I’m looking for beta testers for my Choice of Games game The Dragon’s Flagon Play an adventurer who wants to settle down and run a bar in an eccentric town, only to find murder, intrigue and international politics standing in the way of your well-deserved retirement.
This is intended to be a light-hearted, humorous cozy fantasy.
So far I have 4 chapters written. I’m coming at this from the writer side of things, so I know my code is barbaric and appreciate any and all help with it. I also very much appreciate comments on the story/prose itself.
(also, I know the startup page is borked. I’m workin’ on it.)
Hey, congratulations on the new project and thank you for sharing it here! I took the liberty of moving it into the “work in progress” section as the main “CoG games” bit is for released games. Best of luck with the game, it sounds really fun!
Okay, some first thoughts. Writing these points as I read.
These comments are potentially not relevant due to a bug skipping the first two chapters.
1 - Is there a reason you are going with both a named and set gendered MC? Is that going to add anything to the story as opposed to allowing the reader to name and gender their character themselves? It is fairly well documented at this point that set characters for the player POV aren’t as well received.
2 - I’m never a big fan of starting out your story on a forced narrative failure. The very first choice of the game and it ends with varying degrees of the player character looking kind of like a loser. It’s not a great first impression. I don’t need my player character to be overpowered, but I’d at least like them to be competent.
3- Hell, the second option also seems to reinforce this. Are you intending for the player character to be incompetent?
4- Murder mystery? Threin? Pretty sure none of this has been mentioned before and I’m feeling very lost being dropped whole cloth into a story I have absolutely no reference for. I don’t need a reference for place names and that sort of thing, but for narrative arcs? Who is Threin and why should I care that he was murdered? It doesn’t make for a pleasant reading experience.
5- Have you not implemented character stats yet? Tried talking to Eithne about the Free Odd Society and got told I’m not good at asking questions, despite choosing conversational options up til now and looking at my stats they are all 50/50.
6- I just keep losing. I also couldn’t catch the thief. It’s really feeling oppressive the amount of failures the player character gets handed.
7-
“Listen.” You pour yourself a beer; gods know you need it. “I’m not the one who decided the heart should go in my basement, and I’m not the one who was babysitting it when it was stolen. So how is this my fault, exactly?”
Except I was the one who suggested it. I chose the one up Luden option, so I was 100% the first one to bring up keeping the heart at the inn.
All in all I’d say my major complaint is being dropped into the middle of what feels like a story in progress and being expected to know what is going on immediately. I feel like I’m drowning in names and terms without enough time to digest them.
Oop, I see there’s an issue with your *scene_list command - what you’ve got at the moment is this:
*scene_list
chapter_three
chapter_four
which makes the game start at Chapter 3 (this is why @anon12679161 isn’t able to set a name and gender and is failing all the time - the first chapters in which the PC’s identity is set and the stats get built are getting skipped).
Don’t feel bad. I just quit reading yesterday because of all the points you made. Didn’t have it in me to comment because what I’d been put through made me feel pretty mean.
It should be re-uploaded with the correct startup file. So sorry for the problems! (Lance, didn’t get to implementing comment 7 in particular yet, but it’s on my list)
I am already having a much better time. Much better introduction to the story when you actually start at the beginning. I’m amazed that the link had almost 200 clicks and no-one had mentioned it before me.
If I’m being perfectly honest the amount of bugs are making it difficult to test it. It seems I only go through a few choices before I get hit with an error and have to start again from the start. I much prefer the writing and pacing I’m seeing now, but the code needs work.
EDIT: I’m just now realising that both of my posts have been quite critical. I should say that what I have seen so far I am really enjoying. The writing itself (now that I’m starting from the right point) is actually very good, well paced with a nice bit of humour to it.
Thanks so much for the help so far. I’ve run loads of tests now, found lots of errors, tried to fix them all and re-uploaded the game. If anyone has further patience for my shenanigans, I am so so grateful.
