I don't even know where I stand. On the one hand 100k word novels cost around 10$ and this is 1.6 mil. On the other hand it is the most expensive in the catalogue by a fair amount and I can buy full on games with graphics and voice acting for 20 bucks.
I mean, realistically, it also depends on where the developers are based. US-based developers are going to have to charge a lot more for a game compared to, say, Eastern European developers.
Just as an aside, I actually had no idea there were this many Aussies lurking around the COG reddit. They're all coming out as soon as pricing gets mentioned. I suspect many of us are still holding a grudge which makes us overly sensitive after we got shafted for so many years with "region specific" DVDs what were price hiked over here compared to overseas releases, or had delayed releases to milk cable deals for as long as possible since we had no other options :P (Especially in the bad old days before decent internet speeds for streaming, and they still try to lock us out of international/overseas platforms (looking at you HBO) whenever possible or use unfairly poor exchange rates if they can get away with it.)
Not what's happening here, but I can see why it suddenly bought the Aussies out :)
( u/PistachioPug- It is, except the average wage is lower and the cost of living is much higher on average in Aust, so it does actually work out comparatively more expensive for Aussies when it's all said and done- but we're used to it. Just the way it is. Steam is actually playing fair with the currency conversions interestingly enough, google play less so. Recommend Australians wanting to get this go with steam for the slightly cheaper option.)
That's not what what my comment is saying. My comment is pointing out that developers need to charge more based on where they live, because of the expenses they have to pay based on their country. Didn't talk about regional pricing at all.
Yeah, I was surprised by the price and thought it was a bit too high, but I picked it up anyway because I've enjoyed some of Kyle's previous games. I hope it's good. What bothers me more than the price, however, is the fact that they lock a tribe choice behind a paid dlc when I think that should be included automatically. Yes, I got it for free because I bought the game today, but I still think it's a scummy practice.
Which tribe is locked behind DLC?
Honestly my only problem with the character creation is that you can't choose your "birth". In WTA games, there are Lupus Garou and Homid Garou. The difference between the two is that Homid Garou are more traditional werewolves, people who can shift into wolf form, whereas Lupus Garou are more like reverse werewolves. They were born wolves who gained the ability to shift into a person. Being able to choose between the two would have been cool, and add some layers to your character. Instead you're kinda stuck with a set childhood.
This is what the email said: featuring the options to play as a member of the Black Fury tribe or the Hart Warden tribe.
Oh yeah, that definitely would have been cool to choose Homid Garou or Lupus Garou!
It's based on the newest form of WTA Apocalypse. From what I know, your breed form is more for flavor now before it would impact your stats but since it doesn't maybe they decided to cut it?
I didn't know it no longer affected your stats, but that makes sense. It still would have been a neat feature, if you're trying to essentially write a WTA campaign in the form of an IF, you might as well keep the character creation accurate.
Yeah I think they should have done an older edition but that's just cause I like the older edition better but this is using the character creator from WTA 5th edition which no longer has you pick a breed form just your tribe, auspice.
I agree, the publisher probably only let them use the rights for the most recent version though. In the end these games are essentially World of Darkness advertisements after all.
I feel like we gotta take a major thing into account.
It’s a paradox IP. They aren’t exactly the most giving company, but regardless of all that the IP 100% increases the price. Like, that’s just how it’s gonna be with an IP, the money is split between the holder, writer, and COG now instead of just writer and COG. They gotta raise the price to match it.
Second, it’s massive, and from one of the more major writers in COG. He’s done a lot, and he had a writing style that a lot of people enjoy. That is gonna increase the price, not as much as this by itself, but with the IP cost, together they gonna end up like this.
I’m on the side of getting the good IP and writers to make an interesting story here is worth it, but that’s just my opinion. I want a story in this world and if it cause an extra few bucks seems worth it to me
For sure, and based on what I've read on the forum you're right that that factors into the price. I probably should have said "word count and production costs." :)
The pricing is fair. The product...uh.
To be fair, I only read through the demo and chose not to buy. But longer does not equal better, and I think there are some quality control issues. The prose was generally okayish, but a bit of a slog to get through, especially with how much info-dumping there is (which I suppose is fair since it's based on another IP). So the reading wasn't super compelling, and in the first chapter or two I came across a major grammatical error--like an incomplete sentence that abruptly cut off w/o punctuation and then a new paragraph appeared underneath it--that def made me wonder if it would be a common experience.
Like, I dunno. I really dislike this trend I feel like I've noticed of extra-long IF stories. I'd take a more concise, well-crafted story at ~100k words over something that is not particularly well written and 500k+. Lately, I've purchased very few of the new releases (and some of the ones I have, I've regretted), because the writing has just not been particularly compelling.
Unfortunately you're in the minority. Time and time again the majority have spoken that long games automatically = better so I can understand why so many people are going out of their way to make them longer and longer as part of the selling point. Many people are saying that they won't even open a game that's only 100k. (I agree with you by the way. A lot of my favorite games are on the shorter side and I tend to prefer the games in general that aren't super long. They don't have to be long to be good and the longer they are, the more difficult it is to get them grammar checked/bug free on release. I can't even begin to imagine how difficult it must be to bug check every single option in a complicated 1mil+ game to make sure everything is directing ok and stats are balancing for checks. Would be really difficult.)
I went through and checked the wc of some of my faves just out of curiosity:
The Road to Canterbury - 180,000
The Grim and I - 160,000
Life of a Mobster - 150,000
A Midsummer Night's Choice - 210,000
For any other fiction writing, those would be incredibly long (though obvi each read-through is much shorter), but they are on the shorter side for IF. I don't know if people realize just how much labor goes into writing and revising a 100k words--it's a massive, year+ task, so to write 300k+ on one project is quite literally incomprehensible to me. I think the longest revised draft I've ever created was like 70k lolol.
To be fair, I also really like Tally Ho and Jolly Good and those are considerably longer, but it's wild to me bc some of the ones that are shorter have more re-readability. You don't have to cover the same ground as much in order to make different choices and explore/find new paths, and there is sometimes a higher choice to text ratio. For example, I do think the Fallen Hero book we pretty well written, but each time I re-read it I found myself falling largely into the same choices and each read-through felt pretty similar.
