Hello all.

Episode 6 of the Wrong Way Go Back series is ready for kind souls to help review.

Prospective reviewers should:
1) be aware that getting reading the gamebook first on paper will alter their experience of an online version,
2) be aware that in order to be helpful, detailed comments are required. This means identifying errors, highlighting poor continuity, and general feedback about the difficulty level,
3) have time to actually do the review. As a guide it shouldn't drag on past a week. This means being able to commit to several hours of work.

Sorry if this seems demanding, but sometimes people agree, then I never hear from them again, or they send feedback of the like: "Yeah, it was good."

Those interested please email me at: ff_stories (at) hotmail.com
(Al, if you would like to help again, you can contact me though my personal email)

Thanks

GoldFish
Fri May 14 02:25:10 2010

Hey Ulysses,

Whats ur new gamebook?

Ulysses
Mon May 17 00:04:20 2010

Goldfish 9and anybody else who is interested):

Episode 6 of the Wrong Way Go Back saga has been submitted to this site. The webmaster is very busy at the moment and will adapt it for online play when he has time.

Episode 7 is perhaps 50% complete, but is a relatively long episode, expected to come in at between 300 and 400 references.

Episode 8 has been conceptualised and the introductory references written.

Episode 9 (Honeymoon on Titan) has likewise been conceptualised with a lot of the setup written.

My other gamebook projects are on hold while I work on conventional projects that I would ultimately like to see published. I will continue the other gamebooks after I finish the WWGB saga.

ffproject
Sun Jun 6 09:18:34 2010

The Dead World

It was supposed to be an uneventful trip back to Amorphonon 12, but of course something had to go wrong. Your ship has crashed on an arid world, amidst the remains of a once-great civilisation. What happened to them? Not that it really matters. The rescue ship will be here in 3 days, so there is no need to explore the ruins. I mean, something might happen to you...

The sixth episode in Ulysses Ai's series is now ready for online play.

binki
Mon Jun 7 09:08:13 2010

I wonder does the ending with

SPOILER

END SPOILER

count as successful?

Jordan
Mon Jun 7 09:26:11 2010

That's the ending I got, as well. I doubt it counts as the successful ending though, only because it was easily attained. Ulysses prefers near impossible endings. *Smile.* Great game as always, Ulysses. I lookk forward to exploring further.

Ulysses
Mon Jun 7 10:21:46 2010

Binki and Jordan:

That's it. There's only one successful ending. So congrats.

Maybe I should also point out that there are 125 different ways to reach that ending, and so the key thing is not reaching the end, but what you gain on the way...

William Corgan
Wed Jun 9 12:21:56 2010

"the key thing is not reaching the end, but what you gain on the way..."

A truth for all game books and novels methinks - but mere brilliance to write with that as a driving concept!

Ulysses
Wed Jun 9 14:13:35 2010

William: Thanks

A little more detail:

SPOILER

END SPOILER

This episode very much works as part of the series where you play through with the same character. For those who don't know how to do this, start with Wrong Way Go Back. Once you reach the successful end there will be a link that says 'Continue' instead of 'THE END'. Click this and you will begin Planet of the Spiders with the same character. During that adventure it is possible to gain a bonus to the stat of your choice if you can remember something from the first episode. At the end you can click 'Continue' again to go on to The Golden Crate. In this episode you can gain another bonus to the stat of your choice if you remember something from Episode 2, and can also buy training in weapons which give you Attack Strength bonuses in combat. Reaching the succesful end of The Golden Crate lets you 'Continue' into The Hypertrout. During that little adventure you can receive a boost to your STAMINA, and gain some lasersword training. Surviving will let you continue on to the next episode, but there is one ending where you gain a useful item. Onto Episode 5, if you managed to get the stamina bonus in the previous episode, then Contractual Obligation has a secret area you can access to gain a bonus to the stat of your choice. Reaching the successful end will finally let you 'Continue' into The Dead World with the aforementioned stuff in the spoiler box. At the end of this episode, it just says 'THE END' When you reach that page, save it as a Bookmark or in Favourites. Then later when Epiosde 7 is released. Go back to the saved page and you will find a 'Continue' link. As you can see, there are numerous opportunities to gain stat bonues and weapon bonuses if you play the series as a series. Otherwise, the bonuses gained in The Dead World are largely useless as there are no great challenges in Episode 6. But for epiosdes 7 and 8...you'd better be ready... (In other words: Mwahahaha)

Ulysses
Tue Jul 20 22:51:14 2010

Hello all.

