Creatures of the Snow

When I pressed the random option feeling a little "adventurous", I most definitely didn't expect to find this little gem of a story!

It was a fun read with many interesting details and a likable protagonist (and the cutest little fox! :3). The post-apocalyptic atmosphere was well captured even though our insight into the events leading to it was somewhat limited. The Stead and its inhabitants, with their prejudices and silly superstitions, were fittingly infuriating if not a little predictable and cliche in the whole small close-minded community way we often see in many other stories, but I guess they served their purpose in getting the reader to sympathize with the protagonist. The Snowmen were a rather endearing bunch and I would love to read more about them if a chance arises.

Aside from the occasional spelling mistake, the reading was thoroughly enjoyable and I have no complains besides the fact that the story was too short! I believe it holds a potential for many more stories about the war, the Cryndy (I laughed a little when I read the name aloud and realized the ingenuity behind it ;) ), the Snowmen, and I'm very interested in finding out what happened to Elia's parents and where the superstition about the red color comes from.

To sum up, it's a great story with a potential for many amazing spin-offs and I sure hope I'll get to read one some day so my curiosity about this world and its inhabitants can be satisfied. :)

In typical Bingersoll fashion, the story begins with an interesting title image and song lyrics. I’m a big fan of using the lyrics as it’s a good mood setter. I picture it the way a movie opens, a grand score with the camera spanning across beautiful scenery. Gets me in the zone, ready to immerse myself in the story. I don’t think anyone does it better on the site than Bill.

Hmm. The first page presents the story’s setting. Unfortunate, indeed, that the Cryndys are attracted by red. We’ll find out if that’s true or not. My only critique for the story’s opening, is that a choice is clearly needed. I mean, one of the paragraph begins with a possible branch: “What do you do about [the tracks]?” There are options given after the thought as well. Yet, the reader is given a single, lonely link at the bottom of the page. That does not usually bother me; however, choices were clearly set up on the page.

Couple things: This world is slightly familiar, yet vastly different with technology and (mutated?) creatures. It’s enough to draw on the readers experience, while still being a different and interesting place to explore. And that’s what we’re doing here, exploring the story. The main character herself, without going into too much detail, seems to speak as a sixteen year-old would. Sometimes it seems a little juvenile, but then I remember what it was like being sixteen and wonder how she came to be so mature. Ok a third thing: Snowman were hard to understand at first. Probably because they are already fixed as one thing in our reality. Moving on.

As far as sentence structure goes, I noticed there seems to be a pattern with a good number of paragraphs. Now, Bill, as you are far greater a wordsmith than me, consider this a mere observation rather than a quick and dirty criticism. Often paragraphs are formatted, roughly, like this: X. X. X;x. X, X. They begin with a normal additive, then the semi colon, sometimes an em dash used instead, is placed mid-late in the paragraph. I wouldn’t call it boring exactly, the writing is too great, but perhaps it’s not as effective as it could be.

Similarly, dialogue and narrative felt to have their own format, mostly in the sense that they were broken up. There would be large chunks of narration, then large chunks of dialogue, but rarely a mix of the two. Now that can be due to the plot itself; I certainly wouldn’t want to read dialogue for dialogue’s sake, but I feel it would be more engaging to throw in more pockets mixing the two.

The storygame itself is truly well-done. This comment is more constructive than my typical Bingersoll jerk off. Hopefully it’s more beneficial. Anyone who enjoys reading as well as interactive fiction knows that this really is a quality piece. I’d recommend Creatures to anyone looking for an engaging read.

The first thing that came to mind when I think about this story is that it feels like a brief glimpse into a much larger world. As I read through each branch, I somehow felt that there was a lot more to the setting than is mentioned in the text. Perhaps this has something to do with the excellent quality of the world building, even for a story with a relatively simple plot such as this. There are so many interesting little details sprinkled throughout, such as the existence of genetically engineered animals as well as humans on the planet, or the fact that a large portion of the human population took to the stars in search of a more inhabitable world. Though these little tidbits are not really necessary to move the story along, they add a some depth to it, leaving the reader with a little more to wonder about after they're done. For me personally, the idea of "Red Burnings" really intrigued me, perhaps because they are reminiscent of book burnings. What's interesting to me is that both are rooted in fear and ignorance. For book burnings, it's usually an aversion to new ideas contradictory to those of the ones doing the burning, and for red burnings, it's an adherence to superstition. It would probably be possible to write a whole new story around that concept alone.

