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It’s summer again as we know what that means: school’s out, holidays are coming and, most important of all, it’s time for the 2025 SUMMER READING COMPETITION! And this year we’re playing teams! That’s right – all participants will form teams of three and set out to read, rate and review as many stories as they can in quest of Featured Reviews and the chance to win fantastic prizes (My Trophy, Commendations and Points). But this year there are more points available than ever before:

For every Featured Review on a 1-4 Length story you earn 1 Point, on a 5 Length story you earn 2 Points, on a 6 Length story you earn 5 Points, on a 7 Length story you earn 7 Points and on an 8 Length story you earn 10 Points – registered competition participants only. Points will be tracked individually and for teams every few days and recorded on Mystic Warrior’s Leaderboard of Awesomeness (Patent Pending). There is the potential to earn a massive amount of Points here so don't miss out on this unique opportunity!

But that’s not all – there will be Mini Challenges issued on Fridays and played over the weekend giving teams opportunities to win additional Points and / or Cards. What are Cards, I hear you cry? Cards are how you fuck up other teams or unfairly tilt the board in your favor. There are four: the two Strategy Cards, Strengthen (Double your team’s earnt points for 24 hours) and Stop (Protect your team from Select or Swap) and the two Sabotage Cards, Select (Force another team to only review stories from one genre for 72 hours) and Swap (Force the permanent trade of someone from your team for someone from another team, requires a two-thirds vote).

Oh yes, my friends, this will be a war with dirty tricks, cunning strategies and all-out crushing any hopes your rivals have of getting anywhere in this competition. So, what are the prizes then (apart from the joy of ruining another team’s hopes and dreams)? Well, this year we have a lot:

Top-scoring Individual: 1st Place: Will’s Trophy and 300 Points, 2nd Place: 200 Points, 3rd Place: 150 Points.

Top-scoring Teams: 1st Place: 100 Points each, 2nd Place: 50 Points each, 3rd Place: 30 Points each.

Other Benefits: You will always get 2 Commendations for each Featured Review and 1 Point for all Featured or Unfeatured Reviews anyway. With up to 400+ Points available to the winner other benefits include Bragging Rights, winning a Trophy, earning Ranks and Order Titles as well as increasing the feedback all authors on this site receive for their stories (and getting to tell the untalented just how truly lousy they really are) so there really isn’t a downside to this.

Or is there?

Well, our local Noob Eviscerator and all-around Prince of Darkness informs me the (surprisingly full) PIT OF SHAME will suck in all those who join this competition and fail to write a single Featured Review (and for those already in the Pit, including uniquely, those poor unfortunate souls who have been Triple Shamed, escape or ascension to a less shameful level may be available for prize-winners depending on the whims of the Mighty Powers of Darkness a.k.a. End).

So, what are you waiting for? This competition will run from 11:59pm 31 May - 11:59pm 31 August 2025 EST and participants can sign up and register for teams by posting on this thread any time. You will sign up individually first, and then those running this contest (Mystic_Warrior, myself and the Admins) will randomly allocate you into teams ASAP (ideally within a day or two) so you can get busy reviewing – Featured Reviews will not count until you are in a team (this is to prevent the site’s strongest members ganging up together in a super-team to annihilate everyone else)! Team members can then pick their own names as long as two-thirds of the team agree on it. This thread is for sign-ups only, progress will be tracked and the Leaderboard posted in a separate thread and winner results will be announced at the beginning of September.

Good Luck and let the War of the Words commence!

Perfect timing for me to "intentionally" postpone the long review for this month to the start of the next one. Also since it's not specified are we getting teamed up on random or will there be a draft?

It will be randomised, but you can use the 'swap' card to team up with members you want to work with.

That does make more sense as to why that card exists and why somebody would want to use it.

Yep, it's randomised. Can we count you in CavusRex? :)

Sure, actually sounds more exciting than running around asking people how serious they are about the contest.

Sign me up. I will do at least one (1) review, I'm serious this time!

Locked (Not that it matters for mods, of course).

"Cards are how you fuck up the other team"

Will! Such language!

I just wanted people to think the competition was cool and it sounded better than "give them an oopsy-doosy" :D

How does one acquire a featured review? I have had a few but have never known the mechanics of how such an honor is bestowed.

Essentially the Admins decide which reviews are worthy of featuring. The criteria differs slightly but generally the review needs to be well-written, reasonably comprehensive and constructive or useful for readers and / or the writer(s), if that helps. Are you in Flux?

Let me review the rules one more time. Also, I suggest you increase the point differential between longest stories and those near them, because 1 point difference may not be enough of a carrot (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 5, 8).

But yeah, give me a minute to make sure I won't be damning myself by joining this contest....

EDIT: Okay, it seems the only way to become a slave in the Pit of SHAME is to fail to get one review featured. I think I can manage that, and if not, I deserve the shame. I'm in.

Too late

LOL of course. Good thing I was going to join anyway. This contest needs engagement. Just put me on RK's team so I have a good chance of winning ;).

I feel like poor RK will be bouncing from team to team over the course of the contest.

We're going to make some changes to the points awarded just fyi, Will will update later.

Hey Will and Mystic,
I'd love to join! I'm unsure of whether contest fees work the same with reading contests as they do for writing contests. Regardless, I'm in the first level of SHAME, so I guess I'm paying the -50 point contest fee.

Based on what you said, escaping the pit is also possible, right?

>Based on what you said, escaping the pit is also possible, right?

Lol

Well, in any case, there's still all those sweet points up for grabs!

There's no contest entry fee, just the thread of sinking further into the Shame Pit in the case of failure. And yes, if you happen to be a winner End will consider your case so escape from the Shame Pit is possible. :)

I'll join

RK gave me a nudge so I'll throw my hat in! I had plans to churn out more reviews anyway so might as well do 'em for some points.

nice! Also, locked

Excellent, nice participation so far :D

I'm in! Yahoo!

Not sure if someone else mentioned this, but probably changing the number of featured comments per story to 5 rather than 3 seeing as there's been an increase in better comments in general.

(And an increase in shitposting comments as well, but as we all know, the fools have got to have their fun)

Great Suranna :D And yeah, it's certainly a possibility if that's something you want to do. I think the number of featured stories was increased because there were so many good stories being written so increasing the number of featured comments too would create more space for all the well-written reviews (though, conversely, there are still a lot of mostly older and / or shorter stories still with just one or no featured comments).

Alright, I like reviewing. I'll toss my hat in the ring!

Welcome! :D

Ok everyone, we’ve had a good turnout so far :D We have randomly assigned participants into the following teams:

Team 1: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.

Team 2: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.

Team 3: Mizal and Suranna.

We’ll add an extra member to Team 3 and form more teams once more participants join but for now people can now start reading, rating and reviewing to begin earning Points and we’ll launch our first Mini Challenge on Friday!

One of the first things it’d be fun to do is to think up a name for your Teams – I’ve given you numbers for now but it’d be more fun to have names. You can chat about it here or pm each other and as long as two thirds of the team post here that they approve the name we’ll use it. I had a browse online and some of the names I liked are “The Winning Team”, “I Am Smarticus”, “No Eye Deer”, “One Wheel Short Of A Unicycle” and “I Got 99 Problems But This Competition Ain’t One” but I’m sure you’ll be great at thinking up your own names.

Entry into the Reading Competition is permanently open and the sooner you sign up the sooner you can start winning points for yourselves and your teams. The Leaderboard has appeared in The Parlour Room to help keep track of how everyone is doing. One word of advice: you might want to post Reviews on more recently written Story Games, particularly in the Newly Created Storygames section, or those written by active members as these are the most likely to be spotted and commended by Admins. Good Luck and if you have any questions please ask them here!

Team 3 is fucked. :)

Interesting name!

Locked!

The actual name will be either Team ADHD or Team Please Sherb Save Us

Ill Join team 3 for the funsies, but ill take it a bit slower than usual. 

It's all random, both of you calm down.

I'm in this year too.

Do your worst.

