Player Comments on Reborn

I know this isn't the first time in a storygame contest where all participants really needed to turn in was a solidly built brick house and somebody turned in an entire cathedral, but this is the first time I read one of those surprise-giant stories all the way through, and I think that says something. In many of these cases, the length can be kind of a ratings crutch. I think people read a little bit of it, get a few endings, assume there's great things that follow, and kind of give the story an A for effort. I don't think that's the case for this game. In fact, as I have listened to sherbet slavishly struggle and flagellate himself to crank out all 102 thousand of these words every day as he was writing this story, there's a certain schadenfreude I take in spending the 3 or 4 mornings that I have done reading this on my phone while eating breakfast and absorbing it all with goblinous glee.

Readers who know Sherbet personally might be surprised that such a virtuous and endearing green creature could contain such things, but sherb actually seems to make a habit of using contest prompts as a flagrant excuse to just kick the horror section's ass without remorse, and now he's come in to beat up everyone and take yet another featured spot in the category. His wholesome and friendly veneer belies the ruthless ongoing campaign of Sherbetification in the horror genre, and I'm afraid at this point that I have no choice but to support it.

If there's one thing I enjoy about Sherbet's horror stories it's that he has the audacity. There's no dancing around the issue, which feels uncommon to me, at least, whose horror media intake usually comes from spooky movies or documentaries about clown rapists. The standard pacing of slowly trickling in strange or uncomfortable things on a bunch of characters is fine, but it's only one way to lend believability to the unreal. Sherbet is fond of cutting loose and doesn't hold the reader's hand when it comes to insane circumstances or surreal concepts. Reality is established not in the lead-up to the horror, but in the depressingly real reactions to it, which allowed Reborn to hook me over and over again. The Beast is a mundane matter to be addressed by firewatch towers and public service pamphlets on the second page. Like any wild danger, it doesn't care whether or not you believe in it, there it always is. This does such a good job of showing, rather than telling, where the rules of engagement are, that everything weird that happens afterward almost feels like it's falling into place rather than sticking out to stir turbulence in the suspension of disbelief.

The world Sherbet establishes pretty instantly, is delightfully sad, rotten, and unromantic, but still with an attention to detail when it comes to the wilderness and the finer points of surviving and traversing it that it remains unambiguously pretty at some points. If this were a story about a monster tormenting a mundane woodland town and the wretched attempts to hunt it down, and that were all it was, it would still be great. But the game takes a poignant psychological turn that takes it a step above and really makes the game really quite something special, everything kind of unfolding like a bad dream. And, much like a bad dream, I was able to feel bitterly nostalgic about an entirely fictitious memory, and share sadness the way a friend does for people that I've never known.

I won't talk about too much more because it's just a good story so there's not a lot more I have to say about it. But anyone trying to get featured in Horror these days is just going to have an increasingly bad time, I'm sorry to say.

I didn’t initially start off that impressed with the storygame. It was massive, so for its scope and competency I probably would’ve always rated it an 8, even if it was nothing special. But I was wrong, and this story has made me reconsider my views on what I like in a storygame. I want to get all my thoughts on this story out, so if you haven’t read it, massive spoilers for the entire game. I’ve read through all the endings, might’ve missed a death or two because I didn’t track those, and I believe that reading through all the endings is the only way to really get the most out of this story. Each path is good on its own, but there’s a lot you’ll miss by only getting a few endings. I’m going to start by reviewing the pieces of the game as I came across them at the time, and then I’m going to go into more general thoughts.

So first I went down what I assume is the facility 3 path. Not really sure if it is facility 3 or not. I’m actually really glad I went down this path first, even though I don’t think it’s the main one. I thought the preamble was pretty decent, though the village boys aren’t that memorable. Fields is okay I guess, I don’t like him that much but he is a character with a little depth. I think there’s only a few character in this game that I think have really solid characterization, one being Rebecca and the other few being in different paths. But that’s okay, not every story has to hit it out of the park in every area.

I like the lore that’s sprinkled around the facility. First being the human growth experiments, which is nice set up. I think I realized after reading that the monster that killed Corey and is roaming the facility is one of those, and different from the beast. Then you see a little about facility 3’s relationship to facility 2 and the set up for the books. All of this lore and stuff is my favorite, I really like it. And then you get some lore about how Cassie has the book, and I haven’t met Cassie at all at this point. And apparently Eddie gave it to her? I don’t think that’s explored at all, the fact that Eddie gave Cassie the book that created the beast, but I assume that contributes to his guilt a lot, if he even knows that’s where the beast came from.

So after killing the monster and stuff there’s the purity wing. Now this is part of the story I don’t understand. There’s all this stuff with the mother who has a deformity and the baby, but there’s no other reference to it in the story. Now, in the description it says that this story contains references to Warden and Monster, so I have to assume that this is a reference to Monster, since I’ve read the Warden and it’s very clear where that’s referenced, but I haven’t read Monster.