The well developed setting lends itself excellently to the plot. I already mentioned that it is fairly simple, with most branches taking place over the course of less than 24 hours. At it's core, it's really just a narrative about an outcast girl trying to help save her people from an outside threat and hopefully get a little glory in the process. There is no oppressive authoritarian dictatorship to overthrow or intergalactic war to be won, (at least, there hasn't been for a long, long time), which, for me at least, is kind of refreshing. For some reason, I tend to automatically assume that all stories are going to escalate until the stakes are at least at end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it levels, especially with anything Science-Fiction or Fantasy. This isn't to say that there aren't already a surplus of stories that do this, but it's still always nice to hear a story about a person trying to save just one settlement instead of every living thing on the planet.

There are one or two specific plot elements I'd like to focus on for a little while. Firstly, I'd like to draw attention to the cleverness of having a superstition against the color red. I already touched on one of the ways the story explores the implications of something like this when I mentioned Red-Burnings, but there are a few other well done aspects of this that I'd like to cover. The most obvious of these is the idea that anyone with red hair is immediately ostracized, something that often comes up in the plot. Even more interesting, however, is the origin of this superstition. Supposedly, the Cryndy are drawn to the color, attacking it on sight. Though none of these creatures have been seen for generations, the fear of the color still remains. This has got to be the most logical way I have ever heard of any superstition being born. Even in real life, it's usually something dumb that causes them. For example, someone just so happens to wear a certain sweater on a certain day, then randomly finds a hundred dollar bill lying on the sidewalk. From that day on, they think that sweater is lucky, and ignore all evidence that conflicts with this theory. I actually kind of wonder if this is what happened in this story. It may have just been an oversight on the part of the author, but the protagonist's red hair never seems to actually come into play when fighting the Cryndy. It could be like how everyone assumes bulls hate the color red, when in actuality, they just don't like having someone wave a cape around in their face.

The other thing I'd like to focus on is not as well done. Throughout the story, a lot of characters never seem to have much of an emotional reaction to death. For example, when they hear the chief and his sons getting killed over the radio, nobody really seems to bat an eye. Even in a harsh environment like this, and even if the protagonist doesn't think too highly of him, I would have at least expected there to be a moment or two of shocked silence when the weight of what had just happened sunk in. This is their leader we're talking about, losing him has got to have some sort of impact on moral.

While we're on the subject of things that could be improved, I did notice a couple places where the pacing seemed just a tad bit off. To be clear, the vast majority of this story was great in this regard, and at this point I'm mostly just being nitpicky, but it wasn't always perfect. For one thing, the drunk snowman seemed to be able to gather his friends together a lot more quickly than should be possible. Unless I missed some sort of short time jump, it seemed like one second he was going to get reinforcements, and the next he was already back with an army. Maybe the snowmen can communicate in ways we humans cannot, but it still should take some amount of time to pass the memo along. Another pacing problem was at the very end of page 36, right before the end game link. One of the snowmen just casually mentions that the protagonist should be made chief, and the story ends. This felt a little too abrupt, as it had nothing building up to it. The really strange thing about it, to me at least, was the fact that this was done so well in the branch that ends on page 39. I understand that it's a hassle to write basically the same thing twice, but if I hadn't read the ending on page 39 before the one on 36, I would have been very confused.

Anyways, now that the obligatory constructive criticism is over with, I guess I can go back to saying how much I liked this story now. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone in need of a few hours worth of quality Science-Fiction content, so if you haven't already done so, go ahead and give this story some love.

I really enjoyed it, very entertaining.

it was good

Not very comprehensible for children. The vocabulary is appropriate for adults. I was hoping for something written for a lower grade level. As a story for teens or adults it is good.

I obviously didn't pick a winning path, wound with a haircut and people more unfriendly than they were. Will try again sometime, seems like a good story though.

This was a fun adventure! The fight scenes and descriptions of the locations were very well done!

Too long of stories, not enough choices

This story was a bit good until the end. Actually, there wasn't even an end! No ending? everything HAS to have a good, HAPPY ending!