Player Comments on The Cottage

I get that you wanted to put the bit in about the potential issues with the text colors. However, if you know that much ahead of time that people are going to have problems with the text colors, you probably shouldn’t have published it. I get that you were up against a deadline here, but still. And the same goes for the bit at the end – if your story is so bad that you have to apologize for it, why are you even publishing it? Again, I get the contest part, but I see these initial pages as back covers of books and when I read about how bad the story is, I just don’t even want to start reading. Ah well, on to the story!

For me the colors and images work. I know some don’t like them, but I think they can help set the mood a little bit. So I’m a six-year old girl? Okay. I was a little lost on the first page. I’m going out to play hide and seek – but I have a basket of food? Personally, I’ve never had food with me when I played that game, but hey, maybe this culture plays it differently. But then I get led out the door and atop a giant hill. Now in the hide-and-seek games I’ve played on top of a hill is the worst place you can possibly hide! Everyone can see you there! But I don’t know, maybe the six-year-old girl with the food basket hasn’t played hide and seek before and doesn’t know that.

Now I followed the path back towards home. I realize that in your intro you said that I shouldn’t. But I honestly couldn’t think of any possible reason a lost six-year-old girl would head further into the forest. I guess if you really didn’t want me to go that way, you shouldn’t have given me the option. Overall the descriptions and writing in the story was nice. Of course, reading back through, there didn’t really seem to be much of any options, either. There appeared to be the one major choice, and that was it. But again, it was good writing, I enjoyed reading the story, and hope that you will indeed create and write more here. Thank you for sharing the story with the site.

I enjoyed this story quite a bit.

The first couple of pages and the last couple seemed to have white font in which I had to highlight to read, which was a pain, but I'm not sure if this was a mistake on your end or if it was my computer being stupid, so I won't hold it against you.

The story, based off of the description, had me believed it was a kids centered story. It took a chilling dark turn. I like the way you took the old story and did it in a kind of Brother's Grimm kind of way. It was enjoyable most of the way through.

The only real gripe I have about this is the extreme depression running through this story. I get that it's a theme, but damn was this story straight depression through and through. There's not really anything to break up the constant crying of your main character, but maybe I missed a choice to have a happy ending. I got the betrayal ending, so that was obviously very dark.

Also, it was quite short, and the characters weren't really developed. Not much dialogue either, so it did feel a bit shallow but overall the theme and story kept me happy throughout it. Good job, man.

6/8

This was pretty good, although I will say I didn't go to the cottage as instructed and instead found the way home. The story was still touching enough. I'll have to read through the main part of the story.
What I can see so far is that the spelling and grammar are alright, except you could use paragraph breaks to separate the dialogue from the description paragraphs.
Although I could see you using faminem (famine) to describe what was going on, it felt kind of weird using the Dutch words for mother and father at random points in the story. You could have just stuck to all of the english versions and it would have been fine.
*Spoilers*
It seemed as though, at first you were steadily building up to the children having a vague idea of their parents planning on abandoning them in the forest, so the other children could survive. But then you kind of vomited all of the information out onto the page in a way that makes it hard to believe the children would willingly follow them out to the forest if they knew they were going to be left for dead.
You could have written in the parents finding a more subtle way to do this. Also I am a bit confused, was it a famine that was killing them or a sickness. It kind of seems like they talk about famine, which seems understandable. But at the ending I got the deaths were attributed to some kind of illness. Which if it was an illness I don't see why killing two of their children would even do anything for them. No one gets sick from starving to death, you just whittle away gradually.
Unless I'm missing something I would say it is a major plot hole.
I would also like to say that you should have spent more time working on your story (plot, grammar/paragraph breaks for dialogue) than trying to make the story look pretty. As you should probably know, looks and aesthetics don't do much for something everyone is reading. You could get away with it with a movie or some shit, but this is a reading site. While the background looked cool, it didn't factor into anything except gradually fading from my attention.
Any ways, this story has even greater potential, as it is already pretty good. Remember, plot, grammar, and description are always better than aesthetics.
Good story and keep up the work.

Spoiler Alert! As always, never read my comment before reading the story.

First of all, I did not notice any grammar mistakes disturbing the flow of the story. Never was it necessary to reread a sentence to understand what it is telling me.

I liked in which way you chose to give one of the old tales from the brothers Grimm a new twist.
It was interesting to read and also the plot itself was pretty captivating. The depressed feeling the story did tell was well done and you did great at setting the mood for this story.

Of course the characters could have been more fleshed out and yes it was quite short and lacking of meaningful choices.

Overall though I really liked it.
I also liked the fact that you could stray from the path of the traditional fairy tale and even eat your own brother.
The worst thing for me was the fact that obviously it was quite short. The time pressure you were under did not do anything for this story at all and it does feel a little bit rushed.

The endings are all quite well written and every one has a different feeling to it. There was even a happy ending for a tale that started out rather melancholic.

I really liked your writing style in this and it really told me I should read more of your work. Well done.

6/8 from me for the good writing and work on creating a story that's not only pleasing to read, but also pleasing to look at. The missing 2/8 are for the short length and the missing of significant choices.

Betrayers lies.

Noice

This was pretty good! I enjoyed the pictures and I like how you made little action into suspense. I gave it a 7/8. It's not the best, but it's definitely very good.

The pictured background was nice. Very good story with way too little choices. Can you make some more?

Pretty good, and I had no issues with the background images or other formatting. The only quirk is that the wealthy wagon man somehow passes through the same place whether we went straight home or stayed at.the cottage for several days.

A little too short for me but that's not to say it wasn't a good read. The story is great, but it'd be nice to add a few more options to advance the story. Kudos on the background I've never seen anything like that on this site before.

This story I judged for a children's story. I experienced both the "Happy" and "It's not your fault" endings, and I say, it's a good children's story. I believe it's more Fantasy. The fact that you have to highlight text to read in most pages could work in a puzzle story. It reminded me of Hansel and Gredel or something like that - with a cannibalistic "with" and a house made of "gingerbread." Overall, it was fairly good. 5/8

I really enjoyed reading your story. You did an excellent job with detail and made the story your own.

Intense. Not for you if you're looking for a game, but if you want to read a story that will make you feel, this is for you.