I don’t consider being windows-only a showstopper, but the fact that a game is Windows-only without any benefit over a platform-independent method is a pretty big black mark against it.
(Although Trap Cave had a Linux executable as well.)
I appreciate your interest in self-analysis and your effort to find ways to improve. Although your epiphany about multiple choice vs. CYOA may be valid, I believe you’ve taken the wrong lesson from this. Further on, you write,
With this in mind, pretend for a moment that your games had been written in Inform 7. Shazam! They are now parser-based games that run on all platforms.
The problem is… the platform isn’t responsible for the majority of the bad reviews. (In fact, when I glanced through reviews of Dead Hotel, I noticed more than one reviewer commenting on the hard work you must have done to create your own engine.) Even in I7, your games are still very short and sometimes incomplete, as you note above. Furthermore, if reviewers have any problem with your setting, protagonist, plot, writing style, etc, etc… those problems are still problems in the I7 version.
If you look for opportunities to improve your writing and story, then parser/CYOA/MCA will matter much less. Without those improvements, though, it won’t matter what platform you’re on.
OK I have read through this thread and I have a question. I have attempted to play games on phones/tablets and although they run in browsers, the keyboards are really clumsy. So why not have menu-based games for the purpose of making them easier to play for mobile users?
There are menu-based games.
Or did you mean, “turn parser-based games into menu-based games for mobile use?” I don’t think that’s really possible.
I don’t see a difference between CYOA and MCA, it’s just different names for the same thing.
Well, only in the IF community. 
I know of latest developer and gamer communities where Windows-based homebrew games are appreciated and rated very high. But those communities are not about Interactive Fiction. They are about other types of games.
So I don’t really care anymore what people in this narrow-minded community think about it. And arguing with a wall of ignorance is useless and a waste of time.
The internet has become bigger than you know. There are lots of different gamer communities these days. Just because YOU guys here don’t like it, doesn’t mean that other guys somewhere else on the web in other gamer communities don’t like it. There are lots of individual and different people on the internet nowadays. As I once said, the Interactive Fiction community is hard to convince and impress in that matter. You are used to your Inform Z-Code type parser games; and everything which falls out of that pattern is viewed with scepticism and even with resistance. Actually it’s pretty simple and I finally understand it. Back in 2008 and 2009 I thought I could change this community, but it turned out to be an impossible mission. End of story.
Actually what I intended to say in a nutshell is that the internet has become more diverse now. What doesn’t work in this community, works in other communities. I’m refering to Windows-only homebrew games.
I added a Linux exec of Trap Cave, just to show my critics that I can do it. That was the only reason behind it. Now almost 4 years later in 2013 I can admit it. :mrgreen:
I prefer the term “twist-a-plot” over CYOA…and I agree with Farvardin. MCA and CYOA are the same thing. Just like Oreos and Hydroxes.
I don’t give a fuck.
Screw all racist antisemitic british nazi loser trolls in this community anyway.
I say “Lala.” They say “No, Baba.”
Just because they enjoy to disgree with polish and jewish people on the net.
British racism sucks. And that’s the main reason why I have left this community.
I don’t fight with trolls in here anymore. I have found better gaming communities now.
The only reason I sometimes appear in these forums now is to put british hypocrisy on display.
Oh and fuck the IFComp.
Signing out.
I wondered when this would happen. Took longer than I expected, really.
am i british now?
Enough. Comazombie has been banned, and this thread is now locked.