Prequel story to the CYS "Lucidity". In this prequel, we meet Valdis Visara, a young Latvian doctor who has spent the past two years trying to help a young woman named Samantha Green out of her hyper catatonic state brought on by a series of traumatic experiences when she was fifteen. Valdis works his fingers to the bones, and scours the ends of the Earth looking for something, ANYTHING to help his patient, even if it means making under the table deals and doing things that may break his ethics as a doctor.

You will take the role of Dr. Visara, as he speaks with medical staff after coming back from a trip to Beijing with a miraculous experimental machine that he is sure will help Samantha, and convince the one man who can make or break everything he has painstakingly work for.

(Note: This a very short CYS with no real options. This is simply a short story that serves as a backdrop for the CYS "Lucidity".

I concur. There wasn't any logic or reasoning to have an ending like that. The novel didn't end like that, so why tack on an ending (which, to be, is one of the worst endings of all time) to an otherwise pretty good horror movie?

It's reification. Treating concepts like they're real things. If human beings were suddenly wiped off the planet, there wouldn't be countries. But we go through all sorts of incredible machinations to put concreteness on things that are inherently not concrete. Look at a picture of the Earth taken from a satellite. Do you see the lines that make up the borders around countries, regions, states, cities? Are the oceans divided up? If you hadn't been told about concepts like these, you wouldn't see them as split up into individual land areas. You would see them for what they are: A bunch of land, and a bunch of water.

Anything else is patently absurd and, dare I say, delusional.

Am I trying too hard? Too hard to do what? State the obvious?

Are they jails? They could be prisons. If they had animals, they could be animal shelters. If you take away the bars and the convicts, you'd have a sheriff's office.

Policemen are also men in uniforms who shoot people. What if a postal work goes... well... postal? That would be a man in uniform who shoots people.

You know what else is falling water? Snow.

Lifeforms? Parts.

It's all just parts put together.

Fortunately for this thread, bad horror movies outnumber good horror movies by 2-to-1.

An American Werewolf In Paris, Troll 2, Plan 9 From Outer Space, the two Halloween remakes, the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th remakes, House Of 1000 Corpses, all Saw movies after 2, Gingerbread Man, Dracula 2000, all Tales From The Crypt movies (except the original). Dreamcatcher, Alone In The Dark, Ghost Ship, House on Haunted Hill remake, Anaconda, Maximum Overdrive, Exorcist 2, Hostel, The Happening, Nightmare on Elm Street (after 3), Manos: Hands of Fate, Friday the 13th (after 5 or 6, especially Jason X), The Leprechaun, Queen of the Damned, Feardotcom, The Haunting (remake), The Wicker Man...

And last but not least: Every single SyFy "horror" movie ever made.

Many of my favorites:

The Shining, Psycho, The Thing, The Exorcist, The Thing, Night Of The Living Dead, An American Werewolf In London, Videodrome, Nightmare On Elm Street, Carnival of Souls, Vampire Hunter D, Poltergeist, Ringu, Eraserhead, Jacob's Ladder, Altered States, Dracula (w/ Lugosi, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and most Hammer Horror Dracula films). Hellraiser, Village of the Damned, Nosferatu, Suspiria, The Birds, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, Eyes Without A Face, Prince of Darkness

My Ten:

10. Psycho

9. Night of the Living Dead

8. Eraserhead

7. Dracula (Lugosi)

6. The Exorcist

5. Prince of Darkness

4. Nightmare On Elm Street

3. Suspiria

2. An American Werewolf In London

1. Jacob's Ladder

This world has no countries. Just a lot of land and even more water. :)

I'm planning on including a kind of puzzle in my game, but it doesn't use items or variables. Basically, you go around an empty (or so you think) school, and in some of the rooms are things written on chalkboards pertaining to certain colors matching up to certain numbers. Then, later, you find a chalkboard with 3-5 colors in a specific order, which corrospond to a numberpad that must be unlocked to get into the psychiatrist's office. Only then can you continue the game.

What I was thinking of doing is something as simple as possible. Basically, you input the numbers in the correct order or something bad happens. Would it make more sense to have it simply reset the number sequence and make you start over again (potentially giving the player the ability to cheat through trial and error), or have it be a game ending mistake, forcing the player to find and memorize the solution else they lose?

My other question is, what other sort of simple puzzles would be good to use? Preferably ones for use in a classic CYS, without items or variables. Any ideas would be appreciated.

It looks like it will be a high fantasy medieval story, so here's my advice on that particular genre: The high fantasy medieval genre has, at its core, been done to death (much like cyberpunk and sci fi has been done to death). What you will need to do to make your story stand out is incorporate things into it that you wouldn't really see in other stories. For instance, create new kinds of magic other than the traditional white and black variety. Necromancy, floramancy, things like that. The stranger the kind of -mancy the better (I'd love to see a story with an aquamancer, or perhaps even a drakomancer!).

Including odd technology to give it a more punk-ish feel could be good too. Not neccesarily complex machines or firearms, but something along the lines.

All in all, all high fantasy stories are inherently good, it's just that they get dragged down into atypical fantasy substances. Go out there, be different, think outside the box, and I guarantee you'll end up with a great story people will want to read. :)

Gliffy.com is a website that lets you make all sorts of charts and things. I've been using it for a storyline flow chart. It has a lot of functions and it's really helped me out so far. The drawback is that it's a pay service, but you can sign up for a 30 day free trial.

You don't have to make flow charts. It can virtually any kind of chart. You can use it for maps even. I highly suggest other CYS writers to check it out if you need a little visual management for your stories. :)

I remember playing one of the Zork games. Don't particularly remember the exact name of it, but I remember it was one of my favorite text adventure games in the early days of my gaming.