Earlier this August, I attended Boston GameLoop, an annual game development unconference. I’ve been going for years, and I’m always impressed by the sheer wealth of knowledge available.
I take notes. Lots of notes. And I’m writing up my notes from this year (in fleshed-out form) for everyone who … Keep reading →
Save the hero!
Wait. No. Second try.
Save the monster FROM the hero!
Navigate the dungeon (read: wide-open space) to find hidden monster parts (read: in boxes)! (But they really are monster parts.)
As you increase your monster’s … Keep reading →
Hmm, I'm not even a little bit tempted. Try again?
The post Sin City Temptation by Sharon C Cooper appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Dan Fabulich and Choice of Games just announced three new options for ChoiceScript’s randomtest feature that should reduce headaches in testing. Now, you can check boxes for:
1) Avoiding the use of previously-selected choices. This will help find bugs faster, especially edge case bugs.
2) Reducing the display text … Keep reading →
I was in a lousy mood when I walked into the Armenian bakery this morning. Last night was hectic and miserable, because my fiancee’s birthday party was interrupted by a trip to the ER. She is okay, but many frustrating things happened, and we were both feeling exhausted and abraded … Keep reading →
It's a great thing that the romance is exquisite, as the sugary sweetness of everything else eventually gets to me.
The post Sequins and Spurs by Cheryl St John appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
The main characters are likable types, and I really wish I like this story more than I actually do.
The post Return of the Bad Girl by Codi Gary appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
An idiot plot could sink even the best romance, and this story isn't even halfway close to best.
The post Touch of Paradise by Dara Girard appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
It's like, Buffy's English great-greatmother is an airhead and Spike's great-grandfather is a big fan of Christopher Lee's Dracula characters.
The post Lethal Union by Vanessa Liebe appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
This is the fourth installment of 18 Rooms to Home, an experimental work of interactive fiction. The full game covers a day in the life of Yesenia Reed, whose life is far from ordinary, no matter what she might prefer.
18 Rooms to Home is a serialized game. … Keep reading →
We're in Egypt, the land of killer pyramids and angry natives, and the characters spend most of their time whining. Sigh.
The post Under a Desert Moon by Laura Martin appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Is this a new adult gay romance or just bad propaganda from the PoC LGBTWTFHAHABBQ Division of the Taylor Swift Fan Club?
The post Level Hands by Amy Jo Cousins appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
I'd happily choose to be stuck in an elevator with ten of Vivienne Lorret's heroines than to spend another second with the heroine of this book.
The post The Captain’s Frozen Dream by Georgie Lee appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Is "guys treating women like they are too useless for anything" the new trend in demonstrations of affection?
The post Protecting the Heiress by Martha Kennerson appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
There’ll be a much more formal “hey look, a new game!” post tomorrow, but I would like to fall on my face, which interferes with my ability to write one now.
I beat the Ludum Dare challenge. In just 48 hours, I made a full game. All the code. All … Keep reading →
Talk about inserting a conflict that brings down the romance.
The post Crystal Caress by Zuri Day appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
It gets really personal when the heroine decides to run off straight into drugs-and-pimps hell.
The post Personal Target by Kay Thomas appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Good is overrated. I'd have preferred the lady to be smarter.
The post Lady Be Good by Meredith Duran appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Hi! Guess who’s liveblogging Ludum Dare?
The correct answer is probably “a lot of people”, but one of them is me.
For those unfamiliar, Ludum Dare is an international game jam. Over the course of the next 48 hours, I’m going to build a game based on this year’s … Keep reading →
In a plan view map, elevation is hard. This is especially true for line art maps, where you don’t have the advantage of shading to indicate height and depth using the cast shadows. Here’s three different styles for drawing chasms on a line art map. 1. Simple Chasm – Just Use An Outline This version […]
The post How to Draw a Chasm on a Map appeared first on Fantastic Maps.
18 Rooms to Home: Room 15 is almost ready for release. It’s in sneak preview for the next week with my Patreon supporters, who will warn me about any last bugs (I hope!) before the full release on Thursday, August 27.
… Keep reading →Sleeping with the ex-con next door is supposed to be simple and uncomplicated. Yeah, right.
The post Turning Tides by Ruby McNally appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Romance is Dead is a short visual novel about what happens when science meets the supernatural in the city of New Orleans, why voodoo should only be done by professionals, and how you should never completely write off the chance for romance. The story follows Maddie Washington, a young college student studying cell biology at […]
The post Visual Novel: Romance is Dead appeared first on .
A TBR Challenge 2015 review. I love men in uniform, but maybe not men in this particular uniform...
