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Okay, despite the major contest already going on and all the reviewing events, some of you short attention span zoomers needed MORE BLOOD RIGHT NOW.

BLOOD FOR DOPAMINE! FAST RESULTS! AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR BIG GAMES, WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY, GOGOGOGOGO!!!

Your prompt is:

The game must center around a hunt for information.

Deadline tomorrow, Feb 22, 11:59pm CST.
(Or whatever wacky time that is on Monday for those of you across the ocean.)

Don't forget, we're not going to publish these, just put the link in the thread when it's complete. Mistakes and other signs of rushed work are expected, but they need to have actual branching of some kind, and no dead ends.

And remember:
1) No meme fic.
2) This is still all Suranna's fault.

EDIT:

VOTING FORM HERE

A hunt for information!? How do you expect me to come up with information that would actually be interesting to hunt for- WAIT A SECOND!

The information doesn't need to be found. Perfect!

Good luck to everyone participating in this totally consequence free friendly competition. I hope someone submits a million words!

(Jokes aside, the prompt is pretty good)!

Don't joke about that, you'll summon Mystic.

When Mystic enters with 100k words despite needing to study for an exam, I just need you to remember -- it is all Suranna's fault!

This prompt does make things a little difficult for me, but I can probably work around it. I've got some hours to plan tomorrow before I actually write.

I squarely blame you and Suranna for my participation in this.

Watch out everyone, I now have 100 words. :smug:

How it feels staring at my unstarted story

In case anyone was wondering about mine, I saw the topic, scrolled down and saw this GIF, looked at my cat, and was like: yeah that works. It's been a pretty long couple of weeks IRL, so this was a fun writing exercise.

I blame Suranna for this.

I've got everything outlined by now, and am starting to transfer it over to the editor.

I blame Surrana for having to do an outline.

Aaand... Done! It's not my best work, but it exists now.

I blame Surrana for the quality.

You still have 9 hours. ...You don't want to add anything else?

I have roughly 3 minutes left on the computer, so I can't really do much, lol.

I blame you for the lack of time.

Well now it's just not funny anymore.

Since I had a head start, I have no idea when the deadline is and I kinda just want to go to sleep at this point so here. I feel like for my style of writing, one day story games are a very bad idea.

Nicely done, Clay! You still got like 9 more hours and 15 minutes if you want to add anything.

Still 6 and a half hours left as of right now. I just left work and I'm about to start mine.

Annnnd I had to go help my mom with something unexpected, but I've still got time for something quick. I'm just glad we don't have to publish these, it shouldn't take much to add to it for the main contest.

So what's everyone listening to while writing for this one?

I'm listening to a DJ called KALCYFR. His beats are ominous. They rub my brain the right way.

Was hoping to flesh out the endings, mainly tack on more proper epilogues so things feel more narratively satisfying, but something came up so I'll just submit what I have:

• First of Trillions.

(Who knows, maybe I WILL have the time. There's at least one epilogue I really want to get in to justify the title. But hey, mysteries are good as well. I'll save the rambling thoughts for later, since I definitely do have more to say about this!)

Between brunch and shopping with a friend, to puppy cuddles and trying to fix my mother's bricked Macbook, I actually managed to finish my game!

Here it is!

Phew!

MHD I think you linked to Mizal's story on accident.

Wow! Congrats! You win the contest!

....hey waitaminute.... 🤨

No take backs!

I got very ambitious with this, shooting for 3500 words, and some scripting for learning purposes.

By popular request, these 24 hour thingies will now start being referred to as "Shrimp Jams".

Yahoo!

4 hours remain!

If you haven't started yet, now is the time!

Informant

Here's mine LINK

I have finished my first page! Tremble with fear!

About two hours left.

If you haven't started yet...well, you're probably screwed, but you can still give it a shot.

I ended up having to work today (not that that was anything compared to the 50 mile hike through waist deep snow and thumbtacks to get there) so I was a little worried, but yahoo!

You worked hard.

❤️

Damn, snow AND thumbtacks? The weather in California sure is something. (Are you sure those weren't hypodermic needles?)

I thought it didn't snow there, at least where my grandparents are it's snowless.

Lebisyma

This is the story I cooked up today while listening to some industrial music. Its loosely inspired by some harsh lessons I've learned over time, and while it's kind of rushed, I think its a nice preview of the setting I've been working on.

Ultimately, I was overwhelmed by internet issues and struggled to fit what I wanted to say into the prompt, but I am proud I at least produced something.

Alright, I'm tired. Here we go: So You Wanna Be An Evil Wizard?

I was very close to not doing this at all since I've been swamped with midterm work, but it's just such a great contest idea and with such a fantastic prompt. So I blew off the essay writing and did this instead. (Ironic, considering my game's subject matter.) I blame Suranna.

Impossible!

Here's mine.

The Consequences of Boredom

The Woman in White

The Hightower Heist. It has some scripting issues but you can see the gist of what I'm going for.

Because they bugged me so much, I went back and fixed the scripting issues in mine. I don't know if I will pump up the word count more, but it is the quickest I've gotten a game up and running with random text changes and scripting.

Amelia Bedelia's Day Off

I've read the Amelia Bedelia books, hopefully she doesn't start chasing another monkey XD

Do I count as children (a child)? I would usually think so, but the age thingy says 13.

EDIT: Hold up... this isnt based on the books, is it? Totally different personality. My bad. Crazy coincidence.

5 minutes.

Preview available here. Might play around with more endings later: The Cat Must Be Fed

https://chooseyourstory.com/story/yael

Here!

Uhm, ACKSHUALLY, this is one minute late...

You are real lucky I'm not Endmaster.

It would've been exactly on time, but I accidentally deleted something while trying to copy it over. 🫠

Mine is still going to need a lot of work before I can publish it, but I'm happy with getting so much done in just the few hours I ended up having after work and everything else.

Thank you for hosting this, it was fun and actually got me writing again!

You’re not alone. I need to add a lot more into my story.

And that's time!

I have to leave for work in four hours and still need to at least glance at these disasters.

Have a good morning at work!

14 entries and then Hatter's highly illegal act of madness, I'm genuinely impressed. You all did good. (Unless I start looking at these and decide a couple of you actually did bad.)

