Player Comments on Morcant
There was some interesting writing here, and an attempt to set a mood and create a setting. Overall, I thought the problem was the first half was rather undynamic, even a bit boring. There was too much time spent talking about the physical location, and not on the human stakes or making me care about the protagonist. The figurative language needed work. I couldn't tell if it was trying to be funny, like "When there was storms, the cliffs decided it was a great time to crumble apart and throw rocks and trees down onto the road and subsequently screwed everyone in the town over." I think that's a joke, but it's indistinguishable from clumsy writing.
The opening few choices didn't really feel meaningful.
A few microlevel writing things stick out (using a single hyphen instead of an em-dash, or a few issues with possessives (using Morcants instead of Morcant's).
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Gower
on 8/19/2019 2:12:10 PM with a score of 0
SPOILERS AHEAD
So, I'm not really sure what to make of this story. It wasn't terribly written but it had some problems, as well as some positives.
So, we're a man named Morcant, the self appointed protector of the town of Seameet. The only real issue is we don't exactly protect Seameet from anything in the story. We patrol the towns perimeter and get some good world building and descriptive scenery, but then we basically pass out and now we have this voice in our head for the last few pages. After finding a kid named Jon who also hears the voice the two of us climb up into the cliffs and the voice tells us one of us has to die. So our choice is to either push a small child off a cliff to his death, or commit suicide.
While I have no real problem with this, it just doesn't feel very satisfying. The Voice is vaguely threatening at most (unless you follow a certain path) and even if we do sacrifice ourself the voice will just mess with Jon. I mean, it's heroic and all to throw yourself off of a cliff to save a child but I honestly didn't feel like much of a hero in the story. Like I said before we pretty much just patrolled the town, climbed a mountain, then either killed a kid or sacrificed ourself. But that could just be me.
I will say however that you have the basis to a potentially great story. You've managed to give a fair bit of exposition and detail about the world as well as providing an interesting character (Morcant) with an interesting handicap (the voice). Perhaps a story where we learn just how Morcant became the towns protector. Or maybe one about his previous encounters with the voice. Something like that maybe.
All in all it wasn't really a bad story. It was pretty well written with only a few odd wording choices ("the scrub was so thick that he had to bend double to make it through") throughout. I really think this story has potential, and with a bit more polishing and expansion it could be much better.
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TurnipBandit
on 8/19/2019 12:20:03 PM with a score of 0
This is a story that is long on promise, but short on execution. As a contest entry, it strikes me as another example where the deadline was looming, therefore an ending had to be reached; and this was the last submission to be entered, about 25 minutes before said deadline.
Let's start off with what I liked. Morcant seemed like a (potentially) interesting character. The subtext of the well-loved, self-appointed protector harboring a dark secret for years is (potentially) the foundation of a really good story. The writing is mostly competent, but could benefit from the assistance of a skilled editor.
The problems are mostly structural: the beginning is front-loaded with wads of exposition; the endings are all entirely unsatisfactory; and despite choices spaced evenly throughout, there is little actual branching. Everything funnels back to the same linear story line.
There is no opening hook to get the reader interested in this story. There is this guy Morcant, there is this town Seameet, there are these cliffs called the Steps, and everything seems great and wonderful. I was waiting for Thomas the Train to come chugging through.
Then we walk through town, buy some fish, give it to a hungry kid. Morcant is a wonderful guy. Everybody loves Morcant.
The story begins when the headache arrives, and then we realize that Morcant isn't a happy camper -- and hasn't been for a very long time.
{!!!!!HERE BE SPOILERS!!!!!}
There's no way to evaluate this game without addressing those endings atop the Steps head-on. Morcant has found a child who suffers from the same affliction he does: hearing an evil Voice inside his head that causes great pain when orders are not followed. And at the climax of this story, this unexplained Voice orders Morcant, the hero, to push the child off the cliff. And as Morcant sees it, there is one binary decision: push the child as instructed, or jump off himself and commit suicide.
Let me be frank: both endings suck. Not only is neither well developed -- the story ends as soon as the deed is done -- but the implications are horrific to contemplate. Either you kill the child, or you leave the child to suffer the fate you've endured for so long.
And there are no better endings; this story ends in death, no matter how you play it. This was a fatal issue for me, so my rating was a 4/8. I appreciate the effort, but can we have a more developed story, please?
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Bill_Ingersoll
on 8/20/2019 11:35:47 PM with a score of 0
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