Player Comments on Avoiding Termination

Avoiding Termination takes us through a fresh college graduate’s experience in becoming a successful teacher. There are three schools to choose from — a prestigious boarding school, a public high school with a high turnover rate, and a middle-of-the-pack local school. At first, I decided to play through these in order of presentation, and then I realized that the three choices on the first page are nothing but an illusion to railroad you into picking the public high school. More on my very strong opinion of fake-out choices later!

You make various decisions to manage your classroom and tend to your flock of unruly students, especially a certain troublemaker named Jaxon. You’re also presented with various characters to chat with, many of them romanceable. There’s a lighthearted tone throughout it all, with bizarre twists and turns that can send you straight to an End Game page if you slip up. I think this story starts with a decent amount of steam, and for certain branches it keeps the train chugging along and is a satisfying read. I unfortunately don’t think I can say the same about many of the other branches.

One “bug” I noticed: after you stop the students in the chemistry lab from messing with their equipment, “stop them” is still an option on the “browse the internet” page, which causes a loop (albeit avoidable).

** CHARACTERS **
Of all of the characters you run into Avoiding Termination, I really only found myself invested in Celeste and her nephew Jaxon, as well as Jaxon’s trashy mother. These appeared to me as the most dynamic of the bunch, especially the latter two. I found myself wishing the other members of the cast got nearly as much effort put into their realization. That’s not to say that they are poorly written, they’re just not…written enough. They can feel one-sided at times, and I struggle to care about them. This is another major reason why I liked the Celeste storyline the most here.

I do think the author set up a nice canvas for the protagonist by introducing so many approaches for him to navigate the school, its students, and his coworkers. You can be a very by-the-book teacher that runs his class like it’s the Navy, or you can be a no-fucks-given bum that gets kicked out for straight up jerkin’ it in his class. This is one of the strong points of Avoiding Termination in my opinion.

** WRITING **
The branching is well done, lots of decisions that either lead to zany one-off moments or the termination you’ve been trying to avoid (roll credits) this whole time. Except for ONE certain instance, the author gives the reader a lot of agency with their approach to the world, which I like.

A lot of the writing here is concise, with some pages being literally a few spaced-out sentences long, at the cost of any real flavor or investment in the story. Most of the branches didn’t have anything to reel me in and keep my interest long enough. I only really cared about Jaxon because I stumbled through the Celeste storyline first so I was already familiar with his lore by the time I played through the other paths. It’s disappointing, because things did start out strong…well, sort of. There was a MAJOR issue I had with the very beginning.

Start rant. Right off the bat, I’m met with my absolute least favorite trope in CYOA games: false choices on the first page. Starting with the boarding school application, you quickly discover that the school isn’t even open yet, and the game prompts you to try your luck at the public school instead. Refusing to be railroaded on page 2 of the story, I just went back and chose the average-looking middle/high school only to be met with…my DEATH. Looks like the struggling public school is the only safe option! Teehee!

Do not put effort into advertising multiple options on the first page when you only intend the audience to choose one of them. Just start us at the high school and give us a sensible choice with actual weight on the story in some other introduction. End rant.

Now, rant aside, I think Avoiding Termination can seriously find room for improvement in its prose. Like I’ve said before, the writing here is squeaky clean and free from most SPAG issues, but there are many missed opportunities for immersion. Let’s take something small like the interview at the school, for example. As written, the author outright explains that the interview goes “without incident” and yippee, you’re hired! Sure, you can do that, but if the school has all the issues it was advertised to have, maybe have those issues leak into the interview a bit more. Maybe have *an* incident happen, or have a slip-up on the principal’s behalf that could establish the setting and what a slice of life in the school might look like as foreshadowing. Flavor and spice!

I know the author can do this, because they have a solid setup of this world and they’re able to be entertaining in a punchy, quirky, satirical way. If they added some more spices into the pot, this could be a tasty dish, but now it feels like an overpriced frozen dinner — hot and satisfying for a few bites, then chewy and humid for the rest.

** RATING **
There is a lot of potential for Avoiding Termination, and I don’t want to write it off as a bad game at all. I think this is a decent read to blitz through, some storylines more than others. You’ll likely laugh at some of the bits (I think the flirting options are funny at times) and the read is overall a net positive. If there was more meat on the bones, this could be a much greater experience.

For its highlights and the obvious effort put in, I give this a 5/8.

Spoiler-free review

This game is surprisingly good at first impressions. It quickly pulls you in with a promise of a satirical slice-of-life adventure full of fun and unexpected twists, and it doesn’t at any point lie by making that promise. Unfortunately despite what some people say first impressions aren’t quite everything, and despite its best attempts the deeper into Avoiding Termination the reader gets, the flatter its story falls.

