"19. Try not to go overboard with the bad endings? That's not to say a story should be all unicorns and sunshines with no conflicts whatsoever, but I don't want to play a game all the way through only to feel completely miserable at the end."
Yeah, f*uck you Echo, Adastra and Smoke Room!
But honestly it was hard to emotionally recover from that endings, and I play games to escape hardships of real live, not to make me feel like shit, because character I was playing made everybody suffer.
I agree after my first play through of echo. I began to look in the comments to see if there was a good ending only to find out there was none at the time still may not have one. After that I just didn't trust anything else the Echo project made. I can't even be in a bar anymore without feeling uncomfortable because of the smoke room scene in echo. The writing for echo is good but it's used in a way that I just don't like. The only way I would go back to echo is of there was a good ending.
Since I really like both Echo and TSR (Adastra is a whole other can of worms) I'd have to disagree with you. And I say this despite me absolutely getting fucked up by the Echo "good ending is just the less bad ending" sthick.
Those stories were never meant to be happy ones. They were from the start about a horrible place, with horrible people and horrible circumstances. The endings reflecting that is what I honestly prefer over some strange happy ending that doesn't match the story.
But what I think these types of games really need to do is have proper synopsises and tagging. If I as the reader can see from the start that this is not a happy story and will not be a nice or comfortable experience then I can go in with that mindset and enjoy the stories for what they are, instead of expecting something that never was promised.
Go ahead and slap a giant red warning saying "THIS GAME IS NOT A HAPPY GAME, DO NOT EXPECT HAPPY THINGS" everytime you boot up the game if that's what you have to do. Just make it clear that this is not just another slice of life dating VN.
@Luther C. I agree with you. They can be sad games with no good endings, but author needs to communicate that they are, because it is very rare to get a game like that.
When I first played it and got attached to the character no route was complete and I was sure there would be a good ending. So many books and games tought me there is always a good ending, and those games were a bad suprise.