The rough edges are a part of the fun for something like this though, so resist the urge to secretly polish. I'll have a feedback form up tomorrow and everyone can take a few days to look through these and vote.

I’m not going to do a full Gryphon(tm) review for any of these since I expect a lot of my feedback would boil down to “hurr durr spend more time on this”. So there will be way less feedback on polish/language, and more on creativity and storytelling bones.

Also I’m not scaling my ratings to account for the one-day limit, I am judging these on the standards that I would any storygame, so brace yourselves. A 4/8 is an extremely respectable rating for a one-day storygame; a 5/8 or more is very impressive.

Spoiler warning! Do not read these reviews until you've read the games.


253: An Empty Head - UnscapeableDeath
I’m very familiar with the source material on this one, which puts me at an advantage I think, compared to some others. I did crack a laugh with the ‘reveal’ at the end that this was about the antimemetics division. That said, that’s pretty much the only thing here. The reads like a low-effort 253 word teaser for the SCP foundation stories.
I do see the merit in a spare low-wordcount game to give the impression of disorientation and memory loss, but this only really works if A) the format is used to its fullest extent, and B) it’s contrasted with fuller writing so the reader understands what they’re missing. More on point A: The minimalist format would be useful for heavy branching and a wide array of possible actions. This game is so linear it’s more of an interactive story. This is a cool idea, but right now it’s just an idea, not a story.
I know I said I wasn’t going to give polish feedback, but come on dude. This is a 258 word storygame, and there are typos. It would have taken under ten minutes to fix these, and you posted 9 hours before the deadline.
I’d rate this probably 1/8 if I stumbled across it on the site in the wild. I’m inclined to be a little more charitable due to the time limit; this is 100% better than every game that wasn’t submitted. But still. This game could have been a lot better with only a little more thought & effort on how best to exploit the premise.

3k: In the news - Clayfinger
Reading notes:
- I like the intro sequence. Great job establishing the setting & the narrator’s personality.
- Ah yes the good old “accept the plot hook or immediately end the story” option. I generally advise against ‘hidden’ forms of these like this disguised as real choices, since most people who click on the game actually do want to read the story and you’re just giving them extra opportunities to choose not to play.
- I was hilariously bad at this game. Maybe I’m just not nosy enough.
- Lol at the police chief & narrator talking about trespassing.
- I do like that there’s an ending where you *think* you’ve stopped a crime, but actually helped cover it up as bike theft.
Branching: Technically excellent, but it would have been nice to have more variety in the endings. A lot of the endings boil down to variations on “you go home and nothing interesting happened”
Language: Pretty good! The prose is clear & comprehensible, and there’s a nice variety of sentence types.
Plot: Fine. An entertaining quick read. There’s just really nothing more to it than its premise suggests. It’s fine. Taking this to the next level would require investing in some other story element & bringing it out. A character arc for the narrator? (There’s the beginnings of one, but nothing yet.) Building a vivid & compelling world? A more complex plot that requires careful thought & planning to discover & foil? Something like that. 4/8.

4k: First of trillions - Zake
Reading notes:
- Nice opening sentence. Effectively hooks audience & establishes narrator. I’m less keen on the vagueness in the next sentence; ‘it’, ’then’, etc. Better to just describe what is being referred to.
- The ending where you just take over this random soldier’s life is funny.
- Vigil? Interesting.
- The kill/wander choice doesn’t seem representitive of the actions that follow.
- I like the angry/confused thing, but I’m not sure what impact it has on the story beyond restricting one option.
- I think this story suffered after the eggs all died. Protecting the few remaining eggs was a really compelling character motivation that it was possible to build a short story around. Finding out what happened is a bit more eh. I realize this was likely due to the prompt, but it still impacted the story.
Worldbuilding/novelty: Cool and good. Great premise. I was immediately invested in protecting the eggs and figuring out what had happened. The alien-perspective narration on humans(?) & human structures & habits is a strong point.
The one thing I might suggest is giving the reader more detail about things the narrator would know—like a bit more description on the narrator’s physical form, their recent history, etc. All this will invest the reader more in the story, and make more interesting the actual plot mysteries about what happened and what will happen next.
Plot: Immediately captivating, but my interest fell off as time passed. I wandered around, found a city, disguised myself as a guard, then left, without having really learned anything, gained or lost anything, or come to any major decision. So what? Why did any of this matter? What makes this a *story*? Most of the endings have this exact problem. Some suggest interesting future possibilities, but none of them provide a conclusion to the narrator’s search for answers and meaning. As a result, the story is left feeling unmoored. 4/8.

7k: Informant - Corgi
Reading notes:
- I like the humorous focus on the strict generic appearnce requirements of The Secret Agency.
- ‘Extracting information’ sounds like a euphamism for waterboarding or something. EDIT: Yeah, lol.
- Lol “drive your standard issue car down the standard issue road” “standard issue mile”
- Amused by all the capitalized proper nouns. The Man.
- Excellent job quickly establishing the scenario, protagonist, and stakes of the story.
- Bizarrely enough, I once had a secret government agency with an almost identical number-based ranking system. Still using parts of it at high ranks, but mostly phased it out.
- Lol ‘a little red plumber fellow’
- Plot twist, the big reveal will be that YOU were the informant the whole time
- Well having called the waterboarding in advance I feel obligated to stick to my guns. It’s a classic for a reason.
- I mean if I were a secret agent in I rival org I would include evidence incriminating loyal members of the opposition so they’d get fucked over in case I was captured. (This makes much more sense to me than an informat stupidly ratting out his own ally.)
- Due to this reasoning I take it to the complex, and get shot. RIP me.
- This is why you gotta pay your workers.
- Et tu 44?
- “Standard issue execution” lol
- I got the ‘true ending’ on my 2nd try for whatever that’s worth.
- The green day method is especially devious. Their music is excellent, but their rhyme schemes are dogshit. EDIT: Holy shit dude
- Lol “I’ll never write enough to finish this damn contest!”
- Lol “Time to see what he knows about bees”
- Surprise cannibalism ending
Language: Nothing standout, but I liked the humorous tone. It made this a fun read and elevates the game from merely unobjectionable to actively fun.
Characterization: Simple, but amusing and effective. The story gets good mileage out of the narrator’s comical committment to presenting as much like a stereotypical government agent as possible.
Plot: Clear, and effectively established at the beginning. The stakes and mechanisms are a little confusingly messy, but it doesn’t really matter for a game as short as this. I am a bit annoyed that there doesn’t seem to be any way to get a ‘good’ ending though? Unless there were some delayed consequences I missed. I see the thematic point about there being no victory against The Man, but it would have been cool to see a little more variety.
This is very close between a 4 and 5. I think I’m going to go with 5/8. But I may come back and readjust downward if later games change my mind.

