I am an avid reader of Young Adult vampire romances so expect to find all kinds of cliche adolescent angst and puberty issues in this story. There are three types of vampires in this world--healthy vamps, Discontented vamps (not so healthy) and hyper Discontented vamps (new kind of extremely unhealthy vamps). It's my very first story game so I'd appreciate as much constructive criticism as you can think of.

Just a practice.

@Zake

Thanks very much for your earnest suggestions.

I did intend to cover a span of one semester. Now I’ve realized one semester cannot be covered in sufficient detail within a story game, so sometimes weeks or months would pass by in a few sentences and other times a day would stretch over a few pages. That can’t be help. If I do justice to realistic portrayal of time ,, this story would stretch into a novel. I do want to get it out before I start to get sick of writing the same story for months.

As for the exams part, I am aware I’m not qualified to write exam questions. That’ll probably only happen in ten years’ time. Might not even happen for all I know. What I am looking for is that players are immersed in the school experience. Which is to say, when you play the game, you could almost believe that in an alternate universe, such a school does exist. And what kind of school doesn’t have exams? So the content isn’t important. It’ll probably be one quiz taking one or two question from each subject. For language and logic, I will probably put in real life exam questions I’ve seen back in school. For the elective questions such as Philosophy, I’ll probably ask something related to the lore. Of course, to make sure players are not repulsed by the difficulty (though it likely won’t be difficult at all), I intend to put in a page called the student’s class notes or something.

Yes, after some thought I’ve also come to the same conclusion that philosophical concepts may be inaccessible to players. Therefore, I’ve decided to be more faithful to the entertainment factor that insisting on exploring deep abstract ideas. I’ll make each character as vivid and memorable as possible in hopes that players would see that different kinds of people think differently and thus make varid choices to the same problem. The story overall still examines how trauma victims and perpetuators think and behave. But the exploration is weaved in loosely through dialogue, character development, consequences of players’ choices etc. Lessons would likewise aim to create dramatic effect, with some links to the general theme of the story where appropriate.

Thank you as well for recommending Gower’s article. I actually learnt something because of it. I had to check which writing style my country uses since we inherited both UK and US legacies. Turns out we uses UK spelling and grammar except for punctuation which we follow the US tradition of using double inverted commas. I’ve also just realized that for many years I had been making the mistake of ending my dialogue with a period when my attribution comes after the quote. I’ll have to make adjustments to my story after I’ve completed posting all pages or I’ll break my momentum. One minor point that confuses me in Gower’s article is the way he keeps mentioning “original sentence”. Aren’t all dialogues in narrative fiction original? Unless he also includes academic writing in his analysis where you sometimes quote other scholars, in which case the quote would not be original. Anyway, that’s just a small point. I can generally understand his explanation.

@TharaApples

Thanks for your reply :)

@ Avery_Moore

I see… Well I placed it under fantasy/grimdark/socially important and a bunch of others. Still, it’s a relief that I can still do a school-based one, since I’m halfway through and it would be such a disappointment to have to let it go. But I’ll probably move to other genres such as Historical fiction in future. Thanks for clarifying.

Actually in the philosophy part I intended to make the young vamps learn about literary theories through Derrida or Saussuer. Or perhaps argue a bit about Freud’s uncanny and it’s relation to trauma. I’m interested in trauma studies you see, thus the rape scene at the beginning and depression throbes throughout. I feel that though the vampire series I’ve read in my adolescence were as liberating as a drug for me, those vampire schools did not feel real. I’ve fantasised about a real vamp school where you choose real subjects and take real exams.

Is there a rule about not submitting school-based storygames? I did not see it when I signed up over a year ago. I even recall a school-based contest that year. It would be a pity if you had prohibited school-based. I’m sure there must be a growing fan-base for this particular genre, given that it offers some kind of escapism for the stresses of real life school. You know, a school that is realistic and nevertheless extraordinary at the same time.

Hi, I’m writing a school-based story game and decided to take a short break from all the clicking and typing. So here I am to ask: what is your idea of an interesting philosophy class? In my school, philosophy classes are usually debate sessions. But perhaps there are people around here who’ve taken philo classes in more novel ways.

@PerforatedPenguin

Oh yes you’re right. In the hustle to post I’ve mixed up the numbers.

@Ogre11

I put the choice on page 9 even though the player will go to page 10 regardless and the choice will only affect whether the player goes to page 11 or 12 because the page following page 9 would be too long if I combine my current page 10 with either page 11 or page 12. And it helps with building suspense to split things up.

Yup after tinkering with the variables for nearly an hour, I figured out how to use your way. Your potion example Made things clearer though. Thanks much.

@mizal

Thanks so much for your reply. I was just moping over how to shorten the time taken to complete this. Manual is just too tedious and frustrating. Just forgetting to put in one value, something goes wrong and I have to comb through the editer to find that bug.

Hi, I'm copying my first story game from Word to this site and need help with linking. Here's the situation: on p9, you can choose p10/p11 or p10/12. Regardless which you choose, P11 or P12 will be followed by p13/14/15/16. But if you choose p10/11, you will end up with p18 after p17. If you choose p10/12, you will end up with p19 after p17. How do I make this happen? I don't want to create a whole different set of p13 to p17 for each option because there is another instance down the road when another crossroads like this will occur. It'll be too tedious.  Thanks for your time.