Logged on for the first time in awhile and saw my pointless points had dwindled from a whopping 480 to a measley 380. This seems like a good chance to totally not get distracted and sink further into the pit of shame... what could go wrong? 

I'm going to enter to force myself to review one story this summer at least. I haven't looked at this in ages so this could be fun. Might try to get something started tonight so at the very least I have something.

My understang is that I just need to do a review and it will automatically count towards the contest.. let me know if I need to post my review in a specific thread or something. 

Oh, I must have forgotten to link the tracking thread. I'll ask Will to edit the OP later, but you should track all your reviews there and we'll add them to the leaderboard.

Oh! Hello! Been awhile.

Yeah, a few years... it's good to talk to you again, Mizal. I hope things have been going well around here!

CYS never changes.

Shadowdrake, I think MHD took away 50 points temporarily for not voting in the thunder dome.

All you have to do to get the 50 points back is to go to the thunderdome 2025 thread, read the 2 tiebreaker stories and see which one you like.

Also, it's really cool that you're back.

I loved your time traveler Gower and time loop haunted house stories.

Oh, I see. I guess I should go do that and get an easy 50 points... maybe.

Thanks! I am glad to be back. This writing community is the best I've found, and I haven't been motivated to read or write as much as I should be.

I appreciate the feedback! The Gower story was very fun to write with input from Gower himself. I hope he is still around! The time loop story I'm surprised to hear positive feedback because it was my first story and really just a way to test the editor. At the time it was written it got very poor feedback... but I did update some of the issues and I'm glad you liked it!

Gower still can be summoned on occasion, but he's working on the third game in the Tally Ho series, and he otherwise seems like he's been perpetually buried under a mountain of (mostly AI generated) papers to grade.

....well, last time I tried talking to him he did say something that sounded a lot like "I will play Blue Prince until I die", but that can't be right, I must have misheard.

(There's no way he'd punctuate it that way, for one.)

Glad to hear he is writing a new story and still around! I'm terribly sorry about the AI generated papers though... Last I heard, as far as 20 years from now, they never figure out a solution to this problem. 

Hmm... yeah, that must have been some static or hacking: something was messing with your communications. You should really use the tried and true tin cups on a string method rather than all this crappy internet stuff. Boring grammar was not Gower's thing.

The OP mentions both Switch and Swap, but I assume these are the same thing?

Yep, they are the same thing.

Damn it, I'm in

 

Can I join Team 3

Locked

Hey, another familiar face. I hope life is treating you well, Ace.

He's doing well despite the preasure.

Inside joke? Or did someone take over Mizal's account? It's been awhile--anything is possible here.

The joke: you can still create a drinking game around Ace's posts.

Ah, I didn't notice it in his original post because I read it while doing something else, haha. I get it!

I'm just as slow as I used to be.

Please, I invented that trick.

Are you still in Taiwan btw, or is that done with school out?

I've also been okay. Thank you!

Count me in.

Great, it's really good to see so many people joining :D Participants only need to write at least one commended review in the next three months to contribute but the more the merrier :)

UPDATE: Mizal has informed me that even more points will be available! For people who write a Commended Review of stories 1-4 in length they will receive 1 Point, 5 in length, 2 Points, 6 in length 5 Points, 7 in length, 7 Points and 8 in length, 10 Points. This is to represent the time and effort it takes to read and write a meaningful review of the longer stories as opposed to the faster time to read and review a short story. This is for competitions participants only so, if you are feeling ambitious, please give some thought to read and reviewing some of the larger stories on the site. Remember - reviews on more recently-written stories and stories by active authors are more likely to be spotted and commended by Admins than stories written back in the pre-iPhone era :D

I'm mention to that we're doing away with the "three featured comments per game" guideline as of this month. So that may be either good or bad depending on whether you were hoping to strategically knock people off the featured list (which would be WAY too difficult for us to track anyway), but hopefully it'll mean an end to people thinking they shouldn't bother if they see a game with already featured comments.

In fact, there might be another thread related to this soon.

This is pretty interesting info, thanks Ace :) I think the way the points are offered is fair and it's also worth mentioning this is only for the whole story, depending where the end game links are or the branching structure the amount read would probably be a lot less, a commendable review can still be written just following one branch from start to finish.

I'll sign up!

Nice!

Good Morning! On our second day of the contest, we now have 15 participants so the teams stand thus:

Team 1: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Team 2: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 (a.k.a. Team 3 is Fucked, Team ADHD or Team Please Sherb Save Us): Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
Team 4: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.

Things are still getting underway so there is plenty of time to join before the first Mini Challenge this Friday where people begin competing for the opportunities to mess about with other teams or fix things in their favor :D Don’t forget to chat a bit with your team mates and feel free to come up with a killer team name that will really make an impression (of some kind) on your rivals 😊 All those listed are having their points tracked on The Leaderboard already so feel free to check it out here in the Parlour Room if you haven't already!

Well okay after talking to Suranna I'm actually a bit more optimistic now, and Darius is a good inclusion. I'm going to suggest calling Team 3 Natural Born Winners now just for the sake of a peppy name.

Although it really depends on the availability of Swap cards as to whether there's any real purpose to team loyalty, if we're all just playing musical chairs with them than it's a much more mercenary game about using the people around you for short term benefits while they're there.

Steal cards wouldn't be released too often. There will be mini-challenges once a week with the chance to win a card (which may or may not be 'steal') and/or points, not to mention that a steal could be blocked with a 'stop' card. Most teams would remain with their members for most, if not the entire duration, of this contest.

I suppose for really loyal teams, there's also the possibility of swapping two members of other teams just to cause a bit of chaos.

Goddamn it. I just HAD to say "Do your worst" didn't I?

Fuck it. Time to review.

EDIT: Last year there was a rule stating that for a review to qualify, it had to be authored by someone who had been active since at least 2020. Will that be the case this year?

According to the rules, no. According to recommendations, you have a higher chance of your comment getting noticed if it is an active member.

I vote we change team # 4's name to "Your Worst" or "Doing your worst"

How about just "The Worst"

I know it's your natural imclination to be nice to everyone, but you don't have to be nice to holman--he's expressing here that he thinks you suck and that it's gimping him to have you on the team.

Only in jest. I don't really mind who I'm teamed up with.

I'm aware, but I cope with comedy, or spite. I'll only cry for a minute and then review a story or something. Plus it seems like I can switch people off my team if I want, so that's fun!

Until then, we can be team "The Worst" I'll concur and that makes 2/3 vote!

Ironic since Shadowdrake is the only one on that team with a review so far.

Plot twist: Ben's halfway done with his 5500 word review of Eternal

That would certainly be a great way to skyrocket to the top of the leaderboard. Also, it looks like your team is winning so far.

I'll take the points, then ship him off too the worst team and realize my dream of writing an entire story game out of just comments on other peoples stories, complete with choices, multiple endings, and somewhat relevant feedback. I play for keeps... until tomorrow when I lose motivation.

Which would be worth 1 review, same as Shadow's.

It's not about the points it's about sending a message.

Nah. I did complete a 1,500 word review of Ace's story though.

If I was gonna review Eternal (again) it'd take me the length of this contest to finish it. Eternal is a masterpiece.

I appreciate the vote of confidence! When I eject Ben I'll bring you on board team "The Worst"

My service seems to be causing double posting issues. My apologies.

Yeah, the storygame doesn't have to be authored by someone active since 2020. However, if anyone is thinking of only reviewing 2-length storygames from long-forgotten authors, well, let's just say that they're not going to be handed out commendations easily.

Maybe we'll just unpublish them all and nullify a bunch of reviews at once.

The so far winning team has decided that our name shall be The Review Bored. It's surprisingly easy to agree on one when not a single member actually cares about names.

Indeed, the motion to name the team The Review Bored was duly passed—unanimously—mere minutes after proposal. We look forward to our potentially inevitable victory.

Alright, I'm in too.

I see there's people entering all over this thread so I can't possibly not get involved

Could I join in a few weeks? By then, I might have the time to work on reviewing games.

