Stories that left you disappointed for a reason

[Mjölna]

The Infamous author seems to be dipping more and more into the 'inserting thoughts into player's head' territory, which used to be a big no-no in IF writing. And I think it does indeed feel wordy because there is just so much rambling and angsting and brooding about how everything is so bad and horrible all the time. Not to mention the forced encounters, and the MC feels increasingly like a bumbling idiot as well.

I still like the story, but man does it have its set of problems.

 

[seneya]

It's very clear that he is the author's favourite and Serax is an afterthought

Funny cause I felt like Serax has much more of a personality than Valdricht does.
On the other hand, might be that because he's not the favorite, the author doesn't feel the need to make him into the perfect lover trope, so he gets to have an actual character.

'inserting thoughts into player's head' territory

It wouldn't have been so bad if no options existed that contradict the narrative.
There's an option to say you don't care about Seven. You'll still feel down because of Seven.
There's an option to not care about your family. You'll still be down because of your family.
idk if being accepting of or optimistic about your situation changes the narrative where the MC keeps angsting over the drama fame brings, but I wouldn't be surprised if not
It's like ACoAaF, where you can choose to be bitter and vengeful, but will flip to being all "" when the game wants you to anyway.
Either adjust the narrative, or don't give options that contradict it.

 

[Zoklitsos]

As a funny aside, thanks to all the people who complain about lazy writers here, I returned to writing today. Tnx guys, keep ranting

Lol same here, not only does this thread keep me kinda motivated, but also keeps me grounded in reality since I want to work on my own IF one day and I don't want to do any of the dumb **** a lot of authors and stories mentioned in this thread do

Infamous is seriously making me reconsider the idea that more words = good. It's just... so... wordy... and I feel like I skipped like half of the last update.

Omg, I'm so glad I finally found someone who shares the same opinion. I've expressed a similar sentiment in the Hosted Games subreddit a couple of times and I got absolutely crucified for it lmao. I'm pretty tired of the huge Infamous circlejerk in every single IF space except this one thankfully where opinions are more varied. I used to enjoy Infamous quite a lot since reality TV IFs are a huge guilty pleasure for me (RIP Body Count and Odessa Dating Games ) and I loved the concept of a reality IF being crossed with a music/band IF, but lately I've found my enjoyment of it dropping. When I heard news about the new chapter release, I didn't even feel excited anymore. Like, I'm still gonna read it at some point, I'm not gonna drop it quite yet since it's still entertaining enough (though with every chapter there's been more and more issues popping up for me), but with previous chapters I immediately ran to the demo, I was SEATED lol, now I just can't be that bothered tbh. I also can't be bothered to read the overload of POVs and side stories anymore even though they all get immediately leaked here lmao, there's just so many of them and a lot of them aren't even canon which is very meh to me.

Another thing I got crucified for in the Hosted Games subreddit is that I don't have much faith Infamous will be finished. I think people really need a reality check because while yeah, Amy does write a ton and quickly, a lot of that is side content. I mean if you look at the releases so far, she's averaged 1 chapter per year. Also, didn't she say last year after the release of the prev chapter that she hopes to get this new chapter out BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR?? Cue almost a year later and... she's only now releasing it. She wants the story to be 20 chapters... which means that unless she doubles her writing speed to at least 2 chapters per year (and that's the minimum), it will take literally 20 YEARS FOR THE GAME TO BE FINISHED Okay more like 15 since it's on chapter 5 or something now I think? But the point stands lmao.

My opinion of IF lengths in general has really made a 180, because just 2-3 years ago I used to think the more words it is, the better. But these days I just feel like there's such a thing as too many words and too much variation (another example of this is Wayfarer). Like if it was a team of people working on such massive games then yeah it would be feasible. But some of these authors are way too ambitious and the plans they have just are not realistic for a single person to do unless they wanna work on the same game for like 10 years lmao. Which I mean some of them will probably be happy to if they can keep milking patreon cash out of it but I digress Atp I just think it's better to have a shorter, but FINISHED IF where you make some compromises and cut some stuff, railroad the player if needed (which is inevitable anyway, no matter how much freedom you give the player) and reduce the amount of variation to a more reasonable degree, rather than having a massive, never-ending WIP with a ridiculous amount of variation that makes it virtually impossible to finish. Like it's still possible to make a good IF without it being a morbillion words long and having 57485748 variations for every single little thing....

