To infinity… and beyond!!
Our cheesy retro scifi adventure is launching now (so far it’s on google play and amazon; the rest will click into place shortly).
Update: It’s fully released now on all platforms!
It’s a blast!
This is a game put together by myself (writer and editor), Jac Colvin, Eric Moser, Doctor, and Adrao.
None of us knew each other at all when we started writing about a year ago. There are special features inside the book that give some idea of how the process worked. The short version is:
We used an episodic style so we could write fairly independently, but discussed characters, style, tone, certain programming quirks (spaces or tabs? {he}/{his}/ ${him} for pronouns, etc) and some plot points before we started.
After a game jam, we had 3.5 stories and we were on a high so we kept going (but kept up the manic production speed in order to fight against the inevitable fading of the enthusiasm).
We had an obsessive couple of months, reading and editing each others’ stories (and copying each others’ styles and plot elements). The others gave me free reign to edit all their stories with barely any consultation, which made it very easy to fix things quickly and to add foreshadowing and remove contradictions. I also wrote the final tale after everything else was done, so I could bring it all together in a satisfying way (a lot of elements of that final tale were discussed at length along the way).
I think there were something like 1000 messages altogether (and we’re still talking in our private thread right now).
Pitfalls of group games:
-There’s a LOT of basic stuff (like coding) that needs to be consistent.
-There’s a dropout rate of about 95% (often including the most committed people, because major real-life stuff can and will happen).
-There’s a LOT of extra editing to smooth things out (eg one of the writers had some weird computer thing that hated my computer and I had to go through and manually remove thousands of extra spaces before the game would play).
-Stuff will go wrong - both personal and computer-y. People and computers are always more idiosyncratic than expected.
-The choice of gatekeeping or not (what if someone submits something terrible?) isn’t an easy one - we got lucky with five really excellent (and funny) writers.
-For legal reasons, it’s not (not never ever) possible to “donate” a story (and therefore avoid all the paperwork).
-Your full legal name and address will be on the contract, which everyone else will see (are they serial killers? I know I am…)
-You’ll be dividing profits when the game sells (although you’ll probably also benefit from the overlap of fans from the other writers).
-The time from submission to release will be much longer than usual because coordinating this stuff is hard (for both writers and Choice of Games). 6-12 months probably.
That’s quite a list, but (as will be perfectly obvious from the story) we had an absolute blast writing this, and we went from strangers to friends (except Eric and I, who went one better and became arch-enemies 4 life).
Feel free to ask questions and/or heap praise upon us below.
PS It seems a little expensive to Jacic and I, but them’s the breaks. Please note that we don’t set the price, and this is most definitely a short game.
(And I know finding the right combo of choices to get achievements can be half the challenge).