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Time for the next story!

@mizal @castorgreatpoetguy @ninjapitka @TurnipBandit @Bill_Ingersoll @Cricket @Serpent @ghost11 @DarkSpawn

... And I must say I'm very disappointed in the number of reviews the last game got. Despite having a whole two weeks to read it, only me, Bill, Ninja, and Turnip actually left a review, and Turnip was the one who suggested it, so that's a pretty shitty result. The rest of you... Shame on you all! It's a good game. Go review it now!

Any ways, it's Bill's turn to choose a game this time. Looking forward to seeing which one you pick.

As always, if anybody else wants to join the little bookclub, just let me know and I'll add your name to the list of members. ^_^

Easy choice. I want to recommend Paper-Mache as this week's selection. This was one of the new stories that emerged from Mizal's lone hero contest, and as one of the judges this was my pick for 2nd place. It is certainly a noob's story, and the writing style could use some polish, but I was impressed by both the story and the amount of branching. It made good use of the "Cave of Time" format, and no one branch reveals the entire story.

As a word of caution: Everybody seems to make the same string of decisions on their first read-through, and lands at the same set of somewhat unsatisfactory endings. Be sure to go back and explore the other options. It's rare to see a new writer embrace the branching format so readily, and so I am recommending this story not because it's the best, but because this has been an underappreciated story that as of this morning still only has 9 ratings.

I'm guessing a week should be sufficient for this one.

Several of us have already read/reviewed Paper-Mache already. If you're bored and looking for a few minutes' diversion, I also want to give a shout-out to The Quick Dating Game, a fun and easy little storygame that needs to be rescued from a depressed rating of 4.88.

Play length 6/8, so a week should be fine... And think I'm going to give The Quick Dating Game a read right now. ^_^

Oh wow!  This is a nice surprise.  Thanks Bill!

You're welcome.

Thanks for pointing to the Quick Dating Game, Bill.  I just gave it some love.  As it were.

Everybody seems to make the same string of decisions on their first read-through, and lands at the same set of somewhat unsatisfactory endings.

I think that just happened to me.

As I recall, the very first choice in the story is to come to someone's aid. Which, of course, everyone wants to do.

If you choose not to help, the story opens up.

It's an odd first choice, and I don't agree with the moral implications, but the story does get more intriguing from there. No one branch explains everything, so the fun comes in reading from branch to branch.

That makes sense. I hit the "back" button right up until that choice. Choosing not to help definitely seems like a probable end game link. Time to re-read...

So, a little context, I was planning on having a lot more for the Bolard branch, (some of those death links weren't originally meant to be death links), but I kinda ran out of time.  The idea was to put whole storyline branches in odd places to encourage exploration. In hindsight, I should've done the more heroic branches first, but I had a better idea of what the non-heroic branches would look like, so I did those first instead.  

Diagramming a storygame first is very helpful, as it allows you to visually see the branching structure as you write out the scenarios. The two storygames that I've published here on CYS were first written in Excel, and looked like the screen shot below. Once I had a structure I liked, I began importing the text onto the website and fleshed out the various scenes.

For storygame #3, I thought I was just going to wing it as I wrote it, without charting it out first, because I was under the impression it was going to be short and easy. Instead, without knowing where I was going, I kept getting distracted with the details. So I had to put that one aside and move onto storygame #4, which is coming along much more smoothly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did that using a corkboard in my bedroom.  I just had to cut some content for times sake.  Definatly understand how it feels to try and write one of these without a solid plan though; it's part of the reason so many of the storygames I tried to make back when I was in middle school failed miserably, and now languish in the depths of My Stuff, forgotten.

I wrote a bunch of gamebooks when I was in middle school too, most without diagramming them out first. It did take me months to complete one, and the branches could at times be random. It was fun at the time, although none of those stories ever went anywhere.

However...