Now about the night mother. There’s no way she goes so long without being killed. The justification is that the button operator was spiteful so why should he correct the company's mistake. The only problem with that is presumably if he killed the night mother then the monsters beating down his door would cease to be. So he’d get to keep his life. The only rational I see is that he knew if he killed the night mother the company would kill him for insubordination, which is fair I guess. The company itself could also press the button after facility 3 fell, but I see why they wouldn’t want to risk destroying the books.

Now the endings for this path are pretty decent. I think my “canon” ending based on my natural choices is the fame and fortune ending, and I like the other ending. Going back I picked up the other bad and neutral endings that stemmed from “go on the hunt” choice, and I got to say I don’t think this is the main path of the story. But I like that I did it first, because knowing more about the lore from exploring facility 3 put a lot in context. I expected more from the “go with Eddie” choice though. His character as a whole isn’t very well explored, but again that’s fine with me. Because the intrigue here is about the world and lore for me, and less so the characters.

Now as far as the “Go to Cassie’s” path, I am so glad that I went to facility 5 before Cassie’s house. Because I genuinely think it would’ve been a much worse experience if I hadn’t. But more on that in a bit, I think in general it’s cool to see an active facility is still around after facility 3 is just ruins. Side note, facility 3 must’ve got exterminated relatively recently, since they had to have given Cassie the book 3 years ago, so the monster that Rebecca sees before she drops was there ten years ago, long before facility 3 got exterminated. Anyway, I like reading the little text entries, and at the time I didn’t even notice that the mirror entry was talking about Warden, which is a cool reveal.

I went down the mirror path first, not realizing that the cafeteria path is a short one. And I have to say, Kayla is my favorite character in this game. She is characterized so well, and her and Rebecca are the main two characters that I feel attached to, maybe Cassie but not so much. I first did the path where you eat dinner with Kayla, missing the prisoner path entirely until I went to search for the three endings I was missing. I really like this portion of the game, and love just spending time with Kayla. My main gripe is that after this you go to Cassie’s house, and you could’ve gone there from the start. But if you went there straight away then you would’ve missed the entire mirror world, and it would be way worse. Also there’s no way a player that went to Cassie’s house first who was looking for all the endings would think that they had to go to cassie’s house through the mirror world to get one of them, I’m talking about the endings where Cassie stays as a monster in the mirror realm. I’m not sure that you can get void of life any other way.

Either way, I like the stuff with the house. I did the attic stuff first and then the basement. The reveal that Corey was the monster gave me chills, especially since I had read like 60% of the story at that point and had no idea. One thing I wish we saw more of was Ethan, he was kind of just a random guy in one of the good endings. And I still don’t know why Corey didn’t get revived when the ritual went bad. I feel like he should’ve been, though that would be bad for the message of the story. Though I thought it was really clever, the one ending where the bloodstains messed up the ritual.

That mostly summed up my experience, I liked the other endings, like the experimentation ones. I feel rewarded for reading Warden, and I’m glad that’s the one with the big cameo. Like I said, the characterization I feel is one of the weaker points, I felt Rebeca and Kayla were done amazingly, and Cassie was pretty good. Eddie was okay, we don’t see a lot of him.

One thing I typically don’t like that this story does is rebranching and having choices that don’t matter at all. But it’s done well here, a lot of things are just for flavor and it’s fine. I like that the endings were numbered and I could keep track of how many I got and how many were left. If I didn’t know how many endings there were I don’t know that I’d finish the game, since I hate the feeling that I didn’t explore everything, and I wouldn’t know if I had or not due to all the rebranching.

Overall, as I said at the start, this game is a solid 8/8. Sorry if this review was long winded and rambly, I just wanted to get all my thoughts out about this very long game. This is less of a review and more of a collection of all my thoughts about the game. This story was very rewarding to read and explore, and it’s motivated me to want to read more giant stories.

8/8

W game chat!

I love it! The characters are memorable, the mystery is engaging and the use of body horror is descriptive without being unnecessarily exploitative. I like the branching paths and the scope of this story is perfect for the purpose of the contest. Great work!

Mr Sherbet with the - what's that? - 3, 4 veins? Shit looks like the nile delta. Anyway you got the thickest damn shit I ever did seen, shit looks like a roll of cookie dough. I've been a fan of your shit since day dot man and it looks so well cared for and shinier every day. You use palm oil? Haha, but I really do mean it sir and I have always said this. If you ever and I mean EVER need me to provide some rock hard (and I mean DIAMONDS) foundation for that hefty brick you'll be so mercilessly layin down you hit me up I'll be right up under your big ol nasty large freak ass shit. God bless.

- Ford

A well-written and enjoyable read :)

This was written by our loved local baghead of course it's good.

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Got the neutral ending. I enjoyed this story game a lot!