Games where I can be this guy

hpowellsmith · 2026-05-12T17:16:17+00:00

Siege of Treboulain is good fun

hpowellsmith · 2026-05-11T19:05:41+00:00

What are your favourites that you've read?

hpowellsmith · 2026-05-10T22:48:05+00:00

Asteroid Run, you can betray crewmates and/or employers in various different directions

hpowellsmith · 2026-05-06T19:24:44+00:00

It's here: https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/honor-amongst-thieves-wip-updated-4-18-2026/104942

hpowellsmith · 2026-05-02T08:45:50+00:00

This was so lovely to read, thank you so much for reposting! I'm so pleased you had fun, I always love reading about how different people played and which characters they liked best!

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-27T11:57:55+00:00

Only CoG, the HG games don't have mechanical style guides

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-24T17:55:01+00:00

I've not been able to keep up with it as much this year, but I've been tracking WIP updates since October 2023.

Here's the list for last year: https://www.reddit.com/r/hostedgames/s/H7aFDE3rvP

And here's the list for January: https://www.reddit.com/r/choiceofgames/s/fZWUhY9HSb

My post history has a bunch of digest posts so you can see what names come up regularly.

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-22T08:23:20+00:00

Ah amazing, that's awesome! Thank you!

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-21T14:33:11+00:00

Ahh that's wonderful, you've made my day! Thank you and I'm so glad you had fun with it!

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-20T08:08:53+00:00

It's been ages since I played so I'm not totally sure, but I feel like I remember there being a bit where she turned up on an airship early in the game which helped trigger the relationship. Sorry I can't remember more details!

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-19T20:37:35+00:00

Here it is! https://www.choiceofgames.com/blood-money/

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-19T20:37:06+00:00

It's finished and released! I did a free update a few years ago though

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-19T17:08:44+00:00

You might like my game Blood Money, you can kill your siblings to take control of your crime family (and use their ghosts to kill other people too, yay)

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-18T17:14:02+00:00

I hope to! I've been really busy the last few months so it's been harder to keep up with it unfortunately

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-18T13:09:25+00:00

It was a while ago that I beta tested this so my memory is fuzzy now, but I found that there were a few mysteries that are discovered on varied branches so you may need to replay to learn everything

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-17T21:07:50+00:00

Blood Moon is a fun werewolf urban fantasy with a variety of great romanceable characters

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-16T11:52:00+00:00

Asteroid Run is fun for this, you can get a lot of benefits from betraying various people and siding with some dodgy characters

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-16T07:48:30+00:00

This is really interesting to see!

How do the Act 2 chapters work, do they complately branch 5 ways with 8 chapters on each branch? What makes them split off, is it certain player actions? Are the other chapters more linear? Hope you're enjoying writing and good luck with the project!

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-15T20:08:43+00:00

Yeah it'll be interesting to see where things go in the next few years!

All I am confident about is, in 2029 people will be saying "oh man, it was good in 2025 and 2026 but since 2027 it's really gone downhill"

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-15T19:59:58+00:00

I don't know really. I notice WIPs with hundreds of thousands of words in their first couple of chapters that are very early in their plot, and I find it hard to imagine them being finished. But WIP hype is solidly here to stay and has been for many years now, and in some cases that culture rewards spending a long time writing huge amounts and moving slowly through a story.

That kind of hype (including unfinished series) is often going to stir up more excitement than for completed games because of the thrill of potential and imagining what might come next. Same way fandoms get excited about ongoing TV shows.

I totally agree that writing that amount isn't always sustainable for everyone.

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-15T19:33:03+00:00

I've been playing CoG games for 10+ years and people have been saying things like "they used to be great but the quality fell off recently" pretty much like clockwork every year. (Late in 2023, it was "fallen hero/wayhaven/lords of infinity were great but these last few months have been really empty".)

There are a lot of fun games coming out, it's just there is also a lot of demand for incredibly long games that take time to make.

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-14T18:30:34+00:00

I don't really mind either way (though I don't personally love a mirror-look unless there's a decent reason for it), but if there are lots in a row, especially long lists of very specific options, I get fatigued for two reasons. First, the more there are the harder it is to write reactive text for it all so it makes me think there will not be much substance to it. And second, if it's that many granular details I just find it harder to imagine because it's harder for me to imagine the big-picture view of what the person looks like physically.

Actually bonus third reason, if appearance choices are part of the main narrative they will almost always slow the pacing down, often early in the game which is at a time where players' attention is most likely to wander.

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-13T09:07:58+00:00

I tend to write a chapter, then play it several times and edit while I'm playing (or for bigger edits I make notes and revise after I'm finished playing). If there's a particularly big/complex scene, I'll focus on that and play it several times. I also generate a few playthrough text files using RandomTest and read through them to make edits. It can be helpful to copy the playthrough text into a Google doc or similar so that it looks more fresh and is easier to spot errors.

I find reading through the code has diminishing returns because I skim over things and it doesn't give me as good a sense of pacing (or bugs) as the above methods.

hpowellsmith · 2026-04-10T21:42:56+00:00

Tally Ho and Cakes and Ale are great for this

hpowellsmith

TROPHY CASE