Saturday Bike Ride

A modern storygame by jster02

Player Rating?/8

"Too few ratings to be ranked"

Based on 3 ratings so far

Story Difficulty3/8

"Trek through the forest"

Play Length6/8

"It'll be a while, better grab a Snickers®"

Maturity Level5/8

"Aren't you a little too old to be trick or treating"

Some material may be inappropriate for persons under age 13. If this were a movie, it would probably be PG-13.

Tags

Action Adventure

Mystery

Thriller

SBR Cover Netflix and video games can only go so far when it comes to fighting boredom. Usually the comfort of your own home is more than enough to make you happy on the weekends, but lately something feels off. You've tried to rewatching The Office for the six or seventh time, but just couldn't get into it. After scrolling through your entire Steam library consisting of over five hundred games, you couldn't find a single one that looked worth playing. You're used to being relieved about coming home after a long day of work or school, but lately you've found yourself dreading the emptiness of your own home. There's no two ways around it, you're stuck in a rut, and it's going to take something major to break you out. Luckily, you have just the thing. Before you have a chance to change your mind, you call up your friend who lives across town and tell him to come over as soon as possible. It doesn't take much to convince him to join you on the ultimate Saturday bike ride.

But little do you know that biking can be a lot more dangerous than it looks. The trails are a hotbed for all manner of suspicious activity. You are about to stumble upon an underground subculture more complex and deadly than you could possibly have imagined. Today, you'll find out whether you're just another neckbeard with a cheap set of wheels or a true hero and adventurer.

The trails in the story are loosely based on the ones in my own town. Some of the weird and crazy things in this story are exaggerated or completely made up, but there were also some things I pulled directly from my own experience. My town can be kinda strange sometimes. I'll let you decide for yourself what you think is true and what isn't.

I started this story in late 2020 and worked on it on and off into 2021. Then I sorta stopped and forgot about it. But by that point, it already had enough substance to stand on its own, so I decided to come back to it recently and tie up a few loose ends so that the twenty-eight thousand words I'd already written for it wouldn't go to waste. The finished product turned out smaller than I initially planned, but I'm still reasonably happy with it. A bird in the hand is worth two, I suppose.

Player Comments

I would say overall this kind of nice little contained adventure where you really have no idea exactly where it's going to go.

The beginning did not immediately draw me in, because there weren't any guardrails at first—no obvious quest, no protagonist motives, no conflict. That isn't inherently bad. It's a double edged sword, and can be either good or bad, depending on what the author does. The downside is that this sort of start to a storygame can seem directionless, like you're floundering, going through the motions. But on the other hand, the upside is that the possibilities are wide open.

I feel like the latter was the case here. As I went through the story, bit by bit I began to realize what this story was: a trip into the unknown. For the protagonist, and the world itself. So I decided to take the most adventurous route I could as I went through (and it does seem this game has some decent branching, although I didn't go through all of them).

There were a couple of signs early perhaps—a sketchy friend, a crazy looking homeless guy, and, as far as I can imagine it, QAnon Shaman, complete with no shirt and a viking hat. And then, of course, I reached the ominous looking, dilapidated factory. In one particular branch here, I ended up consuming what I can only describe as a zombie pill (lol), and I immediately lost coherence and developed an inexplicable hungry. I enjoyed that little bit of humor.

Then, I went back and made the choice I actually would make, didn't eat the pill, and helped rescue the kid. It was a merry chase, definitely a little fun as the three of us escaped the drug dealers. Eventually I went home and life returned to normal, which I suppose is the appropriate ending for a contained adventure like this.

But, like all good storygames, if you take an alternate path, you can find claims made by a character manifest in the world. I'm obviously referring to Ryan saying the drug dealers own the police. Don't snitch about the kidnapping! You'll definitely be killed by the cops. I did see that coming and obviously first chose to rescue the kid rather than call 911. But my point here is that you won't have any hint about the police being evil until AFTER you either get killed by them OR Ryan tells you AFTER you choose to rescue him.

Some people would whine and say you had no hints that calling the cops was a bad idea. So, why do I like that instead? Simple: it shows the world is INTERNALLY CONSISTENT and SELF-CONTAINED. Upon going back through another branch, you see that the world exists independently in a certain state, regardless of the protagonist's choices, except when the protagonist directly or indirectly interferes. In other words, it adds IMMERSION.

So, overall I enjoyed this storygame. It has the things I expect most people here and on sites like this expect out of a storygame: branching, twists, a bit of humor, and it doesn't take itself too seriously. I definitely recommend it, and I'm glad the author finally came back and finished it.

— Fluxion on 6/15/2025 10:46:10 PM with a score of 0

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