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Well, hello there. I'm a newbie, and in such I have undertaken the task of completing a storygame for the upcoming Newbie Contest. For the past week, I've been slaving away at the keyboard as fast as my mush brain allows me, and I have finished the first act of my storygame, and I was hoping I could get considerable feedback.

The game is a fantasy-adventure genre game called Eseria. In the first chapter, you control a child whose name and gender you make choose. It is the day you've been waiting for ever since you could remember: Choosing Day. You finally are given the chance to pick a labor that you will apprentice in for the rest of your life...

NOTE:  The game heavily utilizes HTML, CSS, and JavaScript elements to improve gameplay. If there are bugs, something seems off, or something doesn't work, please let me know.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, especially if it's about how to improve the pacing of the game. Thank you in advance!

[Don't worry about the 7 word storygame length. I promise you much, much longer than that. If I'm wrong, then I'll let you play the storygame for free when it comes out.]

Link: http://chooseyourstory.com/story/eseria

Ah, gotta sabotage the competition somehow ;)

Pulling up your story generates a blank first page for me on both Google Chrome and Edge, dunno if it's me, or the storygame.

Hm, that's not good. Do you have javascript disabled, by any chance?

Just checked, it's enabled. 

Alright, I'll get down to some detective work and I'll let you know if I figure anything out.

I can only pray that it's fixed, now. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, lol.

Thank you very much for the feedback!

Yeah, I've been struggling alot with the branching of the story, but I'll do my best to begin branching in the second act. I guess I've been influenced by CoG too much without realizing it, lol. I'll be sure to fix these things, though! Also, glad that I'm not the only one who thinks Nosah's a punk. ;)

Ah, I guess I didn't thoroughly check enough to notice a missing page DARN! Do you remember which two scrolls had identical content?

I've been looking into keeping the save and quit button, but for right now, the save function sort of breaks the way I store variables, so that'll be a job for future me. But that's a good mention about the extension. I'll be sure to add in a choice for what style the window will be in.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to read and write, though!

I'll have to check in what the problem is with the blank screens. For some reason, it works on mine, but I'll have to do some more testing.

Ah, I see, that can be confusing. So, after you view the scroll with the markings (aka translations), you'll be able to use it without having to actually go back to that exact page. So, because the leather scroll is in another laanguage, the translations will show up on that page after you discover them. It's confusing though, so I'll make sure to make it more clear!

Alright, on it! Fair warning, my HTML is horrendous.

Hey, if it works, it works!

...Which it does, for me, on Chrome, so I can't immediately see what might be going wrong.

Yeah, it's strange. It works on Chrome for me but not firefox. It appears the problem is that in some browsers, it's not referencing my external JavaScript file correctly. I just find it odd that the browsers that seem to work vary among users.

So some browsers are simply not loading the external JS? I'm guessing it's because some people are viewing the site on HTTP and some HTTPS, and some browsers are more aggressive about not loading insecure content on secure pages. Try replacing http with https when referencing the JS file.

Hm, it doesn't look like that was the problem. For me, Chrome worked but Firefox didn't. When I inspected it, it turns out my firefox version was referencing an old version of my JavaScript. So after I cleared my cache, it worked. But I don't know how to translate that over to other users.

I still recommend you use switch the protocol, because likewise FF wasn't working for me (specifically "Blocked loading mixed active content" in the console), and changing your script's URL to https was what fixed that.

Ah yes, https it is. Thanks for your help, though! Is it working on Firefox for you, now, then?

Yep! All good over here.

Hopefully it wasn't just a "me" problem.

Awesome, again thanks so much! The funny thing is, you're actually the reason I tried to use JavaScript in the first place, lol, so it's only fitting you're the one with the solution!

I'm not sure which option I'd prefer...

He's getting a 503 from codepen for some reason. So it has to be something on codepen's end, right?

But it's kinda hard to search because you just get a lot of error page mockups instead.

My "dumbness" is not excessive.  It's just the perfect amount.  Regardless of the issue on my PC, I'm still able to open it up on mobile, so don't fret.  

I'm glad I could be of service!

Kudos, this is a fantastic start. The world-building is amazing, and the characters are distinct enough to be interesting. [I found it very interesting that I could play as an essentially indifferent/backseat type character, and yet end up thrusted into a leadership role.] I really like the font choice and how it just looks a bit more polished than the typical story. I'm looking forward to the next part.

I don't even mind that it doesn't have a great deal of non-stat choices towards the beginning, since it reminds me of text-based adventure games which are more about solving a mystery or puzzle than taking different paths. And once the test starts there certainly seem to be a lot of ways to solve problems. 

On the bookshelf, one of the books I opened was blank - but it wasn't clear if it was just because the page hadn't been written, or because it was supposed to have blank pages.

I didn't notice any bugs, and I use the Brave browser primarily. But I do miss the go back button, and would really like a way to save the game!

The only odd phrase that stuck out to me was the character's comment, after the floor changes, that his "boldness is lower than normal" - I wasn't sure if it was breaking the fourth wall about stats, or just an odd turn of phrase.

Thank you for taking time to play through! I'm glad to hear you liked the game, though, and I'll try to incorporate a lot of puzzles in the story, as it seems to be something people like. I'll have to polish the bookshelf, and in general that entire section, but thank you for letting me know! And I'll be sure to add a save function and try to incorporate the go back button (but as of right now, it the back button allows for some crazy stat exploits, so I'll have to work around that). And, thanks for letting me know about that. I'll do my best to make it better.

Oh, that's interesting. The unfortunate thing about that is that I'm not using the variables the site gives me. It's all locally stored in JavaScript. But that's no worry. I can implement a safecheck for exploitation.

Oh dear, I understand my fault

Mine usually pops out the game into a new window, so it's never in the same browser frame and I can't use the browser go-back button. Maybe its because I use Brave, or because I'm not actually that great with computers.

I have Windows. Brave is a browser that ad-blocks (if you want) or pays you in crypto-currency if you don't turn off ads that you can either exchange or buy your own ads with or tip the pages you frequent. I find it less annoying than most browsers. and actually less glitchy than Firefox, but it sometimes interacts with pages in odd ways. I have Firefox, too, I just rarely use it.