Redemption for Jessika (En, Sp, Fr, It, Ge)

[poisonedelf]

I'm more a lurker than a poster normally but I had to pop in here and say that I REALLY enjoyed this game and the effort you both put into it! Great game, 1 of my favorites! Now I have to figure out the rest of the achievements and bonus scenes that I'm missing lol

[boyo111]

For a different question...what was the idea for the micro brews? Was this to add atmosphere to the game?

I went and did a few tries with those, though they never seemed to affect anything.

[tlaero]

There are a lot of inside references in the game that only make sense to me. The microbrews are one of them. If I remember correctly, though, you can ask for one nicely and be more demanding for the other. You can get a point if you ask nicely.

This is a nice segue to the next conversation that I want to have. It's about interactivity, but I'm short on time tonight. I'll write up something tomorrow or so.

Separately, RfJ is on Playforceone now. It's currently got a remarkably high score, but it's early. It'll be interesting to see where it lands when things settle out.

Tlaero

[Rastaranx]

Hi,

I really enjoyed the game and noticed it's the same kind of game as BEW, dreaming with Elsa etc.
Can someone tell me where I can find all those kind of games?

[Skelaturi]

Hi,

I really enjoyed the game and noticed it's the same kind of game as BEW, dreaming with Elsa etc.
Can someone tell me where I can find all those kind of games?

On these forums, but for games from Tlaero you should read the entire first post in this topic.

[b14cx0ut]

Beautiful.

A beautiful story and a beautiful bush.

I sit here, trying to type words to describe all the feels.

I feel as though my soul has been hugged.

This is art.

[Marco6661]

Bonjour à Tous,

Like I wrote earlier in other threads, English is not my native language, so please, I hope people pardon me if I make some mistakes…

I come to this thread after the battle but the war is not finished. (I was during one month in the middle of nowhere, Vanuatu and New Caledonia without computer, tablet or smartphone, yes it’s possible…)

I have taken my time to read all posts and I would like to tell (repeat, also…) some words about RfJ.
I have never played a game that sticks me all the night like this one.

Miss Tlaero, Mr Mortze, you give me a tear with your story and the wonderful and realistic graphics. Hat down! (“chapeau bas” in French) for the amount of work and the great quality of this production.

For some Lagooners, Marc is weak because he doesn’t shine in the middle of this areopagus.
He’s a normal man with a normal life, he likes the local band and people around him, like some millions of others…
I can easily identify myself to this man (it’s very disturbing…).
Same physical, haircut, glasses, a little older, (not court scribe, nobody is perfect…) but mostly a shoulder where sometimes friends like to stay when they are not in a good mood (shape?), (no comment about my genital, I keep my privacy…).

I have play through the game in immersion, go across the “good path” without a lot of problems, am I a good guy?
I have catch a tear on my cheek when Jessica take again her guitar and sing for me (and mostly for herself), with Sarah hidden in the other room, hands on her face.
I need to stop here, I don’t want to say anything else with my poor words but just tell you that I am fall in love for this story. Do this again please.

Marc alias Marco6661

Ps: I leave my glasses when I am in private with a girl, need too much time for clean it after some gymnastic…

[tlaero]

Thank you, everyone for the kind comments. I'm happy that you enjoyed RfJ and that it struck a chord with you the way it did with me. As I start to think about the mechanics of the next game (which is a long ways out, don't get too excited), I'd like to hear your opinions and feedback on the topic of interactivity.

There's a tension between interactivity and storytelling. The more I let you choose, the less I can tell the story I want to tell. But, at the same time, I consider what I do to be erotic games, not visual novels, and I'd like to continue in that genre. There were long swaths of RfJ where there were no choices, and I'm a little surprised that there hasn't been more negative impressions as a result. I guess I got away with it because you were enjoying the story.

I'd like to hear thoughts and opinions on the various types of interactivity, what you like, and what makes the game more enjoyable to you. Here are the various forms of interactivity that I'm aware of in these sorts of games.

1) Dialog trees
I'm not a big fan of these. The biggest trouble is that I don't want you to have to play the game through again and again to get subtly different content. I don't enjoy doing that when I play, and don't want to subject you to it. But, that basically means that I can't put interesting content in a branch. There was a moderately important dialog branch in Life With Keeley that most people didn't see because it wasn't on the ideal path. It was pretty silly for me to do that.

