4/16/2021

3/12/2026 11:38 PM

592

6

0 wins / 2 losses

Lauded Sage Exemplar

Capture the Flag

=For End Master's Manifest Destiny contest=

When Alexsis starts trying to steal your favorite seat in the school cafeteria, things get serious.  The pair of you decide to resolve this dispute in combat:  a game of capture the flag.  Can you beat your nemesis in a game of capture the flag, and reclaim what is rightfully yours?

This story is a short cave-of-time style game with seven possible victory endings.  Happy flag-hunting!

Diplomat

As humanity begins to leave their corner of the galaxy for the first time, they encounter previously uncontacted alien races.  As one of earth's leading diplomats, you will play a key role in shaping the future of your species in this unfamiliar world.

A mostly cave-of-time style story with limited rebranching in a few places, and five victory endings.

 

Winner of End Master's Culture Clash Contest

One Day's Adventure

In this short RPG game, you explore your local village, solving challenges and puzzles, as you try to decide what to do in your future career.

Ruins of Anzar

When a thunderbird attacks you while you search for the missing Professor Keirz, you crash-land on a plateau near the legendary ruins of a ruined Anzaran city.  You must make use of the resources around you to repair your damaged flyer, find your missing friend, and unlock the secrets of the ancient Anzaran temple.

An open-map item-based puzzle game with one good victory ending, and one great victory ending.  Good luck exploring the ancient Anzaran plateau!

For End Master's Manifest Destiny Contest

Secrets of the Crag

Discover the dungeon's secrets, fight deadly monsters, learn magical spells, and more in this traditional dungeon crawl adventure!  Can you survive the dangers of the legendary Crag?

 

An open-map dungeon exploration game using player stats and items, with eleven victory epilogues, as indicated by the first two digits of your score.

Thanks to Nightwatch for the fantastic cover art!

The Sea of Legends

An unexpected supernatural disaster leaves you and your your younger cousins adrift in a strange sea full of mythical creatures and beings. Can you and your cousins escape, or will you succumb to the deadly sea?

Currently, this is a short cave-of-time style game with three victory endings. It is complete in its current form, consisting of the first of many planned "episodes" for the game.  It will eventually be expanded into an episodic gauntlet-style game.

Your score indicates which ending you reached.  0 for a death ending, and a score of 1, 2, or 3 corresponds to one the game's victory endings.

Gryphon Review Archive

unpublished

Point and Click

unpublished

2 minute demo image-based point and click game made with the cys editor and javascript.

Click on the treasure pile when you reach the end of the demo, and it will take you to an explanation on how to code one of these games, and a copy of all the code used to build this one.

To use an item in your inventory, click on it to select. You'll know it is selected because it turns grey. Then you can 'use' it by clicking on the area you intend to use it on.

So You Wanna Be An Evil Wizard

unpublished

Can you survive your first semester at wizard college?

A submission to the one-day storygame contest.

A general guide to character creation, and tips tailored specifically for characterization in an interactive format.

Use this system to code flexible battle sequences using items, link options, and player stats.

How to create a system that will keep track of which item a player has equipped into a specific slot, such as having a "sword" in a "weapon" slot.

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.

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!

This is really cool. Glad to see you got the trophy & points for this, it's absolutely deserved

Yeah lol this take was mainly caused by my years-long quest to build functional & story-enhancing battle sequences in textgames and largely feeling like I have not come anywhere close to succeeding. (I will probably keep trying though lol.) Also now I want to hear your reasoning for this imaginary take lol

Woohoo! Do I win?

Anyways, I clearly have some explaining to do. First of all, a lot of people seemed to think I was talking about video games? I was specifically referring to text-based storygames and narrative-based tabletop RPGs. I think nuanced combat systems in video games and board games are usually fine and great. (Though obviously not always.) I don't play a lot of video games, so I'm not really equipped to comment on them.

Nuanced combat systems can be good in narrative-based games when the game designers commit to putting in the time to make A) A great story, B) A great combat system, and C) ensure that they're directly supporting each other rather than merely coexisting. However, I don't see that often. More often I see games whose strengths clearly lie elsewhere throwing in combat systems out of a sense of obligation. Those combat systems generally just distract from the real strengths of the game, like exploration or the storyline, and have no thematic relevance to the narrative they've been woven into.

I think Fabrikant summarized what I meant; adding a detailed strategy minigame to a game that's trying to be a story can be a major distractor from the supposed point of the game unless the authors are REALLY careful to tie everything together. Similarly, I said "most" and not just "poorly-written" storygames because I've seen this attempted and failed far more often than I've seen it succeed, and in games that were otherwise well-written.

I will concede one point: my bad experiences with tabletop RPG combat may be mainly due to having played mostly with new players who took a very long time to understand the rules. So I may change my stance on narrative-based RPG combat after I've had the chance to see how experienced players handle it.

On a more subjective level, I think I just don't personally enjoy the tack most storygames take to combat. This take was chiefly inspired by my own experiences replaying Secrets of the Crag. I put a lot of throught into designing a combat system with minimum learning curve and maximum enjoyment, and I still find myself bored-ly clicking through the combats at random whenever I revisit the game. I don't enjoy the combat in dungeon stompage either, nor have I found any game on this site that had a combat system I actually liked. If combat is going to be game-ified instead of told as a narrative, I prefer the chance to design my own strategies and attack plans and bring in outside resources, and I just haven't seen any storygame bring the flexibility to combat that something like a board game can manage. But again, this is more of a subjective opinion--from what I've gathered from the comments on Delve! some people really do like hack-and-slash combat games even when they don't provide much tactical flexibility. To each their own.

Ok wander until you find the bike, then keep guessing until you get the right combination (not as hard as it sounds). Makes winning significantly easier

This is far from a walkthrough, but the advice that changed the game for me was to wander around until **POST EDITED I just realized you didn't specifically ask for spoilers, I'll put this back if you say you want it**. That's the most important part of getting the best ending

Thank you for convincing me to check out Cavus's review of Rogues, I laughed out loud.

Seconding this, excellent book

When making this list, I realized most of the stories that gripped me had the same three features:

1) Humorous & distinct first person narration
2) A very high-stakes and tense plot
3) Complex and creative worldbuilding that the plot hinges on

Namely:
- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Fantastic book, consider this my chief recommendation. Read it all in a day or two. One section in the middle has the most tense sequence I have ever read in a book. The Martian (same author) is similar.
- The Harry Dresden books by Jim Butcher (the first four, at least, I haven't read the rest.) I pretty much have to finish these in one sitting.
- Eternal, I read most of the paragon branch in one sitting.
- The scholomance series by Naomi Novik.

I also tore through the foundation series by Aasimov, but I would not describe those books as gripping, they just happened to appeal to me.