Player Comments on Goldlust

Goldlust was not too bad of a story, and I would not mind seeing more from this author, but there were some issues that prevented me from fully enjoying it.

First off, the story itself. It is the classic story of an adventurer betrayed by his partner and finding his way back to a treasure and retribution alongside a chick. That is not an original concept, but, hey, people such as myself often like it anyway. Any idea can work, even if it’s been done by a thousand others.
However, Goldlust just fell a bit flat. There was little time for the character to actually get to know the chick—they were together and both conscious for an incredibly short amount of time before he decided she just had something so special about her and would think about her with his dying thoughts. In one end he even thinks that he is glad that they’ll at least die together. Maybe that would make sense if they had known one another for years, and he could not imagine a life without her being happy in any way, but they’d only truly known one another for only a few hours.
Yes, hours.
The tacked-on love interest just made me roll my eyes and was very unnecessary.

A lot of the dialogue and snappy one-liners seemed pulled straight from other works or were clichés common in adventure stories. Some of that made me smile, but it would have been nice to see the author revel just a bit more in the cheese if he was going that route, as it more often just seemed dull.

Now, the main character is supposed to be looking for a treasure, but in the majority of endings, I don’t even know what the treasure is. Even in the path in which he finds it, it’s just sort of conveniently there for death scenes. I would have liked to learn more about the forge, alter, and other parts of the treasure rather than have all focus be on the bad guy and killing him.
It’s an adventure story with treasure. Give me my treasure.

The mechanics were decent, and the story was very readable. There were a few instances of re-branching, making a lot of choices all lead to one place in the end. With just a bit more thought put into character relationships and either a full embracement of the cheese or more original dialogue, this story could have been much better.
As it is, it isn’t bad.

It was alright. I agree with the others, the story would've been a lot better if it was fleshed out more before publishing. Don't worry, practice makes perfect.

What I'd like to address are the characters. To put it simply, they're kind of boring. They're undeveloped. After I finished reading, I couldn't really see these guys as characters. Just...protagonist, antagonist, and love interest.

What really grinds my gears is Rayden. Why is Rayden the antagonist? The story puts it simply: because he is evil. Okay...so why is he evil? This is where I have no clue. Is he evil because he attacked the reader? Well, according to his backstory, the reader was attacked because he didn't agree with the others (which makes me think that the protagonist was kind of an ***hole to them) so they attacked him. Okay, if that's not it, is Rayden evil because he found the forge? C'mon! The guy just wanted to make some money! How is he evil? Because he's strong?? Because he doesn't want the protagonist to steal the treasure that he discovered first?? Because literally every adjective used to describe Rayden is "evil"??? I really don't know!

Now, the protagonist. He had more development than the others due to being the main character. The reader gets to see his thought process (more like, choose it) so it makes it easier to connect with these kinds of characters. However, the protagonist seemed more like an antagonist to me in all honesty. He obviously did /something/ to piss off his old friends enough to stab him. It was never clarified what he did other than "disagreed." Than he meticulously tracks down his old crew in order to either snatch the treasure they were (probably) spending a large amount of time & effort on finding, or killing them. That's...gosh! Not to mention the protagonist's obsession with Rayden? He clearly thinks Rayden is evil for some reason but with how the story is presented, Rayden didn't really do much to be called evil. If he did, than wouldn't the rest of his crew be evil as well? Why was the protagonist hanging out with them in the first place?

Before I move onto Leah, I'd like to address that if you're going to mention a character who never appears in the actual story (ex: Leah's brother, thanks for the pants!) please at least have some other characters talk about them during some point in the story. You did a okay job with Rayden's nameless crew but I would've liked to know more about them. Why did they suddenly disappear at the end, when Rayden entered the forge alone? Did he kill them? Did they leave?

Okay, so Leah was a love interest but it would've been nice if you could give the reader an option with that. Their romantic development was really sudden. There wasn't much concept of time after protag woke up in Leah's house so we don't really know how much time they spent together. To me, it felt like two days. They seemed more focused on finding Rayden/the treasure than on each other during the journey, too. It was just a bit awkward. Why does Protag like her? Why does Leah like him? As far as I know, this wasn't addressed. It might've been better to leave romance out of this story since was obviously more focused on the adventure & action aspects, and leave the rest up to the reader's imagination.

Besides that, it was cool knowing that Leah knew her way with medicine. I felt like you should elaborate with that more! If she knew her way with herbs & plants, she must've been familiar with the region. She could've had a really keen eye for tracking and helped you find Rayden's crew, or even got you to the forge BEFORE they got there. How cool would that have been? She didn't really have much of a personality other than...girl. It was the same with Rayden, too.

No worries, though! Keep writing, man. That ending battle scene was epic and I loved it. Just keep working at it.

I've only gone through one path so far, but this is surprisingly good. It's been a little while since we had a story with some substance to it posted.

The technical aspects were all good, except for some punctuation errors with the dialogue. You ended almost all of it with commas. That should only be the case when there's a tag afterward like "Hello," she said. If there's no tag, just use a period.

One small issue with the pacing was that I thought the whole relationship aspect came out of nowhere. Leah and the protagonist knew each other...a few hours maybe? And he was unconscious for part of that time. It seems really strange she was tearfully telling a guy she knew nothing about she 'thought he was better than that'...but not as strange as him thinking of some girl he'd barely met and the 'life he could've had with her' as he died.

Also, I wasn't clear on what time period this was supposed to be set in? Altars and treasure hunting, no mention of vehicles and no thought of going to a doctor or the police made me think it might have been in western days, yet the way they spoke 'wow' and 'screw that guy' and so on seemed far too modern.

Still, nitpicking aside, this was enjoyable and I look forward to seeing more stories from you. I'll have a go at some of the other paths later as well, my phone isn't really ideal for this.

While it took me three times to actually come out alive. I will say that it was a really good story. It was well written and I enjoyed the adventure a lot. It is slightly disappointing that in mine they didn't leave with any treasure, but at least they both live and end up together, I assume by the ending. All in all it was very good.

Yaay! Great story! How about letting the solid gold body of Rayden pop out of the waterfall too? It can happen after its current ending. BOOM - treasure hunter can now retire! Ooo, how about they go to cash the golden Rayden in and it's only gold-plated? It goes from potential buyer to getting x-rayed by a forensics team and the two of them try to explain. No one believes them! They have to make it back to the golden stream by another route while being chased. Ooo! I have so many ideas! I love stories that get my creative juice going! Great story! ;)

Excellent story! I had a lot of fun playing this, even though I lost, haha. Keep up the good work!

finish the story man...

Was enjoyable.

Could have been fleshed out more.

This, to me, seems like more of a rough outline of the story, instead of the final draft of it. It has potential, but it is too fast paced with the double spaced lines and large font, and the information is sparse at best. You could spend a few more days and turn each page into 3 with smaller text and no double space, and it'd be a great story!