Most of us here on the forums have all played more than a few wips that have captured our attention and our imagination. What makes these wonderful games so intriguing for us? Why do we want this Wip to continue? Why can’t I stop commenting on “when the new update is coming out”?
well i just wanted to see what everyone else thought so …
What makes a this WIP so GREAT?
Good spelling and grammar is a huge plus for me.
Wow! This the 3rd time I have been able to talk about villains!!! Anyway, a good game to me is one that understands that a villain is just a regular person who has just given in to our inner fears and urges. A game that can do this is at least a mediocre game.
Engaging story and characters with actual personalities that drive the story along. If you can get me to care about the characters and whether or not they live, then you’ve got a good story going.
Good story-telling, and choices that really matter.
If the writer is obviously not going to give me any control over how things go, i’d rather just read/listen to a novel.
Beyond just good writting and the general basic stuff being executed well; I think having good connections between your text, choices, page breaks, line breaks, and proper use of bold and italics can help set good games apart from great games.
A good transition from text to choice and from page from to page can really draw a person in. It can be awkward having choices and text that don’t seem to connect well to each other even if the text is written wonderfully. Having the dialogue carry over from text into the choice can be a good transition or just not having a direct conversation between narrator and reader for the choices.
You also have total control of when pages end and begin giving you a lot of nice option to build tension. Perhaps have some one get cut off mid sentence on one page only to see the cause on the next. Creating your own chapter titles and bolding them or putting italics for emphasis on certain words. All these little things can add up to making a good game great.
@Verand Yes I completely agree with that. I remember playing a wip where the writer had made pages of dialogue without and "quotation marks " around any of the sentences. So understanding a game is a really huge part of enjoying it for me.
@Alvern Yeah I like games where they present a human as being villainous instead of a villain being human. Have you ever seen the anime Code Geass? I like how they present the protagonist as a villainous hero .
@fantom yeah a Good assortment of vivid characters is usually the reason that even some of the shortest wips draw a big fan base. Like team zero , in all honesty the demo is short but what everyone seems to rave over is the striking characters. Yeah and it’s also important to get the reader ‘rooting’ for a character so when we finally kill them off you shed tears! >:D muhahaha
@eleazzaar Having choices that actually matter is the reason to have a choice of game. Because each choice drove you in a different direction toward a conclusion that was unique to what you picked. And I hate when they ask irrelevant questions like whats the color of your drapes ,carpet ,bed , and etc.
Though I do like some choices where they help make a character.
@WinterHawk so the way the game flows is important to you?
It’s as important as everything else is but tends to get overlooked; at least when flowing from text to choice. Having the narrator ask you what you are doing can be distracting from what was happening in the story, but if you can get the story and choices to connect into each other with out that then you can really get sucked into the story. A good example of this is in @Havenstone’s Choice of Rebels during this scene
At your challenge, Ecclesiast Zebed whirled to face you; his protruding eyes turned bleakly speculative. “Who are you…”
“… boy?”
“… girl?”
It is a standard gender selection choice but it integrates very well with the story.
@winterhawk yes I think it is over looked a lot in games where its just like 5 questions before you finally get anywhere and it is distracting if the question has little to no effect on the story.
like I said earlier I don’t so much mind it so much if its helping you build your character in your mind