The name Valdricht keeps reminding me of... Aldrich the Devourer (of Gods). Whelp. Great association for an RO.

Lmao you're not the only one, I'm a huge fan of FromSoftware's games and I made same association, it was all I could think about when playing the game

 

[bosslady]

I wonder if it would help if people would start seeing the Infamous MC the same as the Whiskey 4 one, semi set, because its clear whatever you say, MC is still gonna care about Seven and their family.
Also, I never really liked Whiskey 4 because every dialogue option was a different flavor of sarcasm and there was little to no romance. Correct me if I'm wrong, since I read it a long time ago, but it is true that Ulysses was the only RO? With the other two agents becoming hookups?

 

[God]

Lol same here, not only does this thread keep me kinda motivated, but also keeps me grounded in reality since I want to work on my own IF one day and I don't want to do any of the dumb **** a lot of authors and stories mentioned in this thread do



Omg, I'm so glad I finally found someone who shares the same opinion. I've expressed a similar sentiment in the Hosted Games subreddit a couple of times and I got absolutely crucified for it lmao. I'm pretty tired of the huge Infamous circlejerk in every single IF space except this one thankfully where opinions are more varied. I used to enjoy Infamous quite a lot since reality TV IFs are a huge guilty pleasure for me (RIP Body Count and Odessa Dating Games ) and I loved the concept of a reality IF being crossed with a music/band IF, but lately I've found my enjoyment of it dropping. When I heard news about the new chapter release, I didn't even feel excited anymore. Like, I'm still gonna read it at some point, I'm not gonna drop it quite yet since it's still entertaining enough (though with every chapter there's been more and more issues popping up for me), but with previous chapters I immediately ran to the demo, I was SEATED lol, now I just can't be that bothered tbh. I also can't be bothered to read the overload of POVs and side stories anymore even though they all get immediately leaked here lmao, there's just so many of them and a lot of them aren't even canon which is very meh to me.

Another thing I got crucified for in the Hosted Games subreddit is that I don't have much faith Infamous will be finished. I think people really need a reality check because while yeah, Amy does write a ton and quickly, a lot of that is side content. I mean if you look at the releases so far, she's averaged 1 chapter per year. Also, didn't she say last year after the release of the prev chapter that she hopes to get this new chapter out BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR?? Cue almost a year later and... she's only now releasing it. She wants the story to be 20 chapters... which means that unless she doubles her writing speed to at least 2 chapters per year (and that's the minimum), it will take literally 20 YEARS FOR THE GAME TO BE FINISHED Okay more like 15 since it's on chapter 5 or something now I think? But the point stands lmao.

My opinion of IF lengths in general has really made a 180, because just 2-3 years ago I used to think the more words it is, the better. But these days I just feel like there's such a thing as too many words and too much variation (another example of this is Wayfarer). Like if it was a team of people working on such massive games then yeah it would be feasible. But some of these authors are way too ambitious and the plans they have just are not realistic for a single person to do unless they wanna work on the same game for like 10 years lmao. Which I mean some of them will probably be happy to if they can keep milking patreon cash out of it but I digress Atp I just think it's better to have a shorter, but FINISHED IF where you make some compromises and cut some stuff, railroad the player if needed (which is inevitable anyway, no matter how much freedom you give the player) and reduce the amount of variation to a more reasonable degree, rather than having a massive, never-ending WIP with a ridiculous amount of variation that makes it virtually impossible to finish. Like it's still possible to make a good IF without it being a morbillion words long and having 57485748 variations for every single little thing....



Lmao you're not the only one, I'm a huge fan of FromSoftware's games and I made same association, it was all I could think about when playing the game

Yeah don’t have an opinion on the Reddit it’s a hivemind over there. Well they turned on Aura Clash last time I checked.