3k: Labyrinth of secrets - Fabrikant
Reading notes:
- Can’t say I’ve ever known birds to sing about cold & death, but I see the imagery being targeted here.
- Effective first scene teaser, I’m curious.
- Cool that this monk order is willing to help with the search task for an apparently penniless girl.
- A scribbled note? Oho the plot thickens.
- I love the concept of an altar of ignorance lol.
- Yes I was getting the impression that this was some cycle the monks were putting Anna through in an effort to get her to remember something important. This text seems to confirm my suspicions.
- I kind of like that you only get answers on the path to the bad ending, it matches the story’s overall vibe. The revelation that Anna is *not* related to the Gustreides after all is interesting.
Language: Clear, concise, and reflecting the story’s tone.
Characterization: Minimal, but hinting at depths to come. Branching: Only 1 choice that matters unfortunately.
Plot: First the story provides an effective teaser before entering a flashback. Then the story itself hooks the reader by providing an interesting mystery about Anna’s past and the cause of her amnesia. The story progresses apace, and tension rises steadily as we find a note apparently left for Anna in these old records.
Every part of this story that was actually written was strong and engaging, but it didn’t deliver on its promises, due to not being finished. I am forced to judge it accordingly: 4/8.

5k: Piece of me diner - Sherbet
Reading notes:
- Opening does a good job establishing the narrator’s personality & the stakes & scope of the story.
- Oh I hate this actually.
- Wait so do you get the finger back after they’re done with it?? Like you only have ten fingers and it seems like there have been more than ten customers. But pieces of Nell are missing so I dunno.
- Well I have feelings about the description of this creature that’s apparently mostly mouth, but I don’t know what they are.
- Damn Nell is awful forgiving about all this.
- I got 5/5 ‘game of risk’ first.
- Ohhh damn I didn’t quite pick up on the memory transfer aspect. That’s interesting.
- Hah yeah I like the escalation where when you’re willing to give more, people just keep taking.
- I like the escalation with them demanding details about Nell, about future kids.
- I like the contrast ending 1, but I’m a little surprised it’s not reachable from refusing to give part of your palm.
Man this is a tough one to review. It’s a visceral concept that comes in and out with a bang, exploring the premise (giving away parts of oneself to be consumed as a metaphor for fame) without overstaying its welcome.
Obviously the horror elements are on point. It’s a vivid & disturbing concept treated in a dissonantly mundane manner. The tone is maintained well: everything in the story just feels slightly *off*.
Luca’s desperation for fame comes across well in his anxiety about being liked by the customers. I like the contrast here with his relationship with Nell. Being known by the world vs being known by the people you love.
The character and world details stand out like lights in a dark room. We know just enough about both to understand the scope of the narrative. In a longer work I would like more details and background and character development, but that’s not what this story is here to do.
I appreciate that this is a complete story despite the deadline. Many of the entries feel like “chapter one” of something longer, but this story has been ended satisfactorily. More could certainly be done with the premise, but it doesn’t *have* to be to conclude this story.
Conclusion: This story knows what it’s about and executes that premise professionally and unrelentingly. 6/8.

3k: Lebisyma - 3iguy
Reading notes:
- I see what you’re going for with this opening, but it’s trending towards summary & chaotic worldbuilding dump rather than effective teaser. Still, this is better than explaining nothing at all.
- I wasn’t sure if Lebysima was a term you invented or a pre-existing one, so I googled it. It’s not, but it DID turn up the real name of the weird insect I’ve been unable to successfully describe for months, so thanks!
- I don’t think the gross-out efforts are helping the story. I see what you’re going for with the protagonist’s slide into monstrosity, but I don’t think it’s quite effective. Maybe establishing what they were like before as a baseline would help.
- I always find it amusing in fantasy settings when ‘adventurer’ is a common job a person can have.
- Eh I usually recommend against transcribing accents.
Language: Room for improvement in varying sentence structure & reducing narrative distance by eliminating phrases like “you can tell” and “you can see” that overly remind the reader of the narrator’s presence. I also didn’t think the gross-out & periodic vaguely erotic descriptions helped the story, but I’m not sure what the best tack to take here is, depending on what tone you were going for. Worldbuilding: Nothing standout. The setting felt very generic, with the Lebisyma being a mashup of various fantasy creatures, and other elements of the world & character interactions feeling like they came straight out of a dnd sourcebook. This isn’t necessarily bad, and it means very little time has to be spent explaining what kind of world this is, but it also means the world has little to distinguish itself.
Plot: Interesting concept: the protagonist has recently been afflicted with a transformative magical curse/power, and has to adapt to her new situation. A clear & immediately compelling idea with obvious plot stakes, and the potential to actually resolve itself satisfactorily within the short word count. The execution was okay. It addressed the setup and through the encounter with the locksmith brought the situation to a relatively good ending point. There was nothing that took the story to the next level, and only a little taking advantage of the premise.
This is a personal preference (and asking a lot, especially considering the time contraints) but for storygames where the protagonist is struggling against magical compulsion/maddness, I’d like to see a little more pressure on the player than just a choice between do-this-evil-thing and not. It’s trivial for me, the player, to click the good decision links since I am not afflicted by the narrator’s curse—as a result, the emotional struggle falls flat. But there are things you can do mechanistically to simulate the difficulty of struggling against magical compulsion for the reader. Would be cool to see something like that.
Conclusion: A lowish 4/8 I think. This was fine, but nothing standout.

10k: So you wanna be an evil wizard - Gryphon
Possibly the most insane, weird, controversial, risky, potentially deeply offensive, spiritually serious, scientifically upending, philosophically inspired, personal and mind-melting story that I have ever read published by a living author.

