Story A

Disclaimer: I’m not a professional writer and only somewhat of a seasoned reviewer. The mods who wrote these stories likely know more about writing than me. And to those of you who haven’t read the story, spoilers abound in this review.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Pinballing for my life, that’s an interesting concept. The use of the word ‘flipper’ does hint at a certain penguinite, but for reasons I will divulge later, I strongly suspect that it’s more of a red herring than anything else.

That’s a gripping first sentence. I like the imagery of staring at one’s own lifeless body, with the vanishing calluses and aches, and seeing through your own body. And the description of the arcade is done well, using lots of specific details to create a consistent atmosphere.

One thing about the Thunderdome is that it’s always fun to identify an anonymous author through their style. I always cheat by examining punctuation, though. And there’s only one author out of the four who adds spaces between their ellipses! The Pac-Man paragraph is missing dialogue tags. But I bet this is a stylistic choice given that the Grim Reaper is speaking, and this author has, in the past, omitted dialogue tags for otherworldly beings.

The conversation between Death and the protagonist was fun. It’s comedic and lighthearted, but you can also see the protagonist’s desperation to live…even if it’s just to beat his high score. The only minor critique I have is that the ‘You stick to it a bit’ sentence appears to be unfinished. And a subtle detail I noticed is how the protagonist’s personality interweaves with the narrative voice, like how a lot of descriptions and analogies refer to video games. Even the health bar and gamey element are a nice nod to arcade games.

GAMEPLAY

I have no idea how you managed to put a whole pinball game into the site’s editor, but I am definitely impressed. Even more so that I can control the flippers using my keyboard instead of clicking the buttons. The different levels and having to reach higher scores ramped the difficulty up as the story proceeded.

The only nitpick is that the flippers kind of slant downwards after they’re used, taking up ever so slightly less space, so my Asian calculatedness wonders if I could get a higher score by just letting the ball ricochet around the box on its own. I acted on that intrusive thought and did a little experiment. Based on a very small sample size of two games (one where I actually played and the other where I didn’t), the ‘let the ball do its own thing’ method won over playing twice and tied once. But who knows, maybe I’m just that bad at pinballing.

Something I only realised later: the ranges don’t capture every possible score. For instance, in round three, I scored exactly 7400, but the only options were ‘less than 7400’ and ‘between 7500 and 9900’. Though at least this means I get to try both options without cheating! This gets more noticeable in round two, where the options are ‘Less than 4900’, ‘between 5000 and 6900’ and ‘more than 7500’. Unless something has been coded to avoid a score between 6900 and 7500, that’s a pretty large gap.

PLOT & WRITING

The small scope—a high stakes game of pinball—is a great way to make the most out of a 3k word count. I found the observations about death and the conversation between the two main characters to be amusing throughout. The short paragraphs of description effectively remind the reader of the stakes by illustrating the protagonist’s reactions while continuing to maintain a strong sense of setting and atmosphere.

I noticed a few comma splices, particularly on the Round 3 page, but they could be used as a stylistic choice to convey the fragmented nature of the protagonist’s thoughts as his sense of dread and urgency grew. Each little detail—from the way the machine tilts, to the row of quarters—makes the world so concrete and real. I love the analogy of life and death being like the ball in the pinball game. It’s very fitting considering the motifs in this story.

ENDINGS

Now, onto the endings. First off, the classic winning ending, where somehow I managed to win by the skin of my teeth, as the last round depleted my healthy down to zero. Seems that getting the highest score on round one is a surefire route to success, no matter how badly I do in the later rounds.

I like this ending. The only proofreading error I noticed is ‘in tact’ being two words. Death is certainly intrigued by pinball, likely due to the protagonist’s enthusiasm for the game, and despite his initial reluctance, decides to play too. I like how depth and character development can be conveyed through lines of dialogue without any surrounding description of action and facial expressions, it’s a real skill the author has.

