7/10/2024

10/14/2024 3:31 AM

50

1

0 wins / 0 losses

Warden

Ignis and Aero

Aero, a 14-year-old inhabitant of the village of Albritton, wants nothing more than to read his enthralling storybooks in peace. When he hears of a Golem wandering in the forests near his village, he is more than happy to let the professionals deal with it, while staying within the comfort of his home.

Unfortunately for him, his adventurous brother, Ignis, has other plans.

Author's note: If you want to collect all endings, then there are six of them: The Wise, The Mourner, The Cleaner, The Knight, The Skeptic and The Magician. Certain choices don't have immediate effects but may influence the endings. Also, certain endings can be reached through multiple different paths.

Submitted for Sherbet's Summer's End Synergy Contest.

Special thanks to mrcrimsonclean for proof reading :]

Hmm, I see. Well for what it's worth, I promise to keep my writing within the contest time for contest storygames going forward.

Ahh, I see. Noted. Sorry, I'm new to writing storygames, let alone participating in contests. Hopefully, I will be able to get my second story done in time. If not, I will publish it after the contest ends anyway. I honestly don't mind being disqualified if I'm unable to publish my second story, though I do dread dropping into the shame pit :(

Yes, it did require the walkthrough if I remember correctly. I probably wouldn't have guessed to use morse code otherwise. The dead end is definitely a good idea, I understand now the idea you were trying to convey. That being said, you could add some sort of text when you return to the same page, maybe expressing frustration that no one is understanding your signals. Any sort of feedback that acknowledges the player's previous actions will help drive home this effect better. I think in the first SOS sending puzzle you had altered the text to show how many times you had tried a short scream. Something like that at the dead end would help with the effect, I think. I don't think I managed to get to any "Work in progress" pages. Yes, I did reach the "Terminated" ending... though I don't remember having any opportunity to develop commands outside of the "Execute Analyze" page. From what you are saying, I'm guessing I should've had enough spare time before the project's cancellation to develop those commands from analysis? As for the initial fork, I'd provide an option to run a simulation after an upgrade to determine which component to upgrade next. This can be at the cost of time so that players can't just simulate after every upgrade. I don't really remember seeing "Weeks Left" after the fork. I did have READ/WRITE and NOOP options. I had used the NOOP to get to the "Execute Analyze" page, I think. Again, I will stress that whether people play multiple times depends on whether they WANT to play multiple times. I didn't necessarily feel like I was learning anything new with the iterations of play past the fork which is why I stopped playing when I did. Maybe an option to reflect on your failings can be a good way to motivate players to restart. That could be a third option outside of terminate and sleep when you end up in the digital cemetery. You could use that to drop hints to what players could do differently.

I thought the original summary felt AI-generated because it didn't really talk much about the motivations of the protagonist. This one certainly seems better in my opinion as it talks about how the protagonist has dedicated their life to the goal of natural machine intelligence, and the fear that their sacrifices will be for naught if the project is cancelled. It's better at motivating me to try and help this soul achieve their goals. Well, that's my subjective opinion anyway. At the end of the day, different people like different things. As long as you are happy with what you write, I'm sure there will be others who will like it too :)

Now that I've read the actual story, I have to say this was quite the read. Actually succeeding in your goal but being limited by your technology is certainly an interesting way to tackle this concept. I think this game certainly has a lot of potential. Here are my thoughts based on what I've read: What is this helmet and this capture machine? - The second paragraph has a bunch of sentences starting with "And" and a lot of ellipses. Of course, that could be because your brain is recovering, so I'm okay with that if it was intentional. The fourth sentence in that same paragraph starts with "And a then a" which I'm pretty sure is a typo. - 6th paragraph: "that's what you've told the powers-that-be 'at' Virtudyne" Write a message to your output stream - I guess this part isn't done yet. I tried sending SOS again, but nothing happened. There aren't really any clues of what other messages I should be sending, so I'm not really sure what to do here. Execute analyze - Both of the commands lead to a blackout state with the analyze option being removed from the inventory. So again, I'm guessing this is yet to be completed. Read "A Choice" - The first paragraph of the message starts as "I realized is that..." which seems to be a typo. Maybe it can be rewritten as "I've realized that..." Overall, I'd say this quite an interesting read. I'll look forward to the completed version of the story :)

The summary feels like it was generated by an AI. If it was, I'd highly recommend against using it. AI just isn't at the level where it can write stuff that is interesting to human beings simply because it doesn't understand why humans like the things that they like. Getting a proofreader to look through your story is never a bad idea. A fresh set of eyes can spot mistakes that you didn't even know were mistakes. As for puzzle difficulty... a reader will only take the effort to play through difficult puzzles if you first get them invested into the game's story. They always have the option to just stop and read something else. So again, if AI was used, I'd highly recommend rewriting the story to make it appealing to humans. Maybe talk about the stress that you and your fellow teammates feel due to the fast-approaching deadline or something?

Did you write this yourself?

I always finish fast B) Wait, that didn't come out right. Fuck!

Well, here it is: https://chooseyourstory.com/story/ignis-and-aero Hope you enjoy :]

Haha, thanks. I think the best part is that I can make sure the second one is a good quality story without having to rush to get it out before the deadline. Actually, I was a bit hesitant to ask but is it possible for me to change the story I want to submit for a contest after I've already submitted a story? If yes, then I could post my first story right now as my contest submission. If I happen to finish the second story before the deadline, then I can have that be my entry instead. I wasn't really sure if this was allowed, so I've been sitting tight.