Player Comments on Basement Rats

As usual, read the story before letting yourself, and your experience, be spoiled by the reviews.

This story is hard to rate and describe, a Shelleyan patchwork of the fantastic and whimsical on one hand, and mundane, leaning into ennui, on the other. The combination baffled me, leaving me unsure where the narrative led to and what it wanted me to feel.

There was so much unexplained and unreasonable, it felt disassociative. Take the first two pages for example. All the little details gave off a feeling of a peaceful homestead, a calm retreat. A little bit of loneliness seeped in but was overshadowed by the wonders of the stars. Then the second page came in like a sledgehammer with the sentence 'Your existence was unbearable enough as is.' Then, without leaving enough time to let that blunt punch sink in, that too became overshadowed by the sudden arrival of the guests and their ensuing drama, putting your own personality and experience on the backburner. This confused narration marred my first playthrough.

By my second playthrough, I had settled in, became used to this strange universe where people appear out of the void, and hands get burnt by touching the stars, allowing me to appreciate this setting a lot more. As it turns out, when you prioritise your own curiosity above the knocking calls of others, the narrative becomes more structured. I noticed multiple 'offbranches' from the main drama, all essentially being ways to join the world you only knew through books and breaking your solitude.

From those (I think three?), I enjoyed the bigger one, where you join the dead, the most. Aside from the well written and centered tragedy (that contrasted the bizarre elsewhere), I greatly enjoyed the rebranded ending choices that all left you at the rating link. It was a great way to bring the whole ambiance home. The ending where you simply woke up on Earth felt like a cop-out; explaining this unique world as the ravings of a madwoman cheapened the whole, felt more as an afterthought to oppose the otherwise bottlenecked branching.

In the end, I can't help but compliment the writing and all the character you've put in it. Both in writing and theme, this story felt more like a modern twist to the Gothic style of horror, above the modern hauntings and serial killers, and is an unique addition to this category.

Spoiler free review

Dreams are a funny thing, a magical hodgepodge of sometimes the most random stuff your brain yanks from random places in your head as it does what it does for reasons beyond our understanding, only to have us forget about it as soon as we wake up. But sometimes we happen to remember just enough of it to scratch our heads with absolutely no idea what, where, or why. Playing through Basement Rats is very much like waking up from such a dream, and while I genuinely have no idea if you will like it or not, I’m sure enough that after reading it you will be just as uncertain of whether you did or not.

When I first sat down to read Basement Rats I had no idea the most difficult part of reviewing it would actually be forming an opinion about it. It’s not that I don’t have any notes after going through what I believe are all the possible paths one can take, or that I was so bored while reading it that every paragraph evaporated from my memory as soon as I finished reading it, but rather because the whole storygame is so different from what my autistically over analytical brain categorizes as a horror, comedy, drama or anything else that I tried to label it as along the way.

It wasn’t until I reached one of the later endings in my search for a single answer under the avalanche of questions that something clicked, and I realized the similarities between it and the dream that just won’t leave your head after waking up. Don’t get me wrong the whole thing was still just as abstract and nonsensically inconsistent as before, but in a way that I just couldn’t help but accept. I didn’t mind as much how the setting crumbled upon the slightest inspection, or how the sparse background details contradicted each other whenever a new piece of information casually strolled into the sentence, or even how seemingly meaningless most of the first few choices are beyond giving us a chance to read a few more pleasantly confusing pages.

Even the typos and missing words I kept finding every once in a while stopped being that big of a deal while the abrupt endings that half the time do adorn themselves with a big bold END at the bottom of the page, and the other half decide it’s too gaudy and last summer of a thing started to almost make sense. The same strange feeling of making sense could be suddenly applied to the characters, who while numerous are all very surface level to not say one-dimensional as they inexplicably pop into existence only to often vanish out of it just as quickly.

Despite this tendency to blink in and out of the story they don’t fall far behind the protagonist in terms of development, but mostly because of how much of a blank slate she is beyond being just as confused by everything happening as the reader. The only reason I’m even aware the main character is a woman is because of it being mentioned in the game’s tags. This is however for the story’s benefit as a mostly blank protagonist allows people to easily slip into her shoes and experience the absurdity with better immersion, and a fully fleshed out heroine would most likely stand out from everything else in the same way Alpha Hydrae does.

