Friend Zone

Well, this story was really short and I guess I would say it was "ok". It is decently written, but could be a lot better if it was expanded a bit.

Spoilers:

This story is less that 1500 words, and for that length it seems to do a decent job of branching, but it doesn't really deliver on requiring any effort to escape the friend zone. On my first play, I made 3 choices and ended up successfully out of the friend zone happily married. I mean, 5 years of crushing on this dude, and all you had to do was say you are sick and let him come over. This game would have been much better to remove this easy good ending and to force choices requiring more interaction.

The characterization isn't that great. I don't understand why this guy is "the guy", and how right after crying so much over Daniel, I just go out with the Starbucks guy and have happy ending with him. Perhaps my lack of understanding is due to the fact that I am not a teenage girl. So, because of that, a bit more characterization and understanding of motivation would be good to help get into the story and character.

Also, I really really really (did I say really) have a hard time with stories that extrapolate your girlfriend/boyfriend at 16 to lifelong marriage and relationship. And when this is done within a couple sentences of just getting a first date it totally breaks down. If the goal is to just get out of the friend zone, a first date would be a much better end. The yadda, yadda, yadda now happily ever after endings really ruin it for me.

Overall, this story was perhaps "ok". The concept of using the friend zone as a game (just like irl - hah) could really be good with enough effort put into it. This story would also be immensely better if more work was put into developing the characters.

Eh, I guess the story was alright. Honestly I don’t think the story is a very good romance. I mean Daniel cheats on you in the epilogue so I don’t know if escaping the friend zone was a good thing here.

Romances take a while to build up I hate the just bam they’re in love routine in stories. So this story being short kinda hurts that overall.

My biggest complaints are the lack of character development and the short length of the story both of which this author can improve on. Otherwise the story is fine it just has room for improvement.

For once I have the energy to give my time to the romance section in general. Though the author may never return to read it, I think that a lot of things can be learnt from this particular story game.

I do have to say that the inner character voice sounds like an annoying teenager, which is a good thing. It’s at least better than a cardboard cutout. You know, I do have a feeling what kind of person the protagonist is though she is somewhat grating my nerves every time she opens her mouth.

The spelling is and grammar is okay. I’ve seen some awkward sentences, but it didn’t irritate me that much. The paragraphs are evenly spaced. So great job! Now to the meat of why I dislike these stories that much.

Characters
In fantasy and sci-fi, you can get away with bland shitty characters with no personality at all, because you have ACTION and ADVENTURE and PUZZLES. Sadly enough, pure romance flicks don’t usually have those three. So you have to make due with the only fire power you’ve got: characters.

If the characters are bad, the romance is bad.

The big problem with most of these romance stories is this: Why is the protagonist in love with this dude? When I read through it, I have no idea what kind of person this Daniel is aside that he is your friend for at least five years. There’s zero to no interaction between you and him except for these text messages and perhaps a few lines of bland dialogue?

I want to know more details. How is their dynamic like? Who is the jokey one of the two, the more responsible one? How did they met? Give us some more examples why we as readers should fall in love with the guy.

I have the same problem with Oliver. The lad is a starbucks barista and you get married with him in the length of I guess three paragraphs. In what way is he a better guy than Daniel? Is he more thoughtful, does he have his life all planned out, does he have more money than him? Give us something to make us care about him.

It’s basically a show, don’t tell thing.

One extra comment that I have to make is: she had friggin five years to confess her feelings to him. Why the hell didn’t she do that? Any normal person with a single brain cell would have either: given up already or told their feelings to their best friend. But no, she doesn’t do that. At least you can give us readers a proper explanation.

Branching and story
The Daniel ‘happy’ ending doesn’t feel that happy. You basically ditched your friend Mary for this piece of shit that cheats on his girlfriend. The story calls that happy. I do feel like that this ending could be spruced up a little more with a bit of drama. Now it seems like the protagonist doesn’t care about Mary at all even though she was really good friends with her.

Come on, you could have the protagonist have a heart to heart talk with Mary about this. Perhaps this is enough to break off your friendship or there could be an option where you can repair it.

Okay, and I think that I’m pretty confused that with one ending with Daniel you are all lovey dovey with him with two children. Then you have another ending where he was cheating on you. Sounds like the story doesn’t know whether he is a douchebag or an even greater douchebag. The fun thing is that the narrative itself isn’t even aware of this.

I know that with the romance genre, thinking up different endings is pretty hard. You know, if you have only one guy, how many endings could you possibly think of? Well, with these kind of things you can either be a little more creative about it or more linear.

Look, it’s a romance game, you can make the Oliver branch just a tad smidge bigger. Then perhaps you can make an ending where you stay single and one where you and Mary both stay single. Then you can have another ending where you and Mary are dating. Of course with Daniel, you can have the happy ending where you reconcile your friendship with Mary and get the chance to date Daniel. Then you have a less happy ending where Mary breaks off your friendship.

Look, with a bit of thinking, you can think of at least six endings that can all make sense with a little bit of explanation without anyone being out of character.

Conclusion
For a short game, this is all right, passable. However, I know that everyone including you can write better than this. The romance corner of the site is truly dreadful, but I know that there is a lot of potential. This scenario for example lends itself to great storytelling as long as you put the time and effort into learning about your own characters and the strength and weaknesses of the genre.

it was really fun to play it was amazing, I went back trying every option bringing a smile to my face amazing job ｡◕‿◕｡

Forget about Daniel, Mary and I should ditch him and go have our own lesbian experience.

Gos this hard

oh

This is such a cute story! It was extremely fun to do and I really like it. Good job!

I changed my mind,it was great.

hi it was okay,very short.thanks for your time and effort though.
-Hanako