What's your CoG Story?

My first IF game was Alter Ego, and I instantly fell in love with it because I’ve never witnessed any other game like it at the time. A few years later, I found Choice of Robots on Steam and I was surprised to see that it had the same visual interface/game style as Alter Ego, so I gave it a go (and it got me hooked too, haha).

After that, I started learning more about the other games avaliable from CoG/HG. I decided to join the forums to keep up with the community and new game releases (which I’m glad I did because I love reading different topics and what people have to say about the games).

Overall, I have to thank the community because all of this has been a pleasant experience for me :relaxed:.

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Like @Yachire, Alter Ego was my first exposure to the world of IF. I had never seen anything like it, and the idea of a game having choices like that was mindblowing to me.

Afterwards my next big interactive fiction game would be Emily Short’s Galatea - so many different endings, and so many ways of interacting with the central character! It was a very mysterious game to me at the time, and honestly I credit it a little bit for spurring my interest in coding. Years later, I came across Choice of the Dragon online, and had a fun time playing it. Wasn’t much else available from CoG at the time so it fell by the wayside until one day I remembered it and decided to see what else was available.

I was stoked to see that CoG had exploded - Hosted Games was a thing, and the forums had tons and tons of WiPs. There was a huge backlog of stuff for me to play, and I feel like I had a lot of catching up to do! Started getting back into it with Choice of Robots, which honestly blew me away with how apparent the leap forward was compared to Choice of the Dragon - then I started playing Zombie Exodus, Psy High, Creatures Such As We, Heroes Rise, Sabres of Infinity…long story short, I got seriously hooked - and still am! Helps that the community is great too :wink:

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I love Choice of Games, why? Because a couple years ago, when I was a wee lad, I was looking for games with choices, and games that fit my kind of humour, and what did I find? Sadly only one of those things…(my humour is sadly way to messed up) so one of the first games I played was “Choice of Vampires” and enjoyed it, then I played the sequel, and to this very day waiting for the third sequel(but that’s not what matters), then I found “werewolf’s:haven rising”(might of got that wrong) and loved it to the very core of my being, it was fun and you could kill people, in fact, I played it till I was 2 Achievements away from getting every single achievement… it was fun… then I found the “heroes rise” and “The Hero Project” series, I enjoyed that as well, though I did not get every achievement(even though I would have loved to) I still enjoyed it enough to buy them all, I also played “A Wise Use of Time” that game was amazing, absolutely unique in every way, and while I was buying all these COG games, I was also buying a lot of Hosted Games, the first two games I bought where “A Day Off Work” and “The Aether: Life as a God” both were incredible, I remember killing all the gods in the ladder game, it was very enjoyable, I also bought Unnatural, and enjoyed it so much I also tried to get every achievement, and may have made a nice relationship with the developer, who I consider a friend, a huge shoutout to @Nocturnal_Stillness for making one of my most favourite games of all time, as well as being a good friend on Twitter, and putting up with my weirdness. I also enjoyed “The Lost Heir” series, as well as the “Zombie Exodus” games, I also loved the games @adrao made, they where probably some of the most sophisticated and unique games in terms of paths, choices, and unique gameplay as well as customization.

While I enjoyed all those, there are still games that I have yet to see fully made and completed, while there are still games I have yet to see, I truly hope the COG community gets bigger and better by the years to come, I probably sound like I am not being serious, but I am, I met some kind people, and people who can put up with my sadistic humour, if this community get bigger, I hope that the games also get better, for I am still looking for that perfect game made by that perfect person(I’ve found some close contestants but none have truly opened my eyes), so please keep making games for me, and everyone else can enjoy, and if making games isn’t your cup of tea, then you can play the games that people have made with there heart and souls.

Thank you for reading this long story of my time enjoying this fun adventure I have had, and I will continue to have for the foreseeable future.

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Mine isn’t uber interesting. I found the great tournament on the google play store and really enjoyed it, played through 3x prioritizing different stats each time. I got more reccomended to me but they were from delight games. I enjoyed them quite a bit but they were more linear. After a while I got recommended Cog’s and hosted games products and then I joined the forum. I don’t regret my decision, it’s fun here.

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I was obsessed with interactive fiction for the longest time and found dashington after a couple of days I wanted to try my hand at writing some interactive fiction. That’s how I found CoG I bought one game on app store before starting my first game (Which I abandoned because I got a new idea), and I went on from there, writing a few stories before turning them into games with more possibilities, I end up only submiting 3 to dashington. The community was really supportive so I stayed.

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I found CoG through a Steam sale, p sure the first title I tried was Heroes Rise: The Prodigy. I’d always loved choose your own adventure novels as a kid and had always wondered if and hoped that there would be a modern, digital equivalent aside from old school text-based RPGs. I found Heroes Rise and a ton of other CoG titles right at the start of my chemotherapy, actually, and it was… essential. Being able to get away from reality like that was really, very necessary for me during treatment.

Like, I genuinely say it all the time: I don’t know how I would have gotten through cancer without my best friends, a ton of weed, and interactive fiction.

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A friend recommended Affairs of the Court to me, and got me in deep trouble for all the times I played, trying to get a good ending. I mean, it’s okay, I’m sure I got her back with something. We do this to each other a lot. Share obsessions.

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First game you remember playing?