You can join at any time according to the rules. Just a pro-tip... lurk until you are ready to join. Once you make a post like this there is a chance you are just considered "in" the contest. 

Well, I guess it's time to rearrange my schedule now.

I wouldn't worry too much about unless you get teamed up with somebody who really wants to win and you care about their feelings. The contest will go on for months after all so there's plenty of time to not get shamed.

If you wait until everyone else forgets about this... you might just sneak into an easy victory! Although there are a lot of people in this mob. I wouldn't feel pressured, all you need is one good comment on 3 months. Take your time.

Aren't you in middle school or something? It's summer, you have infinite time.

Heh, not for me! I've still got finals coming up, so it's crunch time!

I say this, yet I spend half my time just listening to audiobooks. At least now I have something else to procrastinate with.

yeah, you're already in. Well, depending on the whims of Mystic, Will, and the admins. There's sort of an unwritten rule where if you post in the contest thread, you run the risk of being voluntold into the contest.

But you can always start reviewing in a few weeks.

You just joined, congrats.

You can start reviewing in a few weeks, this is running till the end of August.

Hey all, here are the teams now following the 3 new participants forming Team 6:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Team 2: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 (Natural Born Winners, Team 3 is Fucked, Team ADHD or Team Please Sherb Save Us): Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Team 6: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.

Darius or Suranna need to confirm a name they like for Team 3 and Teams 2, 5 and 6 can pick one too if they want something more exciting than numbers. The Review Bored are off to a flying start while The Worst is, ironically, in second place and Team 2 is off to a good start as well but it’s still very early days. 😊 Well Done to Mouse, Cavus and Fluxion. :D

Team 3: the Late Bloomers

We'll figure this out eventually!

Team 3 is Fucked is an excellent name

Team 2 should be Grill Night and the Newbie

Lol. I love this!

Putting forth 'Mercer Gang' as team 6's name.

Seconded

RK asked, so I shall oblige

Teams update:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Grill Night and the Newbie: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 is Fucked: Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Mercer Gang: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.
Team 7: IcePrincess21.

Team 5 still need a name and Team 7 will get its other members once a few more people sign up (meanwhile IcePrincess can start reviewing). 😊

I would like to join

Welcome :)

Teams update:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Grill Night and the Newbie: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 is Fucked: Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Mercer Gang: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.
Team 7: IcePrincess21 and Petros.

Yes I'd like to join

Teams update:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Grill Night and the Newbie: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 is Fucked: Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Mercer Gang: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.
Team 7: DarkSoul, IcePrincess21 and Petros.

As this has come up a few times in questions, it's probably best to clarify it here:

Rating a story gives you a Site Point, but that has no bearing on the contest. 

Writing a normal, non-featured review is generally welcomed, but in this contest, it does not give you any points (but still, feel free to track them because it makes us more likely to see and consider featuring those comments).

Now, onto featured reviews. Depending on storygame length, they each give a different number of Contest Points (see the original post for this). Getting a review commended gives you 2 Site Points and you get another 3 for daily commendations, but since the mods are generous people, you could also get additional Site Points (same scoring system as Contest Points). These would be distributed at some point, probably after the contest has concluded.

Week 1: Mini Challenge

It’s time for the first Mini Challenge, where you compete against other participants to win an advantage. Which team will emerge victorious? May the best review win!

The Challenge

Participants must write the best review they can of Shadow of a God-King. Each participant can submit one entry. The winner will be selected by the author, Fluxion.

For the three of you who have already reviewed that story, just choose another one of Fluxion’s stories and comment on that instead.

Reward

The winning team will get a ‘Select’ card. This enables you to limit another team's reviews to a specific storygame genre for 72 hours! Additionally, writing a featured review would grant you 7 Contest Points and up to 23 Site Points*.

*1 point for rating the storygame, 2 points for the featured review, 3 points for daily commendation, 10 points if you’re the most commended that day, and 7 extra points. And all this just for one review, that’s insane.

Deadline

You have until 11.59pm EST on 9th June 2025 (Monday). To participate, post your review on the storygame itself and make a note of that as a reply to this post. 

(Apologies for the late post! Normally, challenges would be released on Friday and you would have until Sunday to complete them, but I have been very busy with packing items for an upcoming trip). 

LOL I am honored. I doubt anyone else reviews it though. The reward seems small for the 126,000-word 136,000-word count (since updates). Then again... imagine forcing a team to review only fan fiction.

If no one does it can I pick my teammate's review which is already done? I feel like giving our team the default win is fair. And Mousecore's review was phenomenal.

I'll have you know that I'm half way done... with the prologue...

Best of luck to you... I wrote the prologue because I thought the first page was too boring....

That's not a bad move: It was intriguing. I did already find two minor grammatical mistakes... but it's otherwise very well-written. However, I tend to not mind a slow start/slow burn story as much as other people. Knowing details of the world helps me get into it.

To be fair it results in a different issue now where a significant part of chapter 1 does feel like a slight lull in the story when we go from tight action to multiple pages of people chilling in a bar.

That's a good point. But I do think it also shows the frustrations that the Resistance has had in acquiring the intelligence they need, and the subsequent questionable manipulation they employ to get it (spoiler!).

Might be, but I feel like that could be conveyed piece by piece over the course of the story just as well, but maybe we should have an actual discussion if I review it (because I totally didn't already write one last night)

The prologue is a good decision. I liked it a lot. But the bit between the prologue and arriving at the pyramid could use a bit of tightening. The party works well, but before and after it there are some bits which could go faster.

End manages to read and rank his contest storygames in a couple of days, which often includes really large entries. The last few times I reviewed long stories, it takes at most slightly over a day (and yes, I also do other things like meet friends, work on university projects and occasionally watch movies). But out of curiosity, how long does everyone take on average to read and review stories? I might consider extending this challenge if it'll make it more feasible. 

(Also I planned this mini-challenge before the contest began to keep up with the tradition of spotlighting a contest-winning story, and I had no idea Flux was even joining let alone that his team would do so well).

I try to do one in a single day, but if it's extra-long (like yours was), I'll space it out over a few to make sure I'm paying attention. The save function is very useful.

The last 7 length story I read took me 3 days... so it's not unreasonable to do this in a weekend. However, I personally have other plans this weekend preventing me from spending a lot of time on this. It's summer, so people might be hit-or-miss on weekends. Also, some of us are slow readers.

I always find ordinary reading and then reading with writing a review in mind to be pretty different things. Powering through a few stories when the only criteria is how well they hold your interest or what rating you'd give them going to go a lot faster than something that needs a more methodical approach with probably some note taking.

That said, you don't actually have to adjust how the contest works every time somebody brings up a new point lol, you're not RK.

I agree with this I tend to take notes so I can point out specific tips to help the author improve... not a ton just like a few examples. I also like to read every path to get a sense of the entire story not the one branch I read.

For the longer stories, they takes me longer than a day(except some days where I just do a full reading marathon day). I would recommend giving that space of a few days so that a lot of people can throw their hat in the ring and really give a great review.

For reference, because it was asked, I'm still not done with my review of "Shadow of the God King". I'm probably slower than most but I will probably finish it tonight. I have a ton of notes and just started chapter 3... I plan to write a long review and have a lot of feedback. I didn't actually have much time to read until yesterday, when I finished an entire chapter (I went back to see how every choice affected the story as well, but it was not clear). This could be finished in 3 days (a weekend)--even with the long review process--but it would have to be a completely free weekend without other plans or work getting in the way. 

I don't think the mini game was unreasonable, just pointing this out for reference to those making the mini games.

Unrelated: most of the choices affect immediate events (such as whether Amun-Ka beats you to within an inch of your life or if instead the Pharaoh is pleased with you) or close off certain paths (like the library encounter with Jack). Mainly they come back in slightly different dialogue later (such as what the Chaperone accuses you of late). There is one choice that dramatically alters the plot, but for the most part they are more about choosing who the protagonist will be than branching into different parallel universes.

Variables are affected by them, but the major ones were intended to affect the difficulty of the trial, but I haven't finished that aspect.

