Before the Pattern Breaks

Before the Pattern Breaks is a short and interesting read about a researcher who discovers a pattern in history and uses her knowledge to attempt to prevent a calamity from occurring. It's quite a decent premise backed by some good writing. A good first story game by the author.

<<SPOILERS AHEAD>>

WRITING:

The writing in this one has a sort of breakneck pacing that constantly keeps the story moving forward. Dialogues and introspection are kept mostly to a minimum with narration mostly focusing on detailing the events that happen in a broad manner. This style kind of fit the frantic premise of attempting to get your research done before its too late so I thought that it was a very smart stylistic choice. I do wish we got more information on the research itself outside of vague references to fractals and patterns though.

In terms of SPAG, there were a few rare errors (Typo with you being used instead of your and I'm also sure there was a place where the author used "y'all" within the narration). Despite that, it was mostly a smooth and pleasant read.

CHARACTERS:

What little development the main character received was done very well. I loved the recurring dream being used as a tool to remind the reader what the stakes were for the protagonist. Her interactions with Quinn also humanize her. I liked how she used the concepts from her research to explain how close Quinn was to her. This had the double effect of establishing their relationship while also showing how present the research was in the protagonist's mind.

Quinn herself is an interesting character too. Characters in story games tend to be pretty moody with the whole "make a choice against them and they won't help you later" idea to promote branching but in this regard Quinn surprised me. I tried to pick all the choices that would dissuade her from helping the protagonist but she still seeks Ava out and helps her anyway. While this meant that the amount of effective branches that the story game had reduced, it did make Quinn instantly more likeable. It's an interesting way to characterize a character across branches.

I did think the other researchers, Alyssa and Liam felt a bit more vestigial. They didn't seem to have much of an impact on the story.

STRUCTURE:

There's a lot of choices, but not a lot of branching. You basically either succeed or fail in putting together a team for your research which in turn leads to a good or bad ending. While I do appreciate that some of the potential for branching was cut in favor of maintaining consistency in characterization, I still think this game feels a bit too linear. It gets away with being a decent read because it is short but were it longer, I might have found the multiple false choices frustrating.

In conclusion, I congratulate the author on making a respectable debut to the site. This is easily a 5/8 in my opinion. Welcome aboard!

For me this was a somewhat weird experience. It is good to see fractals and epidemiology come up in an edutainment game. On the other hand the way in which this sort of research is portrayed as pattern matching, makes it less cool than it is in reality.

Anyway, the factual basis aside the writing was really good and engaging. Though it was a very short story. So overall this was a nice experience although some aspects (dying mother and all) seemed to poke at the seems of the story a little bit.

Some good stories appearing on the site lately :D The beginning of this one is very well-written and the main character is obviously very absorbed in her fractals (whatever they may be). Solely focusing on my dream seems to push me into a loop but the rest of the story develops well. It’s intriguing to think that Covid could have been predicted based on analysis of historical pandemic patterns (actually, the last big one Spanish Flu – which actually started in the USA but you know how some people are – was in 1918 and I read these things come around every century or so).

The short sentences add to the tension and it’s nice to see Quinn come back into the story. The ending is just painful, so well-written and well-linked to the beginning (was the dream a self-fulfilling prophecy or a premonition? We’ll never know…). One thing you could have done – but I’m glad you didn’t – is have more memories of the main character with her mother to make the ending more heart-wrenching but I think it was tragic enough. Your use of the sources appears to be good and thorough and the true information blended nicely with the story.

Good job on this one. It was well-planned and written and made a nice closed loop. It could have been expanded more: the main character could have tried to warn government officials of the impending pandemic and the scale it would grow to, but within its limits it was very well-done. I would rate it a 6/8 because of its fairly short length but within that length you did everything well - like Mizal said, this would have been a great entry for the recently-finished Edutainment contest!

this is a great story that the author has obviously put serious work into. i like the premise but would have loved it to go on longer. i played for two different endings which both made sense given my choices. there were a few spelling mistakes but nothing major. overall, i'd love to see more from this author in the future.

Damn, too bad you missed the contest, this would've been a decent entry. Interesting subject, could be longer but honestly I'm impressed enough at someone showing up knowing how dialogue punctuation works.