Arakhan's Vengeance

I’ll start with the usual disclaimer: I’m not a professional writer nor a seasoned reviewer, so take everything with a grain of salt. Also, seeing that the author hasn’t logged in for a few years, this review would mostly be for potential readers of this storygame. Hopefully it helps you decide whether it’ll be something you would enjoy.

PREMISE

As the description suggests, you play as Arakhan, Captain of the Guard. The inciting incident occurs when the protagonist’s village is attacked and he sets off on a quest for vengeance, spanning multiple locations and involving several fights.

The setting takes place in a medieval fantasy realm, complete with fencing goblins, red ogres and murderous plants. From taking part in a bar brawl to sword fight, there’s a lot the reader can experience. The worldbuilding is so much more complex than I anticipated: the author created a part where the reader can discover more about the world through reading books in the library, and despite the info-dumps, I soon realized there was so much more planning put into this story than I initially thought.

If you’re someone who enjoys (or rather, wouldn’t mind) the following elements, then you’re the ideal reader of this storygame: puzzles/ riddles, combat scenes where you choose each action, and having to replay the storygame a few times to find the real ending. Still, it is satisfying to see everything come together and discover the secrets hidden around the story.

WRITING STYLE

I won’t go into too much depth on the writing style, as another review already covers it pretty well. The prose was easy to read and quite enjoyable. There was good use of deep point-of-view, where the protagonist’s thoughts are embedded within the text, creating personal stakes. The readers see the world from Arakhan’s perspective: the feelings arising from failing to protect his people, the brief memories of his past and the possible consequences behind each choice.

Description is done well, too. Details add to the atmosphere, creating a cohesive picture of various locations—most notable is the burnt village at the start. It was utilized effectively at various points of the story to draw attention to important details, such as those concerning the puzzles that the reader would have to solve. Yet, this is not without its flaws. At some parts of the story, the description felt rather sparse and lacking; this was exemplified even more when readers weren’t given too much information to base their choices on. As such, the life or death situations sometimes felt like randomly clicking a link and hoping for the best.

Within some of the more serious scenes, I noticed attempts at humor. For example, puns like ‘Knife to meet you’ or I’m So Totally Struck by You’ were used as titles when the protagonist was fighting against another character who sought to kill him. I’m not entirely sure how I felt about that. On one hand, it reduced the tension and didn’t really help maintain immersion, yet on the other, they made me chuckle. Sarcasm and other forms of humor were also used.

CHARACTERS

The side characters were portrayed well. For example, it was realistic that Joad and a few other characters no longer trusted Arakhan after he failed to protect them from the attack. This added to the protagonist’s own internal struggle too: I like the technique of reinforcing internal conflict through external conflict, I might steal that in the future.

Though the protagonist did not spend much time interacting with some of them, the personalities of some of the side characters were quite distinct and interesting. I enjoyed the variety of choices we had at the start: fighting with a villager who strongly wishes to kill the protagonist, playing a card game with children, giving a eulogy for a dead man, and so on. There was quite a variety of characters to meet and find out more about.

I enjoyed reading about the antagonists too, and how—depending on the paths that the reader picked—their presence could be foreshadowed quite well before the protagonist ever meets them. This was a cool detail I only noticed on one of my later playthroughs.

Now, onto the protagonist. He can be described by a line one of the other characters said: “An idiot, maybe. But not a coward." At the start of the quest, he believes it would end with his death. Yet, he doesn’t mind, as he plans to destroy his enemies and ensure his village is left alone. This sort of ‘self-sacrificing’ trope is reminiscent of folktales or generic fantasy stories where the protagonist goes on a heroic quest and survives despite the odds. To be honest, I did start off thinking it’d be this sort of story. Yet, I was rather surprised and impressed to find out the scope of this story. But more on that in the next section.

If I had one gripe with characterization, I would have preferred a bit more in terms of the protagonist’s motives and backstory. Fleshing these out would have answered some important questions, e.g. why does being captain and protecting his village mean so much to him? These would have added to the personal stakes while creating a more compelling narrative. Sometimes, he felt almost archetypal rather than realistic. Still, considering the humorous tone of this story, I suppose it was intended to be more of a light, fun read than a serious one.

PLOT & STRUCTURE

Now, for this section, I’ll try to explain the structure of the story in a way that would let potential readers know what to expect (and get the best reading experience) without giving away too many spoilers.

I’ll start by mentioning that there are five endings. Only one is considered the ‘true’ ending. It follows the ‘quest’ structure, with various different sections that lead to either death or premature endings, or eventually links back to the main narrative. Despite this, it is worth exploring at least a few of the different sections, it enriches the overall experience of the story.

The First Act

Note: This isn’t the way the story is structured (it doesn’t actually use the three act story structure), but just how I organized it in my head.