Yeah, I noticed this and figured the game had a lot of coding for this type of thing; however, the changes aren't apparent to the reader. I was very confused that you could skip chapters in the beginning because that would erase all the choices before hand. I'll have comments about this for you, so we don't need to discuss here. You can always message me after the comment if something doesn't make sense or you want to talk about something though. 

Oh for the "skip chapters" options I put in the variables which put the reader on the path I wanted for the story. EDIT: lol sorry I replied before finishing your comment asking my not to reply. Enjoy one free monocled Boomer emoticon for your troubles: \_(0_o)_/

Could you send me the scripting for that sort of thing? I'd really appreciate it.

It'd be just the same ol' %VAR := 1 as everything else, for whatever variables would normally be set on the desired path. Almost anything you can do with variables uses the same method.

If you get the extension you can open up the dev panel to look at a game's variables directly, it's nice to have for testing.

Like Mizal said, all I did was set the variables to the proper value with each link. Just like when you do it in any other page. So for each chapter I have a list of variables that I set to 0, 1, 2 or whatever values I wanted them to be to ensure on page scripting and other things are what I wanted. The only trick is just remembering which choices affected which variable, and putting them in to be activated at the start of the chapter.

For example, the start of chapter 2 in Shadow of a God-King I selected Azalea beating the girl's ass in the bar, and her sparing the soldier who killed her friend. Those are just

% LIBRARY := 1

% BULLY :=1

(disregard spaces obviously; Libraray being 1 is dependent on a previous variable, but it's irrelevant after the library scene so I just went with that the rest of the story)

So just regular variables. Since they all link to chapter starts, I didn't have to use DEST to link to a specific page within a chapter, but I did do that for testing puproses and then removed the link when I published.

That's really helpful! Thanks Fluxion!

In fairness, that challenge was a bit of a toughy for the timeline. If your review gets featured you still get lots of contest points, just not the card. It's great you're putting so much effort into this and being so thorough, I'm sure Flux will really appreciate your review :D

Yeah, I'm shooting for a featured review, haha. I appreciate the encouragement! I was posting because someone had asked how long a review takes... now I need to go actually finish that story!

Lmao at that skip to the end review. You might be the victor. Should be commended for the audacity and ingenuity.

Yeah, I did manage to read and review God-King within 12 hours, but that was on a completely free day that was basically consumed by the review. I can't see myself being able to do something like that again for quite a while. Scribbling down notes and brain-dumping as you read is a good way to get a cohesive review skeleton ready by the time you finish the story instead of trying to type up an entire essay in one fell swoop.

I've taken to using notes as well with reviews. Seems to make them more useful.

Maybe I'll say that the best new review wins, so if only one person reviews it and writes 'story gud' they win by default. At the very least this, may inspire some shorter comments and take off some of the pressure of writing a long review.

Pffft I have until midnight tomorrow. I can get a good review in by then

I think it will be funnier if someone force a team to read romance and dating, since they are equally as awful. The fanfiction section at least has some bones to it.

Mousecore’s review was pretty fire, ngl. It’s a tough one to beat


I’ll review another one of your stories . I always had my eye on that vampire story with the items, so I’ll do that one

If you mean me, I think you've already gotten all the good ones lol. The rest are trash. EDIT: By the Light of Day still needs some reviews from this decade I guess. Has a decent rating.

Yeah I was replying to you.

By the light of day was the story I was referring to, that one got commended! It’s pretty good, right?

Eh, better than average. Good ideas probably. Has a cool little apocrypha type thingy. Cool images.

I’m pretty excited to check it out! Since me, liminal, and mousecore all did shadow of the god king already, I’m interested to submit a review for “by the light of day
“ for the challenge! Should be fun!

At some point I'm intending on reading every grimdark story on the sight for the contest myself.

Dude, you got to read heavenspire, it’s awesome!

Looks good. I'll probably check it out in a few days. Solid length too.

I just posted a review of Shadow of the God King. I'm three hours late, is that an issue?

It goes by EST, so you have two hours, technically. I think. Maybe.

It's still 10 PM in EST, which is what the deadline is fixed in, so you're good.

Ah of course!

ok good :)

If you gave me an 8 and stroked my ego well enough I'll declare you the winner.

Unless I can declare Mousecore the winner and help my team >:)

With two hours on the clock left, here's my review for By the Light of Day since I did God-King already.

Nice job! Another feature for the probably winning team.

Oh, and thanks for pointing out the scripting error. I spent two minutes looking at it and think I found the problem (hopefully). It appears I had multiple "last page" versions, rather than on-page scripting, and I had forgotten to trigger a variable to hide one of them if you either killed Sebastian or chose not to help locate the missing girl.

I probably didn't spend enough time to fix it entirely, because I apparently (haven't visited this one in years) have three different versions of that final fight—one in which Sebatian and Emily help you, and two in which they don't (maybe...again, laziness has compelled me to try to fix it as quickly as possible), including where you find her nailed to his body when you return to that town, with entire city massacred.

But yeah, if not for you, I never would have known.

EDIT: Actually, maybe that tips the balance. You didn't just offer insight into helping me get better at writing or giving me a new perspective on characters or story I made, you actively helped me find a scripting error and literally helped make it better. Perhaps I'll give you the points after all....

Since I already reviewed Shadow of the God King, I had to pick a different Flux story to review. For this challenge, I chose to review The Story of Count Osmond Jorgensen.

I was going to do "By the light of day", but I got engrossed by Paradise Violated, I spent hours reading that story, and then by the time I logged back in, time was running out for the challenge. Nevertheless, I'm still excited to check out By the Light of Day, since Mousecore's review seemed to be really positive!

Ew that one sucks

Lol. It’s better than anything I’ve written, but yeah it was definetly not one of my favorites of your stories.

Still, for an early story, it’s quite good!

I'm pretty sure that one was written in a couple of hours, in my defense. I had failed, as I was wont to do back then (still probably am, really), and had to cobble something together quickly. It got disqualified because I couldn't handle the gramatical errors that writing something so fast causes, so I made like 6 edits after the deadline XD.

Good lord RK you have your literatary history down. That's a great review, mainly because of the deft use of knowledge you display (imagine if I wrote daft instead. Hue.). 10/10 would get reviewed again.

Dude, thanks a lot!

I'm so glad you liked it. I took an elective on greek drama, and it was lucky the knowledge came in handy!

I got to say, if this story was for a Greek Tragedy contest rather than a lone hero contest, you probably would have done really well. It captures the sentiment of a tragedy quite well. I really appreciate the feedback, and the fact that you liked my review!

Now that the first Mini Challenge is over, @Fluxion will judge the entries and decide on a winner. Although I've been away, Will has noted that five individuals have taken up the challenge: Darksoul, Liminal and Mizal have reviewed Shadow of a God-King, whereas RK and Mousecore reviewed Fluxion's other stories. May the best challenger win.

It's going to be me!

DAMN IT, SHE'S GOOD!

I will have an answer probably before 6 PM EST.

scripting errors... let me try this again

Looks like no one on my team managed a review... so I'll be looking at the love and dating section to see if any are readable...

Gower's private game for Natalie is pretty good and most featured reviews on it are pretty old, if well written

True Life is also a great story.

Inseparable is fantastic.

Through Time is a very cool story.

These Shackled Souls is a recent story, also penned by the contest boss, so you could get some brownie points .

I don't know why people say the love and dating category is restrictive, there are some pretty cool gems.

And you could review my gay and depressed story if you're in the mood for well... being gay and depressed in prison.

Noted! I can review your game and some of these other suggestions if it happens.

Dude, I almost forgot that you're a veteran. You've probably already seen/played most of these.

Haha, I haven't read as many stories as you might guess. Also, anything written in the last four years would be new to me now. I appreciate the recommendations!

Of course!

Thanks for offering to check out my game! That's really nice of you. And I hope you enjoy the other love and dating games, if your team gets restricted.

