Player Comments on Away to a Hill

Haha, I see what you did there with the title. I don't know if this is a coincidence or not, but there was also a game called gay and depressed. Beautiful companion piece though.

To be honest, this story is only marginally better than Gay and Depressed, not that it was difficult to achieve considering its rather interesting creative choices. I get what you wanted to do, showcasing the kind of aimlessness and listlessness that you feel when you are pretty depressed. The daily drudgery is actually pretty well illustrated by these short, staccato sentences with very bland statements like "it was a nice day".

However, by doing this you inadvertently made the story a friggin bore to read. There was not really a hook in the first place that draws the reader in nor was any narrative through line shown. This kind of aimless drivel can definitely work in a much more lighthearted work, but even then it is recommended that you come up with some barebones plot to hold the funny lines together.

As for the branching aspect, there are plenty of endings, but neither of them provide some satisfying conclusion. Although the kind of choices are diverse, many of the things that follow are extremely same-y. Protagonist goes to this place, gets a flashback of happier times, then goes home. There are no meaningful characters to interact with, nothing to really invest in.

That's pretty much my conclusion. It's bland, really bland, not offensive, just straight up boring. It's like the one week old bread in my pantry. I could technically eat it if I'm really hungry, but why would I?

Your grammar is good tho and I don't see any egregious spelling mistakes. Keep up with your writing, but this time try to write out and plan your plot before you start writing. It really does wonders in keeping your story clear and focused! If you want a good example how to write a depressed character in a storygame, check out the game depression quest! It's free to play and a pretty short read.

This game is interested in creating little whiffs of emotion in a very short space; the writing is pretty good at evoking that emotion, although the emotion evoked is somewhat one-note--it's nostalgic, sentimental, and a little bit too enigmatic to get across a story.

"It was hard to imagine that so many days ago, I had entered the great greyness and left, with only the mark of grey upon my face to take me back."

It's kind of pretty, and I can see that there are some thoughts about aging and looking backward, and about musing on one's past. But I don't think this is a successful piece of interactive fiction, because the choices don't particularly connect the dots between the bits of fiction. This would definitely have worked better as a multi-part short story than interactive fiction, or perhaps, with more work developing the branches, it could be reworked into a more substantial bit of IF.

As it is, it's just not robust enough as interactive fiction, and the branches, are over pretty much as soon as they begin. I like short IF as much as the next guy, but if you want to develop a Mature Cafe and the Toy Store of Joyful Youth, I want to see that allegory developed. Like, let me have a venti bitter brew of Having to Do My Taxes at the Cafe. Let me play with the Axis and Allies game in the basement. Let me express some thoughts about bagels, which I think was probably a metaphor for something here because I saw it three times in the game or so.

This idea has potential. Develop those branches and give them meaningful choices.

This story is about… I don’t know. I’m confused. Maybe some emo protagonist who doesn’t want to do anything.

There were good aspects of this story. This setting has a lot of potential. The language was also easy to read and matched the atmosphere.

However the few good things can’t cover the faults of this story. It is very linear starting from the first choice, and there are actually only two choices in the whole story, of which the second choice would result in the story immediately ending. The path for staying in was also significantly shorter than going out of the door. Given the lack of length and choices in the story, there wasn’t much branching. There also wasn’t much about any of the characters in the story. We never meet them a second time, or things never get explained and the plot is almost non-existent as none of the characters that appeared were explained any further.

Overall, this story has potential to develop into one with drama and good content, but the lack of choices and length led it to being a confusing story without much plot. 3/8

it wasboring as

Changed my rating from a 4 to a 3 because you changed the title.

hi it IS AMAZIN'G

lole
lmao even

where trans

Short and thoughtful. It's nice.

Better than I expected from the title lol. It's interesting to see a more introspective story like this. The writing is fine but a story this short is difficult to rate when you have to compare it to everything else.

Stories is dogshit, no wonder ur fucking depressed holy shit with

this is bullcrap

Gay and Depressed for the new generation.

I like the sparse writing. The mood is palpably despondent. I read each path. The sledding hill was one of the best passages.

The new title really elevates it!