For my current project, I'm actually taking one of those gamebooks I wrote when I was 13 and doing a page-by-page rewrite. The basic story is the same, but I'm treating the original draft as if it were a chart: I look at a page, figure out what the action or development is, and then rewrite the scene as if I were coming at it fresh. The process has been really fun.

That sounds like a really interesting thing to do.  I might have to go through some of my older stories and try that sometime, once I'm a bit more experienced.  I bet it'll make for a really interesting story, as you'll have the uninhibited imagination of your younger self combined with the expertiese and experience you have now.

Yeah, that is pretty much exactly what I am experiencing with this project. The story is pretty preposterous, but otherwise coherent. And it has the benefit of being complete, with 107 pages in its original form, and 30 endings. It was based on a board game I liked at the time, but otherwise I had almost no life experiences to draw from (a fact of which I was acutely aware throughout my teen years).

Now I have more life experiences than I care to admit, so this is like collaborating with the younger version of myself. He breaks out the story, I write the dialog.

I'm not sure I could give all of those adolescent gamegooks the same treatment, or that I'd even want to, but I'm glad I chose to dive into this one.

107 pages???? At thirteen???  Dang, you were a much more focused kid than I ever was.  If anything took longer than a week I'd get bored of it and start something new.  I still have trouble finishing things; the only reason I finished Paper-Mache was because I was afraid of getting double shamed, (but don't get me wrong, I'm really glad I did).  I'm hoping now that I've actually finished a big story game I'll be able to finish more in the future.

107 pages, in pencil, with illustrations.

I regret that the illustrations aren't getting upgraded with the text, though. My writing abilities have advanced through much practice over the years, but my drawing abilities have taken the back burner.

Well, I guess sometimes it’s better to just paint a picture with your words.  

Ah, my bad. >.<

All done, and here's my review:

That game was kinda cute. Such a weird little premise for a story to wake up and find yourself in a world where everybody is made of paper-mache. Kind of put me in mind of Gulliver’s Travels a little, being a giant in a world of little people.

The writing was very good, only noticed a couple of spelling and grammar mistakes. But I think my favourite part about this game was that, even at the very end, I can’t really tell whether I made the right choices or not… I mean… You can save the world from an evil tyrant… But put a guy who thinks it’s okay to kidnap and do experiments on little children in charge instead. Alternatively, you can betray the creepy child experiment guy… But then the kingdom’s still ruled by an evil tyrant. Either way, the poor little paper-mache people are fucked… I really like that. It’s much more fun than a choice where one option is clearly evil and the other is clearly good. If a game can make me look at the screen and think for a few seconds before I actually make my choice, then that gets bonus points from me.

Now, to what I found kind of disappointing about this game… Well… The people are made of paper-mache. That would be really interesting except… Well… That’s all. That’s like… What the whole game revolves around. Everything else about the world is normal. It has trees and animals and stuff. The only difference between this world and our own is that… You know… People made of paper-mache. I do love stories that are intentionally weird and supernatural, but the weirdness kind of has to be consistent. For instance, stories like Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan and The Chronicles of Narnia, all have a million and one different things about their worlds that make them so weird and magical. This world has… Well… People made of paper-mache. While a great start, I think there kind of needs to be more to it. If a world has talking animals, living inanimate objects, potions that make you grow or shrink, unbirthday parties and riddles with no answers, you think to yourself, “This world is a really weird and interesting place.” If the world has people made of paper-mache, you think to yourself, “Why the hell is everyone here made of paper-mache.” … What’s more, you think, “Why the hell aren’t the animals made of paper-mache?” I mean, if there was any explanation, like the whole world is one big art project made by a child, that’d be okay, but since there never is any explanation on where you are or why you’re there… Well… It just leaves me wishing that the world had more weird stuff in it.

All in all though, it was an enjoyable read. And considering it was a contest entry that only gave you a month to finish it, I’d say you did a pretty great job.

Good review!

