Player Comments on Wizard Duel at Wizard School

A little recap from me to help you write in the future.
There will be spoilers so consider yourself warned.

First things first. The story was very short. Just one page for every choice and one page for the description of the scene. You could have tried to use the same amount of choices to do a multi stage exam within the story. As it is now it simply is a trial and error kind of thing.

I am no native speaker so I will not judge grammar. All I can say is that I did not find any obvious mistakes ruining the flow of the story.

The main character is just plain boring. You provide us with zero background, or any character traits that make him interesting. All you tell us is the fact that he is to lazy to study and has no clue what he is doing.

The test itself is the main problem though.
You provide the reader with a challenge of stopping the tutors fireball. Now we don't know how the magic in your world works, but you simply tell us different kinds of magic.
The logical choice would be water. Using it leads to failure which destroys any kind of reason within the story. Why would anything else work if not even the most basic knowledge of water extinguishes fire helps?
All other choices lead to pages telling us that poorly executed magic techniques or simply very badly thought through solutions lead to failure.

The worst thing though is that you chose to make the only thing worth trying to not try at all. If simply standing there while a huge fireball races at you, and accepting you are dead already is the only way to survive, why would anyone need to learn how to defend? Why would wizards bother trying to create defensive spells if all you had to do was to accept you can not defend against magic?
It creates a massive plot-hole, along with raising a lot of questions and making it seem so immensely unrealistic.
That word seems big in a fantasy game, but every fantasy and magic system still has to make some kind of sense within a story.

All in all it is a very poorly thought through story with no real plot and just one character, who is also very shallow.
2/8 from me.

It was very well written, but I noticed a few problems. This game was very short. The only reason it took me more than five minutes was because you provided us with literally no background as to how magic worked in this world. The correct answer was completely unintuitive, but worse, nonsensical. Defensive magic based on zen meditation is interesting, but it seems almost too easy to use defensive spells. Someone could stare off into a trance and it would be like they entered God mode.

Also, I find it highly unlikely that, given the situation, the guy would be able to achieve the state of mind necessary for such a spell to work. Unless, of course, he knew how defensive spells like that one functioned, which he probably didn't, because you explicitly stated that he didn't study very well.

I'm not sure if I buy into your logic on most of those. I have to assume my player character is just an absolute idiot to use his powers in such unimaginative and foolish ways.

Personally, I find the 'salvation through unexpected means' thing to be a really annoying cliche that needs to be properly foreshadowed to work well. And in a story this short, there is no opportunity to do so.

Also, if a wizard is invincible from enemy attack just by accepting he can't stop it, then why ever bother learning any defensive magic? He also becomes akin to a god and in a longer story that would turn him into a Mary Sue.

The general idea has promise, but it needs to be developed into a much longer story to be fully utilized. Most fantasy usually requires hefty word counts because of the world building that goes into it.

I didn't notice any jarring grammar errors though. And it'd be interesting to see where you'd take this if you made it more in depth.

you can't win, thats why I hate it.

I clicked on accept defeat instantly because I thought it would be funny only to realize I'm a cheater.

Okay, I can see that you took some time and effort to write this, but come on. This is garbage.

2/8 for effort.

This game is shit

Love the article

interesting, neat, must try once and never return

what the heck

There's not really much to this story, though I already knew what I was getting myself into by the description! Honestly, it made me giggle as a fan of the "magical school" genre. I'm sure this was intended to be a parody, so your goal was accomplished. It was a fun distraction, but had too little actual plot to earn a higher rating from me.

Interesting. Would like the test to involve more spells.

This is quite short, but it's an interesting idea. I think I'll play it often when I'm bored.

The sheer absurdity of it all made me smile.

I'm assuming that you intended to make the reader at least feel something along the lines of "haha, this is funny".
That's fine, I'll just rate it on your terms then.

5/8, I didn't laugh.

Also the length should be a 1/8.