4k: The consequences of boredom - Thara
Reading notes:
- I like the quick characterization of the narrator & their friend group through their dialogue & interactions.
- Lol at the narrator dragging Bradley to talk to Brie.
- First ending reached: ‘the rumors continue’, 75% on my test lol
Language: Clear & effective economy of words. The sentence structure is a bit clunky at times, requiring the reader to go back & re-read to be sure of what was meant. The biggest issue is the jumping between present & past tense. I can forgive the typos etc due to the time limit. I really like the way the narrator’s thoughts blend with the narration.
I liked the interactions between the central characters. It makes their age clear, and gives the story a light & humorous tone.
Taking the language to the next level might involve easing on the “telling” descriptions of how the narrator & other characters react to situations, and instead “showing” it through their words & actions. This is already pretty good, but could be smoother.
Branching: Pretty linear, but I find that actually works for this game. It adds to the point about having a childhood adventure that’s so easy to miss.
Plot: Simple & clear, with obvious stakes & resolution point. An effective choice for a story of this size.
The story is simple but charming, presenting a snapshot of the lives of these kids as they deal with elementery-grade social dynamics, debating the existance of the supernatural, running around & going on hunts, and so on. It felt very true to what being in elementary school is like.
I particularly like the last decision about whether or not the hunt was worth it, despite its failure. The background focus on the worthwhileness of childhood escapades brings this story to the next level. In a longer story, deeper focus on character arc could bring this out with even more nuance.
Conclusion: 5/8, I liked this.

?k: Hatter's Garden - MHD
…hey wait a minute!
I didn’t notice this game at first. I did notice the new articles in the help & info section, but assumed it was for some past site event I hadn’t been involved in. It wasn’t until RK pointed this out that I realized it was happening *now*.
Without spoiling any details, MHD’s game invovles a hunt for clues hidden not in her game, but in varying locations around CYS itself. (If you don’t know where to start, check out the link MHD posted in this thread.)
There’s little else to say about this game without spoiling it. But this is a great idea, executed in a variety of clever ways, and takes full advantage of the reader’s familiarity with the site.
Anyways this is a really really cool idea, and I love the creative use of the site & multiple mediums. 5/8.

7k: The woman in white - Cat
Reading notes:
- Wait so is the phone actually buzzing in rhythm? Otherwise I don’t follow the metaphor.
- Extremely good opening hook, I’m immediately engaged & curious.
- For some reason I’m feeling like the mother did it lol?? I’m not sure why though, that doesn’t make any sense. I think since if the blood is fresh the bloodstains on her shirt wouldn’t be brown, that’s very odd. EDIT: Yeah.
- Well it’s seeming to suggest that the sister is the one who did this, but I assume there’s something more at play here.
- I’m not sure yet how good the branching is, but I like the way this investigation is unfolding. I’m feeling like I have to do a careful job navigating or I might miss something important.
- I suppose it could be the father too. Maybe someone killed the older sister and is trying to cover it up. EDIT: Aha, this journal entry seems to support that theory. Yeah.
- Doesn’t explain why he bothered to call a ghost hunter though, and encourage them to stay around after committing the murder?? EDIT: Oh to banish the ghosts, cool.
Language: For the most part, clear & unobstrusive. I like the evocative description, but I think there might be a slight over-reliance on adjectives. For instance, repeatedly describing the wailing in the house as heartrending.
Worldbuilding: Well-presented through the unfolding narrative, as we gradually get more information about the way spirits work in this world.
Branching: Very good for what’s being done: the branching gives weight to the player’s investigative choices as they try to navigate the situation without missing any clues or upsetting the other characters so much that they stop letting you investigate. The last choice is also an excellent touch, with both options resolving the story, but leaving a lingering sense of unease.
That said I think some of the branching flexibility weakens the game: for instance, confronting the parents in the living room after leaving the kitchen leads to an earlier and less dramatic confrontation. Similarly, the options that let the player skip straight upstairs without talking to the parents or investigating other areas first cheapen the final confrontation.
Characterization is sparse, but effective. We get hints at the narrator’s past and personality through details like the scar on her wrist.
Plot: Immediately compelling with a clear throughline that it’s possible to explore fully in the space given. Excellent, and the fullest use of the limited space I’ve seen of the entries so far.
Conclusion: I was torn between 5 and 6. I like mystery games and this is a good short mystery game. The quality is 6-level, but it’s so short & simple I wouldn’t normally rate it that high. I think I’m going to go with the 6/8 for now, but may change my mind later depending on later entries.

1k: The hightower heist - Anthraxus
Reading notes:
- This was edited after the deadline? Boooo!
- Normally I’d ask for worldbuilding details like this to be delivered in a more integrated manner, but I think this is appropriate for a story this size.
- Okay unless I’m missing something, there is extremely little information I can use to guess which links are the best option. It’s fun to try and hunt down all 6 pieces of info after the fact, but I can’t imagine how one could guess the right solution on the first try.
- Ah, it seems finding info is randomized too. Hm.
- There are a number of bugs, where sometimes it tells me I found info but that isn’t reflected in the end screen. Also there’s one page that tells you ‘this is a new page’.
3/8, I do like the concept of sneaking around a corporate facility and trying to dig up incriminating info without getting caught, but there’s little more to this game than randomly guessing and randomly getting rewarded sometimes. Bonus points for the scripting though.

2k: Amelia Bedelia's day off - Suranna
Reading notes:
- I don’t know the source material here, hopefully that’s not too important
- Sentence structure & description effectively establishes a clear tone.
- Lol at her literally judging a book by its cover.
Language: Good! Clear and effective. Does a great job establishing the narrator’s voice & whimsical tone dissonant with the subject matter. The narration is also pretty effective at presenting Amelia’s biased & limited viewpoint.
Humor: This type of game is not my genre so others’ feedback ought to be prioritized well above mine, but I didn’t think the edgy jokes landed. There didn’t seem to be anything to them other than “haha bestiality” or “haha racism”. They weren’t especially offensive or anything (I mean sure they were, but no worse than anything else in this genre), but just didn’t bring anything new to the table. But I’m not sure on what advice to give to make them land better—-maybe study some of EndMaster’s games to see what makes them effective? The edgy humor there works because of vibrant characters & narration, and grounding the humor in more specific & detailed situations than just the abstract concept of prison rape.
Plot: None, events just sort of happen. The quest to take things less literally could have been expanded into a plot thread, but didn’t really affect the story much as it is.
Conclusion: 3/8. A clear plot throughline or stronger humor would bump this up to a 4.

