something that I see as important, and I think that in the case of Slammed it would be a relatively easy fix. But I can understand that you just want to fix typos, that you feel that you’d need to add extra content to make a bisexual protagonist feasible. Just keep it in mind for your next game, will you?
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I just finished my straight fem path ending with ecstasy in their father grave he addressed me like a male and talk about his treacherous other boyfriends
lol @Marajade must have been a weird scene…
@Wyrmspawn yes it was , so you are gay now? Then he speak to me like a boy so i was like 0o
I agree with a lot of @FairyGodfeather’s points. One of the few things that made me sad in this game was the inability to flirt with Rio while dating Evan.
The pseudo-dates with Rio were still entertaining though, and I still very much enjoyed that storyline.
The option for a player to not care about gender is overlooked in a lot of games, but I can see why it might be tricky if the game has gender-switching characters in it.
I’ve played through three times now and still enjoying it.
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Colt Cole aka Maverick then Colt Chaos then Cross, he was a face that was also a generally nice guy he went home after the betrayal, he ended up with Evelyn and beat JJ at the end finishing as 2nd in the world ranking.
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Phil Irvine aka Ender Galow then Phil Vandal then Cross then Ender Gallow again. He was a heel after the betrayal he did a spot of managing, he tried to date Everlyn but lost in the cage fight and ended up getting a mysterious note mentioning an MMA tournament
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Beth Lee aka Randi Roundhouse then Beth Ravage then Cross then Beth Lee. She was a face, after the betrayal she continued to wrestle as Cross. She tried to turn heel after the betrayal but couldn’t due to Evelyn only to then dump Evelyn for Madison in the end, she also beat JJ and ended up 2nd in the world rankings.
Everlyn is my preferred RO but Madison does make it difficult to choose.
Thanks! I fell for those tricks, but even with high strength character, i was able to beat SH in the scaffold match.
I do have to say, now that I played the Prototype title match (and I love that misogynistic prick getting one hit KO’d) that it would have been awesome if you could get a ending where you romance Alex Dobbs in a sort of “McMahon-Helmsley Era” (which was where Vince’s Daughter in WWE had a relationship with her real future husband Triple H when he was World Champ, for those who dont know). A Dobbs-Player Era would have been the cherry on the top to such a ending.
Oh well, hopefully in a sequel that’ll be possible!
@fairygodfeather
I was looking up at the old posts and you mentioned something about Ecstasy getting engaged to someone else and something about waiting too long, what’s that scene? Not seen it before.
@Draggo I haven’t got it through playing, just looking at the code.
It’s a bit convoluted and tricky to get and you can’t be in a relationship with Madison.
From checking the code it’s only available, if you don’t trigger Ecstasy to reject you initially (and the only way to do that is to not proposition them.) When Ecstasy asks if you’re feeling frisky don’t answer “what if I am”. You need to get Ecstasy as your manager, and then reject Ecstasy at the confession scene at the hotel. Then take the kayfabe face path in dealing with JJ. You should get a scene where you can speak to Ecstasy and ask them to wait. Ecstasy will wait for you, if you said yes to feeling frisky, (which makes Ecstasy reject you at the time) but they won’t wait if you chose another option.
And then when Colton asks, at the interview stage, if you’ve any regrets, mention making Ecstasy wait. If Ecstasy is waiting then you’ll get a reunion scene.
If they’re not waiting Colton will say "Colton winces. “Yes, I’ve heard about their engagement.” And you’ll try and hide your pain and pretend it doesn’t matter. And that’s it. If you’re going to go through the effort of playing through to try and get it, I’d suggest instead taking the route where Ecstasy is actually waiting for you, since I think the romance reads better, than just an offhand mention that Ecstasy has had a lightning fast revenge engagement.
@fairygodfeather
You da man