Player Comments on Roamers, Part 1: The Road to Safety

So right off the bat, just from reading the note at the beginning of the story, I think it would be
better in any future stories you write not to stick with only 1 "good" ending with different ways to get there. Maybe try writing some unique endings, for any branching story paths, that have different outcomes than the 1 "best" ending you've written. This will add or improve the feeling of importance the reader has after every choice they make.

One gripe I have with the writing, from the moment I started reading, is the repetitiveness of "You" and "Your"
at the beginning of sentences. One solution to this problem is if you start a sentence off by addressing a
character, other than the reader's character, like "Your wife" you could start the sentence with the character's name. This would help break any repetition found throughout the story.

Another drawback the story has is that there's no sense of the passage of time. One example of this problem is when our character first arrives at the military barracks, yes the correct word is barracks not "barrack", the following sentence is "The next thing you know, you are kneeling in front of a human-shaped target,
with an assault rifle in your hands." while the reader can assume some time has passed
between those two sentences, it completely ruins any type of immersion the reader had. There needs to be some sort of transition text to inform the reader when there's any passage of time. Whether that's shown through sentence wording or if there's italicized text stating how much time has passed, which was beautifully used in EndMaster's wonderful story "Ground Zero".

An issue, that I couldn't help but observe, is that there's a prominent absence of names for any individual our character crosses paths with. While I understand that it's difficult to come up with unique names for every single character in a story, it's still an important aspect of any story that's written. A character with a name appointed to them is immediately perceived with more importance, even if they're only present in the story for a few short sentences. I found it hard to attach any value to the characters (besides my own) as a direct consequence from the lack of names, which made it difficult for me as a reader to fully engross myself into the story and enjoy the narrative being told.

While my review may not be dealing with the story you've written as a whole, and focuses mainly on material found at the beginning of your story. This is just as important to speak about because these issues I've illustrated can prevent people from reading further than the first couple of pages. Fixing these problems in this story and any future pieces you end up creating will enhance the overall flow of your words and will assist readers in staying engaged while reading your stories.

Written pretty well, although it could have used some more description in some places.
The characters felt well fleshed out and the length was pretty good. Few spelling and grammar errors that I could see.
I like that there's some things we never figure out, as it makes it a little more realistic, meaning the guys that leave the main character behind. They never figure out why (so far).

The ending honestly did seem kind of rushed, but I'm hoping the next part will be a bit more polished, and hopefully the main guy's wife will be fleshed out as a character as that would be interesting to see.

I would say this story game, and the series at large has a lot of potential. It would be interesting to see what happens to one of the last bastions of humanity in the United States.

The issue with series instead of a longer story is that, especially with this one, is that it will be difficult to make a continuation of the story due to the amount of different decisions that can be made. How will you know whether or not the player saved this person, or if they chose the suicide plan or not at the end?

It seems like it would be best to make the individual stories in a series work well enough as a stand alone. Meaning make it its own story with a beginning, middle, and end, but then the next game continues it after either a certain length of time has passed or with a different adventure for the main character.

For example, Bob is sucked through a magical portal, learns how to survive in a strange land, rises to become a hero, rescues the damsel, and saves the realm. The second part is maybe six months of a couple of years later, and all the loose ends from the last story are tied up. Except in the second part Bob finds out that one of the original antagonists henchman rises up to finish what he started, or the bad guy actually survived. Then Bob goes on his adventure, takes care of him, and it is peaceful once again.

Write it in a way that variable choices matter, but it can also smoothly translate well without having to ask the reader if they did this, or that, or killed someone off or not. Or just write the characters whole story in one long story game.

Hope you get what I'm saying, as I kind of vomited all this out onto the comments :)

This story had a good plot and all, but too many dead ends that required you to go back and pick another choice anyway. Also as others have mentioned, it would be better to have multiple endings as this is the whole point of choose your stories. Overall it was quite fun, thanks for making this. :)

one word.
A-MAZE-ING

“A woman stands in a demilitarized zone, with heavy fencing, and military personnel everywhere.”

It isn’t really a demilitarized zone if there’s military personnel everywhere, now is it? Also, why don’t we have an option to ignore the military order?

“Retreat, you hear over the deafening sound of the metal walls collapsing.”

You don’t exactly explain how zombies are collapsing metal walls.

“Actually, this whole road is covered with an even layer of glass shards.”

Where is this glass from?

“Doors left hanging open, abandoned, smashed-up cars and shattered store windows hint that the dead may have made a sweep through the town as well.”

How did the dead get here before us when they just broke through the front line?

“Oh, and grab the rest of those guns on the wall.”

Didn’t you just say on the previous page that there wasn’t anything else left to take?

“"You know how to shoot that thing?" You shake your head.”

I just got finished shooting a bunch of zombies in the army and went through 3 days of gun training, but I don’t know how to use a hunting rifle?

“Some of the letters have worn away”

Worn away from what? It’s been less than a weak since the car was abandoned.


The part about Lincoln is a great incoherent mess in general.

“Felton sits with him, and demands to be the only person to be with him. So, he takes one car, and the rest of the group is split into the others.”

Since when did we get more than one vehicle?

“"Why won't you let us through?" you ask.


"You must be a very special kind of stupid, because I already explained that to you," the man says.”

No he hasn’t.

“You suddenly remember. "My wife," you say, and the officer immediately nods. "Yes, she asked about you. You can see her in a few minutes."”

How the fuck does he know who my character’s wife is? I’m sure there are thousands of wives asking for their husbands.

I notice also that several key plot points are never explained, such as the disappearance of food and why we were ditched.

Overall, a story with meh plot that doesn’t stand out in any way and is riddled with inconsistencies.

Well written zombie story. I'm excited for the next part.

I really enjoyed playing this. Well written. I barely found any typos and there were enough options to make it fun.