Wow. This was bad. There is a reason why it's called 'Choose Your Own Adventure', which I somehow don't think this constitutes as seeing as it's more like a 'Choose Your Own Single Choice Nonsensical Anecdote'. Many choices which you'd expect to work against the one fire spell you encounter from an incredibly unrealistic professor just don't work out. For some reason, you were fixated on quoting parts of a textbook the reader isn't even exposed to (and therefore can't know about), then chastise them for not knowing some incredibly specific thing about each type of magic until you get to the 'giving up' option, which, against all reason, makes you bloody invincible. Why would anyone learn magic if all they need to do is not know how to use magic and clear their mind!? Why bother with anything else if that's the perfect defence?
Right, this was also really short. If you want to make an actual fantasy game, you're probably going to want at least 30,000 words under your belt, half the size of a legitimate average novel. Seeing as the average fantasy novel is about 3 times as big and you need to take into account that branching reduces exposure to content unless the person goes back and choose every option, even that is pushing it in length. It also seems really stupid that the teacher basically kills you every time and everyone then laughs at the shitty jokes he tells, instead of screaming at horror at their peer's death and the prospect of their own at facing the same 'exam'. In fact, the audience is so little written about, I'm convinced the other members of the class were just a recording of laughter played on repeat like in a fucking sitcom.
That being said, it was pretty well written (better than most almost every game under a rating of 3 I've seen so far), and had few mistakes (not that I'd expect many in less than 2000 words). This has potential to be decent if the choices are made proportional to the outcome, the reader actually finds out who they're reading about, and you basically change mostly everything except the writing style. Pretty brutal review, but at least I mashed a compliment in there somewhere. A story to be vastly improved.
1/8

I laughed so hard at this storygame. Almost every single ending resulted in death, accompanied by your entire class laughing at you and saying puns. Hilarious. This was a terrible idea.

This storygame really needs to be thought out. I liked it. It would be way better if longer. Great job!

So the answer I expect to kill me makes me live and the answer that I expect to save me kills me..... I call that quite unpredictable.

Well... I stood there and accepted defeat only to win....... I just stood there like "COME AT ME BRO!!" and it worked...... I don't really know how to react......

Puns were great, I was surprised I picked the best choice first try noice story

I didn't mind the length, this was actually quite humorous.

Interesting options

That was short... But okay.

This was awfully short. 2/8

Pretty short.

Could be better, not the worst.

5- for lack of choices and short length. +5 for great ending, detail and choices. +1 for funny puns! Congrats, you passed my interview!:3

What?!? This game is pretty boring since there is only one choice and the answer is like a cop-out...

Died every time using my brain...then finally won lol

This game is pretty stupid. Other than that, good job :P

your a wizard larry

It would have been better if it were longer. And there were how many ways to die? At least we could try again.

It would be nicer if was longer

What was that

I think that you could probably add another test stage; that way it would be longer and there would be more ways to win... or die...

Only one choice, and only one doesn't lead to your death. This is almost the definition of linear.

That was okay...I tried everything until I accepted defeat!

@dragon396

Just click 'Accept defeat.' and you win.

I didn't really like this. The logical choices often get punished and I don't really want to go to a school that kills people who suck at tests and then gloats over it. A good level of detail but the spells are all guesswork unless you either put it in the context of an existing set of wizard stories, use logic or set up a backstory that references the various spells at some point. On the positive side you put in a good amount of effort and the writing style flowed well though :)

I don't understand. That was nothing.

And I find that when a student dies, the other pupils don't laugh. Instead, they should be frightened about their own freaking lives.

And only giving us one choice is not a storygame at freaking all. Do you want to just show off your writing? I have to admit that your writing was good, although you cannot effectively deliver a good storygame.

1/8

I suppose it seems you only spent about a day writing this. It is a good idea, but needs to be extended to be a really good story. I gave it a 4/8 for that reason.