2) Dialog "wheels"
This is what Bioware games do (Mass Effect, etc). You get to a point in a conversation with a character and you can choose a bunch of options, but they all circle back to the same point. That allows you to do the other options repeatedly until you choose the "I don't have any more questions" option. This works in an action RPG where some players (me) want every last ounce of storytelling and others just want to get done with the talking and go back to shooting stuff. But it's probably not appropriate for the kind of games I write.

3) Light Side vs Dark Side
Another Bioware aspect where you do the same game twice, once playing one kind of character and again playing a different type of character. People interact with you differently depending on your character type, and maybe you make interesting choices as a result (but, no matter how Renegade you are, you don't shoot Wrex, you just don't...). I've done variations on this, especially in CfK and DwE, though because I don't like making you play the game twice to see subtle differences, I tried to make there be significant content differences on the two choices. Beach vs Park. MMF vs MFF. Etc.

4) Dialog choices that don't cause (significant) branches.
This is one of the easier interactivity options to do, but it's also probably the least satisfying. The goal is that to allow you to play the character you want to play. ("I'd say something funny here" while another person would say something sweet.) But, in the end, if you just want the score necessary to get to the next sex scene, this doesn't have much impact. And, since the choices don't actually change the story, the impact is low in the best of cases.

5) Whole scene choices
Do I go to the strip club or to the bar? A lot of games do this. Kind of a dialog tree at the granularity of entire scenes. Certainly can add to the complexity of the game and adds replayability but has a huge impact on the story I can tell. I started RfJ with the idea that if you screwed up with Sylvia, you'd still find a way to meet Jessika. And if you succeeded with Sylvia and then screwed up with Sylvia and Sarah, you'd still find a way to meet Jessika. I backed off though because I realized that if I made you able to screw up and still get Jess to redemption, then it would weaken the "good" path. I could use this technique in a game where there isn't a big event the game is pushing toward, or where the character's actions aren't critical to getting to that event, but it wouldn't have worked in RfJ.

6) Multiple full paths
"Good" vs "Lewd" path or "Do I date Jane or Jennifer?" This is really just doing multiple games bundled together. Time spent on a second path is time that could be spent on another game with a new story. In RfJ I used this technique to tell more about an important character that isn't the primary one (Chloe), but generally this is just a way to make the game take longer to finish.

7) Non-linear scenes
This is something I did in Life With Keeley. In large part, you could do the various scenes in any order and still get to the end. Maybe you did the "blow job under the desk" scene before the "roleplay cheating" scene where someone else did them in the reverse order. I don't know how much of an actual impact this has on the gameplay though.

8) Scenes you can "miss"
I did a fair number of these in RfJ. If your score wasn't high enough, you could miss the striptease + blowjob scene and still complete the game successfully. Similar with the MMF scene. I'm not sure how impactful those things are, though. If you play well, you wouldn't even know that you could have missed a scene. So while these are effective as rewards for making good choices, they don't really make you feel like you have more choices to make.

9) Bad choices
Dead end choices that result in the game stopping suddenly. I don't see much benefit here. So you feel like you have more options, but you never exercise them because the game just ends. That's really just a way for me to spend time authoring pages that no one is going to see.

10) Others?
Is there something I haven't covered?



Which of these things do you like and dislike? What could I do in my games to make you feel like your choices are having an impact on what is happening? I'm interested in hearing your opinions on all of this.

Tlaero

[Guntag]

I totally agree with you about the bad choices or bad endings (game over). You are also right about the Dialog wheels, they are just a way to give players a way to skip some dialogs.

For dialog trees, it depends if they lead to real branching paths in the game or not. For scene choices, I think they are a little different, because, if there are enough of them, they can offer a new experience when replaying the game without changing the main story.

Light side vs Dark side is a specific type of Multiple Paths. I like to feel that I can control the story, that I'm not just a witness to the story.

If you want to add interactivity to your stories, you have to be willing to sacrifice time that could be spent writing an other story.