Reviewing other active members stories is the most fun part of this! I have always enjoyed the community here, and helping people who might actually read the comment to improve is more rewarding. I'll get to it after I finish "shadow of a god king" (even if we don't get restricted). I'm assuming I'll actually have time to read today and tomorrow... so I'll probably finish my review around the time we get restricted if it happens, haha.

I believe I already have a featured review on this... unless it's been replaced? I appreciate the suggestion, although I was mostly joking!

If you did I might be the one who got you unfeatured, not sorry about that.

All is fair in love contests and war. My review is 6 years old, so it was bound to happen. I did go check, and I did review that one. No clue if it was ever featured, but I seem to remember it being featured a long time ago.

That one I reviewed before the contest as part of my monthly challenge. Kind of a shame because now I can't do that if we end up stuck reviewing those.

Yeah, bad timing. That game is very interesting. However, I'm sure there are more good stories in there! I haven't read that category a ton--so I'm not sure how true the trope that they are all bad, sappy romance stories is.

Hmmmm.... (scripting error destroyed the site momentarily... should be fixed now)

So, this was difficult. Mizal's review made me laugh. Liminal's was succinct and focused on a couple things I really tried to emphasize (character thoughts and world building). The three others were very in-depth, well written and very helpful (and clearly took a lot of effort given their lengths). In fact, DarkSoul, RK, and Mousecore all wrote fantastic reviews, and it was really hard for me to decide between them. Since all three were high quality, I had to look at other things to choose.

In the end, one of these reviews actually helped me improve the story it was written about, and that's Mousecore's. Without Mousecore's review, I wouldn't have noticed a scripting error in By the Light of Day. Years later, I can't imagine how many one's or two's of people managed to get to the end and wonder who the hell Sebastian and Emily were when they hadn't even met them in the story. But now that should be fixed, thanks to this review.

Consequently, I award the points to Mousecore (and of course, The Review Bored—although I can assure you, team bias played no role here... yeah.).

Sounds... legit?

When you play the Game of Reviews, you win, or you die.

Congrats to mousecore, and the Review Bored!

Cavus, Flux, and Mouse, all 3 of you have been killing it. The review bored is truly a deadly combo, because all 3 members are really strong in reviewing! I think all 3 of you are in the top 3, so the rest of us have to step it up, so all the power isn’t concentrated in one team!

I guess you guys have the sabotage card now, man I really hope our team isn’t picked

Thank you, Fluxion! I'm happy to have helped improve a story. :)

Ten days into the contest but even joining now I feel like catching up won't be hard. Count me in.

I will give 1 art to the overall winner as well

300 points, wills trophy, and an MHD art commission! Ok, this contests rewards are insane! And that’s not even counting the team rewards

Agreed. Big prizes for this contest... might keep people engaged for the full 3 months--maybe.

Darn. I wish I wasn't going to finish last place on the so far winning team. I have so many ideas.

...Time to call in sick to work and read for a week straight.

I suddenly wish our system outage at work (which is totally not the reason why I had time to review as much as I did) will last for the whole 3 months.

Teams update:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Grill Night and the Newbie: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 is Fucked: Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Mercer Gang: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.
Team 7: DarkSoul, IcePrincess21 and Petros.
Team 8: fresh_out_the_oven

Welcome aboard Fresh and don’t worry, there is still plenty of time for you and others to join the competition - you can start reviewing right away and any new participants I’ll assign to your team when they join. Thank you so much MDH, that’s really nice of you! :D And congratulations Mousecore on your great review and the whole Review Bored generally, your card and points will soon be winging their way to you. The next Mini Challenge is in a few days on Friday so they’ll be a chance for one of the other teams to try to win back some ground - The Worst, Grill Night and the Newbie and Team 7 are doing pretty well too. 😊

Congratulations The Review Bored, and especially MouseCore, on winning the first Mini Challenge. You will receive your Points reward but you are also now the proud owners of a Select Card, which will force another team to only review stories of a certain genre for 72 hours (only contest points from commended reviews in that genre will be counted for them in that time). You can use this card at any time but at least 2 out of 3 of you must post which team and genre you have chosen. You can play it whenever you like, either as soon as possible to ruin some peoples' day or be tactical and hold on to it in case of a close finish, the choice is yours :D The next opportunity to win a card will be the next Mini Challenge, which starts in two days :)

Eternal

one of the best storys i have thank you
— pierre2893 on 6/2/2025 10:07:42 PM with a score of 0

Rogues

onef the best stories i read
— pierre2893 on 6/8/2025 3:58:09 PM with a score of 0

Necromancer

one of the best stories i read
— pierre2893 on 6/9/2025 5:34:39 PM with a score of 0

Death Song

it is not the story you are one of the best creators i ever seen every story i read was magnifecent
— pierre2893 on 6/10/2025 7:15:47 PM with a score of 0

Ground Zero

not one of his best stories but i like it
— pierre2893 on 6/10/2025 9:45:35 PM with a score of 0

A Very Special Choose Your Story

weird thing but not that bad
— pierre2893 on 6/10/2025 10:18:34 PM with a score of 0

Paradise Violated

didnt expect it to be so short but not bad
— pierre2893 on 6/11/2025 3:16:01 PM with a score of 0

Innkeeper

great story i liked it
— pierre2893 on 6/11/2025 7:11:27 PM with a score of 0

You lot are lucky Pierre isn’t in this contest, because as far as I’m concerned he’s soundly beaten the chicken soup out of all of you.

Get this man on Team 8!

This is a truly intimidating level of productivity.

I feel bad because this person might not speak English as a first language... but the comment on Eternal is wild. They are reading these very quickly though... I think I spent like weeks flipping through Eternal alone. 

Week 2: Mini Challenge

Greetings keen competitors, it is now time for our Second Mini Challenge. It’s still early in the competition so a win here will give you an advantage later on, especially with this challenge.

The Challenge

This week’s challenge is a straight-forward one: earn as many commended reviews on the stories of active writers this weekend as you can. By active, we mean someone who has been online within the last year (since June 2024).

Reward

(Insert Mystic’s cool card graphic here with the power of imagination)

The winning team will get a ‘Stop’ card, this stops another team playing a Sabotage card on you unless they also use a Stop card with it. Also, the more commended reviews you have the more commendations, points and competition points you will earn on the exact stories most likely to be noticed and commended by admins. This challenge is a good opportunity to rack up points to increase a strong score or develop one before the playing field becomes trickier!

Deadline

You have from 00:01am EST Friday 13 June until 11:59pm EST Sunday 15 June, then we’ll total up the number of commended reviews and announce the winner on Monday (please continue keeping track of your commended reviews in the Tracking Thread, people are doing a really good job with it and it’s really helpful!).

Advice: As a shortcut to check active writers consider the Newly-Created Storygames category or just scroll down to Who Is Online, click someone and review their stories.

There goes my plans to review all of WIBN's stories! If only he were more active lol, just 4 months and he would have met the criteria.

Don't worry, you can still do that. It just might be better to focus on other writers for this weekend :)

No one should do that to themselves.

Am I correct to assume that the length of the story doesn't matter for this mini-challenge?

You still get bonus Contest Points for longer stories at a rate of 1 for 1-4 length stories, 2 for 5 length stories, 5 for 6 length stories, 7 for 7 length stories and 10 for 8 length stories - it is up to you if you want to target longer or shorter stories or a mix :) But yes, we count the commended reviews on an individual basis for the purpose of winning the Stop card so getting 3 commended reviews on 4 length stories would put you ahead of someone getting 2 commended reviews on 8 length stories for the card for this challenge, pointwise though the second person would do much better.

Man, I am so bad at these challenges. I only managed one... and I had been working on that one review since the start of the last challenge! It just happened to count. Living up to team The Worst's name! 

Edit: ended with 2 because one got featured after I posted 

So... I just reviewed a story from someone who started a thread saying they were beginning a story, and the thread was made to push them to finish, and then they disappeared for four years. But suddenly, like Christopher Nolan's Batman, they suddenly rose from the shadows and finished their story and bumped their old thread. Does that count, given that they suddenly became active again? It feels kind of like the story of Lazerus. Dead for four days years, then returned to life.

