Bomb Mission

Synopsis:
Play as a secret agent, part of an organisation tasked by their leader to defuse a bomb that could kill millions. When your companions choose to run instead of facing the threat, it’s up to you to beat the guys in blue and save the city!

Positives:
-For a game this short, there is a lot of branching. Primarily there is a single point of divergence which pivots on your choice to go to the bomb or try to flee: most games would have just sent you straight to the bomb, but the fact I could gave a humorous escapade escaping the explosion was pretty fun too. As well as this, even though I sometimes read the same thing, my previous choices had an impact even if they returned to one of the bigger branches. For example: waiting five minutes at the start means you have far less time to escape the city. Thus even though most of that branch is the same, the ending is radically altered by your laziness.
-Good job on Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling: but more praise should go to the tone of the narrator. While I had some issues with the sentence structure at times (discussed later) the humorous tone was a great juxtaposition to the severity of the situation. Not exactly laugh out loud funny, this did at least make me giggle.

Things to improve:
-I’ve played through all the paths I can find, with all the prevariabled conditions, and I can’t find anywhere that explains the blue guy’s motives. One of the ‘leaving the city’ paths points to the fact that these are discoverable, but they remain illusive. This might be me being stupid, but if it’s not then I feel this is a huge detriment to the story.
-All of the ‘A’ characters are unlikeable, apart from A5, who I grew attached to. I understand having them all would have been way too confusion for a text this small, but some explanation of what they were doing instead of ‘being cowards’ would have made this clandestine group feel more competent.
-Sone if your sentences run on too long. There are entire paragraphs with no sentence variation, making some parts monotonous to read. Try varying your sentence structure somewhat, it’ll improve your writing to no end!

Overall this is a well written storygame that proves you don’t need a sprawling narrative to make a fun experience. Sometimes the simplest things are the best.

I’ll begin with a disclaimer: I’m not a professional writer by any means, nor am I a seasoned reviewer, so do conduct your own research and bear in mind that not everything here may be correct. As for potential readers, beware of spoilers galore.
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There’s a pretty simple premise, and this storygame manages to hold my attention until the end. It’s funny, amusing and makes for a nice short read. The flippant, nonchalant reaction of the main character to the bomb in the secondary paths made me laugh. One thing I find refreshing is that picking the choice which doesn’t lead to the bomb mission still has a few other scenes of its own. I usually don’t like it when other writers include early and badly written death scenes, something that fortunately does not exist in this storygame.

The main character is well characterized too. Throughout the narrative, this character has motives, viewpoints, and an unbothered (therefore humorous) outlook on the death of an entire city. I’ve just written a review for another storygame before this, and I notice something rather fascinating: while that storygame’s humour stems from the dramatization of a normally low-stake situation, this one is derived from the characters’ dismissal of an extremely high-stake event. Both of these work well.

As expected, the central plot-line revolves around actually stopping the bomb. The author has a good grasp on humour, whether through the use of situational irony or verbal irony, and this adds to the entertainment value. It’s quite interesting to read about a spy in a smaller-scale agency rather than the usual unbelievably powerful ones depicted in movies.

A minor nitpick would be that a bit of proofreading may help (but honestly, I could say the same for most storygames; including— or rather, especially— my own). One instance of this is when the main character sees ‘an opening in the group of men’. Another suggestion from me is that you could add a bit more suspense in order to raise the stakes higher.

One thing I liked was that even after the bomb was deactivated, you still had to escape from the blue guys. There’s always just the right amount of things occurring without there being too much (which confuses the readers) or too little (which makes them bored).

I’d like to end this by saying that if you’ve read through this whole review, you could have spent the time reading the storygame instead (which would have probably been a much better use of your time anyway). It’s engaging and doesn’t take too long.

Nice and light storygame. Not a lot of time investment is needed to enjoy playing. Easy to read, uncomplicated plot. Worth reading for a quick burst of entertainment.

Bomb mission!! Cute short story.

I found the options to just ignore the mission to be rather humorous. The writing wasn't bad either. Thus I wouldn't mind going back to properly resolve things in this story-game.