3k: The devil is a STEM major - Ace
Reading notes:
- Amusing setup scenario.
- Lol “I thought all mortals spoke american”
- Lol “You’re one of the greatest minds to ever walk the planet”. And this frame gives you an excuse to immediately give the answer after each answer is picked too.
- I like the time devoted to the explanations.
Language: Good, and supportive of the humor of the framing scenario.
Plot: I found the framing scenario actually a lot more interesting than the quiz itself, which is just, y’know, a quiz. I feel like if you’d written an actual game with an actual plot about avenging your parents by helping a demon with her math homework that would’ve been potentially very funny & cool. But this premise really only mattered on the first and last page, the rest is just a STEM quiz.
Quiz: The individual questions were well done and entertaining. But I feel like “STEM” is just too broad a category to build a coherent quiz around. A narrower topic like “geometry” or “neuroscience” would have made for a tighter theme.
Conclusion: High 3/8, I guess. I did like a lot of the framing going on, but A) This is just a quiz, and B) It’s an unfocused quiz without a clear theme or progression. Sticking to a clear theme would have made this a 4.

6k: The cat must be fed - TechnoMage
Reading notes:
- Amusing concept
- Lol, inhumane society.
- Monoliths of despair? You mean monuments?
- I like the hive of bees metaphor.
- Lol, “you purr like a 2024 Nissan GT-R Nismo” … “You can’t actually hear the calipers”
Language: While I liked the humorous tone of the narration, it was dense & meandering enough that parsing through it enough to actually get the (genuinely funny) jokes became something of a chore. I see and like what you’re going for, but I think this would need to be streamlined & refined for clarity. I think shorter sentences would go a very long way towards fixing this. Also, while some indirect language for humor’s sake is good, I think this storygame has a little too much, and cutting back on it would help ease of reading. There are a few places with tense issues as well. I think reading sentences aloud would help a lot with the kind of phrasing challenges this story has.
Characters: The cat is dripping in personality. I also like the little details that sneak through about the provider, like always crying at Veil of Broken Heart Harbor.
Branching: Boiled down to active/passive, but I liked the summary at the end that varied based on your choices. The final choice was a good way of making the information search during the day matter.
Plot: This is a great idea: A humorous story told from the perspective of a cat who views the house as her(?) personal kingdom about trying to get a human to feed them. Clear plot, clear & resolvable scope for the space allocated, plenty of opportunities for humor & fun events. I like the intel-gathering plot of the cat trying to figure out her provider’s habits & how to use this to get food.
Length: I think this game was too long, mainly due to being too wordy. The funny premise only has so much material for it, and dwelling so long on everything ran through the humor potential well before the story was over. Variations on the same jokes were repeated many times.
Conclusion: 4/8 I guess, the building run-on sentences hurt this story a lot (for me at least). But I think this has a lot of promise, and could easily be a 5/8 with a tight language revision.

3k: Yael - Wildblue
Reading notes:
- This mid-conversation opening full of people and places we don’t know about is confusing. It’s not obvious who Heber is, etc. And even with the biblical setting, it’s a stretch to assume readers know what the Canaanites or Kenites are. (The following pages do a good job of this, it’s just the intro that’s confusing)
- Besides that, good opening. Sets up the missing/stubborn/possibly-Canaanite-allied husband as a good plot hook.
- Oho so this is Sesira? This is interesting.
- Eh, finding it hard to believe that this presumably competent general would be so easily distracted by a relatively desperate seduction attempt.
Language: Good, generally clear & effective while also portraying the narrator’s perspective. A bit clunky a few times, but I chalk that up to a deadline-induced lack of proofreading.
Branching: Pretty bad. There’s 2 choices after Sesira arrives: either you kill him easily and immediately, or you make 2 extremely stupid decisions in a row and get killed.
Plot: Immediately engaging with the mystery of Heber’s location. The next page establishes the stakes of the war, and a compelling conflict for the protagonist between loyalty to her people & cultural duty to her husband. Sesira showing up at the protagonist’s house is a very interesting development. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t do anything with all of these very interesting plot threads. Either you easily kill Sesira, or don’t, and nothing else is ever addressed. The plotline with the husband completely vanishes from the story.
Conclusion: 4/8. I'm a bit torn, because this game had an extremely strong opening that had me immediately engaged, and increasingly interested in where things were going as each new plot element was introduced. But then none of those elements were actually addressed. The ending was just so rushed and anticlimactic it undercut pretty much everything that came before it.
EDIT: Googled the context out of curiosity, and it seems the anti-climactic situation here is historically accurate. This doesn't change my rating, since I think this history still could've been worked with for a more interesting conclusion; like putting a bit more effort into convincing Sisera that you're trustworthy at all. Or something.

Ranking:
Low 6/8: Piece of me Diner, The Woman in White
High 5/8: Hatter's Garden
Medium 5/8: The consequences of boredom
Low 5/8: Informant
High 4/8:
Medium 4/8: First of trillions, Labyrinth of secrets
Low 4/8: In the news, Lebisyma, The cat must be fed, Yael
High 3/8: Amelia Bedelia's day off, The devil is a STEM major
Medium 3/8:
Low 3/8: The hightower heist
2/8: An empty head

And thanks to everyone who thanked me for the feedback :) I've been enjoying reading your reflections about the writing process

Dang it, I thought I had fixed all the typos! Thanks for the feedback though!

On a second look, I realize some of the grammatical weirdness was an intentional styllistic choice, so I may have been mistaken

Well, I still found a few typos, lol. And yeah, some of the grammar choices are intentional, although they are also a result of having to put it together in the little spare time I managed to scrape together that day.

I'm going to put up a Google form for feedback today as soon as I get a second to throw it together. Had a little unexpected excitement after work last night and still dealing with a few related things this morning, but SOON.