The post For Such a Time by Kate Breslin appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
The episodic FMV title MISSING: An Interactive Thriller is out now on Mac. The title, which is set in the style of 90′s full-motion-video games (a more recent example would be Her Story) is already out on Steam, and has been discounted in celebration of the Mac launch. MISSING seeks to marry live-action video (shot not in […]
The post News: Episodic FMV MISSING Out Now on Mac appeared first on .
This is a pretty alright Gothic mystery romance. Alright, that is - just alright.
The post Shadowed by Sin by Layna Pimentel appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
They say the best things come to those who wait, and I know the wait has been a long one, but there is now an official release date for the final act of DestinyQuest Infinite.
DestinyQuest Infinite is an interactive adaptation of the first book in the DestinyQuest series, The Legion of Shadow. Each act of the story has been released separately, to allow players to level their heroes and provide ongoing feedback to the QuestForge team to improve the experience and squash any annoying bugs.
Players who have been submersed in the interactive world of DestinyQuest, battling their way across the fetid swamps of Black Marsh and delving into the lost ruins that litter the spirit-haunted depths of Mistwood, can finally take their heroes onto the last leg of their epic journey.
The final act now has a release date – September 14!
In Act 3 of The Legion of Shadow, the action steps up a notch as you hurtle towards the final showdown with the infamous Legion. Here’s the fluff I wrote for the QuestForge team if you want a taster of what to expect in this exciting last act:
The Legion grows in strength, turning a once proud city to ruin. With the aid of a small band of resistance fighters, you must battle through the Bone Fields, searching its many tombs and valleys to discover a means to defeat the Legion once and for all.
Set against you is the might of a powerful necromancer, intent on summoning a vast undead army, powerful enough to destroy the last of the city’s defenders and break the shield that holds the Legion in thrall.
Will you rise to the challenge and become a great hero of legend, or will the shadows of your past finally catch up with you?
You can preorder the full game here: http://ift.tt/1tYNcZn Act 1 and 2 are already available to play – and by pre-ordering you will be able to play Act 3 on the day of release.
If you also fancy experiencing this exciting adventure the traditional way (that's pencils and dice folks!), then the print version of The Legion of Shadow is also available from all good booksellers.
What are you waiting for – there’s loot to be found!
Happy adventuring!
MJW
This past weekend, I attended Boston GameLoop, an annual game development unconference. I’ve been going for years, and I’m always impressed by the sheer wealth of knowledge available.
I take notes. Lots of notes. And I’m going to be writing up my notes from this year (in fleshed-out form) … Keep reading →
Ooh, this one has a nice kick-ass heroine. Too bad the hero doesn't appreciate that.
The post Trapped by Scandal by Jane Feather appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
What a great way to experience what a lobotomy feels like!
The post All the Ways to Ruin a Rogue by Sophie Jordan appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Why do I keep reading this author's books? Why? WHY?
The post The Devilish Mr. Danvers by Vivienne Lorret appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
I’m deep in the mire of writing an IF Comp entry, which is why I barely had the time to play recent IF releases. But Introcomp is nice in that I can read and evaluate a game in a lot less time than usual, and feel like I have something to say about it. First up: Walker’s Rift, by Hope Chow.
Walker’s Rift is a ChoiceScript story about monster hunting (or perhaps cryptozoological research) in a setting that resembles a fantastic version of modern-say Singapore, with a bit of the Kowloon Walled City thrown in for good measure. The gameplay template is comfortably within the Choice of Games mould, with a stateful branching structure and an initially generic protagonist that gets fleshed out by player choice.
We don’t get very far into the plot in this intro, though we do get enough time with it to get a feel for the setting and characters. The story is structured as a mystery, complete with an elaborately branching series of investigations. This is a very hard structure to work with; and here it has a few problems: it strongly encourages lawnmowering, for one thing, and the same inference is made by the player character repeatedly in different places and times. A lot of time is spent investigating occurrences that are all clearly connected, but are also too similar to one another to really stick in the player’s mind. Unlike in your typical serial-murder procedural story, these are all presented to the player at once, so that there is no sense of escalation. In many ways, the investigation sequence feels like wheel-spinning; at a couple of points, the game explicitly tells you to not choose every option, just the ones you think are important – but with no limit to how many I can pick, and very little context to what might be important, it’s very hard to not just try everything.
Structurally, the story is much more Law & Order than Buffy; but it’s misstepping on the sort of pacing tricks that make procedural stories work. None of this is unfixable with editing, however.
As an intro, it doesn’t really get into what makes this particular character or story interesting. There’s not much in the way of a strong hook. Instead, it has a low-key tone that works well enough for it, but it really wanted to show something more of the setting or situation to give players some context into what might come next – without it, it’s hard to get excited about it.