But seeing the ‘continue’ link at the end, I was looking forward to seeing Death play a few rounds. Does it hint at a potential sequel? It would be great to see an extended version of this storygame.

I tried another route where the protagonist did badly in the first game and his use of words like ‘wack’ and ‘buggin’ does give a retro vibe to the story. There’s a good amount of replayability: getting the lowest score boundary on the second game leads to a different page depending on what you scored previously. This ending makes sense too: Death gets bored and wins a gift for Vida. An omitted word: ‘you are free [to] play pinball for eternity’. The image of him holding bouncy balls (extending the metaphor for the souls he’s collected?) and a stuffed rabbit is amusing and fits the consistent trope subversion of his character.

TL;DR

Overall, this is a really fun game and does amazing things with the site’s editor. I enjoyed playing pinball—it’s certainly quite addictive!

Being a coder, its impressive the amount of energy the person put into this. It's unique for the site and quite refreshing to see, although it definitely is more of a game than story. all in all, I had quite a bit of fun.

Soooo, this was Sent, right?

Boy, howdy, that sure was a lot of addiction. SURGE, cigarettes, pinball. What wasn't this guy addicted to?

Anyway, this is certainly incredibly unique on this sight. I'm not sure how the pinball game works from a computer gel standpoint, but it is somewhat enjoyable. The premise also has a certain charm all its own. You only lack a cheesy love interest to make a comedy cult classic.

Anyway, I did like the description and characterization. The little details really put it in a time and place. Death is also incredibly chill. No technical issues with the writing at all, not that the writing is even remotely the main focus of the work.

As for the pinball, it's... interesting. I'm video game challenged, so I was shocked and surprised to find myself winning. In the early years of my life, I spent a loathsome amount of time staring blankly at a computer screen, grinding away at Pinball Space Cadet or whatever, so I know I suck at pinball. I soon realized that the unlimited tilt is what made it so doable. Turned it into child's play.

I'm torn on how this should factor into the critique. On the one hand, if it played like an actual pinball machine, I would have never reached the ending. I would have died for sure. On the other hand, a greater challenge would have raised the sense of urgency that I actually <I>need</I> to win. Back on the other hand, I know for a fact that creating a pinballs game and embedding it here was likely difficult as is, so I should restrain harsh judgment and just admire. On the other hand though, it's very possible that the effort was not actually worth the little enjoyment it gave me.

Overall, solidly enjoyable, even if it is very cheese-able. Anyway, on to the next one.

The premise is simple and straightforward, just like pinball. I like the voice of Death. At first I had to get used to the stylistic choice to not denote his dialogue with quotation marks, but the prose more than makes up for it. Of course, how could I not praise the pinball game mechanics here. It's a bit simple, but it works and that's more than good enough for me! I like the variance in endings. One could argue that being able to choose their score might be cheating, but it does allow them to see all the pages if their having trouble getting a good enough score.

Short and entertaining in terms of reading, but it has bugs when it comes to coding. The player can just click Start Game, leave the pinball go for a sec, click the best choice and BAM, they're an instant winner.

Use if statements to make it harder for the player, otherwise there isn't much to call a puzzle game here.

Fun game that uses script injection to its fullest potential. While the pinball game itself is unpolished to the point of it being more chance than skill it works well enough for the purpose of this storygame and the simple plot supports it nicely.

Black magic! Sorcery! Thankfully, it's the good kind and not the kind that sucks your soul out and hands it to the devil (unless you suck at pinball I guess).

There's not much by way of actual story but I have no idea how much effort it took to stick an actual pinball machine into the storygame; I'll just stick to saying that I had a lot of fun.

managed to infinite glitch the first pinball. interesting use of medium. enjoyed it.

I got my soul back so that was great. I really really didn't even know CYS was capable of a full blown pinball game. That was honestly amazing.

It was light hearted, straight to the point, obviously had the effort put in to the pinball game as the center of it all really ties it all together.