Player Comments on A Long Way Gone

The story in it of itself was okay, I did learn a lot about what life in Sierra must be like and how hard it must be for the children to grow in a place like this. I did enjoy the ending. It was unexpected, I also liked the fact that it was written okay, sometimes very simplistic and the grammar could use some work.

However, even though the story was good and I found it very interesting to learn about, it felt like I was reading a textbook and story games should not feel like I'm doing homework. I feel like there was more that could be made such by adding in characters personalities and dialogue and have the choices actually lead to different endings.

The choices that were bad would always lead to a death which I feel like shouldn't always be the case. In stories, most bad choices have consequences that have haunted the main character for the rest of their lives. Sure death would also haunt them, but not in that way. There is something more to a story when the choice changes the ending and here it just feels like I am read a boring textbook that is telling me what to write on my next exam. Trust me that is not a good thing.

Farther on, the entire thing read like a textbook. Your friends didn't have any dialogue. I learned nothing about the main character nor any of the other characters making me wonder why I would even want to keep any of them alive. Everything was told to me like it was in a textbook, one thing happens, then another thing happens. There is no pause or anything like that. I expected my geography teacher to come in and scowl me for killing the main character. Everything seemed to be told to us after the fact and that, like some others must have said, is where show don't tell comes it, where we don't want to be TOLD that the character wants to see their parents but SHOWN. For example, if the character hangs their head low, got teary eyes at the mention of his family, that sort of thing.

The dialogue as well, I think would have made the story a lot better seeing as it would have added character to not only the protagonist but also to the friends and people around them.

Overall, I thought the story was very boring, sometimes a chore to read and wasn't even a story game at all. But it was a good learning place to see what life could be like in Sierra.

It was a great story i enjoyed it .

This was a really good story, and although it was simply written, I feel like it fit the story. Very enjoyable.

My way or the highway - the game. Interesting choice of subject matter, bad follow through, any option that isn't what the author wants you to see knocks you back to the choice.

Interesting idea and concepts though written in an occasionally over-simplistic way (when writing numbers I'd recommend using words instead of numerical form unless writing factual information such as a date or address), this is a decent effort at a first story. I'd recommend not having so many dead end links and limited true paths - try to link bad choices into a situation other than death to give the reader a few chances to get out of their bad situation and back onto the "good" path as constant restarting is frustrating to the reader; looking forward to seeing more stories in the future, 4/8.

I think that, instead of directly retelling Ishmael Beah's story, this story could have been your interpretation/inspiration from what you know about child soldiers in Africa and Bea's memoir. By only retelling his story, you have made your storygame linear.

What could've been done to make this interesting premise more engaging for the reader is, instead of describing parts of the plot with a summation, add 'meat' to what you're writing. Following the 'show don't tell' rule gives readers opportunities to think about the goals and personalities of your character. I believe you can make this even better in this way.

4/8, has potential.