I do horror games,but the problem it is never on Horror Categorie,it is on Sandpit. Why you need put it in Sandpit? My Horror games is better than someones in Horror Categorie. Im not the only people with this problem, other peoples made like a Fantasy game and you put it in Sandpit Categorie. Sandpit is like game trash,very ignored.

Could you post a link of your game?

http://textadventures.co.uk/user/view/f ... q/reidolol

I did not categorize your games, but some of them are really small. So perhaps somebody thought you would do some testing

i guess i can increase a bit someones

One thing you could do is not use red text on black backgrounds. It's cliché and makes it hard to read for the visually impaired.

Sorry to bump this post, but a good game i made is send to sandpit, i worked alot in that game and Alex added it to sandpit saying the game is incompleted, the game is completed, but it need to be in a categorie(not sandpit) to my game have audience.

could you post the link of your game?

http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/ ... first-week

OK I played your game and it seems to be better than sandpit so I moved it to horror

Thanks, remember: i never publish unfinished game except if it says demo.

same with my game, it's a comedy game but it's been put in sandpit. I spent a lot of time on it and it's quite long. heres the link http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/ ... hort-alpha

I have built my game from the ground up adding in checkpoints and other stuff, I have now finished it. It is still uncategorised and I don't want it put in sandpit again, It's been uncategorised for a few days now. It is a comedy adventure game. link http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/ ... ifes-short

sorry, but the name of your game contains "(alpha)" so you marked your game as a sandpit game. Alphaversions will always moved to sandpit.

I have completed the game now that's what the bottom link is, it was only in alpha until I had finished the ending.

Sorry, but that is one truly annoying game. Every option seems to lead to you either living (50%) or dying (50%) with no indication of which is which and then you end up restarting every time you die. The very first entry in the game also has a couple of very obvious typos:

You wake after a good nights sleep. You look at your watch, your running late for work.

Nights = night's

your running = you're running

Is the rest of the game anything like this?

Funnily enough, I was just reading this yesterday:

http://ifarchive.heanet.ie/if-archive/i ... enture.pdf

Item 1 on the Bill of Player's Rights: "Not to be killed without warning"
Item 2 on the Bill of Player's Rights: "Not to be given horribly unclear hints"
Item 3 on the Bill of Player's Rights: "To be able to win without experience of past lives"

Of course, that's just one person's opinion (though a weighty one). And there should be some item in there about spelling and grammar checking.

The game has a sort of "Dragon's Lair" feel, where you don't really know what to do and get penalized for it until you discover the arbitrary solution. I gave up after around three steps, as there wasn't even a good "Retry?" mechanism built in. What the payoff would be for all that irritation, I don't know.

I remade the game with a restart button and it's meant to be hard, you just have to remember what options get you though and what ones kill you. It's not the sort of game for everybody. As for the typos I will be going over the game and correcting any mistakes. You are meant to die a lot, that's what makes it funny, the game is called life is short

here is link to updated game http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/ ... ifes-short I will also give you a hint, click the option you think will kill you/the option you woulden't do in real life. 9 out of 10 times it will work

Really? The first option I'm given is to wake up on the right or the wrong side of the bed. Picking right kills me. The second option involves putting my trousers or my shirt on first. Picking my trousers kills me. If you think anyone's going to play through an entire game that kills you off at random like that, you've got a lot to learn about game making.

If you don't like that sort of game don't play, you got a 50% chance of survival, you have to learn from your mistakes, when you die click the other option next time.

Actually, once you get to the methods of getting to work, you are given 6 options, only one of which you survive to make another choice. That's only a 16.67% chance of survival. Maybe if you added an UNDO function so that the player doesn't have to go through every choice leading up to their last death it might make more people inclined to play through to completion.

Or if the writing was more engaging perhaps? The method of death for choose the bicycle option, [spoiler] a short sentence that tells you only that you are hit by a bus [/spoiler] smacks of lazy writing.

I enjoy IF where my choices have meaningful impact on the game or story, even if those choices aren't strictly logical, I believe that a good game will hint at a reasonable conclusion or outcome of my choices before I make them. Your game does not appear to do that in the slightest.

I'd like to offer some more thoughts, and it's not that I mean to beat you up - I'm hoping it will help.

I decided to give the game a fair shot and actually try to play it to the end. Perhaps the ending would have some wonderful payoff that would make it all worthwhile. The use of checkpoints was handy - at least I didn't have to go back to the beginning past some point. However, after I died with a spike to the neck, there was no retry/checkpoint option, so I quit. (I must say, I kept looking for the humor in these death scenes. Something like "Suddenly your foot steps on a tripwire, you step back but it's too late. A spike swings into your neck, killing you" doesn't strike me in the least as funny. Perhaps if you did actually make them funny - and I mean off-the-wall, oversized, creative, bizarre (humor lies in incongruities) - to the point where people might actually enjoy dying just to see what piece of cleverness you came up with next, then you might be able to redeem the game design. A suggestion.)

Being the sort of person I am, I downloaded the game and looked at the source, and I see I was only a step away from ending the game. Sadly, the game ending had no big payoff - just a "well done you completed the game." (sic)

Now, I did find a bit of irony in your title (unless you actually designed the game this way) which is that as I was playing, what I kept thinking was that life's too short to be going through this. If that's what you intended, then at least that bit of insight is well done.

Why am I telling to all of this? Because at the end, you say, "You can help by reviewing the game and telling me what you liked or how I could improve." People have been telling you things so far (and I hope it has done more than just make you defensive), that basically the choices need to have more impact on the game than just taking you to the next decision point. And if you could do more with the writing, it will help make the painful journey a bit more worthwhile. There has to be some point or payoff to a game. (See, for example, this discussion: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3877)

You have obviously put some effort into this. Not everything that is the result of effort is worthwhile, however, and as designers, we need to be honest with ourselves. I've written my share of crap myself, in all sorts of media. What makes a person a good game designer, ultimately, is learning from what doesn't work and not doing it again. You will do well to learn the lessons from this and move on to making the next project better.

(I'm curious - has anyone you've shown this to enjoyed it? If so, then it might come down to taste or age. If not, then there's a big ol' fat clue for you.)

Thanks for the advice, I will be improving my game adding more checkpoints and making all the deaths funny (most of them are). all the people I showed that are younger enjoyed the game (ages 10-16)
The ending for the game happens when you follow the man at the end.

Maybe instead of killing the player off every time they choose the wrong option, you simply penalise them in some other way - knock a score point off or something similar - but allow them to proceed on with the game. Then if they reach the end of the game without the best possible score, they know they went wrong somewhere. Continually restarting just isn't fun. Or at the very least, add more text to the game to indicate which option is the best one and not just leave everything to chance.

in the next version I will be adding more checkpoints

lionclaw0612 wrote:If you don't like that sort of game don't play, you got a 50% chance of survival, you have to learn from your mistakes, when you die click the other option next time.

Sounds tedious. Why endure it when there's fun games to be played?