Savior

This story is interesting. On one hand it feels like so much more could have been done. There could have been so much more that could have happened with the character in this world. On the other hand it's so... EPIC! Like the whole thing is epic battles of high porpoutions. It has this feeling to it, that you would typically only find in super long stories like eternal.

Now let me talk about the whole epic thing. This is the biggest selling point of the whole story. You go around fight insane battles, against overpowered creatures. This whole thing feels like the final arc of an anime. You go around slaying epic creatures. Speaking of which you start off facing a fucking demon, and slaying him with no effort. Like really? You think after seeing how overpowered the main character is how will he ever lose.

Next is the branching. I wasn't that big of a fan to be honest. It felt pretty good, until you go back and see that most of the choices were nothing choices, that rebranched back into the main story. A benifit to this is that the story ends up feeling a lot longer then normal. It lets a story of it's length have a lot more content then it seems. If this was a cave of time story then there is no way this much stuff could have happened in this little words. So while the branching isn't the best, I can't really fault it too much here,

In conclusion this story is epic. It's biggest downfall is the word count being what it is. As mizal pointed out, I didn't think I was going to get a epic story by reading the description by thankfully I was wrong. I really hope you expand upon this story and make it longer.

6 out of 8

From the brief description I had no idea what the story was going to be like, which I quite liked, so it was a surprise to plunged into an epic battle. I can see the link to the competition theme, and it was fun to act the hero who calmly slays demons in their path. And the dialogue, though at times a little confusing, was pretty inpressive.

There are just a few things that could be improved on, if you're prepared to go back and edit it. Firstly, at the start of the story, some of the sentences all started with 'you' or 'the'. e.g.:

'The boy lets out a scream. You duck low as you begin your charge, drawing your short blade. The demon, hearing your approach, turns quickly, snapping its distended maw. You sidestep the attack deftly, raising your sword defensively as it swipes long, jagged claws at your throat. You grunt from the impact of the blow...'

These sentences all start the same way, and after a while, it gets boring. If you swapped one of the sentences round, e.g. 'Hearing your approach, the demon turns quickly...'

The other thing was that all the fighting at the start was too intense. I ended up skimming over most of it. Maybe spacing the combat out over the course of the story, rather than having it all at the start, would be more manageable.

That said, the combat scenes were thrilling, and I would definitely play this again!

First impressions: The description informs that it's 'for the noob contest' but gives absolutely nothing else to go by, not even the theme of the contest. I hope you intend to fix this after judging because I'd hate for someone to pass this by over a boring non-description.

Second impression: Holy heck this is a badass story of a zealous crusader murdering secret spider demons and you disguised it with the equivalent of an ad for wallpaper paste. Why is there no description?!

The rest of the impressions:

I'm gonna be honest though, as awesome as the combat and the setting is, I kind of hate what you've done with the branching. No decision follows logically from any other and something as simple as trying to locate a link I saw before requires this labyrinthian series of clicks through unrelated actions to try and trigger the exact circumstance again.

The fight at the farm is truly epic with the varied ways to get through it and the horrible ways to fail (getting forcibly implanted with spider demon eggs is number one on my list of ways not to die btw) and I feel like this amazing zealous holy crusader smiting the wicked abominations every time. Although Ninja was right that the writing could get a little repetitive in places. (The queen screams in a rage and comes at you again. At the last moment, you duck under her attack and plant the severed leg into the ground. The queen's momentum causes the leg to punch through the joint of the queen. Caustic blood sprays out and nearly burns you as you roll towards a pile of farm tools. You grab a rake and with a wide swing, fling flaming debris on the queen. Fire races up the blood and the queen bursts into flame.) The queen the queen the queen....

It's an impressive and memorable battle full of insane happenings every time however, intense and relentless, even if the nuances do start to blur when you've had to backtrack and redo it enough times. The part that was frustrating as hell though was how this somehow all determined conversation topics later and the interaction with the merchant at the inn.

Going through the whole process to find every possible outcome with the him only to find at the very last that my character literally had the power to get his way or else have the bastard hanged all along was such a facepalm moment. Why not just give the various options for ways to handle it from the start so the player can choose what the character does? You have more personal control over the fight on the farm even though there it at least makes sense that things will be happening that are out of your hands. Restricting us on more straightforward choices just seems pointless.

I'm afraid there's something wonky with some of your link restrictions at the ending, too.

'Continue your journey to the keep' with the boy (after not working out any kind of understanding with the merchant and getting threatened) leads to a dead end page with no links.

After talking with the 'daughter' in the inn after sparing her, and trading the coin for the boy you can get the link to The Heir, where you're dying from poison. (I wasn't poisoned.)

And finally, I got a line there about collapsing from poison (I again wasn't poisoned) that then led to The Successor ending where I was suddenly fine again. The Successor ending by the way is my favorite, it's too bad you also have to stab the daughter's face in to get it because she was an interesting character that cast some interesting light on things that suggested the character didn't know everything. Even though killing her was probably still the best course of action, trusting a demon that had to have eaten at least one farmer and leaving her loose in an inn seems dumb...


In the end though I love the action, love the horrible setting and the sense I'm only scratching the surface of all the deep dark lore. It makes me want to pick up my old dark fantasy demon hunter setting and do something with it again. You should definitely do more with this world.

Toss a coin to your savior, oh jungle of plenty. ^_^

Interesting story we have here. On one hand, it feels epic in nature. Not with its length by any means, but the high-risk, high consequence plot was immersive in a way not a lot of contest entries showed. It certainly has its shortcomings, but it was definitely worth the read, something not all storygames -- or even contest entries -- can boast.

Right away, we're thrust into a gory battle with a demon. While I enjoyed the sudden action scene, the descriptions fell a bit short at times. They had a bit of the same cadence to them. For example, take a look at the very first paragraph:

"The boy lets out a scream. You duck low as you begin your charge, drawing your short blade. The demon, hearing your approach, turns quickly, snapping its distended maw. You sidestep the attack deftly, raising your sword defensively as it swipes long, jagged claws at your throat. You grunt from the impact of the blow, but turn it aside and quickly whip your blade around. The edge drags a long line across its arm, but fails to cause any harm. The boy scrambles away as you center your balance and brace yourself. The demon howls as it slams into you, but you hold your ground. Teeth snap millimeters from your face, but you draw back and slam your boot into its jaw. It staggers back, eyes burning with rage."

Notice anything here? Yes, nice catch! Each sentence starts with a noun. (The boy, you, the demon, you, etc.) Not a cardinal sin by any means, but one after another after another and so on? It comes off a bit stale. The saving grace here is the use of additive sentence. There are portions with a slight pause and describe, which adds some flavor to the mix.

On the "Continue your journey to the keep." page, there's no links. The typical "no link" message doesn't even appear. Is that from a recent update? Also, the page title has a period in it. I think it's best to keep them out, unless the title is dialogue or at the very least punctuated titles are universal throughout the storygame.

The entire storygame feels rather gauntlet-y. When presented with two links that are almost similarly named, I knew they wouldn't have an effect on the story. That being said, the gauntlet nature was fitting for the story. As the entire thing feels like a quick action sequence, deciding between survival and death felt very appropriate. There were some areas where I felt there were too many single links in a row. We'll chalk that up to the contest rush. This is a nice popcorn piece. While the stakes feel high, it doesn't overdo itself. It's an enjoyable read if you want a short game to play.