 

[God]

I wonder if it would help if people would start seeing the Infamous MC the same as the Whiskey 4 one, semi set, because its clear whatever you say, MC is still gonna care about Seven and their family.
Also, I never really liked Whiskey 4 because every dialogue option was a different flavor of sarcasm and there was little to no romance. Correct me if I'm wrong, since I read it a long time ago, but it is true that Ulysses was the only RO? With the other two agents becoming hookups?

This is what I love seeing tbh so many different opinions. One stands above all I notice Romance sells. Never would’ve expected no romance would put so many people off of a game. I think it’s because I originally didn’t come to the IF space with romance in mind so idrc. I prefer having more control over the MC than romance tbh. So my breaking point in a game is getting railroaded.

 

[Leomiz]

Dragon Racer stands as my all-time most hated story in CoG/HG. The "ending" is fine, but the sequel bait where your RO gets killed and the b*tch Nyx's (or whatever the f*ck her name is) attitude at the end really made me root for a sequel...so I could feed her to my dragon. Unfortunately, that didn't end up happening.

Unsupervised. Not a fan of the ending as well. Another sequel-bait where a closed-off ending would've been satisfying by itself.

Any story where the endings were clearly rushed. It's one thing to have a bombastic ending, but I feel more and more stories aren't even trying to build up to the climax any more and just creates an upset to have some kind of "ending," even if it came out of the left field.

 

[northernlight]

the author wants to write an actual novel then an IF

Long time lurker. Came out of hiding because this is exactly my sentiment and ch.4 only cemented it.
I read it, it was ok, not her best but fun enough, but it was a slog to go through. Some authors forget about replayability with these overly wordy IFs. Infamous in particular can be wall after wall of text. While the general consensus seems to be “more content yeah!,” I find a good chunk of it unnecessary.

The Infamous author seems to be dipping more and more into the 'inserting thoughts into player's head' territory

This too. I’d rather have a predetermined MC than be given choices that will be completely disregarded.

 

[Gone_Dead]

At this point all I'm hoping for in infamous is for it to end. The only thing I'm interested in that story is for the MC to show the finger to his bandmates, the RO's and make it big anyway. I happened to like Oriana but the author had to insert drama there too. None of the relevant RO's are interesting at this point, all are either drowning in angst or don't have enough content. Apparently obnoxious assholes are what people like.

 

[northernlight]

None of the relevant RO's are interesting at this point

I think there are too many ROs, and the quality of each romance is starting to suffer because of it. Each one needs their moment in every chapter, which creates a loop of drama that feels repetitive and forced. We have 6 main ROs, a poly route, and 4 sub-ROs… well, 3 so far, since that last sub-RO, LA, was there for like 3 seconds (if I were the author, I’d just drop it).

G, O, and August are progressing fine imo, their romance is well paced. Seven, idk, up to ch. 3, I thought we were heading somewhere, but in ch. 4 it felt like going back to square one. That endless whiplash is so bizarre to me but people are into that.

RIP Seb and Vic, their romance feel like an afterthought.

 

[realman]

I think there are too many ROs, and the quality of each romance is starting to suffer because of it. Each one needs their moment in every chapter, which creates a loop of drama that feels repetitive and forced. We have 6 main ROs, a poly route, and 4 sub-ROs… well, 3 so far, since that last sub-RO, LA, was there for like 3 seconds (if I were the author, I’d just drop it).

G, O, and August are progressing fine imo, their romance is well paced. Seven, idk, up to ch. 3, I thought we were heading somewhere, but in ch. 4 it felt like going back to square one. That endless whiplash is so bizarre to me but people are into that.

RIP Seb and Vic, their romance feel like an afterthought.

As someone who read infamous ch4 because of too much free time, tbh I think Amy should've just made sebastian a sub-RO, or remove him altogether. I think he's supposed to be the fresh air after interacting with all of the show cast or whatever, but it doesn't even feel that way because there's always some bullshit drama seeping through or his daughter ruining the moment.
Not to mention that he appears out of nowhere every so often?? It feels so off and forced, I geniuenly believe the story could benefit from having him removed. He doesn't contribute anything to the story, not even as a stress relief character.