I think there were two useful plot points in making the locals made out of paper-mache:

1. The protag was automatically the strongest person in town, and
2. It made the undesirables vulnerable to fire.

There were the scenes where "you" are enlisted in one rebellion or another simply because of your ability to set things on fire. So I think the point jster02 was trying to make was that this was a world full of piñatas, where an ordinary human could be a "lone hero." Yeah, sure, more world-building would be cool, but sometimes an idea is so preposterous that it just falls apart if you take it too seriously.

What I had a problem with was the frequent use of parenthetical asides. I tend to see that as a lack of confidence on the part of the writer, to constantly explain something to make sure the reader gets the intended meaning. I used to do similar things myself... a long time ago.

But what I admire the most was the use of the branching. I don't know how many endings there are in this story, but there were quite a few, with little or no re-combining of branches. One thing I've learned during my time on CYS is that writing a branching story does NOT come naturally to many people, but this storygame was fun to explore — precisely because there was no one branch that answered all questions. Each branch was its own segment of the larger story. If there had been a single branch with an uber-win for an ending, I would have stopped reading right then and there. But since there were multiple good endings, and multiple not-so-good endings — many of them no better or worse than the next — I kept reading until I had explored every branch. Even many of the CYOA books never accomplished that.

On the other hand, a few of the choices could have been set up better. For instance, early in the story there is an option to either help someone or not help. This is kind of a moral choice, and of course we're going to help unless the peril is just too great. As it was executed in the story, choosing not to help in that one case led to a whole lot of other interesting things, and that was a non-sequitur for me.

All in all, though, none of these criticisms are intended to mean that this was a weak story, or that Jster02 is a bad writer. On the contrary, I think the writing will get better with experience. So @jster02: keep on doing what you're doing.

Hopefully some of the others will chime in on this thread too.

Oh yeah, definitely. Jster02 is clearly a very competent writer. If he can come up with a stor this good in a month, I'd love to see what he could do in a year. ^_^

Add me to your list, Avery, when it's time to the next one!

Oh yeah! Sorry, I forgot. :(

I really do get the sense I missed a main path, although I hit the back button to navigate through. Here's what I wrote:

I briefly played through this story upon its release. Reading all the positive comments, I have the feeling I rushed through and did not give it justice. Plus, there were several contest pieces being published so that could have “mudded up” my interest in the story. At the time of writing this sentence, I am about to re-read Paper-Mache. I originally rated it slightly above average, but I’m interested to see if a second time around will change that.

I can’t argue that the beginning is an interesting start. There are tons of questions initially because you’re simply thrust into a dire situation with no background. For some reason, it doesn’t draw me in as well as it should. It could be the repetitive nature of “something familiar, but I can’t quite put my finger on it” sentences. It could be the voice of the narrator. I just can’t put my finger on it.

The entire story does have a certain magical air to it, almost Disney-like. Well to be more accurate, it’s fairytale-like. The uniqueness of the setting is quite powerful as I don’t think I’ve read a story on here like this one. For some reason, the Paper-Mache creatures remind me of Ewoks. Only less fuzzy and primitive. Actually, they’re more like those creatures hidden in Breath of the Wild that go “Wa-ho-ho, you found me!”

I will say the change in fonts is distracting. I tend to lower my rating a full point (sometimes more in extreme cases) if the simple visuals are off. If the author returns to fix the font, I’d probably increase my rating.

The dead branch with Bolard seems to take a while, but I’m glad it’s there. My main issue was the series of long pages with single links just to hit a choice between four “End Game” links. I’m just glad there’s a dead branch included. It does feel as if it would have been a full path if the author had more time. Contest deadlines tend to do that sort of thing.

Oh wait was that the main path? The increase in sudden “End Game” links made it seem like a dead branch. Perhaps I missed something, but none of the endings felt complete. The only real choices come near the end of the story and don’t really branch out at all. The world was solidly built and the sudden end kind of leaves a gaping hole in what could have been. It feels like a grand tale that cut off prematurely.