Oh hope its ok. We'll need to read them first anyway.

I still need to read all of them, so it's fine. I hope everything's okay!

Woah, thanks for this! I did want to add another detailed branch where the thief takes a more violent approach when he sees the protagonist but sleep caught up to me so I just wanted to wrap the whole thing up.

The feedback is appreciated! My personal concern is that I will either ramble and make the reader despair, or I'll be too vague and make the reader despair. However, for something with this short a timeline, I didn't stress about which way it'd end up leaning.

Having the delayed choices (confusion/anger) was not the best idea, since as you've noticed, it doesn't really matter. There were plans for having a split when confronting the city leadership based on your dominant emotion. Anger ending in violence but confusion having more (potential) revelations. However, it does change one ending, where you try to be truthful. The priestess kills you if your emotion is anger, while with confusion you get baited with the promise of a cool scene that never happens (because the story just ends instead).

The way the eggs played out was probably the (second) biggest shame (with the biggest shame being the endings). There was going to be a third split: Kill, Learn, Wander. With Learn (the cut path) having some way to save the one egg.

Speaking of cut content... the very first page was ALSO going to be a choice. Attacking the contraption, covering the bomb with your form, or trying to save the eggs.

The two that were cut would've had time skips. Obviously not much planned for them, but trying to break the contraption would've had your remains found by some other nation, while sacrificing yourself would you have you wake-up in a sorry state, being dragged by one of the kin you saved (after they grew older) in an attempt to take you somewhere to be fixed/healed.

Maybe if I planned a little more initially I could've then focused solely on writing, and been faster at it. Then again, maybe the real answer is to think less and write more. Will need to try the two approaches.

The endings do feel incredibly weak to me. I did write some short notes about ideas how to expand most of them (having some sort of epilogue for those that end too abruptly... which is all of them excluding the identity theft one).

But enough about what I didn't write!

I have a very easy thing to focus on improving for next time (the endings). This competition was definitely one of the better things to willingly join. You learn a lot writing something to completion! In fact, these seem like a good place to experiment with all sorts of things.

Thank you very much for reading---excellent analysis.

Thanks for the review. Your criticisms were very fair, and they summarized my own thoughts in regards to my own writing. I am eager to do my complete rewrite!

Originally I was going to have a slow build up on the curse’s progression. I lost a lot of time to various mishaps, and about three hours in, with only ~2000 written, I decided to focus more on the curse through the lends of opiate-withdrawal. With that type of thing it causes a massive increase in the sensitivity of the body’s nervous system, which can cause the merging of pleasure in pain. I made the snap decision to make it pretty prevalent because I wanted to get *something* done in time.

Your critique has encouraged me to put some more thought in sentence structure.

A 5/8 out means it's ready to publish now! If Gryphon says 5/8, I expect you all to rate accordingly.

On a more serious note, jumping between present & past tense... I'm going to have to fix that. And also make sure I'm not doing that with my contest entry, too.

I struggle to maintain my tenses too. I read a bit of your story when you posted the link on Sunday, and I quite like it. It is a lot better than mine is. Granted, that isn’t hard.

When I first saw your story, I thought it had Lesbian in the title. But I like yours because you say you like mine quite a bit.

I'm unbiased like that. 

Your game captured that naive wonderment the young view the world with. It was soothing. The dialogue made me smile!

And I liked the urgent against the clock plot that you went with your story-game. The cot feeling like slime is crazy imagery at the start of the first page.

Eugh. 

In a good way.

Somehow I missed that Gryphon was doing this until now; thanks for the feedback and kind comments! I'm glad you enjoyed (and/or were disgusted by) POMD!

I'm coming for you in End's contest you slippery green goblin >:~0

You'll have to pry this belt from my cold, dead, syrupy hands, Hatter!

Thanks for the review Gryphon, it's better than it deserves. Was the new page you hit trying to steal the security badge? I thought I had removed all the links to that one.

My original plan for this included having to find particular items to unlock certain info caches, which would have replaced some of the randomized search results.

Yes I think it was the security badge page. I agree, items would help a lot in adding some logic to the search results

Finished my reviews! Here's some summary notes:

Statistics for nerds:
Mean rating: 4.45/8
Standard deviation: 1.02
(*Counting 'low' as +.16, 'medium' as +.5, and 'high' as +.84)

Summary:

Top three:
1) Piece of me Diner. Excellent concept, excellent execution, strong emotional theme, plot-complimentary character goals, intriguing worldbuilding, visceral concepts. All-around a very strong game.
2) The Woman in White. I will say this was a close match between #1 and #2, but woman in white had one excellent branch and several sub-optimal ones. Diner had some branches that were better than others, but all of them did something new and interesting and packed their own variety of emotional punch.
3) Hatter's garden. Very fun, I loved the creative mechanics.

Best worldbuilding: Piece of Me Diner, with First of Trillions close in second
Best game mechanics: Hatter's garden
Funniest: Informant
Most compelling setup: Yael
Most complete story: The woman in white
Personal favorite: Hatter's garden. Sue me, I like treasure hunts.
(Awards canceled for language & characterization, because they were both very close races between 4-5 different games.)

On the whole, the quality of these games was extremely good for the one-day time limit, and 16 entries is an excellent turnout. Go us!

I'd put mine in third since I don't have to interact with Sent to beat it. 

Thanks for reading, and I'm glad you liked the opening! (Since that was the part I got to before I ran out of time and still had to put in branching.)

I hope you'll take another look at it once it's complete and entered in Endmaster's contest.

Ahh, I was wondering what the hell those articles were about, but hadn't found the first clue in Mizal's game. No idea yet, but I'll let you know how my investigation proceeds.

**PROGRESS LOG SCRUBBED TO PRESERVE HUNT**
UPDATE: I'm in! Figured out the last 3 numbers and brute forced the first
UPDATE: OHHH I get it. Hah, nice one

Finally figured it out! I'm really glad MHD censored our posts, and I just want to say this was such a cool idea MHD! It was so fun to try and figure everything out, and it was so tricky, but it once it clicked everything fell into place. I guess if I had any advice to future puzzle solvers it would be to not necessarily take everything at face value, or be so laser focused at finding a number on each page. I would try to broaden my perspective, and just kind of see each page as a whole, and you should figure it out. Great work MHD! And gryphon for figuring it out so fast, it took me some time! By the time I logged back into the site, MHD already scrubbed your progress log, so I was completely in the dark. Not an easy puzzle.

