Correct. You can read any of the series in any order, although it might be slightly better to read Wizard's Choice first since the other series take place later. Rogue's now has 11 chapters (just released 11 a few days ago) and has a bit more of a sense of completion, although neither Demon's or Rogue's is yet complete.

Now I'm writing both Demon's and Rogue's at the same time, releasing chapters in one series or the other and having their paths cross. 

Thanks for checking it out!

Sam

Well, I'm glad you died a few times. There was way too much material there for me to feel good about you just sailing through it!

Yeah, the rival succubus was supposed to be tricky and reasonably clever (succubi are never stupid). That might not have been fair...I should add a "Life ain't fair" achievement, although that would be a little like the "should have worked".

If you play any more series, I'd love to hear your feedback.

Wow, this is great feedback and so detailed, thank you!

I love Azizella and can't wait to put up another chapter from her perspective. Right now, I'm focused on "Rogue's Choice" which overlaps with Azizella's story.

No, Azizella doesn't like to identify as a demon. Somehow the irony of the title never struck me until you mentioned it.

Ha, I chuckled a few times as I wrote the kinght revenge scene. I hoped most readers would choose that option.

It pleases me that you got pretty high scores. I presume you're an experienced interactive fiction reader/player and so the fact that you were able to guess choices well enough to survive/thrive extends hope to me that the outcomes are relatively logical. Hopefully you died on occasion, though. I don't want it to be too easy.

Yeah, I want to fix the stat thing at some point. You're right that they are designed so that the player doesn't have it too easy/hard for the chapter. It also provides a good "reset point" for when people restart a chapter. I never persisted stats because I figured it would be a testing nightmare...On the other hand, when I first designed these games, I didn't have the "boosting" feature for stats and so maybe I could just push stats through from chapter-to-chapter. I see a possible A/B test for some day in the future.

The linear thing is hard to fix for the reason you mention, not to mention the sheer amount of writing, testing, etc required. Mizal told me my games are "gauntlet" style, which I think is a perfect term and I don't see that changing. But who knows? Maybe I could try this with one of my most popular chapters and measure the restarts and other engagement. It might be worth it.

Thank you for the detailed feedback! It's particularly useful because I shipped Ranger's Choice only a few days ago and I suspected that there will be some kinks to smooth out. For example, I have gotten about 30 typo fixes from customers already despite that title going through an edit.

Your suspicion was correct, there is a large image on the first page after the second paragraph, so that is what you ran into. I thought those images were accessible, but maybe not. I'll have to check to make sure the "alt" text is working correctly. I don't currently use a lot of interior art, so I suppose there's a silver lining to that.

Yeah, I used to have the morale going down in that scene, but since it was something everyone ran into, regardless of choice, I removed it. Maybe I'll revisit that.

I do generic titles for the sake of search and better click-through-rates on the mobile stores. For instance, D&D fans will immediately know what a "Ranger" is and the "Choice" might help clue them in that they will be able to make choices that character. I use pragmatic titles instead of literary ones. :)

Don't feel bad about grabbing the promo. That's what it's for and I'm just happy you're using it.

I'm glad the mechanic was intriguing. I really try not to make the reader "metagame" where they feel they need to do what the author wants them to do rather than what best for the situation. I remember running into this with CYOA books as a kid. "Do you want to go into the creepy house" or "Go home?" I knew to go into the house otherwise it would either end (lamely) or force me into the house anyway.

Deep Space Huntress was one of the early Delight Games so I don't remember it well. I tweaked some of the choices, branches, and consequences, but most of the game design and writing was Robert Kroese (indie traditional novelist).

Thanks! I try to stay on top of mail, although it's sometimes tough as a one-man show. I'm glad I could help. 

Glad you dug it. I always wonder how the achievement system goes over with readers.

Paladins is very similar to my other games because I developed Paladins too and in fact that story is included in the full library on Google Play. Paladins is actually a traditional novel by David Dalglish which I took wholesale and "gamified" using the scoring system you mention (with David's permission). I added about 50% of the original content (~40k words of what had been 80k) in order to create little branches. It was an experiment. I wanted to see if I could take a normal novel, almost any novel, and make it into a game. I'm pretty happy with the result and the ratings were amazing, but it came at the cost of severe "railroading". The story always had to come back to the main "trunk" and it had to do it quickly because of the traditional novel format. Because of this railroading, the only significant effect I could make for the reader making one choice over another was to give them a short branch of different story and use the stat and so in my mind, I basically made "good", "ok", and "bad" outcomes. I wanted these outcomes to be non-obvious while logical to the reader, at least in hindsight. Anyway, that's the goal, but it's more an art than a science, and so I miss sometimes.

You're right, if you play it without regard to what you think will be best for the character, you'll die or at least get a low score for the chapter. I get a good amount of feedback that this isn't great, particularly if they don't agree with the outcomes. :) I even started adding achievements like "Should have worked" since there are plenty of times when a choice seems pretty logical, but just doesn't turn out for some subtle reason that most readers wouldn't expect.

In my experience, most writers are too nice. Anyway, no one was going to read it, anyway. Now maybe 20 will.

You got it, see below.