Falsely Accused:The Telenorian Kingdom's Worst Prison

There are spoilers below, so I would not recommend reading this review unless you have finished the storygame.

You really need more paragraph breaks. At times it felt like an unfiltered stream of consciousness. Cutting it down and separating the text into smaller chunks would make it a lot more palatable to the reader.

There’s a lot of transitions and adjectives that can be cut out for the sake of conciseness as well, all throughout the story. Here’s an example.

“For dinner, you usually eat the pasta. Luckily, it's not gruel pasta. It's actual pasta with tomato sauce. Unfortunately, it's only marginally better than the gruel though.”

Here it is without some of the unnecessary words.

“For dinner, you usually eat pasta. Luckily, it’s actual pasta with tomato sauce. Unfortunately, it’s only marginally better than the gruel.”

That both improves flow and helps the passage be more impactful to the reader. I will admit this is a case of me throwing stones from a glass house, though, so I made an effort to not let it influence my rating.

Also wanted to mention there should be a comma or period at the end of a portion of dialogue, though that might just be a SPAG error rather than a grammar misconception.

Another issue I had was that you spelled everything out for the reader. Take this for example, “you notice him leaning more on his right leg, almost as though his left leg was injured recently”. The premise of him leaning more on his right leg already draws the logical conclusion of an issue with his left leg, there was no need to spell it out further. That’s a pretty mild example in itself, a worse one I can think of was the mouse caught in the trap. You completely explained the symbolism rather than let the reader engage with the text themselves, to the detriment of the story’s depth.

On the main character’s backstory: the summary felt out of place. It would be more engaging if it was a short prologue right before the story, or a flashback at a key character moment, such as in flashes as he’s being tortured. The excessive rumination and spacing out was later acknowledged by the story as a fault of the character, which I did find funny but did not solve the many dry paragraphs of infodump.

I didn’t feel the entirety of the main character’s backstory was completely necessary either. It was a bit confusing at times, though this can also be chalked up as me being illiterate, and a simpler reason for him ending up in prison would probably have sufficed. Even something as basic as “you stole gold from a dragon, leading to an excessively long and mildly comedic chain of events that ultimately resulted in you being falsely accused of kidnapping a princess” would have been less dry to read through.

The violence itself was vivid and descriptive, but the way pain was written made it feel clinical. You described the amount of pain, but not the physical effects it had on the protagonist, eg. the raw sting of the lashes on his back, the incessant agony jolting his bones, warm blood soothing the gaping hole where his eye once was.

Thought the story was pretty amusing overall. The dry humor landed for me and it was satisfying that the running joke about selling organs tied into the ending.

I liked different perspectives of the two endings, but it was quite linear. More branching would have fleshed out the narrative and given more opportunities to explore the world of the story. Killing off the main character for wrong decisions also destroyed any opportunity for character growth.

I gave it a 4/8. I thought there was the basis of a good story within it for sure, and I did enjoy it overall. You can attribute my excessive complaining to negativity bias.

SPOILERS:



As an enthusiast for dragons kidnapping maidens, I was glad to read the princess was taken by the beast. But of course, I can't say I approve of cooking the maidens with bell peppers — I prefer closeted dragons kidnapping to hide their sexuality. Still, it's a dragon kidnapping maidens. You'd understand my disappointment when I found out it was all a ruse, a clever ploy designed to steal the protagonist's organs.

What I liked: there was some dry humor scattered among the brutality, and the world established an interesting culture balancing looking the other way with naked self-interest and sadism.

What I didn't like: Probably my biggest gripe was the exposition. I would have preferred if more of it was done through dialogue, or at least read more like an internal monologue than a recitation. I've been guilty of something like this before, so I'm not judging. But it's easier to read if the information is leaked through conversation.

Oh, and the fact that the end is really just the midpoint. It leaves you on a cliffhanger. Also, I found it a little bit inexplicable that the princess would come in and admit the kidnapping was a shame, and then enlist the protagonist. I guess it was explained, but I'm not sure I buy it.