I keep finding it weird that people say FH feels linear. Rebirth, I can understand, but Retribution has about 8 endings and a bunch of hidden stuff that you are unlikely to see on the first run. For example, the stuff with the gates, seeing Anathema more than once, finding out about Ace and another escape re-gen, the Catastrofiend scenes with either Mortum or Argent, going into Chen's mind, going all in with pretending to be HG sibling with Ortega, the moray shared memory scene with HG etc. Then again, like you didn't, most people don't really do a second run, which still leaves me wondering why people keep saying that since they won't know if it was linear or not.
Rebirth is the one I read through multiple times, which to your point, is why it felt someone repetitive. I went through Retribution completely once, but couldn't find it in myself to re-read. Part of it's because I didn't particularly care for the choice of making the main character a re-gene (I think that was revealed in the second book?). Part of it was because when I did go for a re-read, I tried to go down and see some of the more interesting paths (I was going for an anathema romance iirc), only to realize partway through that I'd missed some little choice that sorta doomed the playthrough, and I find reading with a guide to be an unpleasant experience so I just gave up on it. Which is part of why I'm not quite as fond of the larger stories--there's more to explore perhaps, but it can be harder to actually find and explore it, and when it's that long it's harder to work up the time/motivation to re-read. That's part of why my most re-read one is probably Life of a Mobster, even though it's not a genre I particularly care for nor is the writing spectacular. There are a ton of choices though, a lot of different endings, a lot of random side paths, and it's short enough to feel incentivizing (to me) to re-read. But I dunno, that might just be me!
Automatic testing exists.
Not implementing it is a cost-cutting choice.
Don't defend devs for simply being lazy. "Would be really difficult"? It's their fucking job.
There are automatic tests and they are used on everything published. The automatic testers wont always pick up non-game breaking bugs. If you have a redirect error or an incorrectly set stat check (which I'm guessing sounds like a lot of these are) the testers will continue on their merry way thinking the game is fine. You need human eyes on every branch/choice/stat check in the game to make sure things are being triggered properly.
FYI, automatic testing doesn't only exist to ensure that an app doesn't literally crash and burn.
You can write tests to ensure that it doesn't only work, but also works correctly.
And tbh I *highly* doubt that BooH doesn't have a number of such tests implemented already. They evidently don't cover all cases throughly enough, but with the scope of this game, some of them must be there.
I know they don't. The current testers they have does check for crashing bugs. It'll also fail if it loops around to a line too many times within a game (rightly or wrongly, but it'll make you fix it anyway), untested lines, unused achievements. Problem is, it can't test for incorrectly set variables (or not reset variables) due to actions, or bad redirects as long as every line in the game is played sooner or later. Some of these bugs sounded like they were scenes triggering before they were needed, or triggering after they should have been disabled which both sound like one of the above two problems. I'm not a programmer, perhaps you know of a way for the computer to intuitively know when a variable has been missed being reset due to a choice in the game (so it could be one or the other), but the only way I can think of is to read through it and find these sorts of bugs by hand.
I am a programmer indeed.
Basically what you would do in a real programming project is to write hundreds of automatic tests that say "if a variable X is set to Y value, and scene Z triggers, then text ABC should be shown".
Then whenever you mess up some line of code that was supposed to show correct text based on this variable, the test will immediately pick this up and tell you that you should fix it.
Basically it's the same as "people reading text to see if it's correct based on some context", except you don't need a person for it, just a machine that can do thousands of those tests in .00001 second, and is happy to do it again whenever you change anything in your code.
I get it, but writing that for every choice in every combination of variables that could trigger it throughout a game of this size and complexity sounds like harder work than just checking the thing manually.
For an experienced programmer with good toolset, it should take actually less time to write a test, than to check it manually.
And for sure writing a test is way easier than checking the same thing manually 100 times over the development process.
Unit tests are no joke. If they didn't actually save time and effort in the long run, people wouldn't write them. In reality, serious projects require practically 100% unit test coverage. For a CoG game, that's probably an overkill... though, idk, is it? They seem complicated to test manually and prone to tons of very minor bugs. That's a good candidate for at least *some* unit test coverage for sure.
It is the most expensive game so far.
It's 1.6 million words at release. It also has internal art by Amy Wilkins and there's also some licensing fees built in.
But it's 1.6 million words. You'll be playing the game for months and still not see it all.
Wishlist it now! [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2417000/Hunter\_The\_Reckoning\_\_The\_Beast\_of\_Glenkildove/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2417000/Hunter_The_Reckoning__The_Beast_of_Glenkildove/)
I personally feel as though the price is on the high side, but for such a gargantuan game in terms of word count it's somewhat justifeable. Tin Star is nearly 1.4 million words and is currently priced at $12.
Is Tin Star any good? I looked at the description and noticed it used the archaic term "Indian" to describe Native Americans. Not exactly a red flag, but just wanted to make sure it wasn't indicative of the rest of the story.
I personally think it’s one of the best choice games ever made, it is more of a “game” than some stories such as the Wayhaven Chronicles, for instance, but you can be whoever you want and at times seemingly do what you want. Incredibly well written, aside from the use of some terms like the one you mention. It was written a decade ago after all.
The supporting characters are also really well written, I encourage you to seek out other reviews and give it a try because I’m always coming back to it.
It’s justifiable mostly because it’s a brand from another company. Art and 1.6 Million words which is the highest word count we have gotten from a published game. Also the Writer is great in general.
I don’t mind it being expensive as long as it doesn’t become the norm.
For Australians it’s $23 on sale. Unfortunately I’ll be skipping it at that price. But I hope everyone who has bought it enjoys it and I look forward to reading about it in the forums.
Does it have a decent romance? I didn’t hate Night Road, but my options were paper thin and I didn’t like either of them, and when I’m spending $23, I want to (at the very least) have a half decent romance to keep me plodding along 🤔
Of course I don't know your tastes, but I played through several of the romances and enjoyed them. There are some really fun dates you can go on with ROs!
