Thanks for taking the time to explain. We read these games very differently, and enjoy/dislike somewhat different things in them, but it’s both interesting and helpful to hear your perspective unpacked so clearly.
My good man in a souls like you get checkpoints and saves. And from failure you learn new stuff to help you reach your goal. What am I learning from a wrong choice in CoG games. Most of your interesting outcomes from failure are just disappointing. There are communities of modders out there that spawned from the lack of save system. If you care so much about living with the consequences of a choice then just don’t use the back button or the save system. Having it there at least gives people who don’t want to use it the choice to not while taking it away takes away the choice from us who do want to use it. And what about authors who do want a save system or checkpoints??
11 Likes
My current lack of understanding is absolutely not your fault, just to make that clear! I really appreciate the thread being there as a teaching guide 
1 Like
I understand - I didn’t take it as you thinking it was my fault and no worries at all! 
1 Like
Can we finally get a save system next lol?
8 Likes
Yes! More text formatting options in general, particularly basic stuff like differing headings styles and perhaps colours and fonts.
One thing I always wish there is is an alternative font to distinguish when you’re reading a document within the story, like written letters, emails or text messages. I’m not a fan of just italicising it all.
6 Likes
You can do a lot with images, though the more images you add, the more you need to convert to plain text for accessibility’s sake.
3 Likes
For sure, but actual text will scale/auto-resize/adjust better between devices. An image that looks good on my laptop doesn’t necessarily look good on my phone. Plus, it’s literally the simplest html stuff I want really and I don’t feel like we should have to use images when all I want is text (especially for accessibility reasons too).
5 Likes
My dear fellow,
It would certainly be an even more joyless slog without them. 
As for “learning things,” I feel like I learned plenty about characters and settings in good CoGs like Heroes of Myth, Choice of the Cat, Choice of Robots, Tally Ho, etc. down “fail-stat” paths. I personally find that a lot more appealing than learning a new tactical variation on “stab it up the arse” or the arbitrary moveset of a pack of pixels. (I’m sure there’s rich world lore to discover in Souls too, but I’ve never come within a mile of it without wanting to throw myself into those bonfires.)
They’re welcome to mod the game for any experience they like. That doesn’t mean the company should start chasing their preferred experience.
I wouldn’t. But having that kind of “safety net” on the choices would undercut the experience I’m trying to create in my game, as much as if I let players have the option to pick infinite resources, no weaknesses, no trade-offs, and all the other stuff that the “community of modders” is free to add. I get that some people will find my intended experience roughly as unsatisfying as I find Souls. That’s fine. I can’t satisfy everyone.
1 Like
In your games what about other authors who are not going for that experience though? If an author doesnt want to include a save systems that’s fine, it’s their bed to sleep in but having that for an entire system, really?
15 Likes
Too wordy again... big surprise!
I do the same thing. And have saves for each MC, if I’m playing different routes on an otome. If there’s a save system, I’m far more likely to try out different routes, too, ones I would probably not have tried without a save system. I think knowing that it’s there makes me more patient with games. I mean, unless it’s Fallout: New Vegas, where the saves were corrupted constantly when the game first came out. Loading screen crash pissed me off. Or AC games, where I’d reload a game and Ezio would be stuck inside a rock.
As someone who gets annoyed with games rather easily, I never got frustrated in Crème de la Crème. I even played without perusing the code first, and still never got to a point where I felt I had to go look. You’re really good at keeping things straightforward. Only complaint I had was that I needed more Blaise. 
It’s not even the failing, in general, that ends up irking me. It’s the fact that I take a lot of time to try to develop a character for a game (once I’ve played the demo with my test MC and have decided to continue, anyway), and I have a certain personality in mind, certain skills, etc. A couple of wrong choices–without knowing how they affect the stats–and I end up with a character who is nothing like what I had in mind.
Yes, some of the failures can get irritating, but ffs, I play Breach, where my MC got themselves killed more than once and had to reload, but I never got annoyed at the game about it because I could reload. Plus, it was easy enough to build the character I wanted there. So even if she croaked and I had to reload, as long as her choices shaped her into the character she was in my mind, I could live with it and figure out how not to turn her into wormfood.
To read the damned code before you start the game? Or have it open so you know what choices will lead to?
Or maybe how to click “next” at the speed of light…
There are games, however, that reward failure. Wayhaven is one of those–the more you fail, the better scenes you get with the LI, so if all you care about is those scenes, just fuck up as much as humanly possible. Letting your LI almost die really rewards you! I can’t say I’ve played other games that do this, though. Most times, failure gets characters killed and makes the MC’s life miserable (which is why I resorted to waiting for a guide to get through the last battle in ItFO–I got tired of losing so many men in my armies, which I’m sure would set the MC up for a huge loss and getting rofflestomped in b2).
