I was just curious what people's feelings were on all these 'Title: Part 1' and 'Part 2' and 'Part 3' games that are always popping up here. We sure seem to get a lot of them, and it's not always clear from the description whether they're sequels, remakes, or just another section of a game the author is writing as they go that shouldn't have been broken into pieces in the first place. (especially when it comes to some of these really short CYOAs, I really get the sense they got impatient and just wanted to shove what they had out the door for feedback without waiting to finish the rest.)

I admit that, based on earlier experiences here, I usually just assume the latter and don't bother playing unless there's some really compelling evidence the author knows what they're doing, as in the case of the Victorian Detective games. Otherwise I basically just treat most of them like all the 'demos' that we also get too many of here.

Am I being unfair? Are there some gems I'm missing out on this way?

They do tend to be of the '...to be continued' variety. They also mark themselves out as CYOA which I have limited interest in anyway.

Even if they do turn out to be sequels, why not make something new? For each to their own I guess.

Silver wrote:They do tend to be of the '...to be continued' variety. They also mark themselves out as CYOA which I have limited interest in anyway.

Pretty much what I figured, then. And yeah, I have noticed it's always the CYOAs that do this. I guess it really is just a case of 'started writing a story, got bored, tacked 'Part 1' on there and will continue later, maybe'. And yeah I'm in the same boat on the 'limited interest' thing...it's funny because I love CYOAs, it's only on this site that I've learned to avoid them like the plague.

Silver wrote:Even if they do turn out to be sequels, why not make something new? For each to their own I guess.

Now to be fair, sequels aren't anything I have a problem with on general principle, as long as they have a reason to exist beyond just as an excuse to be lazy and half-ass your 'part 1'. (or make more money, in Hollywood's case...)

I write sci-fi and fantasy pretty much exclusively, and I tend to go heavy on the world-building so there's always this voice in the back of my head going, 'you know, if I could just get my act together and stop procrastinating this setting could easily support another half dozen stories to fully explore it...' So yeah, I definitely do understand the inherent appeal of Title: The Sequel: Sequel Harder: The Final Sequeling.

I fully expect that I'll find my game to be *AMAZING* get a lukewarm response and then move sheepishly on to something else. If I get applause though? Maybe I will make In Space: Oh NO, Trapped Again!!!!1!

For me, I view game series, text or otherwise, like book or movie series: each one should stand on its own, yet form a larger, interconnected narrative if taken together. If it doesn't stand on its own, it's really just a poorly made and/or incomplete thing trying to be passed off as part of something bigger. On the other hand, if there's nothing to connect it to other "chapters", it isn't a series at all, and you should just drop the pretense and make something new.

Here, unfortunately, Marzipan is right: mostly "part 1" means "half-assed thing I spent less than an hour making, probably won't continue, and isn't worth playing anyway".

There's nothing wrong, if people would actually inform you of what these multiple games are:

small parts of a single game (for many good~noble reasons this method is a good method to use, as breaking up a game into manageable chunks~parts sub-games, esepcially if you're an amatuer game maker is a good idea ~ it helps with 'burnout~lost interest' too as you got a tangible playable game ~ motivation to continue on finishing the rest of your game as the next segment part game and the next until you completed your full game, but you got to let people know this, lol)

OR

an actual series of a grand game saga: sequals (and +, I have no idea what you call something after '2:sequal', lol. Terqual? Quadrual? I jsut use 'series' for 3 or more, lol), prequels, and etc.

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I don't mean 'trilogy' for the number of books (3) in the series, I mean, what do you actually call the 3rd (and +) books ??

As someone who's only two games are apart of a duology, I think I can weigh in here. I made my first game in a day. That doesn't sound like it took very long, but I mean a full 14-hour day. It took me a long time (or so I thought). I finally finished it and was very very proud of it. I posted it here and created a thread for feedback.

I got 10+ responses on how I could make the game better. I took all of these and put them into my "Part 2" so that I could make the game even better than the first one. The reason for making Part 2 wasn't that I was too lazy to wait until the whole game was completed to release it. I wanted to continue my story arc, but improve on it so that people could enjoy it even more. Also, people get bored easily and move on quickly if a story drags out for too long. To avoid this, I released Part 1 and then later on Part 2.

I've played both games now and they're good, but if you've ever gone archive-diving on this site I'm sure you can understand where we're coming from.

Yours definitely aren't the kind I was complaining about, but all the same, I think they would have worked just as well as two standalone games rather than a part 1 and part 2. One story is about surviving a plane crash and the other is about castaways being attacked by a lunatic. Tonally they're very different, and while it's easy to say one event led to another there's nothing specifically tying the two stories together; the PC is nameless, the other characters are nameless, whether or not you rescued anyone in the first game doesn't matter, and so on.

Haha! I wish is seen this previous to my post advertising my game (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5087)! I would certainly have publicized it differently! Anyway, I agree with what you all have said, about parts and completion. To be honest, I intended my first game to involve 1. Breaking into the compound, 2.Getting your revenge, and 3. Uncovering the truth about who Xanadu is in one complete game. I started it, as well as other side projects, and realized how large the undertaking was/is. For me, someone who has zero clue about coding but has a story to tell (and choosing to tell it in this format) is much more intensive than I imagined. So, my one idea quickly got divided into three parts once I realized this. On the plus side, I think it actually is making the entire story WAY better because I'm devoting more time and more puzzles into each section. I can't wait to unveil 'Blerk' in part two (which I definitely didn't have in the original idea). All in all, I think each case should stand alone, but I definitely know now not to indicate the first in a series is a "part"!

Wouldn't it be a great idea to be able to include a character count before sampling a game? Post it right there next to the title. This game has: ___ characters or ___ scripts run or ___ lines of code.