Ever Been Chased By A Dinosaur

Hahahaha yes!!! An puzzle & item-based exploration game? I’m thrilled people are writing these. Sign me the hell up.
Anyways this is a fun & enjoyable game on just about every level. Exploring the island is fun, the narration is lively and clear, the excitement comes together for an engaging climax, and the puzzles are fun. Highly recommended if you like puzzle/exploration games at all. Give this game a shot!

=SPOILERS BELOW=

Setting:
Knockoff Jurassic park. A classic, and this game delivers, with plenty of fun exploration sequences and the opportunity to see 5 classic dinosaur species while exploring the vivid island. Anyways I re-watched Jurassic Park last week for like the 5th time, so I think you could say I’m in the target audience for this game.
I don’t really have much to say about this other than “cool!” This game took good advantage of its dinosaur-island setting to present a number of fun locations and things the reader can do in them.
One minor downside I guess is that there are none of the paleontologist details in this game that are in the movies (for good reasons that become clear over time).

Characters:
Overall pretty good for a puzzle game. They’re not the focus, but the touches of characterization we see add a lot to the game.
Obviously the narrator was a pain in the ass, but he’s supposed to be. His dialogue was written in a way that was funny and entertaining rather than annoying. That said, I think there was a little too much of it—the same effect could have been better & more concentrated in less space. It made working through the game a little cumbersome, since I felt I had to read carefully so as not to miss clues, and a lot of the banter turned out to be extraneous.
Evan makes a good presenter for the rest of the island, enhancing and contrasting the scenes the reader is shown. He compliments the message about falseness from the lookout by engaging in his own showmanship. He observes the viciousness and later comradery among the microraptors and appreciates it—and of course immediately farms it for content.
The characters weren’t especially deep, but that didn’t matter because the game didn’t ask that of them, and they were so vivid. I particularly liked how characterization was dropped even before we’d met any of the characters but Evan. For instance I liked the detail of how each of the 8 dares is written in a different style. Juras C Parkin is an eccentric egotistical billionaire who it becomes increasingly clear is responsible for multiple murders (even before we find his villain manifesto—*cough*, diary).

Themes & Character arcs:
This game plays with some interesting themes—what’s real and what isn’t. The narrator is a showman, artificially creating as much content as he actually engages with. This is directly paralleled by the island billionaire’s words, describing fake artificial ruins that have been planted in a fake, artificial ecosystem. The parallels only become more clear as the story progresses.
We get hints of depth from the narrator, behind his intentionally exaggerated controversial showman cybertuber persona. He feigns stupidity at times (and is really stupid at others), but his reflections on what makes good show business demonstrate that he’s really quite crafty. We get hints of his backstory, like encounters with Parkin, and various throwaway anecdotes about his childhood.
A recurring theme is his emotional spareness. He claims to be unable to feel fear and that everything he does is an act, but it doesn’t always seem that way—he seems to forget showmanship for a moment and genuinely enjoy playing with a baby stegosaurus, and later he *does* think he might be feeling fear when he sees a Tyrannosaurus. Then, he really does feel fear when he thinks Jim Parkin is about to kill him.
I like the character bits I see, but they don’t quite form a cohesive whole. In the Champion ending, it’s not clear how or why Evan’s experiences on the island have really changed him. He still needed prompting from Irene to tell the truth about the island; and then we just cut to a victory where Evan has resolved to make videos that inspire from now on. Okay, great, why? This is cool, but would have been cooler if it was grounded in a character arc that brought out and put to the test his principles throughout the game, and then put in the player’s hands what decisions to make with them and at what cost in the final sequence. There are a lot of isolated scenes that suggest something like this: like his observing the microraptors sharing, the stegosaurus and triceratops. The rover/leaf choice in the climax is a good example of a final decision that could tie that up. The ending where he loses his footage to save them is another good character dilemma. But right now these scenes are isolated character moments. They don’t build together into an overall character journey. So his resolve at the champion ending just feels like another game award—its a nice and fun touch, but isn’t particularly meaningful to the player.