Dakota, LA, Eleanor and August are all ROs that could easily be removed without the story changing at all. August is apparently the author's favourite but it sure as hell doesn't feel that way, even Blake has more relevance than them and Blake is a sub-RO.

I think everyone knows that Amy bit off more than she can chew with this massive IF, while apparently working on another IF (??) at the same time. It's impressive that she spits out so much content but she's bound to burn out at some point. No way she can keep this pace for the next 10 years until the book's going to be finished

 

[seneya]

Tbh I feel like having so many ROs is already starting to drag the story down
It's either forced encounters that add to the text bloat, or they barely exist

 

[xeroxo]

Has anyone read Specters of the Deep? It's a long WIP by the author of Stars Arisen, and that should have been my first clue that I wasn't going to like it (Side note: why do most of the CoG and Heart's Choice games feel so bland? There's no personality in them and even the characters are extremely uninteresting).

Anyway, I've played it before and didn't like it because I wanted to play the reluctant hero risen from the dead, but somehow I forgot that. Replayed it again and struggled to get to the end. None of the supposed ROs are likeable except Cecilia, who is the only one that sympathises with the PC and understands them somewhat. The rest just order you around, and even if you say you don't want to do something they just smile or frown (especially that useless king, who acts like the PC should be falling over themself to help the country they died for and dislikes it when you say otherwise) and make you do it anyway. So much for player agency.

 

[zeeya]

Gpp, You're not alone for sure . Disini pasti ada aja org indo cma ya karna ini komunitas internasional, ga pada keliatan indonya wkwk

Hadirr wkwkk started from 2017 otome trus move ke interactive fiction and now here we aree

 

[Vanya]

To the pathetic MCs you can add the one from Lost in your eyes. It seems like you can play badass, but then you are forced to grovel and blush in front of the healer. I would understand if it was optional if someone likes that kind of content, but I wanted to beat the **** out of that son of a *****, not cower and apologize!
There's nothing I hate more than being forced to play a submissive wimp because the author has some fantasy about how that RO will be dominant and commanding - I don't care, I want to turn them into a bleeding and begging pile. If for plot reasons they can't be killed then give any intimidating option that will actually have an effect and fit MC's personality. This supposed to be interactive fiction.

Every demo I've checked lately is worse than the last one I can list games that I like almost 10/10 on the fingers of one hand. But reading the same things over and over gets tiring after a while...

Long time lurker here but I needed to come out here and say something because I read Lost in your eyes for the fist time today and I really can't stand John/Elizabeth or whatever their name is. No matter what I do MC always blushes around them, can't be rude with them, and the worst thing is that MC always has to do everything they want no matter what! It's so frustrating to the point I had to skip all their content. Also I hate how the author made them flirt with Blaine (wich was my RO) and made Blaine blush and we can't even be mad at it, our only response is whatever because of course the two can end up together if we don't romance them and they're also a poly choice apparently but the author doesn't even care about our feelings if we're romancing just one of them.

I don't usually have a problem with submissive MCs but I need to be the one making that choice, and if I'm playing an intimidating and stoic MC I want the text to reflect that not turn into a blushing mess just because they're the author's favorite, wich made me really uncomfortable because when the RO was presented I chose they were too old for my taste and surprise surprise, the text read something like you blush when you look at them, or whatever! No I didn't, I explicitly said they're too old for me but ok, act like my MC is attracted to them and make me even more uncomfortable I don't care anymore! Ugh!

 

[Re336]

because of course the two can end up together if we don't romance them and they're also a poly choice apparently but the author doesn't even care about our feelings if we're romancing just one of them.