A couple of good reads about those subjects, from ExLibris blog :

http://overanalysingaif.blogspot.com/20 ... fined.html
http://overanalysingaif.blogspot.com/20 ... to-be.html

[always86]

1) Dialog trees
I'm not a big fan of these. The biggest trouble is that I don't want you to have to play the game through again and again to get subtly different content. I don't enjoy doing that when I play, and don't want to subject you to it. But, that basically means that I can't put interesting content in a branch. There was a moderately important dialog branch in Life With Keeley that most people didn't see because it wasn't on the ideal path. It was pretty silly for me to do that.

I don't mind a dialog tree, so long as it leads to a different scene. I don't see much point in subtle differences. But different or extra sex scenes are cool. That said as I commented before I'd rather these scenes feature the core characters and not a tertiary character who only appears in one scene.

2) Dialog "wheels"
This is what Bioware games do (Mass Effect, etc). You get to a point in a conversation with a character and you can choose a bunch of options, but they all circle back to the same point. That allows you to do the other options repeatedly until you choose the "I don't have any more questions" option. This works in an action RPG where some players (me) want every last ounce of storytelling and others just want to get done with the talking and go back to shooting stuff. But it's probably not appropriate for the kind of games I write.

I agree I don't see much point in using these options for erotic games. story is important, and why I love your games,but I don't think i'd find myself taking different speach options just to see a different line only to end up in the same place.

3) Light Side vs Dark Side
Another Bioware aspect where you do the same game twice, once playing one kind of character and again playing a different type of character. People interact with you differently depending on your character type, and maybe you make interesting choices as a result (but, no matter how Renegade you are, you don't shoot Wrex, you just don't...). I've done variations on this, especially in CfK and DwE, though because I don't like making you play the game twice to see subtle differences, I tried to make there be significant content differences on the two choices. Beach vs Park. MMF vs MFF. Etc.

I don't mind a light dark system, but again subtle differences don't do much for me. More interested in having a light/ dark branch. Similer to the lewd path in RfJ except focused on the core characters.

4) Dialog choices that don't cause (significant) branches.
This is one of the easier interactivity options to do, but it's also probably the least satisfying. The goal is that to allow you to play the character you want to play. ("I'd say something funny here" while another person would say something sweet.) But, in the end, if you just want the score necessary to get to the next sex scene, this doesn't have much impact. And, since the choices don't actually change the story, the impact is low in the best of cases.

I quite like this. Having the nice guy/ sarcastic guy but being able to score points on both is a nice touch and allows you to feel the MC is closer to your own personality.

5) Whole scene choices
Do I go to the strip club or to the bar? A lot of games do this. Kind of a dialog tree at the granularity of entire scenes. Certainly can add to the complexity of the game and adds replayability but has a huge impact on the story I can tell. I started RfJ with the idea that if you screwed up with Sylvia, you'd still find a way to meet Jessika. And if you succeeded with Sylvia and then screwed up with Sylvia and Sarah, you'd still find a way to meet Jessika. I backed off though because I realized that if I made you able to screw up and still get Jess to redemption, then it would weaken the "good" path. I could use this technique in a game where there isn't a big event the game is pushing toward, or where the character's actions aren't critical to getting to that event, but it wouldn't have worked in RfJ.

I don't mid the whole scene choice change but I feel it should probably lead to different sex scenes. Got to the park get a public sex scene go to the bar get a BJ etc etc.

6) Multiple full paths
"Good" vs "Lewd" path or "Do I date Jane or Jennifer?" This is really just doing multiple games bundled together. Time spent on a second path is time that could be spent on another game with a new story. In RfJ I used this technique to tell more about an important character that isn't the primary one (Chloe), but generally this is just a way to make the game take longer to finish.

I dont mind this but would rather the path led to alternate scenes with core characters.

7) Non-linear scenes
This is something I did in Life With Keeley. In large part, you could do the various scenes in any order and still get to the end. Maybe you did the "blow job under the desk" scene before the "roleplay cheating" scene where someone else did them in the reverse order. I don't know how much of an actual impact this has on the gameplay though.

Doesnt matter much to me either way.

8) Scenes you can "miss"
I did a fair number of these in RfJ. If your score wasn't high enough, you could miss the striptease + blowjob scene and still complete the game successfully. Similar with the MMF scene. I'm not sure how impactful those things are, though. If you play well, you wouldn't even know that you could have missed a scene. So while these are effective as rewards for making good choices, they don't really make you feel like you have more choices to make.