It doesn’t however change the fact that the creative foundations of this storygame are solid. The basic premise of being a fresh graduate starting his journey as the other member of this educational tango offers plenty of opportunities for entertaining events along the way, and the author definitely makes full use of it. This creativity is somewhat stifled by more technical aspects however. Narration, while by no means bad, feels barebones for most of the game, only providing the necessities in terms of worldbuilding and characterization. This problem does extend to characters, who while varied and distinct feel quite one dimensional for most of the story with some exceptions.

The protagonist is similarly basic, but thanks to the significant amount of choices present in the story and their frequency it’s easy to overlook it and instead treat him as a blank canvas for the reader to paint on as they wish. Those choices are definitely the strongest aspect of the game, especially thanks to the unpredictability of their results. There’s a solid mix of branching, false choices and bad ends sprinkled across the story. As you play there’s often no way to tell which choice opens up a completely new path that shines a new light on some characters and which will goes straight to an early game over screen, and the few times your decisions will result in the most obvious of outcomes it still feels fresh due to those results being only part of the cake.

Despite those positives however there are times when the game feels lacking in content, and overall doesn’t quite give the impression of being as long as the word count suggests. This is another blemish resulting from sparse narration and worldbuilding, which might not outright hurt the story itself, but this lack of depth feels like a waste considering that a little bit of extra color could easily make the linework pop.

As it currently stands Avoiding Termination is a decent enough piece of creative work that’s held back from being a true gem by the regretful lack of polish past the first draft, but even in its rough state there’s some good fun to be had navigating the maze of social situations it weaves in front of the reader.

Final score: 5/8

I enjoyed the premise, although more interaction with characters, and a longer story with more teaching decisions would've been nice.

It's really not that bad ...I love the multiple affairs it has

The ending I got was "The Romantic." Was there ever any doubt?
Cool story. Easy to read and good pacing. Well worth it.

This story was a lot of fun to read

awwwwwwwwww Celeste is so wholesome

This is a very flawed game. Its choices don't branch out much and its writing is bland, but somehow I found myself enjoying it. My main problem with this game is it's writing and the length. The characters have no time to be fleshed-out due to short length, the story is bland, choices loop back to each other constantly, etc. I feel the writer could have made this game perfect if he/she simply put more effort into branching out the choices and made a longer game so the characters could shine more.

My final verdict is a 5 out of 8. It's fun thankfully, but it needs some improvement.

Super fun! I like how many choices are in the story. The “flirting” was terrible though xD super cheesy

I like all the different endings. Good work!

I possibly got a short story, but it was incredibly small. It could also use some more details but it had an ok idea. The story dose deviate.

Despite not having much plot to speak of, it was pretty great! Flirting with my fellow teachers was hilarious!

Well, it was alright. It lost my attention after some time since it was a bit boring. Anyways, you should have added some more humour, and made it more detailed. Otherwise, it is a somewhat interesting read. It's not the best, but it isn't the worst either.

Absolutely terrible

This was definitely enjoyable! I got a good ending my first go-around, but the thing about this is... It's just so short. Main characters that you introduced were interesting enough, and development was acceptable. Though this game has many diverging paths, and multiple endings, it doesn't deliver a really good story.
The grammar was pretty good, except for some questionable parts where you missed a word, but from my read-through plural, I didn't notice any misspelled words, so that's good.
In the beginning of the game, it was quite obvious and evident that we were meant to go to ONE school, and not three, which would have made for a very diverse and interesting game.
I really liked your Jaxon character, and I did my best to befriend him, as it was also pretty obvious he was dubbed the 'trouble maker' from a bad home life. Regardless of several obvious cliches in the game, it was enjoyable, and I hope to read more like this.

Enjoyable. Punctuation issues make the reading a little difficult at times. Misleading - your choice may be what you would do, but the words the creator chose might be way over the top.

Meh it was ok

Decent game. Like others have pointed out, it was a bit lacking in substance, but the plot was clear from the start, and the endings gave a satisfying conclusion.

Not too much else to say on it really.

Oakwood is the only school you can apply to.

This felt like the bare bones of an amusing tale. Longer, more detailed pages would have done wonders. I like the sense of humor, I almost chuckled into my fist once but I managed to stop myself before it escaped.

Overall well done. You've inspired me with the path where you accidentally become a janitor; a janitor would be an interesting protagonist.

Nice story.

I was really engrossed in the beginning, but some of the blatantly rushed endings were kind of disappointing.

Great job. I knew you could do it.