Since there's not much discussion going on at the moment, may I ask for people's experiences of The Dead World? Has anyone found any of the major bonuses? Any feedback in general?

(P.S. An update on Episode 7: I've just had to expand to 400 references... it will still be a while coming.)

binki
Fri Jul 23 06:40:35 2010

Hello Ulysses.
First of all, I must thank you for the whole serie of adventures.
In The Dead World I have found some number of bonuses, don't know which ones are major. I prefer to get golden sword and Skill bonuses.

A small bit of disappointment was a character inability to prevent mutiny.

Ulysses
Sun Jul 25 04:30:56 2010

Hi Binki, thanks for your comments.

I wanted to have the mutiny carry through to show how far people will go in a desperate situation, then have that contrasted against normality when it is suddenly reimposed; that is: when the rescue ship arrives as promised and suddenly everything they did to survive is shown to be unjustified.
While the WWGB series is mostly about humour and is not trying to make any great statements about the human condition, in this adventure I added a lot more descriptive language and of course the mutiny to add a new dimension to a story where otherwise not much happens. There is of course the back story of what happened on the planet and why the trap was built in the first place, but that is never revealed in full. The key thing I wanted to show was desolation, and what arises from the human heart when all the distractions and pretences of society are removed. It's then we find out who we are. The main character in this adventure is undergoing transformation after all, and this adventure is a step in that process

Aiken
Mon Jul 26 13:08:19 2010

Ulysses,

I have completed The Dead World a few times. I enjoyed it and it makes a fun bonus round before the next major installment. The bonuses I've found are as follows:

SPOILER

END SPOILER

Hopefully my enseign has some chance of survival in part 7!

Thanks again for a great series.

Snobbie
Mon Jul 26 16:50:12 2010

Ulysses You should be a bookwriter.... I'll check what you worte and made.

Ulysses
Mon Jul 26 23:32:15 2010

Aiken:

Glad you enjoyed it.
Don't be too concerned about what items you have obtained. Items are only carried between gamebooks by exception. From The Dead World there is only one item that will be carried through to Episode 7.

ryan97
Wed Nov 10 00:56:30 2010

well, I went ahead in the series seperately and I must say, I like ht and co because of how you need to do things in a spacific order in ht, and you have to click use so menny times
btw, in the dead world

SPOILER

END SPOILER

Ulysses
Wed Nov 10 01:51:32 2010

Ryan:

SPOILER

END SPOILER

Aiken
Wed Jan 19 10:30:17 2011

Ulysses-Some ideas to make your next "impossibly difficult" gamebook suitably hard:

(a) Combats that must be lost in order to progress;
(b) Items that are very useful but which prevent you from getting vital plot tokens (but you'll never know it);
(c) Endurance must be < 10 in order to elicit the sympathy of a vital NPC (but you'll never know it);
(d) Luck must be exactly 7 when you get to reference 24;
(e) Important information coded using cyphers (not just COH east cyphers, real cyphers); and
(f) Said information is 50% completely misleading, 50% absolutely essential.

Ulysses
Wed Jan 19 14:33:54 2011

Aiken.

Thanks for the suggestions, particularly (d).

I've broken my formula with Episode 7, which is approaching 500 references. The episodes were supposed to be short, which meant that being difficult wasn't so bad. I don't think I can justify extreme difficulty in something 500 refs long. That said, most of refs are to manage technical issues related to multiple visits to sites, etc.
Anyway, there are still a few snags to get past.

Aiken
Wed Jan 19 15:18:46 2011

I must admit that I'm slightly releived. Anyway, good luck- I'm looking forward to it a great deal.

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