Of course, if they've been active suddenly it counts :D And don't worry Shadowdrake, your review of Flux's story is really good and detailed and points wise it's earnt you and your team a lot :)

Yeah, reviewing longer stories is nice points wise... and I am "way to detailed" on my reviews. I appreciate the encouragement! 3-5 was my goal, but I suppose it worked out...

Ok, time's up for this Challenge :) Thank you everyone who took part and I'll count up the commended reviews and post the results soon :D

Hold the certification! There are still mail-in ballots waiting to be opened and counted! I'm still waiting for my inevitable feature for being the very first to review a game that was four years in the making. ;)

Ok, I checked everyone and these are the results of this week’s Mini Challenge:

Cavus Rex (Contest Points: 24), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Fluxion (Contest Points: 12), Commended Reviews this weekend: possibly 1 (pending approval)
Mousecore (Contest Points: 19), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Liminal (Contest Points: 1), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
RKrallonor (Contest Points: 22), Commended Reviews this weekend: 2
Yummyfood (Contest Points: 1), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Darius Conwright (Contest Points: 0), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Mizal (Contest Points: 0), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Suranna (Contest Points: 0), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Ben Holman (Contest Points: 7), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Not So Special (Contest Points: 0), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Shadowdrake (Contest Points: 18), Commended Reviews this weekend: 2
Corgi (Contest Points: 0), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Milton Man Thing (Contest Points: 0), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Mr Ace (Contest Points: 0), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Anthraxus (Contest Points: 0), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Enterpride (Contest Points: 0), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Unescapable Death (Contest Points: 0), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Dark Soul (Contest Points: 7), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Ice Princess (Contest Points: 5), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Petros (Contest Points: 1), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Fresh (Contest Points: 0), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0
Goodnight (Contest Points: 0), Commended Reviews this weekend: 0

So, RKrallonor, from Grill Night and the Newbie, and Shadowdrake27, from The Worst, (who are both really bringing it this competition) are in a tie for the Stop Card. I think that means both of them have done well enough to earn a Stop Card each for their respective teams as well as the extra contest points (10 for RKrallonor and 8 for Shadowdrake) they earned for themselves and their teams from their reviews. Thank you for your efforts guys and Me or Mystic will be back in a few days with another fun, little challenge 😊

Thanks Will!

I really appreciate this!

Congrats to my fellow Stop-card holder Shadowdrake. It's kind of fitting that we have the card, since at least the Review Bored doesn't have both the Sabotage Card and the Stop Card, because then they would be super overpowered.

Good job to Flux as well, you were really crushing it with the reviews and I'm sure your reviews will be featured!

Can't wait to see what you and Mystic have planned for next week

Congratulations to you as well, RK! I didn't think 2 would win it... but looks like my last-second bribe came in handy! It's about time the review board didn't win something... and perhaps we can use our power up to "stop" them! Haha.

Yeah, thanks Will! The contest has been fun so far. This was a nice challenge and kept me motivated.

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it and you're both doing really well - this was a deserved win. :D But next challenge... who knows what might happen? :)

I'd like to join this contest!
Maintaining a facade of productivity is an important thing, y'know.

Hey, welcome :D Fresh has a teammate :)

Teams update:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Grill Night and the Newbie: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 is Fucked: Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Mercer Gang: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.
Team 7: DarkSoul, IcePrincess21 and Petros.
Team 8: fresh_out_the_oven and goodnight_a.

I'm interested in taking part in this! Now that I've been at my new job a while, I should have some extra time on my hands.

Great and congrats on your new job :) Team 8 has a full set now.

Teams update:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Grill Night and the Newbie: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 is Fucked: Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Mercer Gang: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.
Team 7: DarkSoul, IcePrincess21 and Petros.
Team 8: Cat2002116, fresh_out_the_oven and goodnight_a.

Team 7 has voted, and would like to be named "Winter's Wrath" please and thank you! :)

It's a good thing this is a summer reading competition... or you guys would surely win with that name!

LMAO. However, perhaps winter is the death of summer, so they might "kill it" all summer. \_(o_0 )_/

Perhaps... you have given us much to consider on this team name. Only time will tell!

Can I get a confirmation from DarkSoul or Petros? :) Meanwhile:

Teams update:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Grill Night and the Newbie: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 is Fucked: Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Mercer Gang: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.
Winter's Wrath: DarkSoul, IcePrincess21 and Petros.
Team 8: Cat2002116, fresh_out_the_oven and goodnight_a.

Don't forget Teams 5 and 8 you can pick names too if you want :D

Is it too late to join? 😅 (If not, I ask if I may join, due to a friends request lmao)

Of course you can, sign-ups are open throughout the competition, though you'll have to get cracking to catch up with some of the more active reviewers. For now, you get your very own team and if others join I'll draft them into it :)

Teams update:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Grill Night and the Newbie: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 is Fucked: Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Mercer Gang: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.
Winter's Wrath: DarkSoul, IcePrincess21 and Petros.
Team 8: Cat2002116, fresh_out_the_oven and goodnight_a.
Team 9: ProminentPenguin.

Since I'm quite literally 100% of my team, I will name my team: "Penguin Paparazzi."

Sure :)

Teams update:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Grill Night and the Newbie: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 is Fucked: Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Mercer Gang: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.
Winter's Wrath: DarkSoul, IcePrincess21 and Petros.
Team 8: Cat2002116, fresh_out_the_oven and goodnight_a.
Penguin Paparazzi: ProminentPenguin.

If BerkaZerka and PerforatedPenguin joined you, we'd see all the penguins on the site teaming up together!

Don't tell me you've forgotten about Sentinel Penguin, the spork-wielding mod. But he's often referred to as a penguinite so maybe that's a different species entirely.

I had an interesting thing happen, so I figured I would just bring it up and ask the dumb question: There was a comment that I had get featured twice. I'm not sure if this was an accident because two mods got to it at once, one mod with two personalities got to it first, or if it was an intentional attempt to give more pointless-points for the one review. The obvious question is does this count for double the points in the contest? Or is do I just enjoy the fact that an accounting error worked in my favor this time?

Well you get the comms since there's no way to take them away (yet) but for the contest purposes it only counts once.

What happened was I was going through all the recent comments on stories and just clicking the story links in different tabs so I could easily just feature stuff.

Ended up featuring yours twice by accident since I'd featured it while featuring one of Cat's (I think) and when I got to the original tab I'd opened you got featured again while I was just clicking through.

I figured it was something like this; I often double post things when my internet is lagging or I have two windows open. For now, I'll enjoy the extra points and brag about them to make it more hilarious when the mods come back to collect them like undercollected taxes.

Week 3: Mini Challenge

Part 1

This week’s mini challenge is a nice easy one 😊

The winners will be the two fastest people, from different teams, to write detailed reviews (at least a couple of paragraphs) of the two mini stories in the Thunderdome BATTLE OF THE MODS: THE EARTHSHAKING FINALE Thread in News and Updates and post them (if you have already written one then post it again, expanding on it if necessary to bring it up to standard, to win). Whoever are the fastest two writers from different teams will win 15 points each for their teams (but not for themselves individually).

Or will they?

Part 2

There is more: the two winners will then enter a game of Split or Steal.

By 11.59PM EST Sunday 22 June each winner must Private Message me whether they plan to Split or Steal their 15 points. If both split each team gets 15 points. If both steal each team gets nothing. But, and here’s the kicker, if one steals and one splits the one who steals gets all 30 points for their team and the other gets nothing. Feel free to talk to your teammates or even your rivals about it because the real question here is how much do you trust a stranger not to screw you over? :D

Note: People can change their minds about whether to split or steal but I’ll take the last private message sent to me before the deadline as their final answer. If I get no answer from a person the other wins by default and if I get no answer from both they both lose 😊

Reward

There are no card prizes available this week but winning teams have the chance to win 15 or 30 points (or 0). This could be a real game changer, especially for those teams who haven’t got off the starting line yet!