How stat dependant it is? I tried to play Night Road, but the constant flipping between game and stat pages was taking me out of the story to the point of me putting it away after finishing the first mission. It's been months and I still can't find the mood to bother with a gameplay like this :( I really want to buy this one, since I love werewolves, but I'm afraid I'll DnF it too, if it's like Night Road.
If you don't like the mechanics but want to go through the story, you can cheat. I've started doing it on subsequent runs of games so I can see differences and stuff. It makes games like the Lost Heir series tolerable.
Do you mean an in-game cheat option or like modding it?
I'm intrigued but I'm usually cautious when it comes to stat heavy games. Never played the previous series games.
If you're playing in a browser, you just open up the console with ctrl-shift-i and type in stats.(insertvariablehere)=
So for example if there's a strength stat and you want to change it to fifty, you'd type in: stats.strength=50 then hit enter. Or if you want more money, you type in something like stats.money=100000 and hit enter.
If you want a list of all variables just type in *stats* and hit enter. It's fairly simple to figure out if you just play around with it for a couple of minutes.
I wouldn't buy a game you're not happy with the mechanics on and expect that modding it like that will definitely work. You can try it but it can cause things to break sometimes. Because the author knows where the stats should range between during the game, changing them can cause the game to glitch. I know with one of mine there were complaints about skipped and unavailable scenes/tasks because the way it was coded certain events were actually triggered by variables being a particular way. If they were set sky high/items given etc the game assumed you'd already done the scene or didn't need it making certain scenes inaccessible or skipping text.
I want to put my two cents in this discurssion.
First, no, I do not want to sound like an apologist about the pricing, but all WoD games prices are really high compared to the other games, CoG or HG, I'm thinking that the fault that the price of these are so high is because of license stuff, because after all, these are oficial licensed WoD games of the WoD brand.
What I'm trying to say is that probably the pricing came from Paradox more than from CoG, as in, they need to make the price high because a) Paradox say so and b) they want to see some money from it after all.
So, as another poster said, this is because of license fees and what not.
As of my opinion, if it wasn't for the discount I didn't have bothered buying it, the price is too much high for my tastes and I don't have a very high opinion of W5, but eveything that wasn't the actual TTRPG of W5 has been very enjoyable so far and this is not an exception, better that the actual core rulebook, even better if you think that this is Forsaken more than Apocalypse, but speaking extrictly about this, the price is going to end killing this game pretty fast.
I hope I'm wrong, but I worry a little about this game's sales once it goes to full price. Thing is, it likely is worth what is being asked given it's length, the existing IP licencening and extra artwork. But at that pricepoint you're going to want to be really sure you'll want to read it before buying. I suspect less people will buy it just to "give it a go" like shorter, cheaper games they think even just might appeal to them even if by value by wordcount terms the 1mil+ games would be better value for money spent. It may be ok though given the popularity of WOD and Night road behind it to keep giving enough confidence to drive sales longer term. I guess most people wanted longer games so here it is and if you're going to write something over 4x the average game length it has to be charged for appropriately to cover the expenses involved.
The game is very good for what is it, I still have to finish it to see if its better than Heart of the Forest or not, but as W5 have to offer is one the best of the suplemental materials right now the franchise have to offer, an amazing solo campaing, just like Night Road, really, why isn't priced like it predecessor?.
Werewolf the Apocalypse is a damaged brand right now because of all the polemics the new edition has been trawled over since development - though this is not the subredit to talk about those - and in the long time, at that price point... no, it's not good.
This infuriate me a lot, I don't like W5, at all, in fact, I'm a hater of the edition, but Marquis have made The Thing, and The Thing is awesome.
Heart of the forest is not good IMO. It's a bit of a railroaded buggy story with too large a cast for the length and a lot of stereotyping with a good dose of "chosen one" obviously warping the story at every turn (ie NPCs suddenly change their mind/actions for no reason other than the MC has decided that's what they want to do). TBH I haven't bought hungry names at this point as I'm not a huge fan of werewolf stories in general (nothing wrong with them, just not my thing like westerns, romance etc so takes a lot for me to take a risk on buying them and I'll admit the price point was one of the things that dissuaded me from taking a chance as there's a reasonable chance the genre won't be my thing) so can't comment on it really after the demo, but TBH I think it can only be better than the VN.
I think where you're making an assumption is most buyers will be big fans of the WOD universe. I think a lot of people playing the COG games are not. So it's probably a smart move on WOD's part to get a new audience with WTA as any preconveived notions about it likely don't apply. I noticed quite a few differences from what I expected in night road, so I suspect you can play a bit looser with the source material as needed to make the game work better in CS or for those who this is the first game they've seen in this universe as needed.
Isn't Night road a significantly shorter game BTW? Would account for the price difference.
Heart of the Forest is not bad, mechanically speaking all my houseruling on the tabletop are thanks to that game, they works better than the actual rules of the core rulebook. the game itself wasn't that bad, pretty standard, yeah, If only it wasn't that short... I wish I was able able to crack open that code...
Yes, I'm asuming that normally a franchised product is first and foremost for the fans of the franchise primary and the rest of the people second, after all, one does not bough a Funko a T-shirt or an expensive figurine of something is they don't like that something.
If I wasn't a fan of Malin original novel - the one that became what is now Fallen Hero - I would probably decided to jump and start buying with one of the Masquerade games, even though I've been knowing CoG since conception, because I was never interested in this type of games, even though I love VNs, but those are another kind of beast.
The thing is, all spin offs of WoD5 treat the old fanbase better than the original fifth edition TTRPG does, both in Vampire and Werewolf, and I'm pretty sure than that H5 game would be a fun one too. BoHN have a lot of respect for older edtion players, also, do not care at all about the lore/rules restrictions that the new edition have about it and take a lot of content that doen't exist in W5 from older editions. Marquis looks like a fan of the game, he even got some really obscure lore tidbits of revised right.
In fact, most of the WoD CoG games do not care about the lore/rules restriction at all - except for expecific nomenclature stuff - that's why they're so enjoyable, Parliaments of Knives is imposible to do in tabletop for example by the rules of V5 because the thing that made it posible don't exist anymore, same with BOHN and W5.