No problem with this, probably best to tie miss-able scenes in to achievements though, that way you can hunt them down later

9) Bad choices
Dead end choices that result in the game stopping suddenly. I don't see much benefit here. So you feel like you have more options, but you never exercise them because the game just ends. That's really just a way for me to spend time authoring pages that no one is going to see.

I don't mind a bad end cut out, but it doesnt make much difference to me.

10) Others?
Is there something I haven't covered?

Don' t think so.

[cypisek1233]

Tlaero and Mortze, you rocks! Awesome game, thank you

[Wolf007]

Before answering each point i would like to thank you Tlaero and Mortze for another fantastic game.
I loved the story, the art and the characters.
Special thanks for "Mark". I always like your characters (male and female), but this time I relate to him a lot so it was really enjoyable.

Thank you, everyone for the kind comments. I'm happy that you enjoyed RfJ and that it struck a chord with you the way it did with me. As I start to think about the mechanics of the next game (which is a long ways out, don't get too excited), I'd like to hear your opinions and feedback on the topic of interactivity.

There's a tension between interactivity and storytelling. The more I let you choose, the less I can tell the story I want to tell. But, at the same time, I consider what I do to be erotic games, not visual novels, and I'd like to continue in that genre. There were long swaths of RfJ where there were no choices, and I'm a little surprised that there hasn't been more negative impressions as a result. I guess I got away with it because you were enjoying the story.

I did not seen the long No-Choice parts as negative because of two resons. The first is the one you clearly stated and that is I enjoyed the story.
The second, is because the actions follow the flow. Sometimes Non-interactive parts are used to force one scene to happen in a very specific way regardless of player choices and that makes possible to feel those actions as "Out of Character". If the actions makes sence, then is good.

I'd like to hear thoughts and opinions on the various types of interactivity, what you like, and what makes the game more enjoyable to you. Here are the various forms of interactivity that I'm aware of in these sorts of games.

1) Dialog trees
I'm not a big fan of these. The biggest trouble is that I don't want you to have to play the game through again and again to get subtly different content. I don't enjoy doing that when I play, and don't want to subject you to it. But, that basically means that I can't put interesting content in a branch. There was a moderately important dialog branch in Life With Keeley that most people didn't see because it wasn't on the ideal path. It was pretty silly for me to do that.

If it only offers very subtle changes, i don't see much point is these.

2) Dialog "wheels"
This is what Bioware games do (Mass Effect, etc). You get to a point in a conversation with a character and you can choose a bunch of options, but they all circle back to the same point. That allows you to do the other options repeatedly until you choose the "I don't have any more questions" option. This works in an action RPG where some players (me) want every last ounce of storytelling and others just want to get done with the talking and go back to shooting stuff. But it's probably not appropriate for the kind of games I write.

I actually like these. I experience these in Deus Ex: Human revolution. And while it may sound a little pointless in an erotic game, I don't think yours in particular apply to that. Wheels dialogs are good for giving background information, and yours games are building a very nice universe with rich content in story and characters. In average erotic games, most people just post in the forums to ask "how do i get the threasome" or "how to get a BlowJob from X..." but in yours players are debating plot and characters for several pages.
Wheel is also good when replaying. Is like skip button, but more natural.

3) Light Side vs Dark Side
Another Bioware aspect where you do the same game twice, once playing one kind of character and again playing a different type of character. People interact with you differently depending on your character type, and maybe you make interesting choices as a result (but, no matter how Renegade you are, you don't shoot Wrex, you just don't...). I've done variations on this, especially in CfK and DwE, though because I don't like making you play the game twice to see subtle differences, I tried to make there be significant content differences on the two choices. Beach vs Park. MMF vs MFF. Etc.

I'm not a fan of this option. It sometimes give the impression of split personalities. DwE is confuses some people, and still debate witch of both will be "cannon". In Elsa case it can be justified that both are real, in one path you experience the "limits", the other leaves open some "potential". That is the way i decided to consider it, but that is just me.