What I REALLY liked: While there wasn't as much conflict as there could have been, I enjoyed the gruff violence of the prisoners, and the strange culture of thievery and betrayal.

The most humiliated character: Our protagonist. He seems to fancy himself a master thief, yet he was dumb enough to repeatedly use the same location to "lay low.' That's a rookie mistake. Perhaps it was inevitable he would be captured? Not only did he trust other thieves (rule 1 of what you DON'T do), but he also repeatedly used the same place to try to let the drama blow over. The poor guy chose the wrong profession: he's extremely tough and has the propensity to use extreme violence but also the knack for knowing when not to use it. He should have been a soldier, not a thief.



Overall, nice job actually publishing something, and creating an interesting world.

There's some decent prose here, but some of the sections are a bit overly verbose and the exposition can be overwhelming and negatively affect the pacing. Expositing information can be a good tool for getting necessary information out of the way, and there are good instances of that here, but it's not broken

In terms of player choice, there aren't a whole lot of meaningful options till the end. The storygame feels linear as a result. For example, I'm not sure why I as a player would decide to bash my enemy with a tray if I could do it with a knife. If one option is obviously less effective, I would choose the other every time. The narrative seems to reward this kind of thinking as the story encourages the player to behave this way as any other route leads to immediate death.

I'm a fan of some of the simile and metaphor used in certain sections, but it could still use some polish. For example:

"With a whistle through the air, the knife zips right into Balderon's foot, shattering his metatarsals to embed itself in his foot, like a battering ram breaking through the gates of a castle. The blood flows outwards from the ruptured vessels in a graceful manner, blossoming forth like a moonflower sensing the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon."

It's a very colorful image, but the uses of the word "foot" and "moon" twice in a row make the delivery a bit clunky. You could also remove some of the words to make the sentences flow a lot smoother.

There's some good worldbuilding here, and the idea of having to survive organ harvesters and the general suspicion of the public has a lot of potential. A sequel continuing the plot threads here could be worth the read.

I think that this storygame could have stood to be a bit longer, but really, I would have liked to see more choices that didn't lead to death. This was very much a case of 'one choice leads to death; the other continues the story,' with the exception of the final choice at the end.

I would have liked to see the player character's backstory woven more seamlessly into the storygame, rather than just a page of what amounts to information dumping. It also wasn't necessary to note that the player character is left-handed in an aside; the fact that the spoon-shiv is in the left hand indicates as much, and there was no bearing to the story otherwise.

The final room, the ending of the storygame, was interesting enough to pique my interest, but it of course ends right when things get interesting. I honestly think this storygame would have been better as a Prologue, or opening chapter, for a much longer storygame, with branches that actually affect the storyline. After all, the player character choosing not to kill his former crewmate could have resulted in him then having the crew join him after the bit in the prison ends.

What there was of this storygame was interesting and engaging, barring the information dumping, and I found the whole concept of the prison being used as a front for selling organs to be quite interesting. Again, though, it didn't need to be summed up at the beginning, and could have just been revealed through the storygame as it progresssed naturally.

I think there was a lot of potential in this storygame, but it didn't really reach that...at least in my opinion. Thank you for sharing anyway, though. I hope that you will expand this storygame into a larger one in the future.

Pretty good story game!

<<SPOILERS AHEAD>>

I like the many plot ideas (corrupt prison, organ trade, royals seeking immortality) this game brings to the table and how they all work together, but I feel like in a lot of cases the info was dumped rather quickly.

For example, there's no reason for the princess to spill her secrets to this random thief she happened to save. I feel like it would actually be in her and the royal family's best interest to not tell Ryker about the potion that extends the life of the royal family. Especially considering that Ryker has already proven himself to be capable of betraying his friends.

The advocate would have more of a motivation to tell Ryker the truth, so I thought that was fine.

Regarding formatting, you could try putting more paragraph breaks. It's usually a good idea to ensure that each paragraph only explores one idea at a time.

Other than that, I'd say it's a pretty good, gritty prison game. A little short, but worth reading for sure.

*Sham, not shame.