4/1/2023

7/7/2025 9:54 AM

259

2

1 win / 0 losses

Architect

Lazarus Cage

They want to keep you bound in the dark, but you won't let them. You will get out, fight and flee, fail and die, then try again and again...

Nautilus

Grudges must always be the first to die when a storm arrives.

After years away you return home to your dying father, but will you be able to get your brother to forgive you for leaving? And will you step up to the challenge to inherit your father's most prized possession?

Written as part of the 2023 Spring/Summer Contest: Gone Fishin' it is a game with a much bigger focus on story than gameplay, but still there is a decent amount of endings and variation for something this short.

Truly my genius is being limited by the technology of our time, but at least the decision to go on a raid turned out to be most beneficial. Voting wise I am culturally and also personally obligated to say C for the first vote and far as the second goes all options sound viable, but personally I think ignoring the obvious matter of ever increasing need for lodging a tailor sounds like something fun to do for a change and my votes have been overly pragmatic up to this point so I'll say D just for that reason.

Glad my suffering was at least entertaining to you, the achievement almost makes burning two bottles of whisky worth it. Honestly Epilogue 10 was probably my favorite (as soon as I ignore where MC had to stick his dick in to get there), or rather the story leading into it was since that one properly closed up most of its threads instead of taking a hatchet to those it didn't feel like dealing with. 7 is also up there for similar reasons and 4 kinda gets a highlight even though turning Mara into a last minute romance despite how that was setup up to this point made no sense. Initially I thought it was because every other epilogue had a romantic partner, but that turned out not to be the case so I was even more confused. At the same time the competition for the worst is much stiffer, even if I didn't actually hate any endings as much as I found a lot of them either unsatisfying or finishing a story that really should've been capped with a bad/neutral ending. Good thing that came out of it is now I at least know why people like your games, even if it'll be a while before I dive into another, especially one that long.

I remember that particular side story, honestly it's pretty far from being biggest offender and I generally didn't mind. Even found it funny when we later went on the second assignment for the doctor and MC made multiple references to that whole thing. Nah my actual problem relates more to things like how for 99% of Annah's route you get only choices that end in instant death for often the dumbest of reasons and then at the end choosing to align yourself with the Syndicate get you dead while the one where you decide to leave it all behind is where you end up working for them instead. Or how the choice to focus on Lisa sends you into the extended Isabella path and the choice to go to Isabella results in a path where you get an epilogue with Lisa. And don't get me started on the fact that to get to the best in terms of emotional payoff ending you have to pick a random choice about where to go during a random party midway through that branch, which by the way results in you unknowingly fucking your sister.

My comment for this challenge is also the longest review I've written for the site, though nowhere near the longest review I've ever written. If I had the time to make it a proper critique that included spoilers it'd probably be the longest considering my raw notes were 3 times what they usually are for a CYS game.

Just now posted my review on Rogues as my entry for the mini challenge. Probably should've added a profanity warning to it, but fuck it.

Edit note: Because I'm operating on european time I've put the 7th or July as the review date in my tracking thread post, but I am still on time if we're using EST time.

Not an American, but I do respect countries that refused to stay under the boot so happy 4th. Even if my people did it better (and more often).

I have a pretty varied taste in terms of stories, some of my favorite things tend to lean on the darker, more serious side though so your work is definitely something I'd be into, but I also tend to consider hype to be something corrosive to enjoyment and the thought that no matter how good something is I'll never be able to enjoy is as much as I would if I came in without the inescapable bias tends to sour me on things. Most recent example would be Expedition 33, which I wanted to play but didn't have time for and now there's no point because that game could deepthroat me with no teeth and it still wouldn't meet the expectations others created for it.

I haven't read a single work of End's. At this point kind of on purpose because with how much time everyone spends hanging on his dick the odds of any of his games fully living up to the hype are low, regardless of if they're actually good or not which I assume they are because you can't for 20+ years consistently write shit the majority of people like without being good at writing. Unless your name happens to be Rowling. I am still leaning towards Rouges mostly because I planned on having at least one 8 length game on my list for this contest and End wrote half of all those on the site LOL.

Considering I so far didn't touch any of End's games I'm kinda torn on whether to start with something older or never of his. So I'll let the crowd help me pick between Necromancer or Rouges, or maybe something else (I'm not doing Eternal I've got plans for that game that would require way longer than a weekend).

We don't get a second to catch our breath I see and also welcome mizal. Personally I believe we should quickly stock up on resources in case another shitstorm hits so I'd vote for option A now that we've got a geared up squad. Not sure about naming the dinos yet, but I think naming our bus Bespoke Automobile for Navigating the Ground or BANG bus in short since the full name is a mouthful sounds like the most reasonable course of action.