It does gain a lot from the strength of the setting – fantasy with real specificity is unjustifiably rare, especially when that specificity points to something other than the genre’s usual medieval European roots. The idea of treating fantasy monster hunting in the idiom of a down-to-earth police procedural, complete with paperwork and departmental politics, is intriguing in itself. So this is definitely a piece I would like to see polished and expanded, even if this intro isn’t making the strongest possible case for it.
None of my dungeons are flat. I always have things for people to jump off or fall into. But if you’re laying out a top down view it can be tricky to show elevation on a map. A simple method is to use arrows, and basic shading to show higher/lower levels (v1 in the diagram). However – […]
The post How to use Hatching to Show Elevation on a Map appeared first on Fantastic Maps.
“A writer cannot do too much research… though sometimes it is a mistake to try and cram too much of what you learned into your novel. Research gives you a foundation to build on, but in the end it’s only the story that matters.”
… Keep reading →Wait, this is actually pretty fun! Alright then, let's get the party started.
The post Calliope and the Viscount by Aubrey McKnight appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is the newest title from Chinese Room, the folks behind the game Dear Esther. A PS4 exclusive, it launched this week. A first person-adventure game (named alternatively as a first person experience, walking simulator or graphical IF) Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is a post-apocalyptic tale following the stories of […]
The post News: Chinese Room Launches Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture appeared first on .
This is a quick tutorial covering the steps I take when laying out and drawing a cave map. 1. Get the map layout right with simple shapes Dungeons are flow charts. Use simple shapes to figure out where players come in, where they go, how they can bypass certain obstacles, and choke points they need to […]
The post How to Draw a Cave appeared first on Fantastic Maps.
Fullbright, the studio behind indie darling Gone Home, has announced their newest endeavor Tacoma. This game follows Amy Ferrier and her first, lonely, day on the Lunar Transfer Station Tacoma. Comparisons to Fullbright’s other games are bound to occur, especially since there are some obvious similarities. The playable character is female, you appear to be the […]
The post News: Fullbright Announces Tacoma appeared first on .
Nothing really groundbreaking here, but it's fun, and that counts for something.
The post Relentless Lord by Amy Sandas appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Hi everyone!
Today has been pretty busy here (eaten by wedding plans, etc), so I don’t have a new post for you. But I do have some great recommendations to check out in the meantime.
IntroComp is going on right now! This interactive fiction competition’s twist is that the … Keep reading →
Or, dangerously misleading pretty rhetoric that attempts to pass romance off as something it isn't, for the sake of a progressive narrative.
The post Dangerous Books for Girls by Maya Rodale appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
The hero's blind, but that just makes him a blind Henry Higgins.
The post Christmas Carols by Daisy Banks appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
This one is so hot, my brain felt like it completely melted at the end of the day.
The post Heat of Passion by Pamela Yaye appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Oh, I love those horny centaurs... except this one, who really should just do me a favor and die.
The post Bastian by Elizabeth Amber appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
It makes fun of the previous movie and goes all out dumb. Credit given for effort, I guess.
The post Hatchet III (2013) appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.
The post 2-Headed Shark Attack (2012) appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Old school vampire romance alert! Put own your nostalgia goggles and enjoy.
The post One Bite Per Night by Brooklyn Ann appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
The first roguelike I played was NetHack, one of the oldest and best of its breed. I played NetHack 3.1 in the fall of 1991, back when horses didn’t exist and”elf” was still a class.
For the uninitiated, NetHack looks like this:
Goodness, just how many secret spy action hero Dukes are there?
The post Griffin Stone: Duke of Decadence by Carole Mortimer appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Something went wrong in the art of plotting, oh dear.
The post The Art of Sinning by Sabrina Jeffries appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
In the ChoiceScript forums, someone recently asked:
What makes a passage enjoyable? The style, the grammar, or something else? In other words, how can I improve my writing?
These are extraordinarily broad questions, and books have been written about them. Many books.
This will not be book-length. But it … Keep reading →
The first half is gripping historical fiction, the second half is just... sigh.
The post Somewhere to Dream by Genevieve Graham appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Hi everyone!
Did you notice that Sibyl Moon is now supported via Patreon?
Here’s the list of releases from July:
Blog posts
Excuse Me, You Call This Clear Source Code?
Contra Dance, Modern Squares, and Game Design
We Can Do Better Than This … Keep reading →
I guess, for $0.99, I can't expect too much. But still, I think this one could have been better.
The post Haunting Evergreen by LK Campbell appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Some books give me chills. This one gives me rigor mortis.
The post A Match for Marcus Cynster by Stephanie Laurens appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Every time I'm convinced these characters can't be any dumber, the author surprises me.
The post The Elusive Lord Everhart by Vivienne Lorret appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