Didn't Vale also have a crush on Blaine based on that one side story? I don't know if it's still out there somewhere, this whole IF feels like a fever dream to me actually.
This IF feels very trope-y to me. John is the alpha daddy type that turns everyone into a blushing mess. No matter your personality.
Meanwhile Blaine is too submissive, MC always act too dominant around them.
I might be remembering things wrong tho since I dropped this IF quite some time ago.
I don't think the author takes the story too seriously either considering the choices we can choose lol. No matter the choice, somehow the author always makes it sound somewhat pervy/sexual

 

[SasariRomanii]

Didn't Vale also have a crush on Blaine based on that one side story? I don't know if it's still out there somewhere, this whole IF feels like a fever dream to me actually.
This IF feels very trope-y to me. John is the alpha daddy type that turns everyone into a blushing mess. No matter your personality.
Meanwhile Blaine is too submissive, MC always act too dominant around them.
I might be remembering things wrong tho since I dropped this IF quite some time ago.
I don't think the author takes the story too seriously either considering the choices we can choose lol. No matter the choice, somehow the author always makes it sound somewhat pervy/sexual

Isn't this author also the one who writes an IF titled Femboy Dating Simulator?

I read a bit and yeah the writing's so messy it kinda makes me doubt reality. It's a trashy dumpsterfire that isn't even fun, the author I think is trying to make WTF jokey unserious spicy IFs but so far they're just... weirdly gross and boring? I know there isn't a specifically gross thing that happens in the story, but that's just how it feels. Guess it's just the way the author describes stuff, or the way the characters are drawn (good drawing skill tho)

 

[Vanya]

Didn't Vale also have a crush on Blaine based on that one side story? I don't know if it's still out there somewhere, this whole IF feels like a fever dream to me actually.
This IF feels very trope-y to me. John is the alpha daddy type that turns everyone into a blushing mess. No matter your personality.
Meanwhile Blaine is too submissive, MC always act too dominant around them.
I might be remembering things wrong tho since I dropped this IF quite some time ago.
I don't think the author takes the story too seriously either considering the choices we can choose lol. No matter the choice, somehow the author always makes it sound somewhat pervy/sexual

What side story? You know what I don't even wanna know. All this wip is just a big mess!
Omg I forgot about Vale and their homophobic comments if they're the same gender as you. But at least Blaine says they don't like them, if I remember right, at the end I wasn't really paying attention anymore.
I think one of the biggest problems is that the author thought about this big poly with all the RO that's why they're so trope-y, everyone needs to have a role in the relashionship I guess Also I was on their tumblr and yeah, author confirmed John will have a father figure in the poly, and that's just uncomfortable to me, I don'teven like poly, so why can't everyone leave me and my boyfriend alone, it's just too frustrating! Authors need to stop trying to push all the RO together (as a poly or just relashionships) before we make a choice or without the reader's imput, that's one of my biggest problems with IFs these days, boring stories and boring RO who seem like they're more into eachother than into MC
About the pervy things yeah, even what could have been a cute picnic date was turned into a sexual thing and idk it's just uncomfortable to me (especially because I find food extremely unsexy).

weirdly gross and boring? I know there isn't a specifically gross thing that happens in the story, but that's just how it feels.

That's why I keep saying I feel uncomfortable (I feel like I keep repeating myself but ) I guess I'll just quit this wip for good because it's not even a fun read, especially with the lack of options regarding everything (but especially the RO because even that part is not funny to me)

 

[God]

Shoutout to The Abyssal author, seriously he’s perfected his craft. I remember being so hyped about the story, and then he just made a rewrite then disappeared. Comes a drops a few Patreon posts which is great work dangling the update over their heads to keep them subbed. Knows exactly what they are doing.

 

[BiscuitB]

Shoutout to The Abyssal author, seriously he’s perfected his craft. I remember being so hyped about the story, and then he just made a rewrite then disappeared. Comes a drops a few Patreon posts which is great work dangling the update over their heads to keep them subbed. Knows exactly what they are doing.

Yep will be gone for a couple of more months. no update on their rewrite, the title that made them popular in the first place and will rake in about £300 per month in patreon (from what I can see on their page)
*
Another one those was Love & Leases which I used to read, went off due to family issue and would be away, nothing since on their tumblr but making a mint on Patreon