4) Dialog choices that don't cause (significant) branches.
This is one of the easier interactivity options to do, but it's also probably the least satisfying. The goal is that to allow you to play the character you want to play. ("I'd say something funny here" while another person would say something sweet.) But, in the end, if you just want the score necessary to get to the next sex scene, this doesn't have much impact. And, since the choices don't actually change the story, the impact is low in the best of cases.

I really, REALLY liked this in RfJ.

5) Whole scene choices
Do I go to the strip club or to the bar? A lot of games do this. Kind of a dialog tree at the granularity of entire scenes. Certainly can add to the complexity of the game and adds replayability but has a huge impact on the story I can tell. I started RfJ with the idea that if you screwed up with Sylvia, you'd still find a way to meet Jessika. And if you succeeded with Sylvia and then screwed up with Sylvia and Sarah, you'd still find a way to meet Jessika. I backed off though because I realized that if I made you able to screw up and still get Jess to redemption, then it would weaken the "good" path. I could use this technique in a game where there isn't a big event the game is pushing toward, or where the character's actions aren't critical to getting to that event, but it wouldn't have worked in RfJ.

I depends mostly on the game. In BEW it allows the player to explore a very high number of variation. That is the kind of game it is and while also good is very different than yours.
In your games it can be good to provide some variations that don't really change the story. Now if a game only offers one variation, that means that one need to replay the whole game (o a considerable proportion) just to get a single achievment to complete and get the extra scene..... then that is BAD.

6) Multiple full paths
"Good" vs "Lewd" path or "Do I date Jane or Jennifer?" This is really just doing multiple games bundled together. Time spent on a second path is time that could be spent on another game with a new story. In RfJ I used this technique to tell more about an important character that isn't the primary one (Chloe), but generally this is just a way to make the game take longer to finish.

I think that one MAIN path, and one SIDE path like in RfJ is good. If multiple MAIN path are available it may damage the story as it usually it provides a longer game but a short story.
And like in Dark/Light in a universe of multipple conected games it will rise the question of witch one is the official one.

7) Non-linear scenes
This is something I did in Life With Keeley. In large part, you could do the various scenes in any order and still get to the end. Maybe you did the "blow job under the desk" scene before the "roleplay cheating" scene where someone else did them in the reverse order. I don't know how much of an actual impact this has on the gameplay though.

If order in some scenes provides no changes at all. Then it does not matter.

8) Scenes you can "miss"
I did a fair number of these in RfJ. If your score wasn't high enough, you could miss the striptease + blowjob scene and still complete the game successfully. Similar with the MMF scene. I'm not sure how impactful those things are, though. If you play well, you wouldn't even know that you could have missed a scene. So while these are effective as rewards for making good choices, they don't really make you feel like you have more choices to make.

I prefer to miss something than an early ending that gets me clueless. Achievments should point and give clues to those scenes so one knows that there is more to find.

9) Bad choices
Dead end choices that result in the game stopping suddenly. I don't see much benefit here. So you feel like you have more options, but you never exercise them because the game just ends. That's really just a way for me to spend time authoring pages that no one is going to see.

One usually don't like dead dead ends. But i don't mind those as long as it easy to see where a bad choice lead to that end.
If i did something wrong i like to know it soon. I don't like when one little dialog option changes a single point and the game requires perfect scores from time to time. So a little miss early and you find several pages latter that you loose. That is frustating, as it may be difficult to know where was the mistake and saves may have been overwriten. That is the reason i sometimes play these games with walkthroughts.
One thing is missing somthing, another is playing for nothing. In RfJ choices do not needed to be "perfect", i liked that.

10) Others?
Is there something I haven't covered?

10.A I think in another post there was the option of giving the player the choice to "model" a little the PC before the game even starts. Like RPG.

While some games can benefit from that, I don't think your games should as they share a single universe.
Too much liberty of action(or character) will probably provide CAOS to the general story.

10.B Sex scenes interactivity.

While i don't miss it much in your games, as i usually like how you write these scenes, sometimes is nice to have more choices. Like the blowjob in RfJ, just a little more.



Wolfwood

[boyo111]

Again thanks for the awesome game...and some day I hope to find out more about these microbrews.