Puzzles:
Like I said, I’m thrilled to see more people on the site doing stuff with scripting and items. This game makes good use of the CYS editor.
I really liked the variety of puzzles & achievements this game has. There’s the dares, there’s the footage, there’s getting subscribers, and there’s other achievements like the island’s mystery plot surrounding Juras and his daughter. This is a great approach for puzzle/open-map games, since everyone who plays can find *something* on their first go, and is invited to come back and figure out the rest. There’s a real sense of progress. People who get stuck on one puzzle can go work on others, and there’s less risk of the frustration that more linear puzzle games can cause.
I almost wish the game was harder/deadlier? I came prepared for dinosaur attacks, but the only choices that lead to death were the very obviously fatal ones that I only clicked on to confirm that they did, in fact, kill you.
Similarly, the puzzles themselves weren’t very hard or complex. There were only a couple sections with puzzles that had more than a few steps (like getting into the lab). Item use was pretty predictable, and usually showed up automatically with a link once the player had the right item; which makes the game much easier than it would be otherwise. That’s all fine, but it might be cool to make some secrets a little harder to find, and have them feel more rewarding that way.
For instance, the final sequence in the lab has a series of options where the reader can quit now, or keep investigating. One option would be to hide the ‘keep investigating’ options behind other items elsewhere on the island, or other puzzles. Similarly, I love using the quicksand to defeat the Jim-osaurus, but it would be even cooler to make the player think of that themselves—maybe by giving the same drive-around-the-island options as they’ve always had, but a limited time before Jim catches up, and seeing if they think to drive to the quicksand themselves. (Will11’s blacksea detective game did something similar to great effect.) As is, finding the best ending is pretty easy. (Unless there’s some other secret one I’m missing.)
But this also works as it is: mainly an exploration-based game rather than a puzzle-based game, and if the intent was to make the coolest endings easily accessible, it succeeded.

Language:
The narration is clean and efficient, with just the right amount of flavor and description to detail the setting and character actions without drawing attention to itself. It fades smoothly into the background, which is perfect for this kind of story. The dialogue tagging was also great—taking excellent advantage of physical descriptors instead of overusing dialogue verbs. I didn’t notice any clumsy phrasing at all.
This game is funny too. Not all the jokes landed, but many of them got a chuckle from me.
A criticism: The narrator can be long-winded at times, which tempts the reader to skip through their dialogue while looking for clues about the next action to take. Boiling down the wisecracks—and the wording in general—for some of the transitional scenes might help. Particularly on the choice-hub pages where the narration is the same every time the player visits. I liked the attention to narration, but the game felt like it dragged on a bit between choices, and that would be a good compromise to speed things up. Right now, much more time is spend wading through the narration than actually solving the puzzles.
The humor in this game feels very visual & delivery-based. It’s funny as is, but it would be hilarious with a talented performer. Have you ever written for visual mediums?

Specific notes:
- I like the premise lol. And I like the attention to story & dialogue for what’s mainly a puzzle game, it really takes games like this to the next level.
- 30$ a month?! Inflation must have gotten bad.
- Lol at the different wording styles in the dares.
- Lol, “no one knows I’m here” immediately pulls out a list of hyper-specific dares.
- I like the images too, the pictures and vaguely techy border & font add great atmosphere.
- Lol at pointing out the typo in ‘ate a leaf’
- Lol, “especially here, where there is no one to rival it”
- Hey, what do you call it when you punch a T-rex and he gets a bruise? A dino-sore. EDIT: Seems we had similar thoughts lol.
- What do you call it when he takes an advil? A di-no-sore.
- Lol “I am Evan, and I am abnormal”
- Sketchy + sus. “Why does something have to be real to capture that childlike feeling of wonder” are all the dinos robots or something
- “At long last we have succeeded at creating Jurassic Park from Michael Crichton’s famous novel ‘Don’t create Jurassic Park’.” (Yes, I know his actual point is ‘capitalism bad’)
- I’m wondering how you got art with such a specific & consistent feel. Did you make it yourself?
- Oh very nice, updating link descriptions. Professional touches like this really make a difference in puzzle games.
- This whole thing is starting to feel like free advertising for Juras C Parkin.
- Wild detail of the seat of the rover-saurus molding to fit your shape. That’s insane engineering.
- My camera survived being eaten by a spinosaurus?? Maybe they’re holograms, not robots.
- Lol “Why pay someone to tell you your problems when your comment section does that for free?”
- I also like the recurring joke of all of his videos having the same name scheme.
- The dino food goes away if you try to use it on the wrong page—I don’t know if that’s intentional, but I recommend against it.
- I like the scenes with the microraptors. Nice thematic tie ins.
- This foreshadowing about danger to the camera is interesting. Surely there must be some option that actually does destroy it.
- Lol, “Wait, isn’t the stegosaurus a dinosaur?”
- Lol “Given how much I struggle with spelling, maybe I’m diabetic too.”
- Lol at him panicking in the quicksand
- Honestly not sure why the landrover worked on the quicksand, but great!
- Insane that he titled his own diary confessions of a mad scientist.
- Insane that he’s writing ANY of this down. “Yes it was I, Juras C Parkin, who was behind it all! I emotionally manipulate my daughter! I eat baby dinosaurs for breakfast and make their parents watch! I stand up in movie theaters and glue dimes to the sidewalk! Wahaha!”
- I don’t know, in another game this would be over the top, but this game is kind of selling itself on over the top humor. It works for the character. I’m a lot more nitpicky about the characterization of the various dinosaur responses to everything, but that’s nitpicks.
- Pretending to be Helen seems like the safest option here; might check out the others later.
- Lol, “sharpest bulb in the room”
- Lol, “you roll your eyes and hope your audience wouldn’t call you out for this terribly paced scene”
- Haha, I was right about the dinosaurs being genetic immitations! (Dang, looks like I didn’t include that guess in my log. Well you’ll have to take my word for it.)
- Lol, “creator of content”
- Pretty convenient for Helen to just happen to be here, but I’ll forgive it.
- This is a great climax sequence with the land rover & quicksand.
- Bronze award my ass, I have close up footage of all 5 dinosaurs and completed all 8 dares. (You might have a bug.)

