Things That Readers Don't Like

1. BAD GRAMMAR.  Yes.  Oh yes.  One or two are okay, but readers don't like this.  It's not the absolute worst, but it's still something you NEED to avoid if you want a score any higher than a four.  It's annoying, and raters tend to take off one or two points which you might otherwise have earned--just by checking your typos and not rushing through your storygame.  Make sure that typos get fixed.  Even if it's just a small one.

2. DEATH LINKS ON THE FIRST PAGE.  This is just pretty annoying.  Instance: Page one says something like "You need to go kill a monster".  There are two choices: "Go on the left road" or "Go on the right road".  Choice A lets you continue.  Choice B drops a large rock on your head and kills you.  Readers do not like this.  Please.  If they are going to die, they want to at least have went through something like an adventure before meeting the fateful "End Game and Leave Comments" link.

3. DEATH WITHOUT WARNING.  The example I used above applies to this also.  Readers hate this because, referring to the example above, there is nothing wrong with choosing a road that leads to your right.  They at least want some kind of warning that a choice leads to death!  Just because a person decides to go right is not a choice worthy of death.

4. UNFINISHED GAMES THAT ARE NEVER FINISHED.  I have never seen a demo that was actually finished.  Never.  They all just stay up there as demos...forever.  When you see a demo, you can almost always automatically inference that the author does not have the heart to finish, and wants to get something published...so they published an unfinished storygame.  Uh-uh.  Don't do that.  To be simple, people won't like it.

5. OVERLY DIFFICULT STORYGAMES.  This isn't as much of a fault as some of the ones above, but it's still horrible.  Many games are simply too difficult.  For example: How am I supposed to know that I have to use the pen in the elevator?  What's the relation between the two?  Now, if it were a screwdriver I were supposed to use in there, that would at least make a little sense.  Please don't do this to your readers.

6. STORYGAMES THAT HORRIBLY MESS UP THE "STORY" PART.  Anyone can publish a game on this site.  Meaning: Half the games are going to be really, really messed up with the "story" part.  Even if you aren't a published, bestselling author, you can still at least turn up a fairly decent story if you want to publish one.  Edit out the plot holes--for that matter, actually decide on the plot before you begin writing.  Some games jump from one plot to another, unrelated plot without any connection.  Do not do that.

7. NO END-GAME LINKS.  What I mean is stories where you can't end the game unless you reach the "good" ending--sound familiar?  It's extremely frustrating, because in most of these such games there is about 1% chance of getting the "good" ending on any given try.  Because those games are just bad, and the writers don't want you to rate it badly because you can't find the good ending!  I'm not even going to say whether this is a good idea.

8. STORYGAMES THAT PEOPLE HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT.  If you're going to publish a storygame about some book series that nobody has ever heard about, there are several requirements: 1 - It MUST go in fan fiction.  2 - Either explain everything to your readers, or warn readers not to read the storygame unless they know about this.  Even with those two basics, there's still a lot you have to do for people to actually like your game.

9. GENRES THAT ARE TOO COMMON.  There's nothing to stop you from plagiarizing someone else's storygame on this site.  Anyone can publish a sequel to Necromancer if they want.  But--to sum it up nicely--don't do it.  To move into the less drastic degrees of this infraction, do not publish games that lie in a topic or genre with too many games already, like the zombie genre, if yours will just be like every other one.  This does NOT mean you shouldn't publish a zombie story--I have nothing against that--but if you are going to go write one, make it special.

10. A BAD STORYGAME.  I'm going to sum up this article with this last point.  If you bothered to read all that text above, thank you.  I hope your storygames, if you ever publish any, won't include any of that.  And all that above--often quite a few of them combined and packaged into a 1/8 game--makes number 10: A bad storygame.  Needless to say, this is the one you want to avoid the most.  

So...that's it.  Don't complain about all that text you had to read!