Or perhaps by standing out she would fit in better as ironically being out of place is a big theme of both the setting and the main story. With a green/peach/blue colored Victorian house floating in space, ghosts, children, gods, children of gods who are also gods, and of course rats the plot throws a lot at the reader within its short twelve and something thousand word count. This does mean there is no time to slow down and properly understand what’s happening before another knock at the door tries to pull us towards the next bundle of questions and then do so again and again until we’re finally, and often abruptly, left alone again, just sitting there wondering if we actually read the story to the end, or did we just fall asleep midway through and our brain just grabbed whatever it had lying on the leftover thoughts and ideas shelf to finish it on its own.

In some kind of conclusion Basement Rats is certainly unique, but I don’t know if I’d use that word in a fully positive manner, or even be willing to recommend it to anyone. If however you managed to read through this Tangent wearing Review’s favorite hat, and don’t consider it a waste of time I’m sure that you won’t end up considering sitting down among the rats with a cup of coffee and cinnamon toast in hand a waste of time either.

Final score: 4/8 as utterly meaningless as giving something like this a score is.

If you're not into strange fiction, there's a subpath that is probably the easiest to understand where the theme of loneliness is clear cut and explicitly stated. IMO, all the paths in this story should be experienced, because they're all entertaining and delightfully absurd, but if you want a story with a short and easy conclusion, choose "become dead". The main character talks to Alyda and decides she wants Alyda to take her back to Earth. She chooses to become dead, and jumps off into the space between the porch and nothingness. It's really poignant and beautiful but sad. Then Alyda takes her back to the workshop and gives the main character the choice between Heaven, the Hells, or Earth.

If you want a more cut-and-dried story, choose that branch. But I must stress that you will be missing out on a lot, I think you should read everything, it's definetly worth it.

Carmina's death messed me up lol. I mean, goddamn! We hear so much about Carmina only for her to die and Oberon to just take her soul, just like that!

BASEMENT RATS REVIEW

When writing reviews for storygames, I always try to capture the emotions that I felt and the mental state that the story left me in. After all, when I write a review for a story, it’s usually because the story left some kind of impact on me, and this review is a way for me to process the story and my journey reading through it.

Sometimes it’s easy. After an adventure story, I might be feeling triumphant or pumped. After a sad story, I might be feeling depressed. After a long story, I might feel enchanted by the world.

Other times it’s difficult. Particularly with more abstract stories. Basement Rats by MadHattersDaughter is the latter type of story.

Throughout my time on this site, I’ve noticed that MHD’s stories always have this certain element of weirdness and oddity to them that adds to the charm of the story. I guess the best way to describe them is whimsical. MHD stories create a wonderful atmosphere that causes the ordinarily discerning and critical reader to be fully absorbed into a strange and unknown world, and at the end of it, feel as though they experienced something special, yet not know how to express it.

MHD’s stories are also always poignant and reflective in a rather thoughtful way, which I enjoy. But that makes reviewing them somewhat difficult because more than the plot or the characters in this story, my main takeaway was the emotion and atmosphere created by this strange story.

The setting, worldbuilding, characters, mental monologue, unanswered questions, mysteries, and art all come together to create this effect in a most pleasing way. By the end of this story, I felt somewhat lost and confused, and mildly depressed. More than horror, this story touches on feelings of isolation and experiencing an existential crisis, of abandonment and not knowing your place in the world.

Characters randomly appear and disappear like fragments of a long forgotten memory briefly resurfacing from the depths of the mind, only to vanish back into the abyss of the subconsciousness.

There is something odd about the setting that really accentuates this whole otherworldly vibe the story is trying to approach. The planet doesn’t orbit a sun. It’s a green Victorian style house on a random planet. There’s no day and night. The juxtaposition of the victorian style architecture with this strange dead zone in outer space is an effective narrative tool that makes this story feel weird.

