Reccommending my comment for featuring on CapturedNecko22's "A Dog's Life" instead of Loon's.
*SPOILERS*
I'm not really sure how I feel about this one. The overall story was decent and actually enjoyable, but the small details from grammar to character were off-putting enough to distract me from the story.
First, I'll go over the formatting and English issues I saw.
The first thing I noticed after the first few pages was that there *seemed* to be a lot of choices. I was excited that the story was going to have a lot of branching and many different endings based on what you chose, but then I remembered this is a 2/8 and found out most of the choices don't matter. That was a little disappointing.
I noticed a lot of grammatical errors as well. The most noticeable things are that the narration switches constantly from past to present tense then back and that the narration switches from 2nd to 1st person a lot. The second person narration is actually pretty good for the most part, but then the 1st person disrupts the immersion completely. You also use a lot of commas where they shouldn't be. When there's a compound predicate in a sentence (ex: You walked to the store and bought bread.) you often use commas before the conjunction. A comma should not be used in this instance. You also misuse ellipses a couple times that I noticed, using them at the end of complete pages instead of to omit text or show that the narrator is trailing off. The sentence structure could also have used some work. It's often choppy to read because of the same sentence structure over and over.
As for formatting, you often had very short pages with only one link on them. These pages could easily have been added onto other pages to make it seem much less linear. You also had a few times when the use of variables would have been very nice. The pages where you have a list of memories to relive really could have used variables.
Now for the story content itself.
Like I said earlier, I enjoyed the plot of this story. It seemed pretty well thought out, it was just the small details within it that put me off. At the beginning, you suddenly know what humans are even though you were never really given what they're called or what they do. This inconsistency is a common theme throughout the story, so I won't comment on it too much other than that you need to make sure everything makes sense. Speaking of making sense, several of the things that happen don't make any sense at all. The house that's on fire is unlocked, but I'll let that slide. What I will *not* let slide is that you, a puppy, dragged an adult woman out of the house by yourself even though you wouldn't have known she was in any danger and you had no real reason to understand the situation or to drag her out. You also bite Tommy twice (then literally kill him) and don't get put down or taken to the pound for that, which is strange.
Now for characters. I would have liked to see more development with the mother and the other pups so that the protagonist would have a little more emotional attachment to them, but it's ok as it is. Mom doesn't show up much at all except for meaningless interactions after her initial scene. Greg and Tina's romance is a nice subplot that I would have liked to see developed more thoroughly, though this is a dog's story, not theirs. My biggest gripe was with the character of Tommy. It's strange because sometimes he and Greg seem like best friends, but sometimes like they're mortal enemies. Tommy is characterized as a kid who's just a little misguided for most of the book, then he suddenly is a psychopath that kills dogs and girls who don't love him. That could have been built up so much better. Signs could have been dropped here and there showing his tendencies and possibility of erratic behavior. The interactions between characters are sometimes weird as well, specifically the dialogue.
For my final thoughts, this was alright for a first storygame, but it could have been a lot better. The small details within the plot and the writing just needed some ironing out and a lot of proofreading.
-- Megumeme on 2/3/2020 6:30:54 PM with a score of 0