Deadline

I’ll announce the two winning review writers as soon as possible after they have posted in the Thunderdome Thread and then announce the results of the Split and Steal competition early on Monday morning. Feel free to chime in with your advice for the two rivals and be sure to keep reviewing over the weekend to help your teams.

RK Krallonor of Grill Night and the Newbie and Shadowdrake27 of The Worst were the two fastest reviewers (and their reviews are very good) so they will be competing in Split or Steal this weekend. What do you think they should do?

I already made my choice. I'm locked in. I hope Shadow makes the right choice as well. But what do you guys think we should do?

Congrats to RK and Shadow. Too bad I didn't see the message sooner myself. Damn you sleep!
Can't wait for both of you to choose steal.

Yeah, a challenge starting right at midnight is a tough one to catch. I missed it also.

To answer RK's question: In a prisoner's dilemma, you should always choose to split.

Midnight would probably be easier to work around since I can just stay up for another hour (or in my case just do nothing given I usually stay up late anyway), but I'm european so for me it starts at 6am which is even worse.

Holding his breath, Shadowdrake listened carefully from his perch in the willow tree. All he could hear was the gentle gurgling of the stream to his back and the natural silence of the forest sleeping in front of him, as if this were the only patch of woods in CYStia undiscovered by the bands of delinquents that camped along the riverbank. It even smelled pristine, earthy, as if a rainstorm had just washed away the unpleasant smells that festered in the city proper, but this night was clear.

 

"Come on," Shadowdrake27 pleaded as he peered into the darkness. "We need this to catch the review board..."

 

Seeing nothing, he was about to leave when a twig snapped. There was a rustling of leaves, but nothing came into view. Shadowdrake27 blinked and scratched his head, leaning forward to get a better view as if something might materialize in front of him. 

Empty space muttered in the clearing under the willows branches, which hung down like curtains thinly separating the rest of the forest from a 20 foot diameter around the tree. Leaning closer, Shadowdrake27 struggled to hear the words being uttered by nothing--as if the wind itself could whisper--when RK suddenly appeared. 

 

A gasp and gentle thud broke the silence of the night as Shadowdrake27 fell from the lowest branches of the willow tree. Pain shot through his back as he laid on it in the cool grass with the misty breeze rolling over him from across the river. 

 

“Are you okay,” RK asked, leaning over Shadowdrake27, worry spreading across his face.

 

“Yeah…” Shadowdrake27 groaned, struggling to his feet. “I didn’t know you could turn invisible.”

 

“You did say to make sure no one saw me heading here—not even my own teammates.”

 

“It would have been okay for me to see you coming though.”

 

“Sorry about that: when you are the last of the great hot dog wizards, you take warnings of caution seriously! Especially since Yummyfood is missing these days.” RK scanned the forest and added, “So, you said you had a way to take down the review board?”

 

“Indeed, but we are waiting on—“ Shadowdrake27 started before he was interrupted by soft whistling coming from the complete darkness deeper in the forest.

 

RK and Shadowdrake27 scrambled behind the Willow tree and peered into the darkness; strolling up to the tree while whistling a merry tune in utter darkness, Will emerged with a warm smile on his face. He stopped on the other side of the tree and finished the tune before looking around.

 

“I’m here—as promised!” Will announced in a friendly tone.

 

“Can you keep it down?” Shadowdrake27 hissed, stepping out from behind the tree with RK. “The goal was to meet secretly!”

 

“Oh, I doubt they can hear us… they are too far ahead. Besides, they are all asleep: everyone is—except us three.”

 

A shiver ran down Shadowdrake27’s spine as he looked around—noting for the first time that they were alone and isolated. He cleared his throat and responded a bit louder, “Fine, did you bring the stuff?”

 

“Indeed!” Will’s smile broadened. “30 points, 15 for each of you.”

 

“Thanks, Will! This will allow us to—“

 

“But there is a catch!” Will interrupts. “Two, actually. First, these are for your teams, not for you two.”

 

“That’s fair,” RK said with a smile of his own. “These will make a huge difference!”

 

“Second,” Will continued with the smile growing to an unnatural smirk. His eyes gleamed with joy as his words formed slowly and clearly. “You can split the points evenly… or one of you can steal all 30; however, if you both try to steal you both get nothing.”

 

“What?” Shadowdrake27 exclaimed. “This was not the deal! We agreed on 15 points each!”

 

“And I held up my end of the bargain… you both can take them if you agree.”

 

“Fine, RK let’s just—“

 

“No, no, no!” Will interrupted again. “Not so quickly, little dragon. You will give your reply to me privately, and I’ll only count the final answer at the end of the weekend.” The smile on Wills face seemed to split his face in half as his eyes grew so wide they caught the moonlight like a cat stalking its prey in the night.

 

Shadowdrake27 gritted his teeth, but RK pointed out, “15 points make a huge difference… but 30 points changes everything. I see why this would be tempting, and it’s not a true challenge without a twist.”

 

“RK, what are you saying?” Shadowdrake27 questioned as the sun began to rise. He clenched his fists as a few early risers began to crowd around and pick up on what was happening. 

 

“Just that we have a game to play,” RK responded casually, waving his staff as if swatting away a fly. “We both seem to be good at games… this should be fun.”

 

“Steal the points!” someone shouted from the crowd that had formed—craving blood even in a battle of whits. 

 

“This is CYStia, after all,” Will chided.

 

“Hey! What’s going on over here?” Jster02 called from the forest, walking towards the growing mob.

 

“Welcome newcomer!” Will said in a friendly tone, his usual warm smile reappearing. “Let’s get you on a team; it’s never too late to join the fun!”

 

The pair walked off towards the river as Shadowdrake27 and RK faced each other in the expanding sunlight. Will never looked back, as if he was unaware of the chaos he created in his wake.

I shall not sit idly by as you defile the punstastic name of The Review BORED. Know that retribution will be swift, wordy and as always spoiler-free!

lol, I love this! I didn't know I could turn invisible till now, but I will cherish this magic ability! Hope this is commended!

I really love this prisoner's dilemma set up Will had. I can go ahead and say that I already chose to split, and will choose that for the rest of the weekend, but the cool part of this challenge is that you can't believe anything I say since for all you know, I could be saying I chose split, just to get you to choose split, so I would choose steal.

I did some reading and apparently, from the game theory side of things, steal is the best approach, which kind of sucks because then the challenge will be for nothing.

I feel like the only people who gain if we both choose to steal are the Review Bored, and Cat's Team, since Cat did a ton of reviews. So if we can both choose split we'll gain, so it all depends on whether you're willing to trust the word of an internet stranger, because for all you know I could be trying to get you to choose steal. After all, we're at 17, so maybe I'm trying to boost my team. And since you guys are at 35, you might also have a huge incentive to steal if you believe I'm choosing to split. This is so confusing! All I can really say is that I chose to split, but I guess you'll never fully know till Monday :)

Surprise! I based your character off the profile picture... so I took a few liberties. I assume you also can use magic to make condiments appear for a BBQ, but very little is known about wizards.

 

Yeah, game theory assumes a head to head and had you go for the both the safer play and higher upside play. In this game, it's best to say you will split and choose steal. Saying you will steal is madness because it guarantees 0 points. However, picking steal has two outcomes of 0 or 30 with an average of 15; meanwhile, actually picking split has two out comes with 15 and -30 averaging -7.5. It's statistically better to pick steal.

 

I also picked split though. Knowing your opponent changes the game, and we have been amicable so far. It's also a group game rather than a head to head. I see the worst case being all the points get lost as the review BORED (sorry Rex) runs away with it. Therefore picking split ensures the 30 points get into the game for someone that isn't already winning. Also, 15 points is like two really long reviews which is fought 2 weeks of work for me... I'm okay with the 15. If I get 0, it only took me a few minutes to write that review anyway.

Glad you picked split! With the points from the split, both our teams will benefit :)

Just a few more hours to go so last chance if either of you were tempted to message me... :)

It's RK and Shadowdrake, they're the worst people possible if you're looking for a fun backstab. Shadowdrake would play a strat game like Milton.

