Hi there! I just thought how amazing you all are for putting the effort into your stories, and how, I think, none of you get as much appreciation or credit as you deserve for writing, which is a lot harder to do than I think some people, including myself, realize!
My favorite CoG writer is Zachary Sergi, author of the Heroes Rise and Versus series, and I appreciate him and love his work because of how it made me feel to play those games like I could achieve more than I ever realized. I also love his books for the representation, and how seamless it was. Not that it’s unnatural to have so many minority characters in a series, Heroes Rise and Versus were just two of the first times I had found a form of media where so many groups were represented, and well-done too. Also, Zachary Sergi is responsible for my favorite RO in any CoG game, Jenny, from Heroes Rise. That romance made me feel a lot of things, mostly good, over the course of the series, but especially happiness, especially because of how I ended the series with her, and even got to see a glimpse of us together in The Hero Project: Redemption Season! I don’t know if he has a forum page, but I hope Zach Sergi knows how I and so many other readers adore his works!
If you want, respond with your favorite CoG/HG writer, or any other author, and what you love about them and their work below!
Edit: Some other favorite CoG/HG writers of mine, including WIP writers, are (in no particular order) @P_Chikiamco (SLAMMED!), @JimD (Zombie Exodus and Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven), @jasonstevanhill (Choice of the Vampire 1 and 2), @WayWalkerLeigh (Way Walkers trilogy), @malinryden (Fallen Hero), and @RenaB (Model Citizens: Unmasked and Icarus Sun).
Ah, another excuse to praise @JimD and Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven. I’ll take it.
The character creation alone is something to behold. The amount of characters you can make, all of which can be absolutely different from one another in every aspect, is just mind blowing.
Then there’s the actual game itself. It’s quite surprising how in only three days you can establish mostly every single detail about your character. What their priorities are, how they’ll deal with other survivors and their plans for the future are just the tip of what you can decide about them.
This next one is mostly just personal praise from me, but I still wanted to throw it out there. You’ve got these two stats: Humanity and Morality. Humanity is basically your respect for human life and Morality is basically how often you help people. What really surprised me, however, was that you could have exceptionally high Morality and exceptionally low Humanity at the same time.
Personally, I fell in love with that idea. Just imagine the savior of the apacolypse not being your typical kind hearted fellow with a warm smile, but instead a soulless husk of what was once a human. Cold, silent and emotionless, yet still willing to lend out a helping hand. Maybe it’s purely for pragmatic reasons; safety in numbers. Maybe they do it to retain their sanity. Or maybe they do it just becuase they want to, without any meaning attached to it.
And when a zombie or a bandit/looter/traitor showed up…no mercy will be given.
So yeah, here’s my 528th praise comment of Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven.
Oh yes, I love @JimD’s work as well! You’re totally right about how much freedom was given in creating one’s MC and how dynamic and multidimensional you could make them. Also, props to the readers on how creative they are with making such characters. I’ve seen some excellent art and descriptions of people’s MCs. I’ve always just made my MC as myself, or as close to me as I can make it (though I’ll try different occupations through different playthroughs), in order to experience as much immersion as possible.
This is nice that you wrote this. This is my first time writing. I’m about to send it in for the contest, but I was accepted as a Hosted Game before the contest was announced. That just made me want to really put my all into my game, as if I wouldn’t have anyway!