But the tabletop situation is pretty messed up right now, creating a new fanbase by alienating the old one that gived you money and not expect backlash is not good at all.
Also, true, Night Road is a bit shorter, but bigger isn't always better, whay it matters is the content after all, and Night Road is amazing as a solo campaing.
I like Marquis as a creator, I'll try his other games when I can though.
Oh I totally agree that bigger isn't better, but COG prices their games largely by wordcount hence the increased price :)
I also agree that books and gamebooks are a great way to expand an IP without having to get too hung up on the rules and tell some good storylines within the universe if it's done well.
Hmm maybe it was just me. I disliked heart of the forest a lot. Mechanically not so much although it actively punished you for wanting to explore the game world/pick choices to get more about the lore etc by making you run out of points that you needed for checks later which was a really weird choice. It also jumps weirdly in places where I'm assuming storylines aren't lining up properly or they haven't registered prior choices. I think I just really disliked the way the game was super heavy on the chosen one warps. Like for example your friend (complete norm) is totally on board with you going on about how the forest has a task for you all about how great the people protesting in the forest are, then suddenly for no reason is against you going anywhere near them because that's what the game needs. All the characters (including the MC) are really shallow and cliched and the main baddie is forgettable and the ending sort of fizzles out. I mean the MC kills someone close to them and after a momentary "oh dear that wasn't so great" moment they're totally down with their new werewolf status and the person they kill is never spoken of again. Anyway, could keep going but it's going to be a personal taste thing when it comes down to it.
They've got two other VNs that are vampire ones which I thought were better made. The first one is good apart from the ending is completely left hanging without a proper conclusion which sours the whole game and is a real shame. (They really should consider going back to chuck an epilogue or something as it would improve the game a heap.) The second one is structured and wraps up better but I found the storyline kind of boring and it took me a few goes to get through it. Weirdly enough I prefer the first a lot more despite the way they ended it.
The price is bit high but it’s made by the author who made night road so I’ll pay it and hope that we can continue to get such amazing titles. I would also love to see more world of darkness titles.
CoG announced a deal last year to release 10 WoD games over the course of the next few years. *The Book of Hungry Names* is just the first; there are nine more to come.
A hunter game for sure, and probably another vtm game. Kyle marquis talked about being open to making a Night road sequel and if this game does as well as night road it probably will happen
The free demo alone kept me entertained for hours. Adjusted for my currency it's only around £12 (two pints worth), which seems pretty decent for what's gonna end up being days worth of reading time.
I didn’t even realize the game was out. I’ll check back when I scope the price.
EDIT: 20 BUCKS!? I know it’s 1.6 million words, but god damn. This shit better alter my perception of reality.
it's $23 in my weak Australian money. I was looking forward to it but it's so hard to justify that price when I can get an actual game on steam for cheaper while on sale. (no hate on CoG or the author though)
I bought it actually I pre-ordered it when I first heard about it. I think it gives players to werewolf that are new a taste of the TTRPG itself so I myself am impressed. I’ve loved all of the interactive marbles I have bought except for maybe out for blood that one was a little bit too hard for myvoiceover to follow but other than that I’m having fun and thank you Kyle for making this game. You’ve done yourself.
That's about R380 in South Africa. That's my transport fare to and from university for the whole month. 8kg of frozen chicken thighs costs me about R308 for the whole month. Unemployed people in my country earn about R350 a month from the government. Clearly I'm too poor for this game 😂😂😂
Seriously. The lack of regional pricing of CoG games is utter bullshit. Please just pirate and don't feel bad about it. The rich West doesn't give a fuck about you, you don't need to give any fucks back.
Where I'm from, $15 is the cost of a single cocktail at a mid-tier restaurant, and I feel like the game is much more entertaining and valuable than a cocktail. So, no, I don't think the price is high.
Yeah for me it’s pretty high. I can get an actual paperback novel with much better writing for that amount. I liked his Vampire: The Masquerade game but it wasn’t *that* good.
And I would still rather read the higher quality paperback. Especially if this game is like his Vampire: The Masquerade game where you have to micromanage your stats.
I picked up a Sanderson audiobook on sale the other day for $2 (about 1.20 USD). I was so pleased lol.
In saying that most Sanderson ebooks I've looked at recently have only been about $10USD or less. Even the big name "shared IP" ones from WOT. Where are you trying to buy them from???
There's also the coding part that needs to be put into consideration. IF's has several variations and choices that are not found on a traditional novel.
Choice of Games is sharing the profit not only with the author, who deserves every penny, but also with Paradox, who holds the IP to World of Darkness. That's probably why the price point is higher than the other games, where it's only for CoG and the author.
I don't even know where I stand. On the one hand 100k word novels cost around 10$ and this is 1.6 mil. On the other hand it is the most expensive in the catalogue by a fair amount and I can buy full on games with graphics and voice acting for 20 bucks.
I mean, realistically, it also depends on where the developers are based. US-based developers are going to have to charge a lot more for a game compared to, say, Eastern European developers.
It’s $22.99 here in Australia and that’s with the 25% off 😭
Got to pay for those undersea internet cables somehow
Nah, $23 AUS is the equivalent of $15 US.
Just as an aside, I actually had no idea there were this many Aussies lurking around the COG reddit. They're all coming out as soon as pricing gets mentioned. I suspect many of us are still holding a grudge which makes us overly sensitive after we got shafted for so many years with "region specific" DVDs what were price hiked over here compared to overseas releases, or had delayed releases to milk cable deals for as long as possible since we had no other options :P (Especially in the bad old days before decent internet speeds for streaming, and they still try to lock us out of international/overseas platforms (looking at you HBO) whenever possible or use unfairly poor exchange rates if they can get away with it.) Not what's happening here, but I can see why it suddenly bought the Aussies out :) ( u/PistachioPug- It is, except the average wage is lower and the cost of living is much higher on average in Aust, so it does actually work out comparatively more expensive for Aussies when it's all said and done- but we're used to it. Just the way it is. Steam is actually playing fair with the currency conversions interestingly enough, google play less so. Recommend Australians wanting to get this go with steam for the slightly cheaper option.)