Mizal is correct: I'm probably the most boring person to have playing this game... however, I'm also busy during the days and only free at night really. If I were to make a back stabbing move it would probably happen 3 minutes after the deadline 

Well, if Cavus didn't say it, I will. Someone commend this.

I really like these characterizations and it reminds me, you know who else smiles all the time? Batman's Joker :D

Fun Fact: I just discovered I have the power to commend posts (or I always did and have only just noticed, which is at least equally likely) and decided to use it on you first :) Just been reading up on the Prisoner Dilemma and it does recommend Stealing but psychology does play its role too in terms of trust and duplicity. We'll give it 30 hours or so then I'll announce the results.

I appreciate the vote of confidence! Glad people liked the short story... I haven't been writing much recently, so it's nice to get positive feedback.

 

Also, pointing out the 30 hours remaining is diabolical, haha. Time can be a cruel thing when making decisions.

Dark horse candidate for MVP.

That's a lot of points for a challenge. Almost makes reviewing stories not worth the effort. < - which is what I WOULD have said if I was a whiner, so instead I'll edit the post to include this disclaimer.

Ok, I see my attempted audition to be a trickster agent of chaos has been unsuccessful and I had better leave creating conflict to others 😊 Of course RK and Shadowdrake both split because they’re both nice people who are nice to each other. We might as well just say every participant in this contest is a winner, let’s all grow our hair long, move to California and start a commune. :D To be fair, it was a good tactic for both teams but are these amicable tactics enough to take down the imperialistic might of The Review Board?

With the extra 15 points each, and going off the most recent update to The Leaderboard, the scores are (roughly):

The Review Board: 71 Points
The Worst: 45 Points
The Final Draft: 35 Points
Grill Night and the Newbie: 32 Points
Winter’s Wrath: 12 Points
Mercer Gang: 0 Points
Team 3 is Fucked: 0 Points
Team 5: 0 Points

So, while The Review Board are working very hard and have developed a clear lead The Worst, The Final Draft and Grill Night and the Newbie are all doing very well and remain strong contenders (especially good work from The Final Draft, who started after everyone else). Winter’s Wrath is getting underway but a few of the other teams might need a bit of a push (we wouldn’t want the Mercer Gang to disgrace their namesake). Genuinely well done RK and Shadowdrake and there is still everything to play for: next week’s Mini Challenge might really shake things up 😊

Not you too Will. Apparently Fluxion's name idea was so good it just flies over everyone's heads LOL

Sorry, in my head I changed it :D

I do apologize, it was just glossed over in my story. That is a very easy slip up to make.

Don't worry about it, in the first of your stories I didn't notice that you made that slip until I was scrolling past it later on. Still it's a waste of a good pun if it's so subtle people don't notice it. Or maybe that's what makes it a great pun?

Alright, I'll bite. I missed writing reviews. Put me in the game, coach!

Ok doke, for the purposes of this competition you are an honorary penguin.

Teams update:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Grill Night and the Newbie: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 is Fucked: Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Mercer Gang: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.
Winter's Wrath: DarkSoul, IcePrincess21 and Petros.
Team 8: Cat2002116, fresh_out_the_oven and goodnight_a.
Penguin Paparazzi: jster02 and ProminentPenguin.

Wait, so I get to transform into a penguin if I join now? Sweet!

Also, I know I'm a little late to the party, so I brought a bribe for my fellow reviewers. ;)

In the middle of a review frenzy is honestly a brilliant time to publish.

I love seeing all this activity even if I haven't really been able to participate yet, summer is traditionally pretty dead around here with people traveling and other strange activities that involve going outside.

I've been writing this one for a while now. It basically started as the second story that I mentioned that I was going to publish for Sherbet's summer contest. When I saw the reading competition was announced, I knew that I just had to finish and publish this story before it was too late.

Your productivity is admirable! Thanks for the wonderful story! I am reading this right now, and I can say that if you had published this in time for the Summer Synergy Contest, you would have placed even higher! Great story so far!

I've been swamped at work so I only got through a few pages so far, but I agree it has the potential to be a real gem, especially from a character and dialogue perspective.

Welcome to the Penguin team Clayfinger :)

Teams update:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Grill Night and the Newbie: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 is Fucked: Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Mercer Gang: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.
Winter's Wrath: DarkSoul, IcePrincess21 and Petros.
Team 8: Cat2002116, fresh_out_the_oven and goodnight_a.
Penguin Paparazzi: Clayfinger, jster02 and ProminentPenguin.

Alright, I should really get around to actually doing this. First though, we really need a team name.

My suggestions, cringy as they are:

• The Final Draft
• Lit Chicks
• Quill Coven
• Fully Booked

That is all.

The Final Draft sounds best to me.

Yes, the Final Draft definitely captures that aura of procrastination we have all experienced at some point into the past, only to make something decent at the last minute :)

Sounds like we’re all in agreement, then. Wonderful

Teams update:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Grill Night and the Newbie: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 is Fucked: Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Mercer Gang: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.
Winter's Wrath: DarkSoul, IcePrincess21 and Petros.
The Final Draft: Cat2002116, fresh_out_the_oven and goodnight_a.
Penguin Paparazzi: Clayfinger, jster02 and ProminentPenguin.

I saw your message and will check it out! Might be a bit because longer stories are hard for me this week/weekend... but I'm going to try to do a few longer ones next week!

No worries. It's not going anywhere. XD

Just finished getting all the endings (no idea why I do this to myself with every game I review) and as soon as I figure out how to convert my notes into a review that doesn't spoil the game I'll post it. If you want my notes or specifics just hit me up somewhere.
Meanwhile for those curious: It's very good, but I'm still annoyed how everyone in CYStia is apparently allergic to the idea of false choices. Also either Clayfinger is a very specific type of weeb or there's way too many coincidences happening here.

Any resemblance to stories previously written are purely coincidental. XD

It is true that I am a specific type of weeb, though. Now, I'm really curious to read your review and see what you think. :]

In that case you can now go and read it. Ignore any typos I might've made, it's currently 5AM and I've been supporting myself on my writing crutch for a few hours now. We can later discuss spoiler stuff in PMs or on Discord.

EDIT: Mods at least read what I've written before you feature it. You're making the fact I'm cheating too obvious.

I enjoyed the shape of the paragraphs.

Thanks for the quick review! It definitely gave me a lot to think about regarding how choices should be handled in a CYOA.

Your approach is not invalid for a storygame, but given I'm writing my reviews mostly for someone who wants a better if they'll like it I do feel obliged to point it out to manage expectations. The upside of me bitching about it is that the reader will know to expect less choices per page, which should bring their general enjoyment and score up so it's a win-win.

All Endings? Can I challenge you to review Rainbow-1? ;)

I can give it a shot after I get through the next few things on my list. I'm not absolutely set on getting all endings before reviewing a game, but I try to get as complete an experience as possible. So far most endings I've gotten in a single game is 41 in Gower's Game for Natalie with the bulk of my notes for that game being names I've given to each.

That's impressive. I should check that out.

I would like to join this competition!

Well that gets you your very own cake-based team then :D You're just in time for the next Mini Challenge, which will drop tomorrow night. :)

Teams update:

The Review Bored: Cavus Rex, Fluxion and Mousecore.
Grill Night and the Newbie: Liminal, RKrallanor and Yummyfood.
Team 3 is Fucked: Darius Conwright, Mizal and Suranna.
The Worst: BenHolman44, NotSoSpecial and Shadowdrake 27.
Team 5: Corgi213, MiltonManThing and MrAce321.
Mercer Gang: Anthraxus, Enterpride and UnescapableDeath.
Winter's Wrath: DarkSoul, IcePrincess21 and Petros.
The Final Draft: Cat2002116, fresh_out_the_oven and goodnight_a.
Penguin Paparazzi: Clayfinger, jster02 and ProminentPenguin.
Team 10: YellowCake.