You probably didn't have a lot of choices or paths than branched off in a bunch of different directions. Your story probably read more like a proper story rather than a CYOA.
At the very least, do what the old Zork books did. Give 2 choices where one leads to an ending and the other continues the story.
If you are talking about that Grue game I liked it. The main thing was logic behind all the desicions the player made, and I also liked the abstract-ness behind it. If you make this longer, maybe a few more difficult logic puzzles, give clues etc... this would make a nice mystery/puzzle.
my mistake
I haven't played this particular game yet.
I would call a game extremely linear if there was one "correct" path through the game and any "wrong" choices led to an immediate ending.
Nah, you make a good point pyth-tastic. Your story can be anything you want it to be. I think most of us were a little dissappointed to stumble upon a "you're dead" link when there were no clues as to what would KEEP us from dying in the story. IT can be frustrating to choose an option and to just keep dying with no way of knowing what would save us. Still, the story itself is a great first try for this site, but it lacks some of the things that make a story GREAT.
On this site we use linear to mean that your story has only one possible outcome and no way to predict how to get to that outcome. One wrong flip-a-coin choice and your dead. Your story is less story, and more random events that happen. that doesn't make it WRONG, just less engaging to us as your audience.
Hope you write more! You have a great style!
march
Thanks Leon, although putting me and madglee in the same sentence isn't necesarry. He's an amazing writer, I'm still a journeyman. Again linearity is also just putting the character into a position where (s)he feels like they've been given a choice. Mattias the One Knight is a pseudo linear story, same with the Tower and Starwars.. You wouldn't know it though because I've given the illusion of choice.
Just play around and see what you can do.
The biggest problem with death links on the first page is that then people can/will rate your story after having read only one page.
Sure, they ought to go play it again, but sometimes you'll get the people who sat down all nice and ready to be entertained for a few minutes and they read the introductions and--bam- it's over. Their rating is likely to reflect a certain amount of disappointment.