To save future puzzlers some time, I'll say that my "Late4Tea" interpretation was erroneous. It won't lead you anywhere, and I think that was a red herring. or I just overthought it, because the actual clue is different. Still click on their user profile, just don't be led astray by the number four in the username like I was

Oh actually it was me that scrubbed my progress lol. I realized after getting to the end that if I left everything I'd written it would ruin the fun for others, so I deleted it. (I have no idea who scrubbed yours though.) Congrats on navigating to the tea party on your own!

Truly it's more effort than this site deserves.

I would tell you, but then MHD might detonate the bomb under my chair and I don't want to deal with regrowing legs in March of all the months.

Okay, going to officially launch the voting phase on this tomorrow. Everyone has been playing through these, right? Not arguing or trolling in other threads?

Well, we can all take till next Sunday, but the form will be available and hopefully at least a couple of you besides Gryphon have some thoughts on the best of the bunch

After that, you could launch a 24 Hour Reading Comp, where participants must read and rank all sixteen stories before midnight on the 2nd of March for an additional reward!

I wouldn't do that to anyone lol. We got way more of a turnout than expected and over 60k of writing in all, when I had expected maybe half a dozen games with something like a 4k upper limit on the word count. Everyone really buckled in for this one, I needed basically the whole week too. >

Of course I've had other fun stuff going on this week, like totaling my car, and surgery (unrelated!) so maybe I should consider tormenting the peasants with another deadline to cheer myself up, but nah, I'm too happy with how this all turned out. Very likely I'll set up a repeat in April especially as there's been requests from those who missed it this time.

Did Gryphon actually write 10,000 words in a day or was this an older project revived for the prompt?

I'm just trying to imagine how it's possible to do that, physically. At least with the way I type.

I think he did. Gryphons known for typing a lot and writing really long and comprehensive reviews, plus the game relied on this image point and click thing that gryphon was previously working on in the editor. So it makes sense that he’d be able to turn in a 10k game. Also, I think 10k is not out of the realm of possibiiity for one day, if you work on it for 4-5 hours at a speed of 2K/hr. I think it’s an impressive feat for sure, and one that I wouldn’t be able to do now, but I think that it’s still possible, just incredibly impressive.

Honestly I'm not sure on the word count. The game is 100% new, I came up with the idea that morning, and built it from scratch that day. But there is a lot of scripting and item use, and that's been known to mess with word count totals occasionally. Knowing what's actually in the game, I find it hard to believe it's a full 10k

EDIT: I didn't actually use the image point and click thing in this game; just normal editor stuff. And my typing speed is not that impressive lol (2k an hour is insane and I have mad respect for anyone who can do that); I just blew off all my homework to spend like 8+ hours on this

Anyway, here's the form. Thanks to the sheer number of games I know it looks a little gigantic, but most of the questions just let you select a quick rating, and the only required ones are the number of contest points you're awarding to each.

SHRIMP JAM THE FIRST, VOTING FORM HERE

(If someone will be a dear and collect the links to all the games in a nice convenient list below this, it'll be worth a comm for your time.)

Free comm? On it.

An Empty Head by UnscapeableDeath
In The News by Clayfinger
First of Trillions by Zake
Hatter's Garden begins here by MadHattersDaughter
Informant by Corgi
Labyrinth of Secrets by Fabrikant
Piece of Me Diner by Sherbet
Lebisyma by 3iguy
So You Wanna Be an Evil Wizard? by Gryphon
The Consequences of Boredom by TharaApples
The Woman in White by Cat
The Hightower Heist by Anthraxus
Amelia Bedelia's Day off by Suranna
The Devil is a STEM Major by Ace
The Cat Must Be Fed by TechnoMage
Yael by Wildblue

You are so helpful, I almost forgive you for writing 10000 words about a wizard school.

Next time add a target:_blank to your links! ;~)

Everyone got a quick blurb from me. Good work! There are some strong stories for this time limit!

That was very nice of you. 

That's... that's a form, right there.

Just look for the mandatory "Award points to this game" question for each one, the rest are actually optional. But it's set up so you can give feedback on things like plot and branching without having to actually type words.

The hard part is still actually reading the games!

Reminder that voting runs through to the end of Sunday, I'll be posting results early Monday.

Apologies. I don't think I'll be able to get around to voting. I'm busy paying the price for procrastinating on my contest entry. ToT

Finally! I can work on the horrible mess that I made tomorrow.

Yes, but WHICH Monday?

Unfortunately, I've managed to leave it too long to finish reading and voting for all of them. I will continue reading and rating/reviewing over the next couple of days, but I won't be able to complete the form (unless I can have an extension).

Technically the voting period has ended! However, I won't be able to look them over until late tonight, giving those of you who were waiting until the last minute to give feedback several hundred more last minutes!

"tonight"

I have the utmost faith

It might technically be AT 4:48pm ON WEDNESDAY YOU COMPLAINING BITCHES, ESPECIALLY YOU OGRE! I am going to be at work another hour and then there are the various time waiting things that are just a part of my process.

my goodness, looks like I was perfectly on time after all!

Okay so first I want to address the false, ridiculous rumors that have been circulating in this community recently, the ones that would imply I have some kind of difficulty in finishing things I start or doing things on time.

Basically, these comments are malicious and plainly

Anyway, on to the next thing.



Y'all be nasty. Also, (spoilers!) UD did not win.

However, he did vote, which was more than most of you did! The turnout on the writer side obviously was incredible, we got twice as many entries as I expected and most were far more substantial than expected too. Unfortunately, the 61k(!) of words seems to have intimidated a lot of people so that we only got a handful of voters, even including whoever was pretending to be Ford. Next time we may need to figure out a solution for that. Less questions on the poll for one thing lol.

The winner however was pretty clear, so congrats are in order to @Gryphon with that insane level of output, even if it WAS about a wizard school. The next three runner ups, Sherbet, MHD, and Cat meanwhile were all just separated by a couple of points each.

