I had a lot of fun working on the Single Choice Jam game [If You Had One Shot by mathbrush](https://If You Had One Shot) with Wade Clarke, Victor Gijsbers, and Hanon Ondricek. I had the idea for the game concept and wrote it up, but wasn’t confident in my writing skills, so recruited some help (originally I was going to find 4 people for 4 endings but there were some scheduling conflicts).
One of the authors was interested in knowing if anyone had been able to figure out which ending belongs to which author; I’m kind of interested too, to see if there’s a ‘word fingerprint’ out there.
Now that the jam is ‘complete’, I can say that if you want to play more than once, you can circumvent the gam’s gimmick by playing in an incognito window online or deleting the file it creates when downloaded (called ghosts or something). Thanks to those who played!
(Also, I should perhaps add that all paths consist of two pieces of text: the one you see immediately after making the choice, and the one that you see when you then try to restart or play again.)
I’d like to, with Brian’s blessing. Another thing might be for all guessers who wanted to, to PM him our reasoning (if he’s up to it of course!) It’d be fun to do but of course it can wait! (It already sort of has, for 2 weeks. So what’s a bit longer? )
At any rate I’m also a bit worried people may tabulate who has guessed what and be biased there too. Not that big prizes are at stake. So I hope everyone guesses before they peek at others’!
You can post here with spoilers; dm is good but after it’s revealed people would probably want to see what your reasoning was because it could lead them down a rabbit hole of something fun.
And all the co-writers have equal say in this so I’m happy with whatever Victor says!
North: I said Hanon. The big dancing climax, plus the implication that the protagonist is bi, seemed pretty Hanon-y to me.
East: I said Victor. Obviously this one has a lot of Christian themes, which I could see folks thinking means it’s Brian, but a) my sense is he’s pretty reticent to include those in his general-audience IF, while b) this is a Christian approach to a set of moral and philosophical conundrums, which is what Victor’s IF is all about.
South: I said Brian, though this and West were the ones I was least sure of. The dialogue actually seems slightly more Wade-like to me, and the lack of capitalization of “swat team” makes it seem less likely that an American wrote it. But the grandma stuff at the end gives it a wholesome vibe that I thought was more Brian’s jam.
West: I said Wade – I wish I had a better rationale here, but honestly, after feeling pretty sure of my Hanon and Victor guesses, I had mostly convinced myself that Wade was South but then I saw the ending text here spelled it “rumour” rather than “rumor” and that was what clinched it
Hm, OK, I’ll add my own logic. Mike’s reasoning makes more sense to me than my own, after a reading.
East: I guessed this was Brian due to the religious themes, but then it could be Victor, too, because he definitely Thinks about Religion and Morality.
South: I guessed Hanon because of the DEA. It just feels like something people outside America just wouldn’t naturally peel off as a detail in something so brief, and Brian’s already East.
North: I guessed Wade because there was music, and I remember his music room from Cragne Manor. My guess is, if any one of the four authors would incorporate music into the game, it’d be Wade.
West: that leaves Victor. It’d perhaps account for “rumour” with “dollars” at once. But on the other hand, Australian dollars are a thing.
Yay! I’ve played the game so I can finally participate in the thread
I thought the writing was so cohesive between each part I could not clock that different people wrote different branches… It’s a bit like face blindness but for writing…
I think the fact that I haven’t played much of each author’s games is not helping me… so Im going at random:
Woo-hoo! Apparently I have some skills! Some incredibly abstruse, verging-on-completely-useless skills, but hey, I’ll take it. Kudos again to you four for a fun game, and thanks Brian for prompting use to try to figure out the mystery!
It’s interesting and amusing how my one-of-two guesses all cascaded to make things 100% wrong.
Well, I’m going to go in a corner and feel a ton of secondhand smartness anyway, as I did admit after the fact Mike’s guesses fit in better. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
So yeah this was a lot of fun. For all my just wanting to get through a backlog of stuff, it’s good to have tangential reveals to look forward to.
wrong!