I found this forum about a couple months ago, but choicescript is different. I play choicescript game about a couple years ago (6 years prob) with ‘Lost Heir’ series. A couple years passed and i play a marvelous game called ‘War of The West’ by a great gentleman who helped me how to create choicesript game. If it weren’t for him, i probably forgot about you guys.
But i’m glad i didn’t :smiley:

I’ve played IF of differing sorts before but they all had graphics. I only ever found out about Choice of Games because of Kyle Marquis’ ‘Night Road’ being talked about on the Vampire: The Masquerade forums on Reddit that I’m a semi-regular contributor too. I was a bit skeptical at first – I don’t know why, but I was. But after watching a playthrough of it on YouTube, I decided to pick it up and give it a whirl.

I loved it. I could build my character any way I wished. Their sex, sexuality, clan, ideals etc. And since I really liked Night Road, I started looking at other games on this forum that might interest me – and I’m a lucky girl, because there’s been quite a few.

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So everybody, how did you get into these choice-script games and interactive fiction in general?

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My mom got a new iPad I believe in like ~2012 and among the pre downloaded apps was this one called “The race.” It was the first thing from CoG I’d ever read but I never got into the community till recently.

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Choice of Robots on Steam :robot:

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Bàck I think 2009. Decided to search for a choice of game on the Google play store. Like I remember from child hood. And I think I came across the iron trench I believe what it is called and clicked on the link of choice of game link. Since then been lurking here.

When I was 8 I stumbled upon broasides then when I was older I went back and redownloaded it

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It’s been almost exactly ten years for me! I got married in 2011, and at the insistence of my husband, I went from having never owned a cell phone in my life to having a smartphone at a time when that was still fairly unusual. (Actually, it was an early Christmas present I didn’t want. :joy:) My husband and two of my teenage stepkids and I were going from California to Texas for the holidays, and I figured I might as well check out some of those newfangled “apps” to make the drive bearable for my introverted self. I went onto Google Play and did a search for, I think, “story games.” There were exactly four CoG titles at the time and a handful of Hosted Games, and I downloaded them all immediately. At that time new releases were few and far between, so I read those four games, especially “Choice of Romance” (now called “Affairs of the Court”) and “Choice of the Vampire,” over and over again for the next few months. The stories were amazing, and although I put in a lot of time (and money) looking for similar apps, nothing else was even close.

Although I’ve been fascinated since then not only with the stories, but with the narrative structure(s) and the unique opportunities and challenges of interactive fiction, I never joined this community until a couple months ago, which I regret now, since there are some really cool people here I wish I could say I’d known for years.

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Pre-downloaded?! How tf did that happen?

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I actually don’t know how they decide those things. It was simply there when when got it.

Contextual Lead-Up! In late elementary school, my sisters and I used to collaboratively fill out online quizzes. Some of these were story-based quizzes that we thought were similar to choose-your-own adventure books (which I loved from the school library!) since the results would change the ‘chapter conclusion / quiz result’, and then you would continue to Quiz Part 2 and onwards; all individual quizzes meant to continue the story.

While their interest waned, I loved them and became an avid Quizilla fan in middle school until it shut down in 2014. (Just as I had begun designing my own version of these story-tied quizzes too! :sweat: ) I became eager to fill their void in my heart, searching the internet for similar quiz-based content - and instead fell into the world of reader-inserts. (I know they receive considerable flack from some, but it was a comforting vehicle of escapism for me at the time.)

Yet my desire for something more interactive-esque was stifled by the inherently railroaded nature for personality and assumptions of appearance of this medium. And, when I decided to dabble in these reader-insert fanfictions myself to practice and share my hidden interest in creative writing (as then, and now, I haven’t someone in my life I would feel comfortable sharing my writing with in person) I felt myself becoming concerned about not being accommodating to a broad audience.

So, I decided to try and rediscover those types of quizzes to compare the mediums. But those I did find were a lot more limited in their functions than my memory recalled, yet I had then simply chalked it up to my inability to find the ‘right’ ones from my memory rather than the case having simply been my young imagination over-inflating the realistic scope of such quizzes. :sweat_smile:

I Googled phrases similar to ‘choice quizzes’ to continue my search. Google showed Choice of Games, and their latest game then had been Sixth Grade Detective. I played the demo . . . and was heartbroken to have my world-changing experience of absolute enjoyment be cut by a paywall. I quickly scrolled through the other titles, and then played Choice of Dragon. Then Choice of Broadsides.Then I played all the free demos before hopping over to the Hosted games to play all of their free demos. Again. And again. I was in love with these games! :heart_eyes: But . . .

Post-Discovery Happenings

I had been too scared to ask my parents for money to play them in their entirety, out of guilt for wanting money from them and fear of being embarrassed for my interests, and thus remained content to replay all the free demos over and over whenever I had an inkling of free time. I dreamed of one day using my own money to buy the apps, and eagerly awaited any miraculous new releases for even more demos to play (not yet aware about these forums until years later, that discovery happened maybe ~2019 or no sooner than late ~2018).

By some point in highschool, I eventually overcame my fear of embarrassment and gathered the courage to purchase an iTunes card for myself to discreetly buy their games without judgement. (My parents and siblings did tease and question my purchases, but by then I found myself willing to endure it for the possibility to enjoy even more of these games. :sweat_smile: ) This allowed me to fall even deeper in love with them, and here I am in the present day! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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A rabbit… Hmmm! Now, there’s an idea for someone: a game based on Alice In Wonderland! (It is Public Domain, after all…) :thinking:

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