Rainbow-1

I have to give a huge amount of credit for just how much work you put into this story! I've explored three separate paths so far, and each one has been completely different. I'm not sure when I'll be able to explore more, but I'll definitely come back to this storygame at some point to see other paths.

Somehow, I missed the fact that the playable character is an inmate firefighter during my first read through, so when Suzy was aiming a gun, I was completely confused. I liked the wayward lovers end, but...I was extremely confused about how the characters died. I mean, I assume they did? But I think I was missing something when I reached that first ending.

I would have liked to explore a bit more of the path involving Agnes and Tim, but I somehow ended up getting them both killed and didn't really know how. I liked that there was the option to form connections with both of them, but with Tim saying that he had feelings for the player character, I found myself really confused, because there just didn't seem to be enough time/exploration for those feelings to develop.

I really liked the happy hunting grounds ending I reached with Jean, though it was obvious that it ended with them both dead. Still, the whole thing with the afterlife was nice to read about, and I found the whole idea about the nemesis quite interesting. And that mental image of the tarantula was incredibly creepy. I have a phobia of spiders anyway, so the idea of a tarantula the size of a cat was truly horrible.

I also liked how you described the fire and its spread. At some points, it felt like an entirely separate entity, which fit really well with the feel of the player character and his history that I got to learn through the paths I explored.

Thank you so much for writing and sharing this! It's honestly obvious how much work you've put into this, and what I've read of it has been quite engaging so far.

Review of Fabrikant's game "Rainbow-1"

First off, I just wanted to say that I love the dry humor in this game. You know, the understated "not-trying-to-be-funny" sardonic observations/quips that just adds a nice touch to the story. I always enjoy reading dry humor and try to incorporate in my own writing. So the character is an inmate firefighter who comes from a long line of shamans, and he routinely explains words in his native language like "Fuck" which translates to "fuck". That was pretty funny. At a later point in the story, you poke fun at our hero trying to invoke his shaman heritage by saying "Hear me, I am the fire walker shaman of the Latvik and I command thee". The line just doesn't fit with the rest of the story, the tone is too reverent and sounds like it came straight out of King Arthur. And you executed the humor well. One suggestion I would give is that you overexplained slightly, you don't have to explain the humor of it, since we got it and we enjoyed it.

"The line is too long winded and the fake 'thee' at the end makes it feel like something from a play. You feel like an actor--a fraud, someone pretending to be a cliche Indian from the movies. The truth is that you know nothing of your ancestry. Your people are not in the history books, and whenever your father spoke of them, he was faking it, repeating lines that Indians said in old movies."

This paragraph to explain the joke is a bit much. But tat didn't take away from the joke, the joke was really funny. I just enjoyed how left field the use of "thee" and "hear me" was and the story does make fun of you for choosing it.

You did a really good job describing the scenery as well. I'm a southern boy, born and lived in the south all my life. I might have went to California a couple of times, and that too Nor Cali, so I really enjoyed how you were able to mentally take me somewhere that I haven't been before, and actually make it seem convincing. I love some of the figurative language you used like "where millionaire's villas with their glistening swimming pools litter a landscape, like silly toys scattered by an absent-minded toddler". I really enjoyed that analogy since most people who would have done something that enhances or glorifies the beauty/grandness of the estate. But our character clearly disdains this sort of grand ostentatiousness, and makes it clear, because he had a bad experience in that neighborhood.

I love the way you spend time on the actual fire-fighting process and go into detail on how they saw the trees, and clear the brush. You take your time with it, and that is a very rewarding experience for the reader.

The directions this story took were innovative and surprising. At every step, I wasn't sure what would happen next. It takes a good writer to do that without seeming random and luckily, at every step, I felt like I was going somewhere for a reason, and the story progresses logically.

You did a good job of not info-dumping. The plot you chose was novel and ambitious, I mean "prison firefighter who's also a descendant of fire walker shamans", there's a lot packed in there. A lesser writer might have spent too much time dwelling on and expanding upon the character's backstory, but you avoided this.

List of endings:

You did a wonderful job with the branching. There were so many options, at times it felt like this story was endless, in a good way. It did not feel dragged, but rather when you finished one ending, you really wanted to explore more. I also love how you listed and named all your endings.
Flaws:

Some of the character descriptions could use a little more. Like Suzy, who's a small Asian woman with a pretty face. That's a pretty sparse description. You do make up for it by having Suzy and the protagonist talk so we learn things about her through dialogue rather than exposition dump, but the descriptions could have been more fleshed out.

Overall, well done. This is a truly great story with a novel concept executed well. I'm going to give this a 8/8, because even though there were flaws, it just sucked me in.

SPOILERS




I was impressed with how many endings there were. This was a real "choose your" story.

What I liked: First, I was pleasantly surprised that jumping out of the helicopter wasn't an instant death. While you probably would have died even landing in a pool, it's still nice that the story continued.

The humor was well done. I was quite pleased that by choosing not to take Agnes into the bedroom you got to do a three-way with her and Tim. That's the only way it could have been done without offending the universe. I liked at the very end you still had a single choice which dramatically changes the outcome — choosing sacrifice, or watching as Tim makes that same choice. I liked it so much I went back and tried another near-end option, and was pleased to find the ending had me getting my orgy on television, presented by Anderson Cooper. Another nice touch.

What I didn't like: I don't really have any complaints on this story game, other than the scope was just a big wildfire in basically a single night of action. But not every story can be a sprawling adventure to return the One Ring to Mordor.

This storygame was written well and had lots of directions you could choose to go. Overall, this was well done. Would read again.

This story has a unique premise and I loved getting to understand the main character better with each playthrough. My sister is a wildland firefighter (not an inmate though) so it was pretty cool to read a storygame about the subject. I can't wait to force her to read it. Anyway, the number of endings and versions of events is stunning. I played through the game a few times and loved how differently the story played out each time. My personal favorite ending that I achieved was the Swedish ending. I was a bit confused as to why we named our son after Tim after he abandoned us but I guess he did come back and save us from Nazis so it's somewhat deserved. All in all, I had a lot of fun exploring the different routes.

The first ending that I got was the Triangular End. Lol


Good:

1. Branching

2. Plotting


Bad:

1. Punctuation , spelling, and capitalization

2. Word choice


I rated the story a 6 because I appreciated the original premise and just for being the rare CYOA story written for adult readers, though I do reserve the right to lower my rating later on if I ever actually read another path and it isn’t as good.

A good premise for a story. It captures the oppressiveness of being caught up in a calamity quite well. I expected the story to stay realistic, but it strayed tastefully into the realm of fantasy for a brief moment, and I thought the effect was quite good.

I would really recommend proof reading though. Just read what you've written out aloud and you probably would've caught a lot of errors. For a reader, these errors may knock them out of the immersion whenever they occur which I definitely felt was a problem here.

Still, good story with a fairly uncommon premise. I'd say it's a great first story.

Interesting story with a POV that is pretty uncommon. The situations are well described without much SPAG issues. On almost every page, however, the is some incorrect word choice or bad sentence structure (repeated words or phrases, wrong homophone, etc.) I would recommend a detailed proofread.