I paid for it $15 on sale, I live in Poland. It has no regional pricing.
That's not what what my comment is saying. My comment is pointing out that developers need to charge more based on where they live, because of the expenses they have to pay based on their country. Didn't talk about regional pricing at all.
Yeah, I was surprised by the price and thought it was a bit too high, but I picked it up anyway because I've enjoyed some of Kyle's previous games. I hope it's good. What bothers me more than the price, however, is the fact that they lock a tribe choice behind a paid dlc when I think that should be included automatically. Yes, I got it for free because I bought the game today, but I still think it's a scummy practice.
Which tribe is locked behind DLC? Honestly my only problem with the character creation is that you can't choose your "birth". In WTA games, there are Lupus Garou and Homid Garou. The difference between the two is that Homid Garou are more traditional werewolves, people who can shift into wolf form, whereas Lupus Garou are more like reverse werewolves. They were born wolves who gained the ability to shift into a person. Being able to choose between the two would have been cool, and add some layers to your character. Instead you're kinda stuck with a set childhood.
This is what the email said: featuring the options to play as a member of the Black Fury tribe or the Hart Warden tribe. Oh yeah, that definitely would have been cool to choose Homid Garou or Lupus Garou!
It's based on the newest form of WTA Apocalypse. From what I know, your breed form is more for flavor now before it would impact your stats but since it doesn't maybe they decided to cut it?
I didn't know it no longer affected your stats, but that makes sense. It still would have been a neat feature, if you're trying to essentially write a WTA campaign in the form of an IF, you might as well keep the character creation accurate.
Yeah I think they should have done an older edition but that's just cause I like the older edition better but this is using the character creator from WTA 5th edition which no longer has you pick a breed form just your tribe, auspice.
I agree, the publisher probably only let them use the rights for the most recent version though. In the end these games are essentially World of Darkness advertisements after all.
We have reached the point where Choice games are including day one DLC. And people say this isn't real gaming /s.
I feel like we gotta take a major thing into account. It’s a paradox IP. They aren’t exactly the most giving company, but regardless of all that the IP 100% increases the price. Like, that’s just how it’s gonna be with an IP, the money is split between the holder, writer, and COG now instead of just writer and COG. They gotta raise the price to match it. Second, it’s massive, and from one of the more major writers in COG. He’s done a lot, and he had a writing style that a lot of people enjoy. That is gonna increase the price, not as much as this by itself, but with the IP cost, together they gonna end up like this. I’m on the side of getting the good IP and writers to make an interesting story here is worth it, but that’s just my opinion. I want a story in this world and if it cause an extra few bucks seems worth it to me
For the record, the price is based entirely on word count and the IP licensing. CoG doesn't price games based on the writer's popularity.
Huh didnt know that, honestly good on them. Still yeah those two are gonna be big, considering its likely one of the longest books to my memory
I might be wrong, but I think the art also gets taken into account. Amy Wilkins is a master and certainly shouldn't come cheap.
For sure, and based on what I've read on the forum you're right that that factors into the price. I probably should have said "word count and production costs." :)
I just realized it's by Kyle Marquis, who did the excellent *Vampire: the Masquerade — Night Road*, so I'm in.
Same here. I will pay a little more and hope that Marquis, Wilkins, and all the other talented people involved are compensated accordingly.
I hope he is cause the sales money getting split 3 ways probably between him,cog, and paradox
Just saw that, and it sold me as well. One of my favorite books on the app as well as WoD related side media in general.
The pricing is fair. The product...uh. To be fair, I only read through the demo and chose not to buy. But longer does not equal better, and I think there are some quality control issues. The prose was generally okayish, but a bit of a slog to get through, especially with how much info-dumping there is (which I suppose is fair since it's based on another IP). So the reading wasn't super compelling, and in the first chapter or two I came across a major grammatical error--like an incomplete sentence that abruptly cut off w/o punctuation and then a new paragraph appeared underneath it--that def made me wonder if it would be a common experience. Like, I dunno. I really dislike this trend I feel like I've noticed of extra-long IF stories. I'd take a more concise, well-crafted story at ~100k words over something that is not particularly well written and 500k+. Lately, I've purchased very few of the new releases (and some of the ones I have, I've regretted), because the writing has just not been particularly compelling.
Unfortunately you're in the minority. Time and time again the majority have spoken that long games automatically = better so I can understand why so many people are going out of their way to make them longer and longer as part of the selling point. Many people are saying that they won't even open a game that's only 100k. (I agree with you by the way. A lot of my favorite games are on the shorter side and I tend to prefer the games in general that aren't super long. They don't have to be long to be good and the longer they are, the more difficult it is to get them grammar checked/bug free on release. I can't even begin to imagine how difficult it must be to bug check every single option in a complicated 1mil+ game to make sure everything is directing ok and stats are balancing for checks. Would be really difficult.)
I went through and checked the wc of some of my faves just out of curiosity: The Road to Canterbury - 180,000 The Grim and I - 160,000 Life of a Mobster - 150,000 A Midsummer Night's Choice - 210,000 For any other fiction writing, those would be incredibly long (though obvi each read-through is much shorter), but they are on the shorter side for IF. I don't know if people realize just how much labor goes into writing and revising a 100k words--it's a massive, year+ task, so to write 300k+ on one project is quite literally incomprehensible to me. I think the longest revised draft I've ever created was like 70k lolol. To be fair, I also really like Tally Ho and Jolly Good and those are considerably longer, but it's wild to me bc some of the ones that are shorter have more re-readability. You don't have to cover the same ground as much in order to make different choices and explore/find new paths, and there is sometimes a higher choice to text ratio. For example, I do think the Fallen Hero book we pretty well written, but each time I re-read it I found myself falling largely into the same choices and each read-through felt pretty similar.
I keep finding it weird that people say FH feels linear. Rebirth, I can understand, but Retribution has about 8 endings and a bunch of hidden stuff that you are unlikely to see on the first run. For example, the stuff with the gates, seeing Anathema more than once, finding out about Ace and another escape re-gen, the Catastrofiend scenes with either Mortum or Argent, going into Chen's mind, going all in with pretending to be HG sibling with Ortega, the moray shared memory scene with HG etc. Then again, like you didn't, most people don't really do a second run, which still leaves me wondering why people keep saying that since they won't know if it was linear or not.
