Player Comments on Life of a Wizard

I liked the sense of humor, but this is far too short and the plot consequently moved too rapidly.

The longest path I found proceeds like this:

Wants to become a wizard – Takes a test – Passes and becomes qualified to become wizard – Becomes Bandit instead – Attacks and kills Headmaster – Plunders and kills everyone and establishes a new school.

This is accomplished in 10 pages. Here’s the shortest path I found:

Wants to become a wizard – Become bandit instead – Attacks and kills Headmaster – Plunders and kills everyone and establishes a new school.

This is accomplished in 6 pages. There is little build-up and little detail on how these events happened. Not to mention that the direction changes on a whim. You are supposed to be taught how to be a wizard, but then the choice of being a bandit shows up and you can act upon it without any build-up or reason for the protagonist to act upon those wishes. Why does the protagonist consider being a bandit? Why does he become a bandit (depending on the player’s choice)? There was nothing to indicate that their goals or aspirations could be achieved by banditry (One way this can be solved: they want riches above all else and aren’t afraid to do dirty work in order to obtain it, this can be achieved by banditry, so the choice to become a bandit makes sense) or that their personality would influence such behavior (One way this could be solved: make the main character not care about the welfare of anybody but himself). If there’s no indicator or reason of why the protagonist is striving to do something, then it makes that striving to do something pointless. Also, these are the only paths I found without resulting in me dead, making it incredibly linear as well. I don’t understand why you couldn’t add a conclusion for the wizard path and instead force people to go down the bandit path in order to get a prologue. This also would’ve made the test with the wizard not pointless. This also would’ve removed that annoying loop-back link.

There is little back story and no motivations for the main character. I know that they went to the wizard school because they are a wizard, but why did they leave their previous home in order to learn at the school? What does being a wizard mean to them? Why did they see it as more of an aspiration compared to other careers? Asking questions about characters motivations and answering them via either interactions between characters (such as the Headmaster. An example: “Obviously you are good enough to be a wizard, so much in fact that you get to skip enrollment and all that other stuff and get right to the test! But first, I’m curious, why are you a wizard?”) or by the narrator explaining (You, an aspiring wizard, have left your home to learn more about wizardry because of your hometown’s constant barbarian attacks. You hope that you will learn offensive spells in order to protect yourself and the town. Well, that, and because you have massive debt from the tavern, and you hope that the tavern and it’s owner will be destroyed and killed by another attack while you’re absent. Good thing this academy doesn’t have a tuition fee, or you’d be in massive student debt too!) or by any other methods out there.

The main character has very little personality. I realize that the story is in second-person and you want people to put themselves in the boots of the protagonist, but the protagonist has to still have a worth-while personality. Think of it this way, you cannot think up and present all the different ways a character can go about a situation in a setting you produce. One way to cherry-pick the choices you present is to think of what the character that you have built up a personality would choose. You cannot do that with someone who does not have a personality at all.

I assume the Headmaster is speaking to us directly, so he should have quotation marks around his dialogue. Aside from that, technical missteps are few but present.

Details were few and far and each page was pretty barren. Ask these questions: What does the protagonist look like? What does the Headmaster look like? What does the school look/smell/feel/hear like? What does Fantalia look/smell/feel/hear like? Always think of the five senses when describing anything in your story.

Never put an end game link on the first page.

I would give this a 2/8, since some effort was put in and I like the humor, but the first-page end game link, the extreme linearity and, to a lesser extent, the loop-back link all bumped it down to a 1/8.

I thought that the fighting aspect was the best part.

Fun game

This was... Weird. Not quite sure how I managed to kill the zombies with healing magic, but I'll roll with it. The main problem with this game is that I have no idea what you were trying to achieve. I don't really get the impression that you're actually a fan of the Magic Student genre, but it didn't seem like you were making fun of it either. What was your motivation for making this game?

I'm not sure if you were going for random humour, but if you were, there's just two little problems... It wasn't random, and it wasn't funny.

