Of course! I feel silly for not mentioning Choice of Robots - it was a hugely popular and influential work and was a pioneering example of the in-depth “arm-and-fingers” game structure that’s become a cornerstone of many, many ChoiceScript games since.
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It can never get enough promotion 
.
And now that I think of it, how many other games at the time of Tin Star’s release (aside from ZE/ZESH) allowed PC to kill ROs (or remove completely from the story, in Maria’s case, but she can be killed/set up to die in later encounters) starting in the first encounter (not Yiska and JT, but they both definitely lack plot immunity), and/or just skip story events (granted there are consequences for doing so, but still…)? It’s still very rare to see this.
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Absolutely agreed on Slammed. Not just genre-wise, but dynamic-wise – with the exception of Heroes Rise, there wasn’t too much character focus in CoGs before it, and characters were often defined in broad strokes. Slammed went incredibly hard in establishing its characters and character dynamics, in a way that I feel has honestly altered the way writers would continue making for games afterwards.
I’d also say Choice of the Deathless has been influential due to the fact that it’s a CoG that showed that you can “get weird with it” and still make a highly successful game. It was the first CoG with a truly bizarre setting, and it pushed the boundaries of the types of stories you could write in CS.
That said, if I had to pick one that honestly is the most influential? Heroes Rise. I know it gets flak on the forum, but hear me out.
It’s one of the first commercial releases on CoG. It’s one of the first times the company worked with an external author on main-label content. It is, by far, one of if not the most financially successful games that CoG has made. All of these things have shaped the current culture of CoG, in ways that I can’t menaingfully elaborate on without going into more detail than there honestly shpuld be in a random forum post. You don’t gotta like the game, but it is, objectively, one of the most influential pieces of writing in Choice of Games’s entire catalog.
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I saw this done once, in Chronicon Apocalyptica, and I thought it was really sweet and thoughtful. Not only were the gender roles pretty rigid, it’s a setting that strives for historical accuracy as well, and the author still found a way to reasonably incorporate nonbinary pcs. The code goes something like:
Does Abbot Ceonwulf address you as a man, like many of the monks, as a woman, like many of the nuns and laity training to be a scribe in the Abbey's school, or, like everyone else here, does he only care about your work and personal conduct, ignoring gender designations?
*fake_choice
#He addresses me as a woman.
The Abbot bows in recognition of your service.
*set gender "woman"
*set pro "she"
*set obj "her"
*set poss "her"
#I am a man.
The Abbot extends his hand to yours in recognition of your service.
*set gender "man"
*set pro "he"
*set obj "him"
*set poss "his"
#I don't identify in a gender binary. All scribes work side by side anyway.
The Abbot bows in recognition of your service.
*set gender "person"
*set pro "they"
*set obj "them"
*set poss "their"
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I truly appreciated that, too! Even though I didn’t play as a nonbinary person myself, I’m always happy to see as much inclusion as possible. I do love it when anyone can be seen and welcome.
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I certainly recall the earliest days when our mutual friend Elizabeth introduced me to @ladybird because she was making a jump into games with this new story-driven company named Choice of Games, and then also meeting some of that crew at some of the earlier Boston Festval of Indie Games years. It’s been a journey!
Games that were influential. Hmm. Knowing a few of the authors and the people involved never gave me much of an objective impression, but I’ll give this a go. I definitely think credit is due to the earliest multipart games: the Heroes Rise trilogy, Samurai of Hyuga, Wayhaven, The Great Tournament, Choice of the Vampire, Lost Heir, and Zombie Exodus spring immediately to mind. RPG fans in particular love taking their characters on new adventures.
Their complexity across multiple entries showed what was possible and raised the bar for other writers and themselves as well. Zombie Exodus walked so Zombie Exodus Safe Haven could run…or shamble more quickly I suppose.
In a way what we’re seeing is an extended example of what happens in console generations. There’s a reason why if you look at lists of best games on a given system, many of them turn out to be from very late in the console’s cycle. When developers no longer have to figure out how to use the hardware but rather maximize out its potential, it opens up the door to ambition and excellence. The general uptick in the quality of ChoiceScript games is because there’s so much institutional knowledge for any developer to capitalize on whether it’s their first game or their fourth.
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A few thoughts after reading more (interesting and enlightening) replies: Reading about Tin Star, it struck me that it being so huge when it comes to words an general content, may have been a big influence on other COGs and HGs, because from what I understand, there were few, if any, COGs and HGs around at that time that were long or “big”. I’m sure there are other forum members here who know more, but I’m wondering if Tin Star was the first COG or HG with a 500+ word count? If so, then I could see certainly see a case being made for it influencing other COGs and HGs to “go big” when it comes to word count and having a large word count eventually almost becoming a requirement if you want your COG or HG to become popular.
Speaking about Tin Star, I noticed that a comment said that Slammed was the first COG/HG where you could “kill off” the main NPCs, including ROs. But from what I understand, you can do that in Tin Star as well. I’m not clear on whether Slammed or Tin Star was released first, but if other forum members could chime in and clear up whether Slammed or Tin Star was released first, this would help me( and other forum members who read this thread and are also a bit hazy about the excact chronological order of releases) figure out which COG/HG that was the first to do this.