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
I first reached the champion of mossy fossil island ending. Then I went back to find a few others. The leaf one was toughest, since I never actually tried the purple leaf at the start of the game on my first go through.

CONCLUSION: I feel a little guilty rating this a 7/8 after raving about it in my opening comments, but I try to reserve 8s for games that blew me away in all categories, and while this is tons of fun, I don’t think it was *perfect*. Bringing this up to an 8 would probably require 2 things: 1) Really honing in on the meaty character stuff for Evan. I liked what I saw, but right now it’s in the background. 2) Making the puzzles & island secrets take more ingenuity to track down. But again I’m not necessarily suggesting you actually do either of these; the game is fine and good as it is, and either of those would change its nature in ways you & readers might not like.
Anyways this is great and feature-quality. (And would probably replace mine if so. You rat bastard.) I’ll be commending this within a day or two if no one else gets to it first.

What's up guys, it's ya boi Siyu back at it again with another review!

(Spoiler warning)

I found this story to quite an enjoyable read.

The puzzles I felt could've been a little bit harder so as to not simply be 'Go to Point A then Point B' but they were competently scripted and had the story deftly woven into them. My favourite joke was the blackmail one, right at the end. Characterisation of the MC was well-done, he's sufficiently annoying and the lines where he's thinking of how to make the video more appealing is a nice touch, it really helps to sell that this guy is a vlogger who's been doing this since childhood. I liked that there were multiple ways to complete certain dares in ways that made sense, such as the capture a dinosaur sleeping one. Regardless of how you completed each dare, the author takes the time to make it feel rewarding and considering this story is the second contest entry you've submitted in a 2(?) month period, impressive work.

Now, onto the negatives.

As I mentioned earlier, the MC is meant to be a caricature of a YouTuber, so the story will parody and somewhat exaggerate a YouTuber's commentary throughout to make fun of them. However, the amount of times this happens in the story is excessive to the point where it goes from mildly amusing to grating as you're essentially forced to sit through segments of a YouTube vlog multiple times. I think a better way to do this would either to exaggerate the dialogue more or to reduce the amount you write these sections into the story.

Speaking more on the humour, this story relies heavily on meta humour most notably in the part where Juras 'infodumps' onto the reader. I get that he thinks he's speaking to his daughter and that it's part of the intended humour here, but to get to this page I already have to read a book where he tells me all this info anyway. It's both a joke that goes on too long and makes you go through something you already know, it could've benefited from being shorter is what I'm saying.

I didn't notice any SPAG errors and it's a decent length. Definitely worth a read. 5/8.