The saddest part is that I think Bannerlord put more effort into his review than you put into the whole game :p

I had a few problems with this story.
1. This was too short.
2. The maturity level was a little to low.
3. Why is this called Life of a Wizard, if you can be a bandit?

It looks like there are a lot of options, but as far as I can tell they all either end in death or the same non-death ending. While there is a bit of humor involved, it isn't enough to make up for the lack of story or choices.

watta...make it longer

amazing

good

I suggest a rename. Life of a Wizard is an already pretty well known CYOA on Choice of Games. Not that it matters that much, but I just consider it nice to make titles as unique as possible (easier to search for on google,ect).

Also recommend removing the end story link on the first page.

Game is pretty short. I love me some wizard sims and think you could do better on this if you gave it more time.

GL

10/10 would literally rather have my eyes gouged out than try and read this "story" again

it could be some what better

Ah, well, the title is rather misleading. I was expecting to become a wizard but ended up a bandit :p The humor was okay and everything but this ended kind of arubtly.

If this game had just a bit more depth and backstory, it would actually be rather decent, but as of now it's just okay.

You might want to change the maturity level one up, just because of a rather foul word, but other than that it was so-so.

Oh. It's one of THOSE games. Where the exit is more clear than the entrance.

i go in 50bajilion *&%# LOOPS COVER THIS THIS STORY IL GASOLINE AND BURN IT then tell the creator what you did then you walk away thaghing i was the worst story ever

kill kill oh the story ended

I don't like the going-in-circles thing, where the only way out is "I don't have it in me" or "I'M AN EVIL BANDIT" *plunder plunder kill*.

Really... I'm speechless but not in a good way 5/8

Lame and short

Thanks for the point!

BTW people this I think was meant to be a joke, not to be a story. It was hilarious, and that's also a reason for it to be short. IT'S A JOKE.

HILARIOUS!

cant stop laughing

Cool.

I thought this story was entertaining I played it a couple of times to get the ending but my favorite is becoming the bandit. It was a little short though.

It was ok...but there was no plot, and the time loop thing was a little boring. But the text is humorous, and it entertained me for awhile.

Well, this was kinda fun, had some funny writing and has some nice use of links.

Sadly it was very short and had very few words per page. Make it longer and add more content and I'll give it a high rating.

It was okay but very short.

5/5 would have hand to hand combat with zombles again

It was actually pretty funny and there were some pretty good ideas in there. You should have written a longer and more detailed story, though. I knocked off 1 point from the rating because of the shortness and gave you 3/8.

It's too short, but it's very funny.

I blinked and I missed it. It was very short, which was a shame, because some of the humor was actually alright and it's always fun to play as a fledgling mage on the path to power.

Of course, the length also meant that there wasn't enough to get immersed or develop a plot, so I was left feeling kind of 'meh'.

Its not bad. Just needs more of a purpose

Funny but very short and pointless really. It also doesn't matter if you pick a sword or magic...

This is pretty funny :)

It was okay, just note that people will abuse the shit out of stories that allow you to just say "No" to the beginning, finish, rate whatever the hell they want, and then leave.

I liked it. 5/8
It was short, funny, and 'fuck it, I'll be a bandit' was a great line.

Life of a wizard is a pretty misleading name...

Wait... I killed the zombies with healing magic? Damn, I'm good. ^_^

I killed everyone in the magic school... so am I a normal bandit or a magical bandit?

Fun little distraction, though, why can you only be a successful bandit? it's quite . . . shocking =P

Really a bit too simple

I don't see the point of the title "Life of a Wizard" when it's almost impossible to actually become a wizard.

Wait, how did I end up the Bandit King? Not a bad little distraction and quite clever :)

"Actualy Its Quite Shocking"
I don't want Lightning Spell I wanna "Shocking and NSFW" Power! xP

Just really random and short, which is a real big gnat for me. However, in all seriousness, I WOULD like to see you create a version of this that actually sounds like an adventure and story, with classmates to interact with, philosophies and principles to follow, as well as testing the morality of all kinds of magic.

I think you can do that. Probably. If you want to dedicate that much time. :P