So I played the Twelve Trials. My character neither wanted to be a champion nor a good. Every time I acted I did it in the worst way possible and to no surprise i never won a single event, I pissed off God’s by refusing any Athletics etc. If this was a Grecian Pantheon my protagonist ass would be aye by Monsters or something for eternity. But in the end there was two choices . Either the gods are dead and nothing you did mattered or presumably everyone becomes a god Even if you were the biggest screw up to ever walk the face of the Earth. In the twelve Trials where every trial is won by it’s champion in my own God’s trial I managed to not get the special win. And yet I probably had potential to take their place. Luckily I chose the dead God’s and because it was a backwards world i became a Lea of my village instead of someone who fucked up so badly even their God couldn’t play favorites. But it felt like nothing my MC did mattered if there was a sit on your hands option for every time I still would have become a good or convinced the gods to die. It felt railroaded so I was wondering when others felt railroaded.
Every game, ever made is railroaded to some extent … there are boundaries to all sand boxes and there are limits to all games.
With that said, the choices in some IF games have more weight and consequence to them than others. Tin Star is an example where I felt this to be the case.
A game which I feel has very significant choices but still has constraints placed on the MC is the Infinity series. This might be contradictory but it works quite well in advancing the author’s goals in depicting colonialism and its effect on those targeted by colonialism.
Zombie Exodus and Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven is the most “sand box” like game published in either library in my opinion. (ymmv).
The WiP by @MichaelMaxwell called Breach is an open-world project, that is very ambitious and complex. When it is finished and succeeds it will be a favorite of many who like breadth in their games.
I’m not going to call any one for failure because non of my games have been published yet and I’m not a publisher either.
Wayhaven Chronicles 1 basically has a single path running through it, with variations changing based on your MC’s personality/stats and your chosen love interest/the interactions you have with them. The sheer amount of variation you’re allowed to explore more than makes up for it though…I suppose you can say that it makes up for its single plot by giving a great freedom with relationships and refining your MC, and man is it good at it. (I really love WC lol.)
That said, I think the author said you’d be able to make bigger choices down the line, when the story is less constrained by buildup, so it may not be a good example by that point.
I heard that you can end Heroes rise Open season with a legend score of 80 just by spamming the button ‘next’, if it’s not railroading, i don’t know what is
Lol that’s pretty funny I should try that and see what I get.
- And you dont even need to load in a save. Hitting next in the new player recap works too
Edit: cant speak for RS, but in the trilogy you could at least get a game over when you picked choices not in line with your stats.
Now it’s all
“This attack may not be your speciality but it works out yet”
Only difference is how many legend points you get (which before were a currency in the case of game over) and if you get an achievement.
But the course of the story stays the same.
Of course, one can say that the game is now less stats-bound than its predecessors but is this the right approach?
Edit 2: just remembered that in RS game over is a thing too. So OS is the only one where things are handled this way.
And to name another game: heard some off things about Windbrook, and looking at the code confirms this.
The fielders choice, Congresswolf, and choice of the rock star are all quite railroaded, but that doesn’t mean they’re not fun games.
Choice of the rock star I ended up getting an indie career Working with other big bands and doing Jam sessions were there other endings?
Does your Congresswolf win no matter what?
The most railroaded game? Gilded Rails, clearly.
Wayhaven does it well. The plot progresses pretty unflinchingly for the first game at least, with (major but still) cosmetic changes to scenes based on RO. It does allow you to experience a romance without needing to play to character types or worry about “beating” the game so much, so it works for the story it’s telling (plus it never tells me how I feel or react to a sitation to push the plot along, really, so the railroading isn’t as jarring)
Someone had to but did you have to?
I regret nothing.
You’re congresswolf either wins or loses but the endings are pretty much the same regardless.
Isn’t there like five different jobs you can take as an sorta ending like werewolf’s rights, keep working, a career in advertising , etc?
The story was so awesome and the characters so endearing that I didn’t mind the railroad at all.
Heroes Rise and Way Walkers University had the most obnoxious railroading, in my opinion.
The first part of Affairs of the Court is also problematic, because you can only continue from the “routes” where you romance the monarch. Since Choice of Romance was a dating sim, invalidating two of your possible romances was a case of poor planning.
It’s actually not 
. I’m getting the feeling this isn’t well known, but it’s a retelling of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn with magic thrown in. That’s why there’s only one person you can romance and continue the story.
Edit: Watched it a while back but this series on the Tudors is actually pretty good (not completely accurate- it’s entertainment rather than a doc, and has a game of throne-ish feel. Also the link’s ok, but the show is NSFW.) The Tudors
So it’s not “Choice of romance” it’s " The Dramatic retelling of actually events"?
It’s loosely based on history, but yeah to me it seems to have a large influence from real people in Tudor England rather than being a dating sim 
. I guess Choice of Romance rolls of the tongue better than A dramatic retelling of historical events that occured in Tudor England with magic 
Early on when it was just lauched, it was marketed as a ‘romance game’, IIRC, since it was the first game where the person you romance is the focus. (Also in a time when gamers at large tried to turn their nose at this sort of thing.) Yes, the author was pretty public with how it was largely inspired by Ann Boleyn, and they later made it clearer by sticking to that gun in Intrigues, but if you weren’t following the discussion it was really easy to miss the author’s inspiration and intention for the game.
Rebranding it as Affairs of the Court was a wise choice, imo.
I don’t remember the author talking about it at time of release (probably before I started hanging out here) but remember thinking “hang on, that storyline seems really familiar!” when reading it and checking it out on the forum to see if Tudor England was what the inspiration was. It’s just I think this has been the second time in about 2 weeks I’ve had this discussion where people have been unhappy about the railroading with regards to relationships not realising what the backstory is, so I don’t think it is widely known that’s what it was unless you were around at the time it was first out on the stores or have seen a forum post about it. I agree “Affairs of the Court” is a good title for it.