The first branching choice occurs when the protagonist can choose between heading back to his village to find survivors or searching for his friends. I suggest choosing the latter. In my first playthrough, I believed they were completely separate paths whereas in fact, clicking the first choice just means you miss out a sizable portion of the story.

Now, there are several locations to explore, each with their own puzzles and challenges. If you’re someone who doesn’t like puzzles, then this story is probably not for you. They’re an integral part of unlocking the ‘true’ ending. Though I guess in some parts of the story, brute forcing your way through them could work (not so much in others, unfortunately). I must note that one of the hints after an ending did mention ‘saving all your companions’ and unless I missed something, I don’t think that’s possible.

Once again, when the protagonist reaches the town, there are lots of places to roam around. All of them have completely separate subplots. If you have time, I recommend checking out a few different ones. I was surprised by how in-depth they all were.

In one of them, there was a fight scene where the reader would pick each move as the choices were blow-by-blow (literally and figuratively speaking). Depending on the type of reader, this might get a bit annoying or it might even be fun. This mechanism is used later in the story a few other times. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded too much had there been more foreshadowing of the consequences of choices. At times, there was seemingly no rhyme or rhythm as to what would and would not kill the protagonist.

In another part, there was a fun potion-making puzzle where the protagonist remembered a moment back when he was a kid. While this appeared somewhat random at first, having no special significance to him, it was later revealed to be an important part of unlocking the secret path. There was also another part where you could go through a dead man’s house, snoop around his secrets, find his corpse, and give a speech that goes hilariously wrong. Fun stuff.

The Second Act

This is where the protagonist leaves the safety of his village and ventures out in his quest for vengeance. The choices here are all either death endings or bottlenecks back into the main narrative. Also, I will echo what Urnamo’s comment said: do not go to the tents or you would be stuck in an infinite loop of tent hopping (unless I missed something there).

Most of the choices are mainly what to do in a given moment, with shorter pages and more emphasis on reader agency. Usually, I tend to see this most in amateur stories, since a lot of the time it means really short pages which may as well be joined together, but in this story, there were instances where this worked really well. (Light spoiler). For example, there was a part where you have four choices and even though they repeat you have to choose them in the right order to survive: tie a rope to an arrow, tie the rope to the tower (or vice versa), then fire the arrow, so you create a zipline. It was very creative and I enjoyed figuring that out.

(More spoilers: I really can’t pick an audience for this review, lol) After sneaking past all the goblins, the protagonist does have another fight scene with one of the antagonists. This was a fencing fight. I did fencing as an extracurricular in high school, but I must admit, I didn’t understand a lot of the terms that were being thrown around. There wasn’t any context given either; I’d have appreciated a page which explained how it worked, or if the author didn’t want to break immersion, perhaps the captured character the protagonist was trying to save could have provided some advice. (Speaking of advice, I seem to somehow keep switching back into ‘advising the author’ mode, oops). It felt a bit repetitive at times; maybe if there were more details about the fight, it would have been better. Still, I really liked the cool detail where the protagonist asked a riddle and the answer connected to the way they defeated the villain. Those who read the story will probably know what I’m talking about.

The Third Act/ ‘Epilogue’

On my first readthrough, this epilogue did not really feel like much of an epilogue. Part of this was the new information that was revealed and a conflict that was introduced suddenly without being resolved. Although it did answer one of the questions raised at the start—why Lyestra, an ordinary village, was attacked—it raised more questions than answered. Furthermore, none of the endings seemed satisfactory. One of them did briefly mention the bravery vs foolishness portrayal of the protagonist, yet I did not see much of a strong a character arc.

Only then did I realize: there’s more to the story than I initially believed.

The True Path

It was amazing how all the different branches and paths interlinked. In one of my first epilogues, a treasure is mentioned almost as an afterthought. Then, on other paths, the reader can discover more about this. There was also a part where the protagonist can read books about worldbuilding. I loved how this connected to the different sections, some of which occurred before this event so it’d be impossible to use that knowledge unless the reader replays the storygame. In fact, replayability might even be necessary: it is by taking notes of the details of previous playthroughs—even ones that appear unsuccessful—that the true ending is found. I enjoyed the character’s realization that vengeance isn’t as great as it may seem. Overall, there appears to be so much effort put into this storygame, that even now, after having found all the numbered endings, I wonder if there’s still more I missed.

TL;DR

This was a fascinating storygame, with equal parts ‘story’ and ‘game’. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys fantasy quests and engaging puzzles. For the best experience, I suggest multiple playthroughs as there’s so much to explore in this story.

