Player Comments on Polaris

I clicked through the first couple of pages of this wondering how EndMaster could have possibly only bothered to give this a 7. There clearly was a lot of work put into this-- with the world-building, the story, and of course all the hand-drawn pictures to go along with it (Those were my favorite!). It seemed like an instant 8 to me. But clicking through a couple more pages the problem becomes more apparent.

Frankly, this storygame is unpolished.

There seems to be some missing pages or parts of the story that were cut out or overlooked due to the time constraints of the contest. On the page choosing to entertain Nova Wilde, there seems like there should be a missing scene where you get some information out of her. It doesn’t seem to make sense to just show up unannounced, have sex with Ms. Wilde, and then leave without getting information? Aren’t we supposed to be investigating to see if she’s the one responsible for the bot virus?

On the starting page for Chapter V there is an option to call Emulator. If you decide to go this route you get a cute scene of you and the robot cuddling, but you seem to miss out on a vital page where you get an invitation from a Kleckner bot. A scene that you would’ve seen if you picked the other option, deciding not to call Emulator. So it’s clear that the pages seem to be out of order there.

On the page ‘Speak to the Authority Bot at the Scene’ there seems to be some variables at the bottom that were left exposed. It’s not really a problem that affects the rating, I just thought I should let MHD know.

Well despite everything I really liked this story. ‘Dystopian Cyberpunk’ usually isn’t my thing but I enjoyed the way MHD did it. I usually am a fan of romance so maybe that’s just missing in a lot of these kinds of stories for me, ha ha. I mean, I did like how some scenes you used your ‘feminine wiles’ to seduce to bots and get out information from them and the romance with Emulator and the even the way Nova, DollFace and Andromeda seemed to fall for your charms as well. The story seemed a little short for having such an ambitious world and I would have liked to see that expanded upon as well.

Overall, it’s a 7/8 for me!

The prose oozes with atmosphere and the artwork is amazing! I love this world you've created! It definitely succeeds in immersing the player in a noir-style story and more.

It's interesting about the lack of "real" men in this floating city. The idea of a female population having constant exposure to artificial male personalities in the place of biological men is an interesting idea that I would be curious about exploring further. I wasn't personally interested in dating Emulator, but I liked the character anyway. I was less enthused with the fact that I as a player had to watch as the protagonist would have a sexual encounter with Emulator without any choice in the matter. It would have been interesting to see a route where the player chooses not to acknowledge any "humanity" in the bots at all, perhaps even developing and cementing the character's repulsion to bots depending on certain choices.

Polaris is a mystery story that sheds light on consequences of environmental pollution and also involves unlikely romances.

My favourite character was Dollface because she was multi-dimensional and felt real. She wanted to be an actress in her past, had disputes with her robots, and then developed to be head of her own company. She is an independent woman and I liked reading conversations involving her.

I liked the mystery components in this story. The story lets the reader gather clues around the pages and decide for themselves who the culprit is, only to find out that there is another side to the story and clues given might not always be true. I think this was very innovative.

What I didn’t like though was that the story kept forcing me to have romantic relationships with characters. Come on, I was only introduced to Emulator for like 5 seconds! I don’t even know his personality or anything. Also, I’ve only met Nova Wilde for two sentences. Why on earth would I feel disappointed when I chose not to entertain her? Which is weird because it’s not like you don’t know how to do this. In Mission Sunshine, that star guy had wife and children and never even said a word to me yet I still wanted to date him.

This story felt like a 6 but because of author notes that were missed out on some of the pages and also links that were unavailable because I refused to date the robot and the actress (making me unable to get to the bottom of the mystery) I gave 5/8 instead.

I love the world building in this story, you can tell MHD has been working on this world for a while With every detail making the world feel alive. The illustrations on a good chunk of the pages help visualize the universe and who doesn't love seeing more MHD art.
Reminds me of "The Incal" by Jodorowsky and Mœbius

hawt

Quite an ambitious depiction of an orphaned planet.
Some parts were confusing. For example, at one point Emulator was destroyed but he was back in one of the epilogues.
Definitely achieved the noir type of genre feeling, even though here and there the prose was rather clumsy. But it left a depressing picture of a failed industrial world slipping downhill into misery and chaos.
The branching choices were rather odd - I had to go back a few times to be able to ask obvious questions or pursue a 2nd option rather than being led onwards to the next chapter.
I was rather mystified why there were almost no men. Had the bots taken over that role?

Great story! I liked the characters and the 'steampunk noir' was an amazing premise!