4/1/2023

6/13/2025 2:14 PM

198

2

1 win / 0 losses

Architect

Lazarus Cage

They want to keep you bound in the dark, but you won't let them. You will get out, fight and flee, fail and die, then try again and again...

Nautilus

Grudges must always be the first to die when a storm arrives.

After years away you return home to your dying father, but will you be able to get your brother to forgive you for leaving? And will you step up to the challenge to inherit your father's most prized possession?

Written as part of the 2023 Spring/Summer Contest: Gone Fishin' it is a game with a much bigger focus on story than gameplay, but still there is a decent amount of endings and variation for something this short.

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

Guess it's time to start holding points hostage again...

This might be the closest matchup so far, which is doubly annoying because both stories are praiseworthy for completely different reasons.

Story A definitely gets a point for sticking much closer to the prompt with its story, but personally I found Story B a bit more interesting on top of the whole story being more coherent. I don’t mean A didn’t make sense, but there’s just a few things that weren’t said, which make it difficult to be certain of some elements when it comes to the setting in terms of time, location and even by proxy the “protagonist(s?)”. It’s probably just my tisms trying to overanalyze shit, but once you notice something you can’t unsee it sadly.

This doesn’t change the fact that A’s writing feels richer, mostly because it only uses narration, which means it can fit a little bit more content into its word count. However in comparison to B its reveal feels quite a bit less impactful. B’s twist piqued my interest much more, especially from a philosophical and ethical standpoint. It kind of reminded me of The Prestige in that regard.

I’m going to give it to Story B purely on personal preference, but I wouldn’t be surprised if A ends up with more votes thanks to its unique perspective.

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.

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.

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

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

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)

A good balance I find when it comes to science fiction is to only really talk about the how and why when you're confident in them and to otherwise don't muddle the waters with pseudo science. Pressure in the depths? Our suits are designed to deal with that! Different gravity? We've been living in space for centuries now, a quarter of a G less/more is the new jet lag we adjust to with our bio-engineered bodies. You mean whenever I teleport I get blown up into molecules? Damn I sure those eggheads who invented it know what they're doing. What I mean is that unless it's crucial to the plot, or you really want to flex your knowledge it is better to not go too deep. Ignorance to how things work is probably the biggest step towards realism. Just like how you don't think how exactly you can send text and files through this nebulous thing called internet Mr. Smith isn't going to care much how his spaceship capable to roughly 20000c that he gets to work with functions.

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.