It’s very impressive to see a second full-length story written so quickly in a completely different genre to the first by the same author. The title is fun (though shouldn’t it end on a question mark?) and I like the premise about a youtuber who has clearly never seen any of the Jurassic Park movies. I like the achievements available, though it seems rather mean to assume that I’d need hints on the very first page (didn’t stop me looking at them though. If I’m going to be chased by a T-Rex it might be handy to know they’re allergic to cheese or something). Alas, it was a cruel trick.

Nice pun on the billionaire CEO’ name (his whole story and relationship with his daughter are probably the best-written parts of this story). The list of dares was well done too. I fought the temptation to take the giving up ending and went into the forest (which was indeed green). The pictures are a great touch. I like how my guy is basically a performing monkey for a bunch of internet strangers but, then again, I suppose that is pretty how Youtube works for some. I liked the for-rest joke. The artistic style for the Mossy Fossil Island map is refreshingly original. The baby Spinosaurus is very cute. Exploring the island is fun, though I did get eaten by Microraptors at one point and had to go back. The puns were… there.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to get past the swamp. I did all the dares but I didn’t earn any awards (to be honest I have forgotten what they were) and am just glad to make it to the end with all my limbs uneaten. I’m not a fan of puzzle games but this one was sufficiently easy that even I was able to get through it. It was well put-together, well-written (though the parody of youtubers started to get a bit wearisome after a while) and I never really felt in much danger from the dinosaurs, it was all about making sensible decisions to avoid danger.

I commend the author (though not literally) for writing such a good puzzle story with a fun backdrop of dinosaurs. I would put this one in the family-friendly category as it did not feel high-stakes or dangerous, despite my character’s tragic lack of common sense and being such a pain generally I did find myself rooting for the dinosaurs. This is a fun story and I think SU did a really good job of putting it together with some clever uses of items and variables. Overall good work, I’ll give this a 6/8. I’m looking forward to seeing this author’s next story!

I don't have time to write an essay, so let's cut to the chase:


This game is one of the few games that have a lot of skill put in to making them. No changes needed. also, tell Jon I said "Lol, fag."

This was fun, and I'm glad I'm not I'm this contest.

Best game i've seen so far. Maybe give a secret "L is for Loser" ending to those who just keep waiting?

For the second story written by the same author for Endmaster's Prompt contest 5, this is a particularly impressive wordcount and technical complexity. While Evan, the protag gets a little annoying, and it is possible to fall into endless loops, the story itself is engaging and impressive.

The secrets of the island are well hidden enough that even after finding the keycard and wallet, I still could not find a way across the quicksand, which is where I presume the secret lab must be located. There is clever usage of items, although this storygame has the same issue as many with heavy item use. It is too tempting to simply try to use every item on every page.

There are few SPAG issues, although there are some missing words scattered here and there, but not enough to really impact readability. The hashtag line on the Awards page seems to be doubled for no reason. The story would benefit from another editing/proofreading pass, but really remarkable for being the second story written during the contest by the same author.

Spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk.

PROS: I did find the YouTuber reference to be amusing, and in line with the "tryhard" entertainment a lot of these content creators exhibit. Watching Jurassic park as a kid, I've always wondered what it would be like to be on a island with dinosaurs. The "dare" task list was an amusing way to set goals, and I did find the "touch grass" option to be amusing. Finding the wallet and keys and exploring other areas made this feel like a genuine exploration game, to the extent where I was curious to see where it would lead next. This is the type of interactive adventure I could see as being an amusement park of some kind.

CONS: So there were a couple of links that felt unnecessary, for example on the front page when it says "I need hints!" and then says there are none. Why even have the link then? Spamming the "keep waiting" simply leads to passive aggressive responses like "seriously you're still here, stop wasting your time, ect." Generally speaking sometimes clicking the same link a couple of times does lead to an amusing conclusion, so did it occur to you to simply not waste the readers time or your own, say something like "you get bored and wander off deciding this isn't the dinosaur to spend your time on" with a previous page link? Some of the "dares" such as eating leaves, could be seen as pointless when he item could have been obtained simply by picking the leaf due to how pretty it is.

I would have rated this a five, given the quality was very good for a newcomer. However, in part due to having higher expectations after your previous storygame and in part due to SoecialOlympic's desperation rivaling that of a paraplegic prostitute in the comments section, my final rating is 4/8

The points literally do nothing, lmao.

This should be featured.