(Though I suspect MHD would have placed higher if she hadn't fooled so many dumbasses into never even making it to the party smh.)

Big thanks to all of you, but especially to those of you who not only wrote but put some decent effort into giving feedback to the others as well. I'll be back soon to hand out commendations and points rewards (like some of these greedy fatcats even need them smh...), and soon (SOON!) will post more detailed statistics as well as the feedback received.

We will also definitely be doing this again in April, if things didn't work out for you to join this time around.

Thanks for organizing! There was some nice feedback and the little teaser I made will definitely be expanded into a full game. Also thanks to Gryphon, Cat and MHD for reading and quality feedback.

I've got halfway through the entries. I haven't managed to vote, but I will read and review the rest of them...by the end of this week, hopefully.

Congratulations to Gryphon (absolutely diabolical word count for a 24 hour period) and to MHD and Cat as well. This was really fun and surprisingly produced a lot of stories, most of which I hope to see published sooner or later.

I would call this first Shrimp Jam an absolute success!

You better watch your four-walled, lockless-windowed house with no fire alarms. >:~{

Hmm, maybe getting rid of my burglar alarm was a bad idea...

Yeah, makes sense that I didn't win. I'm willing to bet the photo has rankings or smth, but it's sadly blocked for me. I am surprised that only a few people voted though.

Thanks for setting this up, Mizal! (And thanks for the idea, Suranna!) I look forward to doing it again next month!

I greatly appreciate you letting me not come in last.

No problem; I commonly assume the role of being the person you can always point to and say, "At least you weren't that bad."

It usually isn't this bad, though, lol.

Also just to add: congratulations to everyone who managed to produce something! And especially to Gryphon...and to Sherbet and MHD, too! I haven't read Gryphon's yet, but I definitely enjoyed Sherb's and MHD's entries.

Congrats Gryphon! And good job to everyone that put in something.

That was a well-earned win Gryphon! You already got my review via DM (as thanks for the notes you provided for mine), so I don't have much more to add. I'll just say I was super impressed with what you put together in so little time, and I’m looking forward to seeing the final version published!

And congrats to Sherbet, MHD, and Cat also. Beyond that, I had a fun time with everyone's storygames, and will likely review most of the ones that get published later on when I have time. I provided a few quick notes/impressions on each of them within the voting form, as that's as much as I could do for now.

I guess I should have voted, but it was a pretty large ist of games and I am lazy. I played the two best games already though and now can play the other. (Never did figure out the pin code to Hatter's Garden, add dumb to lazy.)

Great job though to everyone who participated.

Congrats to Gryphon for winning the 24 hour contest, and to Sherbet, MHD and Cat as the runner-ups! Well done to Mizal for posting this on time and not even a second late. 

My plan was to set aside a couple of hours to read everything. However, I only got through a third of them in the allocated time (one review ended up longer than the story itself) before having to work on more urgent deadlines. I will try to finish the rest at some point this week, maybe even in time for the next update post! 

Wow, yay! Thanks everyone for the congratulations :)

Congrats to Sherb, Cat, MHD, and everyone who submitted (and everyone who voted!). This had a huge turnout, and pretty much all the games were very strong for the time limit. Here's to many more shrimp jams!

Congrats on the win, Gryphon! You did a really good job!

Question for the authors, do any of you have definite plans to expand and publish your stories?

If you need to wager some pointless points to make that happen, this is the place.

Hmm, I don't really have any points worth mentioning and I don't care about the ones I do have. I'm also busy writing for End's contest through the end of the month, so I wouldn't have time until April to start updating mine. That being said, I have a lot planned for expanding my silly cat game and plenty of cleanup to do on what’s already there.

To make things a little more spicy for myself, can I bet my account if I don't publish it by April 30th? If I don't get it published, you can ban me. And if I do get it published in time, you can give me absolutely nothing. It’s like a participation prize, where I participate and then get told to go pound sand afterward. Fun times!

Yeah, we don't do this with legitimate site members, it's not benefiting anyone to ban a complete-sentence-and-sometimes-even-paragraphs user for missing a deadline.

Well, that's a fair point! I could just stop using complete sentences, but honestly that would drive me crazy. It's enough work to remember not to use a period at the end of my sentences when sending texts. It's not quite as exciting, but how about a dynamic bet? Just take all but 1 of my points if I fail to publish it by April 30th. And if I publish it in time, I get to not lose my points? That way I still get all of the risk, and none of the reward!

Ultimately it's all in good fun. And I'm just throwing a little extra accountability at myself to make sure I’m giving myself space to write more in my free time. I'm not an especially fast creative writer, but I enjoy doing it.

Good move. 100 points say my story will be published this year.

Sure, why not? 5 points says that I can publish it by June, and another five points says that it gets a four or higher within a month of publishing.

Wow, you really like to live dangerously huh.

5 points isn't a lot tbh, so I don't mind too much if I lose both bets. It would still sting though.

And yes, yes I do.

I plan to expand/finalize for sure. I don't think my game would need to be expanded *too* much, but I felt like the setting had a distinct vibe with some avenues for further detail & worldbuilding/side adventures, etc. Not too much more though. I want to keep the plot tight, and don't want the setting to overstay its welcome, so there won't be THAT much change to the fundamental structure.

Out of curiosity, for anyone who played my game, what kind of expansion/finalization would you want to see (or not want to see) in the finished version?

Sure I'll make a point bet. I can't really work on this for the rest of the academic year, so I'll wager 200 points that it will be finalized by the end of August.

I already am being threatened with SHAME, but I'll also bet 50 points I finish it by the 1st because why not.

Three storygames in one month, now that's productivity.

Lol I wish.

I'm finishing the game I started here for the Bible prompt, I'm once again struggling with the other prompt though. It's so frustrating because just like the last time I know the kind of story I want to write, but it needs a lot of build up to work emotionally, and the details of how to get to there and include enough branching just aren't clicking together for me.

Piece of Me Diner will see the light in early to mid April, once the prompt contest ends. Wagering is beneath me, though. :smugpepe:

Maybe someday, but it is far down on the project stack.