I like how the story depicted the loneliness and the vastness of the cold expanse of space. Phrases like “float endlessly among the sea of stars that were always barely out of your reach” and “the closest star to you was several million miles away” are examples of how to use setting to establish mood and tone right.

The main character is a seemingly friendly person, but also simultaneously antisocial because of their deep isolation over the years. The odd ways she thinks about and interacts with the world are shown in some of the most random encounters. For instance, she’s scared of a trick or treater, and she says “child or not, it might have still been here to pillage your home and murder you anyway”, which is an odd way to react to seeing a trick or treater. Then again, her house is completely inaccessible, so maybe that is a perfectly reasonable reaction? Or even a bit of both? Also the way she offers Alyda a cup of coffee because she thinks “that’s how humans interact with each other”.

The strange cast of otherworldly beings adds another layer to this work. Till now the main character has lived in isolation, but all of a sudden, all these strange characters start traipsing through her house as though it’s perfectly normal. Vida, Oberon, Carmina, Alyda, and Melloney are all really interesting, and the story takes time to show us these characters through dialogue and interactions with the main character, rather than rushing them by. Understandably, the main character is driven crazy by the odd way these characters act and the seeming entitlement they have towards her home. Or at least some of them. When the main character says “What the hells is going on!”, I actually laughed out loud while reading this because she captured my thoughts perfectly. It feels like random stuff keeps happening with little to no explanation and I feel fascinated but lost.

Despite the oddness and frequently diverging branches, some themes remain constant. Loneliness and isolation is an important part of this work, and if you’ve ever felt so alone that you’d wish someone would talk to you, anyone, even if it was to insult or berate you, then you’d resonate with this work. This work captures the feelings of loneliness and isolation in the depths of space well.

This story doesn’t feel like horror, it’s more of speculative fiction. Or even Weird Fiction, which is an actual subgenre of Speculative Fiction, that originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Slipstream and Surrealistic fiction are also subgenres that fall under the umbrella of speculative fiction. This story embodies some of these subgenres because more than the plot itself, the vibe and general atmosphere of weirdness, almost the feeling of being in a waking dream, is the hallmark of this work. Basement Rats is a must read, and I’m excited to read more by MHD.

TLDR: It's really odd and weird, and you’re not going to understand where the story is going with the overall narrative, but stick with it and it will become a great and memorable story that you’ll definitely re-read! I highly recommend everyone check this one out. It’s a conglomerate of several fascinating themes and ideas that all mesh together well in this strange setting of a house situated on the edge of the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy.

in my point of view, I didn't get the meaning of the story Maby just because it's for fiction and imagining or something and some annoying agendas like two women kissing as I understand but on the bright side its good for improving imagination if I rate it, I will probably give it 10/4

Weord and real interesting

I feel like I just woke up from a fever dream after reading this story. The best part of the story was the smooth and elegant phrasing throughout. I also enjoyed the many literary references, whether intentional or not (A Wrinkle in Time, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, etc.). On the other hand, some parts of the story, particularly toward the end, felt incomplete, while many choices made no real difference in the story. Overall, a solid story, with enjoyable pictures to boot (though I, like others, also wished that every page had been illustrated).

amazing. 10/10

i wish i had a twitch account with lots of followers to have seen how much i enjoyed this. thank you xx.

I don't really get it but it was cool I guess

I have to agree with enterpride on the fact that this story is hard to describe and even harder to rate. It’s a patchwork of little stories stitched into one large story. At my first read, I found it incredibly hard to wrap my head around. Characters winked in and out of existence just like the stars the protagonist so dearly loved, and the whimsical aspects of the house itself was both charming and intriguing. The universe that Basement Rats occupies is not one to be understood but to be experienced. The protagonist’s thoughts, bleeding from topic to topic and emotion to emotion, were confusing to navigate at first.

Though the story, for the most part, was nonsensical, it was still enjoyable. I loved how the characters were described and each one felt like their own person, unlike a lot of whimsical stories of the same design. I especially liked Oberon’s dialogue! The house, though sparsely described, definitely reflected the character’s own traits. There were many small details in the story that I think most readers would overlook, but the overall story (if you could call it that?) was charming and somewhat comforting. In the tangling mess of intertwining inter-character relationships, there was still always the urgency of the basement rats and how to give the children treats.