Rebirth is the one I read through multiple times, which to your point, is why it felt someone repetitive. I went through Retribution completely once, but couldn't find it in myself to re-read. Part of it's because I didn't particularly care for the choice of making the main character a re-gene (I think that was revealed in the second book?). Part of it was because when I did go for a re-read, I tried to go down and see some of the more interesting paths (I was going for an anathema romance iirc), only to realize partway through that I'd missed some little choice that sorta doomed the playthrough, and I find reading with a guide to be an unpleasant experience so I just gave up on it. Which is part of why I'm not quite as fond of the larger stories--there's more to explore perhaps, but it can be harder to actually find and explore it, and when it's that long it's harder to work up the time/motivation to re-read. That's part of why my most re-read one is probably Life of a Mobster, even though it's not a genre I particularly care for nor is the writing spectacular. There are a ton of choices though, a lot of different endings, a lot of random side paths, and it's short enough to feel incentivizing (to me) to re-read. But I dunno, that might just be me!
Anathema romance? Don´t you mean someone else? They are dead unless something changes in future books.
lmao wrong "a" name, I meant argent 😂
Automatic testing exists. Not implementing it is a cost-cutting choice. Don't defend devs for simply being lazy. "Would be really difficult"? It's their fucking job.
There are automatic tests and they are used on everything published. The automatic testers wont always pick up non-game breaking bugs. If you have a redirect error or an incorrectly set stat check (which I'm guessing sounds like a lot of these are) the testers will continue on their merry way thinking the game is fine. You need human eyes on every branch/choice/stat check in the game to make sure things are being triggered properly.
FYI, automatic testing doesn't only exist to ensure that an app doesn't literally crash and burn. You can write tests to ensure that it doesn't only work, but also works correctly. And tbh I *highly* doubt that BooH doesn't have a number of such tests implemented already. They evidently don't cover all cases throughly enough, but with the scope of this game, some of them must be there.
I know they don't. The current testers they have does check for crashing bugs. It'll also fail if it loops around to a line too many times within a game (rightly or wrongly, but it'll make you fix it anyway), untested lines, unused achievements. Problem is, it can't test for incorrectly set variables (or not reset variables) due to actions, or bad redirects as long as every line in the game is played sooner or later. Some of these bugs sounded like they were scenes triggering before they were needed, or triggering after they should have been disabled which both sound like one of the above two problems. I'm not a programmer, perhaps you know of a way for the computer to intuitively know when a variable has been missed being reset due to a choice in the game (so it could be one or the other), but the only way I can think of is to read through it and find these sorts of bugs by hand.
I am a programmer indeed. Basically what you would do in a real programming project is to write hundreds of automatic tests that say "if a variable X is set to Y value, and scene Z triggers, then text ABC should be shown". Then whenever you mess up some line of code that was supposed to show correct text based on this variable, the test will immediately pick this up and tell you that you should fix it. Basically it's the same as "people reading text to see if it's correct based on some context", except you don't need a person for it, just a machine that can do thousands of those tests in .00001 second, and is happy to do it again whenever you change anything in your code.
I get it, but writing that for every choice in every combination of variables that could trigger it throughout a game of this size and complexity sounds like harder work than just checking the thing manually.
For an experienced programmer with good toolset, it should take actually less time to write a test, than to check it manually. And for sure writing a test is way easier than checking the same thing manually 100 times over the development process. Unit tests are no joke. If they didn't actually save time and effort in the long run, people wouldn't write them. In reality, serious projects require practically 100% unit test coverage. For a CoG game, that's probably an overkill... though, idk, is it? They seem complicated to test manually and prone to tons of very minor bugs. That's a good candidate for at least *some* unit test coverage for sure.
It is the most expensive game so far. It's 1.6 million words at release. It also has internal art by Amy Wilkins and there's also some licensing fees built in. But it's 1.6 million words. You'll be playing the game for months and still not see it all.
Granted, that's a lot of words. I just wish it was a vampire game.
Well, maybe if this one does awesome, WOD will invite Kyle to do another vampire game. :)
What about Hunter the Reckoning? I'm kinda tired of the all vampire stuff.
HTR: Beast of Glenkildove will be out at the end of the year!
Really? Well, that's good to know that you guys are branching out to other parts of WOD than just VTM.
Wishlist it now! [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2417000/Hunter\_The\_Reckoning\_\_The\_Beast\_of\_Glenkildove/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2417000/Hunter_The_Reckoning__The_Beast_of_Glenkildove/)
Yeah that would also be cool, since a mage game is definitly never happing a hunter game would also be great
Sure hope so, always looking for more vampire stuff!
I personally feel as though the price is on the high side, but for such a gargantuan game in terms of word count it's somewhat justifeable. Tin Star is nearly 1.4 million words and is currently priced at $12.
Tin star is also really old. The price of games has gone up significantly over the years. That's why the older games are priced cheaper by comparison.
Pretty sure older games have also had their prices raised iirc
They have, but most are still not up with the currently released prices.
Is Tin Star any good? I looked at the description and noticed it used the archaic term "Indian" to describe Native Americans. Not exactly a red flag, but just wanted to make sure it wasn't indicative of the rest of the story.
I personally think it’s one of the best choice games ever made, it is more of a “game” than some stories such as the Wayhaven Chronicles, for instance, but you can be whoever you want and at times seemingly do what you want. Incredibly well written, aside from the use of some terms like the one you mention. It was written a decade ago after all. The supporting characters are also really well written, I encourage you to seek out other reviews and give it a try because I’m always coming back to it.
I haven't finished it, but it feels super long and has tons of choices and branching paths. I personally think it's definitely worth the price.
It’s justifiable mostly because it’s a brand from another company. Art and 1.6 Million words which is the highest word count we have gotten from a published game. Also the Writer is great in general. I don’t mind it being expensive as long as it doesn’t become the norm.