1) Dialog trees

Trees belong in a forest, not a game. Some larger games with lots of paths and far more space to tell a story work with it, for the games you do I think they would hobble the way you want to tell things than help. Overall I find them repetitious sometimes when there are only one or two choices that move things along, background is ok if you need it for immersion but I think its overkill in many games, unless you REALLY need to understand some objective or background in detail, like Dragon Age.

2) Dialog "wheels"

Never liked these, mostly for the same negative aspects of trees. One or two choices move you on, but the rest are useless

3) Light Side vs Dark Side

I'm ok with this, since I see it as the Good v Lewd path...there are differences and that's nice. In a larger game like LOQO there are subtle differences, but you have to move far into it to see them. I like how you get it immediately in your games. I like it as an option, it also allows you to play with the character by selecting "bad" options along the way and see what happens...usually a game over, but its amusing to see how far you can go.

4) Dialog choices that don't cause (significant) branches.

Maybe some to move through a scene, but I wouldn't expect this to be a significant part of the game.

5) Whole scene choices
Do I go to the strip club or to the bar? A lot of games do this. Kind of a dialog tree at the granularity of entire scenes. Certainly can add to the complexity of the game and adds replayability but has a huge impact on the story I can tell. I started RfJ with the idea that if you screwed up with Sylvia, you'd still find a way to meet Jessika. And if you succeeded with Sylvia and then screwed up with Sylvia and Sarah, you'd still find a way to meet Jessika. I backed off though because I realized that if I made you able to screw up and still get Jess to redemption, then it would weaken the "good" path. I could use this technique in a game where there isn't a big event the game is pushing toward, or where the character's actions aren't critical to getting to that event, but it wouldn't have worked in RfJ.

I actually liked this in RfJ but I never hit all the skip paths, its nice when you have more character paths to tread but when you have only one main character you are trying to interact with it should impact the story in some way. Like Sarah not being as nice to you if you are a jerk during the Sylvia + Sarah scene, I thought that was imaginative, and you get an in that way. If done well, as it was here, it works.

6) Multiple full paths

I see this within Brad's Erotic Week, does he go to the bar and meet Emily, or the Strip Club and meet Natalie. Or do you set it so some earlier event might send a character to one place or another? In that way it works, since it gives a different setting to influence the main character. Otherwise, its as you say, multiple games put together, it all depends on who you meet.

7) Non-linear scenes

8) Scenes you can "miss"

I don't mind non-linear but sometimes that takes a toll on storytelling, since you don't know in what way to tie them together. Things you can miss I feel should be more towards the end, or they are scenes you won't get to because your score is not high enough. Otherwise they come across as filler. and you don't want to put your talents in that rather than actual story, do you?

9) Bad choices

This to me is I screwed up playing, I didn't listen to the characters or do what they needed. Although there doesn't need to be something for that, maybe something that tells you that X happened because you missed Y, a hint to do better (if possible) or just say I messed up, try again.

I like the options we have, and the selections work well.

I hope that helps.

[persnik]

Just finished and I must say a great game, thank you!

[bing6541]

1) Dialog trees
I'm not a big fan of these. The biggest trouble is that I don't want you to have to play the game through again and again to get subtly different content. I don't enjoy doing that when I play, and don't want to subject you to it. But, that basically means that I can't put interesting content in a branch. There was a moderately important dialog branch in Life With Keeley that most people didn't see because it wasn't on the ideal path. It was pretty silly for me to do that.

I guess it depends what form, if any, of replayability the game's author/creator wants. Some games, like yours, can be enjoyed and replayed click for click without the need to send the player into subtle variant paths. BTW, where is the branch in LwK? I'd be interested in checking it out. But didn't you also have this in GtkC, with respect to the secret ending?

2) Dialog "wheels"
This is what Bioware games do (Mass Effect, etc). You get to a point in a conversation with a character and you can choose a bunch of options, but they all circle back to the same point. That allows you to do the other options repeatedly until you choose the "I don't have any more questions" option. This works in an action RPG where some players (me) want every last ounce of storytelling and others just want to get done with the talking and go back to shooting stuff. But it's probably not appropriate for the kind of games I write.

I can't imagine where this would come into play in any of your games to date.

