Player Comments on Escape From Saigon

It's an excellent topic, and I think you could go far on it. Here's some of my suggestions.

Really play the emotions. I agree that you could describe more about Long in the introduction and the poor life he's been through. Really show us what it was like, and how terrible it was. Show us more about his family and develop their characters, make them realistic. I want to agonize over the decision to be with my mother or stepbrother; I want to grow attatched to the mother and feel sad when she dies; I want to be sad when Long leaves his grandmother and yet hopeful for a new life for Long. I really want to be there with Long and feel what he feels.

Eliminate the right/left choices. They are just plain annoying and purely up to chance. Chances left purely up to luck are no fun.

Overall, I felt like you did a good job not being too linear. This is a great topic, like I said, but I would love to know more background!

Good story. It's well written, especially if this was a school project (because we all know those don't turn out well most of the time). I would have rated this higher if it weren't so linear, but I do get that this is based off a book.

Hey mattisatschool! You asked for some suggestions, so I played your storygame multiple times to get the feel for the different paths I could take before I wrote a comment- I have quite a few suggestions for you!
1. Loved the creativity with changing color of dialogue for different characters. Neat!
2. There were probably one or two grammar issues on almost every page- simple sweep through the pages to fix grammar will improve the overall quality of the game. Along with grammar- there were a few times that, despite the colors, it was slightly difficult to understand who was talking to who. A little extra description will fix that.
3. If you want a really great storygame you have to make the player emotionally wrapped up in the story- I think (even if this crosses the borders of the real life story) you could add a page in your intro about the poor quality of life Long lived while living through the Vietnam War. This will also make some of your decisions more impactful to the reader's mind and more high stakes for them to choose. For example at the beginning- go with Mom or stay with Brother- it was easy for me to choose to go with Mom because I felt like there was more of a connection between me and her than me and my brother.
4. There were some really great times (like get off the bus or wait a half hour) that allowed you to make a choice that affected the game but kept you on the path that the real life story went. That was awesome!
5. To counter that, though, a few choices, such as go right or left, are extremely unimportant decisions for the player to be making, and just create a "fill" to make the story longer. Maybe try editing what decisions you make so they're more important to the story's ending
6. From when Long gets to America to the end, it's a really big decline of excitement and emotion from where you were previously. I thought you could write in more detail about the life Long lives in America, from making memories with his new family to friends at school, bullies, and being a young man who had racial discrimination against him as he struggled to find a job after leaving the house and make a name for himself here in America. You say he has a family later- brief detailing on that maybe, too, will be emotionally attaching.
7. To give the player some better options, maybe add some more dialogue choices that force you to talk to people more in the game. A great story makes the player live in the story, instead of you as the author simply telling them what happened.
8. The very end slide before the end of the game was a super disappointing ending just because all that happened was that his family crowded around the tombstone- there was no evidence that his wife or children shared any of the emotions that Long experienced when making that visit. Perhaps at the very end, they could sit under the tree and Long would tell his family a childhood memory of his with his grandmother.
I know I got really detailed and super picky, but I thought this was AWESOME!!!! :D Super great story and a whole lot of potential to be on the top five on the homepage- just needs some polish and more emotional connection. Otherwise great- thanks for writing and I hope you make more games for us players in the future.
~E (from AandEcoproductions)

...hard-core