5 Likes
I mean all problems would be solved if COG enabled some function in choicescript itself to add after chapter end checkpoints, so the choice of adding saves is on author, but they are too lazy/ can’t be bothered to do so. And their arguement makes no sense considering all WIPs use save slots which make it far easier to do a playthrough. Why do demos get save slots but the full game don’t will never make sense no matter how many times COG justifies it.
1 Like
Normally i don’t post anything here, since my englisch might not be so great, but…
Glad that we can finally delete our saves. Also for having a save system : Yes, please.
While i get the ‘‘Choices are more meaningfull without them.’’ thing, i thought the same in detroit :become human. It was more fun to not load a save and just live with the choices. But in interaktive fiction and Vn’s i personally need to save.
1 I will restart the game if i picked a choice i didn’t like, no matter if i am already at the end of the game. Which happens too often. For example : sometimes i thought a choice is meant to be sarcastic, but ends up being mean.
2 Failing a stat check, i will restart then too, it gets frustrating real quick.
3 I like replaying my favourite parts in the games, but don’t want to click brainlessy through who knows
how many pages to get to it.
4 Sometimes i misclick.
Thats why i prefer playing on dashingdon or Itchio, cause i can save. The exitment over published games is kinda…meh? I’m happy to play them, but i will always have to restart the game for some reason or another and it’s kinda, well, frustrating.
10 Likes
See, this is what I don’t get. Simply let each reader play at their own will, or let the author decide what kind of saving system they want (if any) to better experience their game. Why can’t a choice be meaningful even if there is a back button? To me, personally, the joy I take from playing a game is in experiencing the choices to the best gameplay I want, so it still is meaningful - even if I go back on it.
What is honestly frustrating is the lack of regard for the very constant and vocal plea for saves. It is, frankly, also a bit inconsiderate to tell people that an interactive fiction is best experienced without saves while disregarding the needs and difficulties of some readers.
But aside from the reason, a save system would be greately appreciated, and yet, seeing as it took years to even let us delete save files - the very bare minimum at this point - I don’t think I will ever see those implemented.
(Sorry OP for going off course, my grievances don’t lie with you at all. I actually liked the options you offered)
16 Likes
Frankly? It’s impossible to cater to every gamer at all times. It’s also important to understand that often the “very constant and vocal plea” is from a very vocal minority of people. It’s okay to listen to those people and even work with them, but it’s the vast, vast minority who complain about these things.
That being said, I DID listen to the folks asking for rollbacks when I updated Parliament of Knives with its dlc. I coded and updated it with a chapter rollback from scratch. You know how many people thanked me for that, either in a review or in a message? Or even commented on it at all? About 5 in the last year since its implementation that I’ve seen. The silence was deafening.
On a personal note, I highly, highly dislike back buttons. Not as an author, but as a reader. I find myself utterly paralyzed by choice, second guessing everything I do constantly, wasting my time going back and reading every single state before moving on. It’s awful, imo. But everyone’s experience is different.
I think if you’re going to have multiple saves, the best implementation would be like the old Tin Man Games gamebook apps where you have a limited number of ‘bookmarks’ where you could save and recall. That way, OCD folks like me won’t be save scumming for hours and tearing their hair out, people who want multiple saves get them, and the limited nature of them still allows the narrative to feel weighty.
10 Likes
It may interest you to know that the reason I, an otherwise fierce opponent of rollback, would like to see chapter saves become, if not a standard feature, at least an easily implemented one, is because I saw firsthand how useful they could be when I accidentally hit the wrong thing during a playthrough of Parliament of Knives. I was torn between just forcing myself to roll with it or restarting and clicking back through several chapters, and then I remembered the chapter save system. It took me probably less than five minutes to get back on track. I don’t remember if I’m one of the five-ish people who thanked you, but if not, please count me down as the sixth-ish.
4 Likes
You’re on the list 
Glad it was helpful to you! I actually really like it myself, and it seemed like a pretty good compromise, system-wise, at the time. I will probably implement similar systems in future games after I’m done with Werewolves 3.
7 Likes
I first encountered a checkpoint system with @AllenGies ’ Tin Star game and have been thankful for it since, in other games and having the ability to incorporate it in my games,
I understand the choice paralysis issue, but for me, it manifests the complete opposite than @GreekWinter 's.
For me, not having a save, or a back button, is debilitating, and it freezes me to the point that I will not continue on with a game until I find out the consequences by other means. (guide, code reading, etc).
19 Likes
I’ve suggested CoG open up a save system option for HG authors, and if that doesn’t have negative effects I’d be happy to see it opened to CoG authors too. On this one, you’re not arguing with me.
2 Likes
This, if you think a save system or a back button ruins the experience because of this, this and that, thats fine, completely valid. Why the heck would you not give the player the choice on wheter to use it or not?
The addition of a save system isnt going to hurt people who wont use it, the worst thing its going to happen to them is misclicking the back button, that on itself is fine, because it only forces you to choose one option again, while right now a misclick in most games means possibly replaying the whole thing.
17 Likes