I’m pretty sure it’s referencing Don’t Wake Me Up.
I don’t know the upper threshold, but I’m pretty sure they create the poll starting with whatever game is closest to hitting that threshold, and then go down from there, and the lower threshold is where they run out of slots in the poll.
Ah ok that makes more sense then. I wasn’t sure how they chose games for the poll except they were under and over some sort of nebulous threshold.
I voted for The Twelve Trials, The Butler Did It and The Iron Destinies.
The Twelwe Trials was one of the first Choicescript IFs that I played/read and I still got a soft spot for it. But I also really liked the Greek Mythology vibes, how it made your MC feel like a mythical hero and the feeling of being a part of a band of great mythological heroes, each with their own strength and archetype, a bit like being one of the Argonauts. The only thing I was a bit ambivalent about was the ending, though I know that the romances being so barebones probably have hurt it a lot.
The Butler Did It, though not without its weaknesses, IMHO has one of the best plots of the HGs and COGs I’ve played, with lots of twists and turns and your MC(and you the reader/player) discovering that the world they live in is very different from the way they though it was.
I first bought The Iron Destinies the year when I discovered choicescript IFs, 2021, but it was then overshadowed by my favorites that year and I only tried it a couple of times and was left thinking “this is weird” and not sure whether I liked it or disliked it. After diving back into it this year I still think that it’s weird, but I also think that it’s highly enjoyable. Lots of replay value, lots of interesting stuff to do and much of that interesting stuff being quite epic. It’s very different from most other HGs and COGs, which may have made it difficult to get into for many readers/players and it also suffers from having a demo so short that it doesn’t convey what it’s like . But if you’re willing to give it a go and letting go of preconceptions that it would be like a more regular choice-based IFs, it’s just so fun. I mean, what other IF can give you the opportunity to become a planet playing around with moons or asteroids, become a magical sword going on a quest and becoming a god, sometimes even experiencing all of them in a single playthrough?
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I feel like I could write a whole essay about this, which is one of the joys of the game for me! The game is so much about the push-pull between wish-fulfilment/fanservice/artificial agency/player denial that I feel like the locking is part of what’s great about it.
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I would really love for you to expand more on your thoughts about how locking so much content behind a gender locked RO who will not be everyone’s cup of tea is a great way of conveying the push-pull between all those aspects. I think I can see your point, but I would also argue that while that may turn some people away from that particular paths and endings, there are also other elements of that particular RO that will make many readers/players of a compatible gender and sexual orientation flock to that particular RO. I mean brooding emo vampires have had plenty of people finding them romantic at least since Lestat, (whether Dracula can also be considered to be a part of that category is a case of YMMV, I guess),. So while you have many people not being interested in romancing that character at all, you will also have plenty of people who will be very interested in doing so and for whom that character is very much a fan service character. So I’m not sure whether this conveys the push/pull between wish fulfilment/fan-service/artificial agency/player denial equally or equally well to those trying and also wanting to try that path and those not being interested in trying it , since many of those people who tried that path feeling that they get more of that fan service than those with no interest in doing so, in addition to getting more content and a fuller and likely more enjoyable reading/playing experience (though some can still kind of enjoy it even without that content, as a fan of Philip K Dick and other authors with stories that had similar themes to his, I could still appreciate the twist at the ending, for instance, though a lot of the replay value and a lot of the intended message was then lost)
Then again maybe making the character gender-locked to male could be considered to be a meta “take that” to the time when all or almost all of the ROs in regular computer games were usually female, by gender-reversing that. Still, while I can see that it might be clever from a meta perspective and appeal to the IF Comp crowd, for me and many others with no interesting in romancing that character it just made that HG less fun and greatly reduces replay value. And since apparently, many of the more important themes and messages that the writer wanted to convey, including what she(I think) told was the closest to a canon ending was locked behind that particular path, this means that this will also all be lost on many of the readers/players, which I suspect was very much an unintended consequence. This in turns mean that the in-depth treatment of those themes and maybe even those themes in general, will be lost on many of the players/readers. So outside of the gender locking of that particular important RO making this HG less fun for many player/readers, it also means that those players/readers in question likely will lose out on a lot of the message and treatment of those particular themes. This in turn means that while this decision may align with what the writer wanted the readers/players to experience and think about in some ways, in seems to do the opposite in other ways. These are my thoughts about it, anyway. I hope I didn’t come off as too harsh or like I’m not interested in your take on it, because I really am, though(and maybe also because) my perspective is obviously quite different from yours.
I wish there was a “see results” option (unless I’m missing it). I haven’t played enough to vote myself but I’m curious!