I’m very proud to present my world Chiaroscuro to you. From the intro text:
[i]“Welcome to Chiaroscuro, where black and white have more shades than grey.
Explore a world of light and shadow and choose your destiny.”
[/i]The first chapter is playable and open for public play-testing.
It’s the prelude of a greater story, but it features a hopefully satisfying GAME-END-(for now-)Storylet.
Please note: I’m no native speaker and writing prose in a foreign language is quite a challenge.
If you stumble over typos, irritating use of language or other text bugs: I’d be very grateful if you’d send me a message![i]
:)
I’ve gotten through the introductory bit, and it seems interesting. The idea (shadows versus light, I believe) seems somewhat cliched, but I’ll hold back on forming a solid opinion until I’ve gotten a bit farther and understand the world more.
The introduction took longer than I expected, and I was starting to wonder if I’d ever get the main story with the two decks.
I really appreciate it. And yes, the intro bit takes quite a while … the whole first chapter is, in a sense, the introduction.
But do not worry - you will have access to a sometimes deck every now and then.
Hmm, to let you know I wanna turn on monetization I am supposed to post into my own play-testing thread, right?
So let’s see …
[color=009999]I must
provide a valid active support email address for my players; [color=00FFFF]- check![/color]
provide a valid active PayPal email address to receive payments; -[color=33FFFF] check![/color]
warrant to FBG that my world is monetisation-friendly. This means it can’t be fan fiction. Even fic-friendly rights owners generally draw the line at someone making money from their work. [color=00FFFF]- check![/color][/color]
All right, I would love to monetize my world !
There isn’t much that should be nex-locked just now, from the design point of view, but tipping would be nice =)
I’m somewhere in the middle of Chiaroscuro and it’s beautiful. I do find the intro a little too scripted, specifically:
I have to accept the Quest? But what if I didn’t want to? Could you let a player choose not to do so, give them some quality (“independence” or “unhelpful”) and yet still feed them somehow into the quest actions to progress the storyline from a different point of view?
Also, excellent phrasing on the early cards hints (the red italics)-- what will happen, how it might help, and so on. Well done!
p.s. I got a bit stuck as the Opportunities > Wougar! card was in my hand but I couldn’t use it (I had already earned one Haunch of Wougar, but the card requires me to have no haunches to play it.) So it’s just sitting there in the way of a full redeal/refresh.
You could edit the card to make it Minimum 0 or have it vanish (maybe) if you earn too many Haunches? Or set the branches to change based on number of Haunches, and not have the number of Haunches be the card’s own requirement. I can still move on with the pinned “Wougar?” card but that has only one option so it’s a bit of a grind.
You might mean “sprint” instead of “spurt” in the success message on the Wougar! cards. I think it’s “Eerie” not “Eery” in the Long Cave.
The target number of berries and haunches is high for the number of actions or choices we have to take to get there–a bit slow or grindy without enough variation to make it interesting. Adding other rare or not-too-rare results on these branches, or more branches with different text (even if the harvest of berries or wougar is similar) might add something to the imagination. But I’m deeply amused at what happens to those berries and haunches!
First off: Wow, thank you so much! :D
And yes, you’re probably right about the unrealistic inevitability of the Quest. I’ll think about it … and very probably change it as soon as I finish the next chapter (which will still take a while since I’m working on other projects right now).
[quote=Kir Talmage]p.s. I got a bit stuck as the Opportunities > Wougar! card was in my hand but I couldn’t use it (I had already earned one Haunch of Wougar, but the card requires me to have no haunches to play it.) So it’s just sitting there in the way of a full redeal/refresh.
You could edit the card to make it Minimum 0 or have it vanish (maybe) if you earn too many Haunches? Or set the branches to change based on number of Haunches, and not have the number of Haunches be the card’s own requirement. I can still move on with the pinned “Wougar?” card but that has only one option so it’s a bit of a grind.
…
The target number of berries and haunches is high for the number of actions or choices we have to take to get there–a bit slow or grindy without enough variation to make it interesting. Adding other rare or not-too-rare results on these branches, or more branches with different text (even if the harvest of berries or wougar is similar) might add something to the imagination. [/quote]
Oh my, that’s a shame! I playtested that part an awful lot, but it seems I changed the “Wougar!” card during testing and simply forgot to re-adjust the settings. Players were meant to be able to use it to get wougar haunches, regardless of the number of haunches they have. Oh well. I already changed this and also tweaked the whole wougar business a bit, adding an additional branch and more results. Though I’ll probably tweak it some more since I’m not really happy with the opportunitiy cards right now.
Ah, it’s always good to have enthusiastic proofreaders. Thanks!
Hope you enjoy playing my game and stay tuned for the next chapter!