I enjoyed the illustrations, but I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed at the lack of art further into the story. Though minimalist, they did their job, and helped bring my interest to the protagonist’s surroundings. However, the longer the story dragged on, the more my interest began to slip. I enjoyed reading about the characters, but without some sort of driving force in the protagonist to accomplish one single task or a sense of duty, it felt like the story was rambling on and on about all these characters and pushing the protagonist into the background, almost reversing their importance. Whether or not this was intentional, I can’t tell, but it confused me for the most part. I wanted to learn more about the protagonist--why she was in the void of space, all alone, stuck with the rats and cold coffee and shelves of books.

Overall, this was a good read for such a short story, and full of that childhood whimsy one would associate with Halloween. MHD definitely establishes her skill in Basement Rats and I look forward to reading more!

MHD has a very good sense of humour and oniric storytelling. However, this story feels flat compared to her previous works. It has weird pacing that drags on the story and makes the last few twist unbelievable. Still, the writing is solid with good prose and Characters like Oberon are a solid addition.

To start things off, naturally, the art is great. Just a few objects and setpieces, really, but they're well-drawn objects and setpieces. Can't fault anything about that.

I felt like I was reading the transcript of a nonsensical dream. Though I am sure this is the intended effect, it did give me some trouble understanding exactly what was going on. At the same time, the nonsense was very humorous and I can get behind that.

One gripe I cannot forgive, though, is in my playthough, I only experienced one singular basement rat, which I gave to a small child. By this reasoning, the story should have been called "Basement Rat". If anything, I experienced ice-solid frozen coffee more often than rats, so maybe it should have been called "Frozen Coffee". Unforgivable.

6/8, pretty good.

I hate to say it, but this story completely lost my interest several pages in. There was much repetition but not much plot: happily floating through space, unexpected guests ringing the doorbell, no one offering any compelling answers, but also no one posing an intriguing question. Rinse and repeat.

The writing itself is fine, with whimsical tones and all that. It's just that the story failed to engage me, not in the way some of MHD's past stories have.

I'm also going to brave one more criticism: we all know how well (and quickly, and frequently) MHD can whip out witty drawings, all of them imaginative and well executed. The illustrations here, though, are about as interesting as clip art.

My challenge to the author, then, is to create a storygame in which the illustrations and the story itself compete with other in terms of which is the better. The story should inspire more dynamic drawings; the drawings highlight the richness of the story.

One of the reasons I loved the original CYOA book series was because of the illustrations; not only would I read the stories, but I'd flip through the book and study the artwork. Often I'd find an intriguing illustration, and then keep rereading the story until I found the path that led to it. In other words: a well-written story couple with awesome drawings is nothing short of awesome.

Given how well I know MHD can draw, my expectations for her self-illustrated stories are certainly higher than this.

This was an adventure in, well, somewhere. It certainly created some vivid pictures and sparked the imagination of the reader as the story started and as it unfolded. It creates quite a different reality from the very beginning, but at the same time ends up with some very similar problems involving rats and other unwanted guests.

MHD does an excellent job of mixing up the story, combining the incredibly outrageous with the boring hum-drum in a way that makes perfect sense, at least while you’re reading this story. While there may not be a tremendous number of choices, this is still quite an entertaining story with conversations that shouldn’t make sense, but completely do. It is sort of a cross between the Twilight Zone and Monty Python in a strange way.

When you do read this gem, do take your time so that you don’t miss anything – there is quite a bit packed into a small space here. If you read too fast, you’ll likely miss some of the fun. Great job with this one, MHD, I loved it!

A short and entertaining tale with nice illustrations (as one might anticipate, coming from MHD). Spelling and grammar is controlled. The story has a couple endings following from one arc. The order of conversation and answering the door changes the choices sometimes, lending variance to the story.

Thoughts about happenings in the book follow. The way Oberon's speech is unquoted and unstyled is really neat; it feels like his speech is simply a fact of the universe. I thought the MC switching from not feeling lonely to feeling very lonely was a bit quick.

Overall, a good game and for its brevity, little reason not to try it.