Ratings and Reviews by ChanceOfFire

Usually, I would recommend a long and linear approach to writing a choicescript game. Caves and Dinosaurs flat out goes against this recommendation, opting for a game with over 70 endings on a roughly 100k word count. Of course, this means that each playthrough will be short, and maximum value will come from plenty of additional playthroughs.

The writing is pretty entertaining, even if not exceptional, as you roll your character class (there’s some really nice art here) and head out for your mission. You have the option to chance things by rolling the dice and deciding your choice, or use a certain stat to choose something for you. It’s possible to meet a bad end in this game, depending on how the dice and choices work for you, but the game simply allows you to try again.

It’s absolutely not your traditional choice game. Still, it was somewhat fun to play just by rolling the dice and seeing what a short new playthrough will bring. If you’ve a short bit of time you need to pass, you could do worse than trying out a playthrough a few times for more bite-sized entertainment.

I was deciding between three and four stars. That said, I have a weakness for the character art, so this gets four.

A group of factions are experiencing raids, and perhaps one faction is responsible for this. Your task here is to investigate. The premise is fairly interesting, although the execution doesn’t quite match it. The writing, while technically acceptable for the most part, also has plenty of roughness to it.

Investigating each faction simply means completing a puzzle which does not appear strongly related to investigative work. These puzzles aren’t difficult and I got everything right on my first try. Still, difficulty isn’t the problem, just that these puzzles feel like a crude stand in for an actual investigation which ties to the plot.

Once you are done, you get to join a debate on who was behind the raids. The game, as a whole, doesn’t take too long, and I had no interest in another round. That said, I’m still awarding three stars as I think this free title still isn’t egregiously bad to warrant less.

Paranoia is an improvement over What Happened Last Night, I guess.

The story is decent, I suppose. You start off with a day to day management system, where you need to collect a certain number of items to advance to the final mission. You have some medication which you can either choose to take or not. (There's actually an interesting gameplay mechanic behind that.) Some parts of it were funny, even if it was probably my childish side laughing.

Once you reach the final mission, you'll get the first checkpoint seen in HG history, where if you fail, you are allowed to retry the final mission rather than the entire game. I suppose I could give bonus points for that. Still, once you finish, you'll probably not want to play this again.

Wanna know what happened last night? To save you the trouble: (Spoiler - click to show) Some guy was unhappy about being made fun of for being short by some attractive woman at his club, so he killed her and made you the fall guy.

The game is full of dead ends which lead to an instant game over. There is a good bit of branching and multiple endings, although a lot of it feels silly. (I admit some of it was funny to my childish side.) Gameplay wise, there is a good bit of additional content for folks who want to do multiple replays, with multiple endings, although I'm not sure that it's worth your time to try finding them.

This was one of the first choicescript games released under the HG label. At that time, it was 'good' when folks were starved for choicescript games. Now, perhaps not.

You're dead, and have a new job to haunt stuff. Work hard, and you'll make it to the top.

The premise is pretty interesting, and the writing is definitely solid. Still, this game sets aside the usual choicescript format, opting for a statless system with plenty of branching paths, instead of the usual long and linear approach with stat checks. Without any stats, most choices matter, as these choices will determine where down the many branching paths you'll head.

The game's length is pretty variable. If you mess up (I mean, don't quite follow orders for) the earlier missions, it could end quickly, although you might still feel satisfied with the outcome. Otherwise, if you try to do your job well, you'll get more and more options until you reach the top, now with another ending.

I think the author is a very good writer, even if not writing the popular stuff in HG town. This title is free to win, so I'd recommend having a look.

Imprisoned was probably one of the better HG titles in the early CoG days, although standards weren't high at that time.

You're thrown into a cell for... something. There is a substantial character creation process as you are put through the early scenes. While you are in your cell, the game is pretty much like a stat management RPG, where you will have to raise certain stats, manage others, and think about how you will escape.

I managed to escape by raising a stat (Spoiler - click to show)(push ups, then bending the bars). Still, navigating the dungeon is tricky and some of the descriptions aren't too well written, which just makes it more confusing at times. My escape attempt eventually met with an inglorious end... but eh, I tried.

The writing is acceptable at a technical level, although I saw some typos. The game's tone is a bit juvenile at times, but I suppose you could treat this as a not-so-serious fantasy story. It's a pretty flawed title today, but might perhaps still be worth a look.

I don't wish to be too harsh on HG titles released during the early days. After all, games were free and expectations were low at that time. Still, it is hard for me to praise this title.

The writing is rough. The game is broken up into rooms with a lot of parser-like puzzles, but it was hard to figure out what to do simply by reading the descriptions. There is a hint menu for folks who are stuck, but the menu isn't very well-designed and will need a lot of clicking. There is a picture of each room in the game, which looks like some diagram I'd scrawl on my engineering notes back in college, but it just looks awful for an actual game release.

I managed to complete the game once and meet the final person, but failed his 'final' test. Still, at that point, I had no further interest in a replay.

Mobile Armored Marine is another title released in the very early CoG days. It was pretty long by the standards of that era. During the early days, there was some feedback over certain storyline and choice decisions the game had, although the author politely listened to feedback and made some changes to the content, which is a plus.

The game has a very lively writing style with plenty of humor. I also found the stat system simple but elegant, with a small set of skills you can build up at the start of the game, depending on choices made. Later, you can test these skills on the battlefield, with a health bar stat for your armor which you will need to keep over zero.

In terms of military tactics or story, the game is probably a bit lacking, but the author did address some issues in the early days. Perhaps it would be better to let the walking tank conduct recon and soak up the damage first before sending the fodder in. Still, I think the entertaining and confident writing style does make up for it.

It's not very long, but it remains free and fun to play.

Zebulon was written for a contest/event a long time ago. I think the theme was 'friends' or something. Anyway, here, we have two bickering friends with wildly different personalities to appease.

Compared to many of the older choicescript games, and even today, I think the writing is pretty good, with a strong dose of humor without overly-lengthy prose. Most of the options will have you choosing to make either one or the other of your companions happy. The game is often explicit about who you'll make happy and who you'll piss off, although there seems to be few, if any options to make both happy with the same choice.

You are given a mission to complete an objective within a certain time frame. Speed is critical, as with balancing your expenses, and managing the two people along for the ride. Still, it is a fun read, even if a short one.

Zebulon was released during stone-age CoG, and was probably one of the stronger HG titles at that time. But even now, I think it's still an interesting read, even if the choicescipt arena has come a long way since.

In addition to playing the game, I had line-edited it in full and therefore have a good sense of the content. Still, I would certainly not have spent so much time on edits if I had the benefit of hindsight. (which I didn't)

Anyway, I did sort of go through the game during the line-editing process, and probably saw more than a player actually would.

Last Dream is very linear in design, like a linear array dotted with fake choices. Branching is minimal at best. That said, a lot of these choices affect a certain variable, and to win the game, you would have to accumulate enough points in this variable to avoid a bad end.

The writing was well... not good in the non-native sense, which was possibly why Hosted Games wanted a native speaker to review the writing before accepting it. I actually liked the story there, and Midori was a character I would have liked to romance, but sadly, she wasn't an RO, although there are romances in the game. I am unable to comment on similarities to FFX as I have never played it, for what it's worth.

Ultimately, this game was pulled from HG after being approved for publication. I don't know the exact reason for this, no official reason was publicly given, and the discussion thread was locked for futher comment. It has since been released for free. On another note, the original submission had AI content, but HG had permitted the author to replace it before approving it for publication. That said, the replacement (which was approved for publication) had AI content as well. The AI status of the current free release is unknown to me.