I’m also wondering about the origin of public and open WIPs that are linked in the forum. Did this only come about because of an initiative by the company or was this partly or wholly because of an idea by a COG or HG writer? If it’s the latter, then I think that the WIP and COG/HG which started that trend should certainly count as massively influential. Maybe even if it was all because of an initiative by the company, for the first WIP that created a lot of interest, since this certainly must have helped put WIPs on the map, so to speak, and there’s no denying that so many writers using WIPs to get feedback on their HGs and, sometimes, COGs, has probably made a big difference in the content that gets released.
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SLAMMED! 2013 Jun 28
Tin Star 2014 Feb 21
Thank you, that certainly means that Slammed was first, like the original comment said.
Tin Star was the biggest by a long way for a long time, though Magikiras went past 1 million words in 2016. In 2017 a series of very long CoGs came out which I think represented the start of a shift/wordcount inflation: Choice of the Cat, Tally Ho, and Choice of Rebels. Since then, games of 500K+ words have become more and more common over the years. Interestingly a lot of the very long games (though not all by any means) are sequels, which makes sense as authors will have exponential amounts of branching to keep track of and refer to as the series continue.
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Tin Star held the record for the highest word count of any CS game for nine years. And then it was matched or exceeded twice in two months.
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fwiw, I did give Allen fair warning I was closing in on him for years beforehand.
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If you count all three parts of zombie exodus as one game, then, after the release of part three last year, I think that was the first game to break the tin star record
speaking as someone who, quite literally, grew up reading choice of games (I read choice of vampire before ever learning proper english). I think the early trinity of choice of romance, heroes rise and choice of vampire set the foundation for the genre. then, there were some breakthroughs such as tin star, choice of robots and zombie exodus. as of late, i’d say the impact of fallen hero and wayhaven are undeniable when you check out the latest releases and WIPs.
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Choice of robots-It was the first time I ever saw so much branching done. There were chunks of the game that I never saw because I took another path.
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I think this was widespread in a lot of similar writing forums at the time. It was part of forum culture from the outset. Jim Dattilo, Andy Why, Allen Gies, Paul Wang, Sam Young, Lucid, J. Leigh, jeantown and Eric Moser were all if I recall correctly early examples of authors who posted their WiPs for forum feedback and helped establish the CoG/HG version of WiP culture.
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Speaking of @jeantown I think Guinevere deserves a mention. Despite not being finished I feel like it influenced a whole generation of games here.
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Wayhaven series: After the first game came out, practically every COGs or HGs need at least some degree of romance in it
Infinite Sea: They have a separate tag for this series, end of story
Choice of Dragon: No need for explanation
The Great Tournament: This game alone achieved immortal status among the community, the first game for many ( me included )
Fallen Hero series: Often named among the best games on this platform, I think it created a new standard for quality ROs
Breach The Archangel Job: It carries the whole criminal genre of this platform, the shadow it casted is just too big, too overwhelming
Notable mention: Tin Star, Evertree Saga, Choice of Robots, Zombie Exodus, Samurai of Hyuga ( I put these games here for avoiding personal bias )
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I actually think that the Infinity Saga, while very popular (and I personally enjoy it a lot) is not especially influential relative to its huge success.
Most of the things that seem particularly distinct about those games have not really proliferated to other series. Gender locks certainly haven’t, and remain very controversial even for Hosted Games.
You also haven’t seen a ton of war stories, stories where you get hard failure death endings a lot, or stories with more heavily “wargamey” design where you have to manage your own army in addition to your personal stats. Choice of Rebels is the main exception there to these, and I could definitely see Infinity being really influential on it.
The main area I do see potential influence is the expansion of world building and codexes, which Infinity was an early adopter of, and has proliferated to other games with complicated worlds, although I’m not sure it was the first Choicescript game to do it.
I think the lack of influence compared to its success (compared to the HG series clearly influenced by Wayhaven, for example) partly reflects that what the Infinity series does is really complicated and ambitous on a design level, while a majority of complicated games are more complicated at a narrative level, with lots of plot branching but not a lot of complicated gamey stuff like deciding which of a bunch of ways to train your troops is better, and then succeeding or failing 4 chapters down the line because of it. There is definitely an audience for that, but I think it’s a slightly different one than most of the authors and readers here, and that’s reflected in things like the traditional lack of save systems (which is due to an assumption that these aren’t games you will die and have to reload a lot). To me the fact that Infinity has a seperate forum reinforces that.
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This is a really really weird question to ask, especially for me but:
Is it?
I mean, I know I’ve got a pretty committed fanbase who generate quite a lot of discourse and content, but I feel as if the Dragoon Saga is fairly niche compared to even a lot of more popular Hosted Games. While I don’t have exact figures, I do know that Mecha Ace has probably outsold the entire series as a whole (for the record: I don’t regret giving up royalties for that - the lump sum paid off my student loans), and I’m almost certain that while Lords of Infinity has done pretty well, it probably won’t match Fallen Hero: Retribution’s numbers, and will certainly get outsold by Wayhaven’s third book when it comes out in a week.
Which again, begs the question: how big of a success is the Dragoon Saga?
I know it reviews well, and I know it’s generally considered positively. I’ve gotten other paying work on the strength of its writing, but that still makes me think it’s a moderate success at best, especially outside the closed circle of this community. I’m not saying it’s been a failure (I wouldn’t keep writing it if it was), but given that I literally have to make rent and put food on the table on the strength of its sales (we’re currently a one-income household for a variety of reasons), that question really is one I’d like a a few subsequent opinions on.
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