A featured-quality story that deserves more attention than it receives


Good:

1. Excellent and extensive strategy component- perfect combination of tactical and riddle/puzzle elements; one of the few games where logically exercising caution can actually be rewarded by the game; puzzle elements well integrated into the narrative; I loved how every significant thing in a scene could be manipulated/acted upon by the player

2. I loved the extra lore (Air Bud!) and flavor text, something not many other stories have

3. There are just enough red herrings to make the game not too easy for us; good difficulty and variety of riddles and puzzles

4. The quality of writing picks up as the story goes along, starting out workmanlike and getting more elegant as it goes on

5. Good amount of branches that are completely different in reader experience


(the following flaws are miniscule; just nitpicking, even)

Bad:

1. Each named character could have been developed more; there is a large cast of interesting characters, but I would have liked to get to know and care about each of them more before the adventure

2. As I was returning to Lyestra with Lodan, it said that I was unsuccessful in locating Anaria, even though I never even made an attempt to locate her, and Glusen was not mentioned at all

3. On one of the Larcassio duel pages, clicking on the Remise option led to a destination page that said I Parried instead

4. There were some minor punctuation issues


Ugly:

1. There was no way to both figure out how to open the golden box AND open it in the same playthrough, which is disappointing; I would have liked to be able to explore all of the options at each location, such as in Lyestra town or while searching for my comrades, and get the full story, if not all of the endings, in one playthrough without having to restart the game, instead of only being able to explore one option and being forced to leave by the north gate or go back to Lyestra as soon as I explored one option; the use of the plural "guards" and the prompt of "Where should you go first?" while deciding on which comrade to rescue made me think that I would be able to go after all three of them in succession, so I was let down that I would only get the chance to rescue one comrade in a playthrough- at the very least, we should have been notified that we would only be able to go after one of the three before making the decision

2. There was no indication or clues that shooting the torch would end up with the tents on fire

3. Speaking of the tents, I couldn't find any way out and got stuck in an endless loop after entering them. I tried everything that I could think of to get out and clicked on every possible link, but still couldn't find another outcome besides either death or another tent (some of the potions in the laboratory seemed like they would have been perfect for the tents puzzle, but they didn't seem to be craftable with the ingredients available). I had to intentionally get myself killed just so I could go over to the siege tower instead. Is this a bug or am I missing something? Has anyone been able to enter the tents puzzle and emerge alive?

4. I don't know anything about fencing or its terminology, so it was jarring to be thrown into a life-or-death fencing duel without any idea of what the options meant. A fencing tutorial early in the game, like a training session in a guard patrol camp at the outset of the game (which would also have given us the opportunity to get to know and care about Anaria, Lodan, Glusen, and others), for example, would have been great

5. Some of the bar fight pages could be rewritten; a lot of the death scenes were reused for different choices, even when the death scene text on some pages didn't fully match up with what had just happened; when I loop back to a page that I had already been on, the text should acknowledge when something noteworthy had happened already rather than seeming like I had just arrived at that moment for the first time; I was stabbed by Riker even though the knife had just been mentioned as being lodged in the table


The story was compelling and made me care about the characters, so I couldn't help but think of whether there would have been anything that I would have done differently had I written the story. I think it would have gone something like this: the mythical weapon's name would have been Vengeance, instead of a generic name like Blood Blade, to play off of the title and themes of the story, and it could have genuinely wanted to help Arakhan be happy by helping him to get revenge for all of his fallen comrades rather than just being a purely cartoonishly evil entity; the story would have posed the philosophical question of whether getting revenge would truly have made Arakhan happy and the pros and cons of each side; and, finally, Vengeance would let Arakhan make his choice in an epic climax of whether he wants to indulge in his revenge or not.

The story made me wonder what happened to Xavi. Perhaps we can find out in a sequel....

I enjoyed playing Arakhan’s Vengeance. While it had less focus on storytelling, it was supported by great choices, interesting paths, and fun puzzles. It was clear that careful thought was placed into the choices. I liked how your character could branch off into different paths (the death scene with the children and playing cards made me laugh), and I will definitely replay the game for different endings. I also enjoyed how picking up items opened new choices. The world felt well-planned. The story had great grammar and spelling. Although it had quite a few punctuation errors, it didn’t take away the enjoyment. However, one aspect of the game that I felt needed improvement was the writing.

The dialogue was fine. Sometimes, it felt unrealistic (mostly Arakhan’s lines felt very forced). There was good dialogue though, such as Joad’s and Riker’s parts. You did a good job at showing some people’s personalities through their lines, and I felt like you thought about their characters. I liked how you added bits of humor (an example being the bar scene when you hug your right-hand man).

Meanwhile, the writing was simple and got its point across. There were a few somewhat immersive scenes with good descriptions, such as when Arakhan entered the town, saw the destruction, and smelled blood. However, for the most part, I felt that the matter-of-fact description held the story back and caused it to feel bare. It seemed that you often did more telling than showing which made it hard to empathize/connect with Arakhan. I felt like I didn't really get to know him.

