Tally Ho — Only a perfect servant can solve a perfect mess!

I’m not surprised or too concerned that some person on Steam doesn’t know what plagiarism is. My first-year students have a really hard time distinguishing plagiarism from parody, pastiche, cited quotation, or allusion (I just taught this unit, so it’s fresh on my mind). It’s just one review.

This person feels like Choice of Games is operating in a gray area, ethically, but I would hope that any critical thinker who looks at the works on offer would reject that claim at once.

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If it’s a WIP, not only is it not pertinent to Choice of Games as a company or any of the products they offer, it definitely isn’t relevant to a Steam review. So credibility for the rest of the review kinda goes away on that point alone, not counting the blatantly confrontational tone and selective interpretation of the facts.

I wondered for a moment if they had been talking about broadsides, maybe, cause that one is pretty close to the hornblower novels (though still no plagiarism.) Were they even talking about a cog/hg game?

To note, it’s not exceedingly rare of people to accuse us of plagiarism (I look into every account of it happening with HG that comes my way, just to be certain). IIRC Samurai of Hyuga has been accused of it with like four different (completely unrelated) stories. (How something is supposed to perfectly follow the plot of four different stories is beyond me.)

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I think the issues here that roused this reviewer’s ire is that two of the major characters are honest-to-goodness meant as take-offs of the characters from the novels (Rory and Aunt Primrose), and that I reference some of the classic jokes and phrasing from Wodehouse (mentioning “the poet Burns” for example, a direct callback to a favorite joke from the stories). That’s what pastiches do, though–similar to Midsummer.

But I do think that they make an important point that it would be good to mention Wodehouse in the game, and this will be added to the “About the Author.”

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I thought that the store page mentioned Wodehouse too; the game is so obviously a Wodehouse tribute. Jeeves and Wooster are such literary archetypes they might as well be public domain, no names from the J&W books are used, the reviewer sounds like they were making a supercilious point without tact.

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This is going to be the new game:

It is tentatively titled “Cakes and Ale.”

Juggle your responsibilities as both the president of the irrepressible Noble Gases social club, and as the niece/nephew of the cheerfully oblivious Lord Cholmondley in a pastiche of the Blandings/Drones novels by P.G. Wodehouse.

It has been accepted as a three-part game. I’m still trying to figure out what a reasonable writing schedule will be for me. Definitely nothing will come out in 2018.

In this game, you will be the employer, and have your own clever servant.

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Booo!!
I demand it to be written right now!!!

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Ohh… This is very interesting! Looking forward to it developments.

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Thanks for the vote of confidence!

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Will we be able to choose our servant (like how you can choose your Sargeant in Sabres of Infinity), or they will be a fixed character?

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I don’t know everything yet about this game, but this I know: the servant will be a fixed character in Cakes and Ale.

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I have a question about “Tally Ho”, how do I successfully get the peridot hairpin?!

Here are some ways which you could get it:

Summary

Either you have to get it from him during the stop in the village which requires some stats:
*For the one option, you need to have more than 40 bold AND less than 35 soothing
*For the second option, you need to have more than 40 persuade AND more than 35 soothing
*For the third option, you need to have more than 40 skulduggery AND more than 35 observe

OR

Deceive him when he is asking for your opinion on the what birthday gift he need to get. You need to be in first class compartments for this. If you are in good terms with him during that part, you need to tell the truth that Aunt Primrose loves jewelry and you have lower than 35 persuade, he will doubt your word and get the other gift when the gift shop event happen. You could also steer him away by lying but you need more than 35 skulduggery.

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This is wrong, it need to be lesser than 35/30 to get it with the bold option.

I must have misunderstood the code, will correct this.

@VioletHikari I corrected the one pointed out by @Urban. Soothing should be less than 30 for the first option.

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@resuri08 is there a way to get on the train without running through the couple?

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You can shout with a high persuade (higher than 35) or, if you slow down, you can still get on if you supply the quotation with a higher than 35 culture, and then run for the train. You can also be subtle about the quotation, but you also need a higher than 25 skullduggery in that case.

Lots of ways!

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Just wanted to post that Aunt Primrose is possibly a better Aunt Dahlia than the one in the Jeeves & Wooster TV series. She’s so wonderfully hammy I keep picturing her as a nice non-puritan version of Lady Whiteadder slap slap “You wicked child, Rory!”

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I have just finished Tally Ho, and I simply had to come here and tell you: that was all I could hope for and more. Not many stories can be this engaging, fun, witty, and well-built while avoiding the pitfall of being too complicated. It was a short ride that left my heart feeling bittersweet, and my mind whining for more. Goodness, the very atmosphere was such that it made immersing into the story so natural and effortless. I have played a number of great and fantastic Choice Of games, but none stoked my craving to create like yours.

In fact, I had to draw my dear butler boy straight after:

I had hoped to gush about every part of the game in elaborate detail, yet I shall refrain from doing that as to not be a spoiling boor.

Whatever you are working on next, know that I will be greatly looking forward to it.

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