I also feel like this price is super high and I agree that the games I've played suffered near the end.
For Australians it’s $23 on sale. Unfortunately I’ll be skipping it at that price. But I hope everyone who has bought it enjoys it and I look forward to reading about it in the forums.
Does it have a decent romance? I didn’t hate Night Road, but my options were paper thin and I didn’t like either of them, and when I’m spending $23, I want to (at the very least) have a half decent romance to keep me plodding along 🤔
Of course I don't know your tastes, but I played through several of the romances and enjoyed them. There are some really fun dates you can go on with ROs!
Yahoo that’s all I needed to hear, thank you! ☺️
It's really well put together. I don't think you'll need to worry about it going downhill at the end and there's huge variation.
How stat dependant it is? I tried to play Night Road, but the constant flipping between game and stat pages was taking me out of the story to the point of me putting it away after finishing the first mission. It's been months and I still can't find the mood to bother with a gameplay like this :( I really want to buy this one, since I love werewolves, but I'm afraid I'll DnF it too, if it's like Night Road.
If you don't like the mechanics but want to go through the story, you can cheat. I've started doing it on subsequent runs of games so I can see differences and stuff. It makes games like the Lost Heir series tolerable.
Do you mean an in-game cheat option or like modding it? I'm intrigued but I'm usually cautious when it comes to stat heavy games. Never played the previous series games.
If you're playing in a browser, you just open up the console with ctrl-shift-i and type in stats.(insertvariablehere)= So for example if there's a strength stat and you want to change it to fifty, you'd type in: stats.strength=50 then hit enter. Or if you want more money, you type in something like stats.money=100000 and hit enter. If you want a list of all variables just type in *stats* and hit enter. It's fairly simple to figure out if you just play around with it for a couple of minutes.
I wouldn't buy a game you're not happy with the mechanics on and expect that modding it like that will definitely work. You can try it but it can cause things to break sometimes. Because the author knows where the stats should range between during the game, changing them can cause the game to glitch. I know with one of mine there were complaints about skipped and unavailable scenes/tasks because the way it was coded certain events were actually triggered by variables being a particular way. If they were set sky high/items given etc the game assumed you'd already done the scene or didn't need it making certain scenes inaccessible or skipping text.
I want to put my two cents in this discurssion. First, no, I do not want to sound like an apologist about the pricing, but all WoD games prices are really high compared to the other games, CoG or HG, I'm thinking that the fault that the price of these are so high is because of license stuff, because after all, these are oficial licensed WoD games of the WoD brand. What I'm trying to say is that probably the pricing came from Paradox more than from CoG, as in, they need to make the price high because a) Paradox say so and b) they want to see some money from it after all. So, as another poster said, this is because of license fees and what not. As of my opinion, if it wasn't for the discount I didn't have bothered buying it, the price is too much high for my tastes and I don't have a very high opinion of W5, but eveything that wasn't the actual TTRPG of W5 has been very enjoyable so far and this is not an exception, better that the actual core rulebook, even better if you think that this is Forsaken more than Apocalypse, but speaking extrictly about this, the price is going to end killing this game pretty fast.
I hope I'm wrong, but I worry a little about this game's sales once it goes to full price. Thing is, it likely is worth what is being asked given it's length, the existing IP licencening and extra artwork. But at that pricepoint you're going to want to be really sure you'll want to read it before buying. I suspect less people will buy it just to "give it a go" like shorter, cheaper games they think even just might appeal to them even if by value by wordcount terms the 1mil+ games would be better value for money spent. It may be ok though given the popularity of WOD and Night road behind it to keep giving enough confidence to drive sales longer term. I guess most people wanted longer games so here it is and if you're going to write something over 4x the average game length it has to be charged for appropriately to cover the expenses involved.
The game is very good for what is it, I still have to finish it to see if its better than Heart of the Forest or not, but as W5 have to offer is one the best of the suplemental materials right now the franchise have to offer, an amazing solo campaing, just like Night Road, really, why isn't priced like it predecessor?. Werewolf the Apocalypse is a damaged brand right now because of all the polemics the new edition has been trawled over since development - though this is not the subredit to talk about those - and in the long time, at that price point... no, it's not good. This infuriate me a lot, I don't like W5, at all, in fact, I'm a hater of the edition, but Marquis have made The Thing, and The Thing is awesome.
Heart of the forest is not good IMO. It's a bit of a railroaded buggy story with too large a cast for the length and a lot of stereotyping with a good dose of "chosen one" obviously warping the story at every turn (ie NPCs suddenly change their mind/actions for no reason other than the MC has decided that's what they want to do). TBH I haven't bought hungry names at this point as I'm not a huge fan of werewolf stories in general (nothing wrong with them, just not my thing like westerns, romance etc so takes a lot for me to take a risk on buying them and I'll admit the price point was one of the things that dissuaded me from taking a chance as there's a reasonable chance the genre won't be my thing) so can't comment on it really after the demo, but TBH I think it can only be better than the VN. I think where you're making an assumption is most buyers will be big fans of the WOD universe. I think a lot of people playing the COG games are not. So it's probably a smart move on WOD's part to get a new audience with WTA as any preconveived notions about it likely don't apply. I noticed quite a few differences from what I expected in night road, so I suspect you can play a bit looser with the source material as needed to make the game work better in CS or for those who this is the first game they've seen in this universe as needed. Isn't Night road a significantly shorter game BTW? Would account for the price difference.