For example, when the official messenger told Arakhan what happened to Lyestra, it was meant to be a horrifying moment, but it honestly didn't feel very serious. I felt that more vivid descriptions and a deeper focus on emotions/senses could have enhanced the suspense and tragedy of the news. An example of how it might go is:

. . . at that moment, a (young/old/dark-haired/light-haired) man comes hurtling through the bushes, his (color) cape flying behind him. He stumbles, (color) eyes widening at the sight of you.

You freeze. Your hand falls from your sword. “Adonis?”
“Arakhan!” the man cries, lunging forward and clinging onto your arms. “Thank the gods I’ve found you!” His legs suddenly buckle.

You stumble back from his weight and grab his thin shoulders. “Hey, careful!” you snap.

He trembles against you. Sweat runs down his (pale/tan/dark) skin as he pants, mouth struggling to form words.

“Calm down,” you order, slowly releasing him. “Breathe.”

As Adonis bends over and sucks air into his lungs, questions explode through your mind. Adonis is the official messenger of Lyestra, so it’s not unusual for him to travel around (etc. This is where you can add some background to him, showing why it’s unusual for him to be far out in the woods. For example, where is his horse? Is he dressed appropriately? What does he look like?) He lifts his arm and wipes his forehead against his sleeve. A dark splash of red grabs your attention. You snatch his wrist and stare at the blood seeping through his (insert color) shirt. (END OF EXAMPLE)

In addition, you frequently wrote “you feel/hear/see” or “it appears”, and I felt that it could have been changed so the story feels more immersive. For example, rather than “You feel your heart sink/You feel his hatred wash over you like the tide/He appears to have sustained a nasty cut along his bicep”, it could be, “Your heart sinks/His hatred crashes over you like a tide/Dark blood oozes out from a deep, jagged cut on his bicep.” Or instead of “You are suddenly interrupted by an incredible crashing sound coming from behind you”, it could be:

“Actually, Lodan, about that—”

A sudden crash erupts behind you. (end of example)

At times, I noticed you repeated yourself and could have been more concise. Here are several examples. The first one is when you’re describing the search for goblins. You wrote, “However, you told them you would like to make one last sweep of the area before you return home. You and your men have split up to search the area for any sign of the goblins. You are on your own, in a dense area of the woods. You are searching for any sign that the goblins were here.” I felt like it could have been condensed to: “However, you told them you would like to make one last sweep of the area before you return home, so you have all split up to search for signs of goblins. You are on your own in a dense area of the woods.”

Another example is the description of an arrowhead, which I felt that could’ve been written with fewer sentences. You also kept repeating the word “arrowhead.” I felt that it could have been shortened to something like: “As you stare at the tree, you notice something that had escaped your search before. There is an arrowhead embedded in the trunk of the tree. Someone has snapped off the shaft. You yank it out and notice a small, white feather attached to it. You pull it off and spot a strange symbol painted on it, something you have never seen before. It’s a red, two-headed cobra that fills you with dread.”

Overall, I loved reading the story. I enjoyed the various paths and puzzles, and you clearly worked hard on the choices. Like I said before, I’ll be replaying the story. I only wish it was longer because for how well-planned your world and characters were, the length seemed surprisingly short, like a mini adventure. I felt that the story’s main weakness was the writing. I thought a deeper focus on emotion/the five senses and more detailed descriptions would help the story feel more immersive. I hope you continue writing and submitting more games, and I wish you all the best!

I was surprised to find I never rated this, I definitely remember reading and enjoying it, and well...I commended it?

It's one of the more solid fantasy tales on the site, it's just remained in relative obscurity because it's not QUITE one of the greats. There is some heavy competition in that category after all. But it's an overall entertaining read, and the branching is involved enough to be pretty satisfying--it may take a bit to figure out the best ending. I'd recommend it to anyone.

was quite short, but was a bit of a challenge.

The combat scenes were really getting me hyped up. It felt so much fun reading through the whole barfight. The puzzles were also really cool to solve.

it was fun, but I'm not really of a nonfictional story guy so it was an ok journey

this is so fun but it was confusing too

This is honestly a really fun game! Feels like a video game with all the puzzles and the town to explore and then the quest to wipe out the goblin camp. The fight with the boss felt like it was trolling a little because there's no way to know what all those swordfighting terms mean, but there were other jokes in that confrontation. Also, not sure if you came up with the riddle at the end yourself but I liked that one. I'll have to come back and try for a better ending, I made peace with the red ogre but I didn't like being forced into that, I wish I could've offered to just find the artifact for him.

too hard