3) Light Side vs Dark Side
Another Bioware aspect where you do the same game twice, once playing one kind of character and again playing a different type of character. People interact with you differently depending on your character type, and maybe you make interesting choices as a result (but, no matter how Renegade you are, you don't shoot Wrex, you just don't...). I've done variations on this, especially in CfK and DwE, though because I don't like making you play the game twice to see subtle differences, I tried to make there be significant content differences on the two choices. Beach vs Park. MMF vs MFF. Etc.

I think this worked better in DwE than in CfK. But it was effective in both. Leads to replayability, and the player can fantasize one way or another.

4) Dialog choices that don't cause (significant) branches.
This is one of the easier interactivity options to do, but it's also probably the least satisfying. The goal is that to allow you to play the character you want to play. ("I'd say something funny here" while another person would say something sweet.) But, in the end, if you just want the score necessary to get to the next sex scene, this doesn't have much impact. And, since the choices don't actually change the story, the impact is low in the best of cases.

This may have been at work in RfJ. I found it pretty easy to be well-rounded, without even trying, simply by mixing up the types of responses.

5) Whole scene choices
Do I go to the strip club or to the bar? A lot of games do this. Kind of a dialog tree at the granularity of entire scenes. Certainly can add to the complexity of the game and adds replayability but has a huge impact on the story I can tell. I started RfJ with the idea that if you screwed up with Sylvia, you'd still find a way to meet Jessika. And if you succeeded with Sylvia and then screwed up with Sylvia and Sarah, you'd still find a way to meet Jessika. I backed off though because I realized that if I made you able to screw up and still get Jess to redemption, then it would weaken the "good" path. I could use this technique in a game where there isn't a big event the game is pushing toward, or where the character's actions aren't critical to getting to that event, but it wouldn't have worked in RfJ.

6) Multiple full paths
"Good" vs "Lewd" path or "Do I date Jane or Jennifer?" This is really just doing multiple games bundled together. Time spent on a second path is time that could be spent on another game with a new story. In RfJ I used this technique to tell more about an important character that isn't the primary one (Chloe), but generally this is just a way to make the game take longer to finish.

I don't see either of these working in the kind of games you write. And when this mechanism does appear in other games, it's as you mention a choice of which game you want to play--do you go after the blond or the redhead, the stripper or the co-worker? I know a fair amount of this is happening on multiple levels with BEW, and I'm not sure I want to invest that much in keeping track of every little choice. When it is finished, it will be a true tour de force, but the game player is going to have to make a commitment and still be interested in turning over every single rock.

7) Non-linear scenes
This is something I did in Life With Keeley. In large part, you could do the various scenes in any order and still get to the end. Maybe you did the "blow job under the desk" scene before the "roleplay cheating" scene where someone else did them in the reverse order. I don't know how much of an actual impact this has on the gameplay though.

This was effective in LwK. The player didn't have to worry about screwing up an order of events, or making a choice that got off a path. And the story didn't suffer since all the alternatives were different ways of having Keeley spice things up.

8) Scenes you can "miss"
I did a fair number of these in RfJ. If your score wasn't high enough, you could miss the striptease + blowjob scene and still complete the game successfully. Similar with the MMF scene. I'm not sure how impactful those things are, though. If you play well, you wouldn't even know that you could have missed a scene. So while these are effective as rewards for making good choices, they don't really make you feel like you have more choices to make.

9) Bad choices
Dead end choices that result in the game stopping suddenly. I don't see much benefit here. So you feel like you have more options, but you never exercise them because the game just ends. That's really just a way for me to spend time authoring pages that no one is going to see.

I think you can blend these two. The player makes choices that don't necessarily end the game, but limit what happens in the game. Chaotic does a fair amount of both of these, and the player gets an ending--but perhaps not an ideal ending. It is a little fun to try and figure out what choice would yield different results.

10) Others?
Is there something I haven't covered?

While you are creating individual games, you are also creating a universe. I'm most looking forward to how all of that comes together. Maybe there's a possibility for how one ending to one game alters the universe. Sort of like what occurs in Something in the Air. Not completely, since that's one game, but sort of. If someone played the lewd path, how does that ending affect the next game in this universe? I don't know. That could get overly complicated. People look forward to your games and your characters and Mortze's artwork. Your filling a niche that no one else is. Thanks for that.