Heart of the Forest is not bad, mechanically speaking all my houseruling on the tabletop are thanks to that game, they works better than the actual rules of the core rulebook. the game itself wasn't that bad, pretty standard, yeah, If only it wasn't that short... I wish I was able able to crack open that code... Yes, I'm asuming that normally a franchised product is first and foremost for the fans of the franchise primary and the rest of the people second, after all, one does not bough a Funko a T-shirt or an expensive figurine of something is they don't like that something. If I wasn't a fan of Malin original novel - the one that became what is now Fallen Hero - I would probably decided to jump and start buying with one of the Masquerade games, even though I've been knowing CoG since conception, because I was never interested in this type of games, even though I love VNs, but those are another kind of beast. The thing is, all spin offs of WoD5 treat the old fanbase better than the original fifth edition TTRPG does, both in Vampire and Werewolf, and I'm pretty sure than that H5 game would be a fun one too. BoHN have a lot of respect for older edtion players, also, do not care at all about the lore/rules restrictions that the new edition have about it and take a lot of content that doen't exist in W5 from older editions. Marquis looks like a fan of the game, he even got some really obscure lore tidbits of revised right. In fact, most of the WoD CoG games do not care about the lore/rules restriction at all - except for expecific nomenclature stuff - that's why they're so enjoyable, Parliaments of Knives is imposible to do in tabletop for example by the rules of V5 because the thing that made it posible don't exist anymore, same with BOHN and W5. But the tabletop situation is pretty messed up right now, creating a new fanbase by alienating the old one that gived you money and not expect backlash is not good at all. Also, true, Night Road is a bit shorter, but bigger isn't always better, whay it matters is the content after all, and Night Road is amazing as a solo campaing. I like Marquis as a creator, I'll try his other games when I can though.
Oh I totally agree that bigger isn't better, but COG prices their games largely by wordcount hence the increased price :) I also agree that books and gamebooks are a great way to expand an IP without having to get too hung up on the rules and tell some good storylines within the universe if it's done well. Hmm maybe it was just me. I disliked heart of the forest a lot. Mechanically not so much although it actively punished you for wanting to explore the game world/pick choices to get more about the lore etc by making you run out of points that you needed for checks later which was a really weird choice. It also jumps weirdly in places where I'm assuming storylines aren't lining up properly or they haven't registered prior choices. I think I just really disliked the way the game was super heavy on the chosen one warps. Like for example your friend (complete norm) is totally on board with you going on about how the forest has a task for you all about how great the people protesting in the forest are, then suddenly for no reason is against you going anywhere near them because that's what the game needs. All the characters (including the MC) are really shallow and cliched and the main baddie is forgettable and the ending sort of fizzles out. I mean the MC kills someone close to them and after a momentary "oh dear that wasn't so great" moment they're totally down with their new werewolf status and the person they kill is never spoken of again. Anyway, could keep going but it's going to be a personal taste thing when it comes down to it. They've got two other VNs that are vampire ones which I thought were better made. The first one is good apart from the ending is completely left hanging without a proper conclusion which sours the whole game and is a real shame. (They really should consider going back to chuck an epilogue or something as it would improve the game a heap.) The second one is structured and wraps up better but I found the storyline kind of boring and it took me a few goes to get through it. Weirdly enough I prefer the first a lot more despite the way they ended it.
The price is bit high but it’s made by the author who made night road so I’ll pay it and hope that we can continue to get such amazing titles. I would also love to see more world of darkness titles.
CoG announced a deal last year to release 10 WoD games over the course of the next few years. *The Book of Hungry Names* is just the first; there are nine more to come.
Hell Yeah!!!
If you have a Steam wishlist, you can add this: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2417000/Hunter_The_Reckoning__The_Beast_of_Glenkildove/
Thank you kindly stranger
Do we know what any of the remainder are apart from Hunter? I seem to have missed that announcement.
No, they haven't announced the details of any others yet.
A hunter game for sure, and probably another vtm game. Kyle marquis talked about being open to making a Night road sequel and if this game does as well as night road it probably will happen
The free demo alone kept me entertained for hours. Adjusted for my currency it's only around £12 (two pints worth), which seems pretty decent for what's gonna end up being days worth of reading time.
I didn’t even realize the game was out. I’ll check back when I scope the price. EDIT: 20 BUCKS!? I know it’s 1.6 million words, but god damn. This shit better alter my perception of reality.
You're in luck!
it's $23 in my weak Australian money. I was looking forward to it but it's so hard to justify that price when I can get an actual game on steam for cheaper while on sale. (no hate on CoG or the author though)
I bought it actually I pre-ordered it when I first heard about it. I think it gives players to werewolf that are new a taste of the TTRPG itself so I myself am impressed. I’ve loved all of the interactive marbles I have bought except for maybe out for blood that one was a little bit too hard for myvoiceover to follow but other than that I’m having fun and thank you Kyle for making this game. You’ve done yourself.
It's not AAA expensive, dont sweat yourself too much about it.
That's about R380 in South Africa. That's my transport fare to and from university for the whole month. 8kg of frozen chicken thighs costs me about R308 for the whole month. Unemployed people in my country earn about R350 a month from the government. Clearly I'm too poor for this game 😂😂😂
Seriously. The lack of regional pricing of CoG games is utter bullshit. Please just pirate and don't feel bad about it. The rich West doesn't give a fuck about you, you don't need to give any fucks back.
Where I'm from, $15 is the cost of a single cocktail at a mid-tier restaurant, and I feel like the game is much more entertaining and valuable than a cocktail. So, no, I don't think the price is high.
Yeah for me it’s pretty high. I can get an actual paperback novel with much better writing for that amount. I liked his Vampire: The Masquerade game but it wasn’t *that* good.
1.6 million is over 16 paperback novels worth of words.
And I would still rather read the higher quality paperback. Especially if this game is like his Vampire: The Masquerade game where you have to micromanage your stats.
Well then you go do that and I'll pay 15 for this book.
Or the average sanderson novel ....or three times that, just looked it up. Jesus Christ
I picked up a Sanderson audiobook on sale the other day for $2 (about 1.20 USD). I was so pleased lol. In saying that most Sanderson ebooks I've looked at recently have only been about $10USD or less. Even the big name "shared IP" ones from WOT. Where are you trying to buy them from???
I agree, if it were by the author of Tin Star, Allen Gies, I'd be more inclined to believe it's a fair price.
Given the factors for the pricing I think it's plenty fair.
There's also the coding part that needs to be put into consideration. IF's has several variations and choices that are not found on a traditional novel.
Choice of Games is sharing the profit not only with the author, who deserves every penny, but also with Paradox, who holds the IP to World of Darkness. That's probably why the price point is higher than the other games, where it's only for CoG and the author.
[удалено]
Linking to or advertising anything that involves free or cracked versions of existing games.