Bound by Light

General Recommendation: A short game surrounding a paladin’s quest to defeat some demons, and deal with the complexities surrounding his oath to never lie. Very linear, but well written overall.
Preview: Can you defeat the demons without forsaking your oaths?

=SPOILERS BELOW=

General notes:
At 5000 words, this game is too short for much scope of plot or characters, but by focusing on the paladin’s internal conflict and relationship with Rigg, the game avoids seeming too shallow. This relationship gives the reader something to latch on to and adds depth to the narrator, who would otherwise come across as much more two-dimensional.
That said, in a game so short there’s only so much characterization that can be done; Rigg and the narrator are both archetypes rather than original characters of their own. The narrator’s character arc feels more like an outline than a completely believable journey, it’s not really clear what about this specific encounter has made him change his ways.
I really like that this game approaches the “lawful good” concept from the angle of when it is good and lawful to break your oaths. Too many lawful good characters wind up acting stuffy and overbearing and arrogant because authors think that “lawful good” means “self-righteous”. The narrator here starts off this way for sure, but this game is about his growing towards someone with a more complex and nuanced understanding of true morality.
What I don’t like is that the player doesn’t even get to make this choice themselves. It’s a pivotal moment in the game, and those moments should always be left up to the reader.
This game would work better as a short story than a game. There’s only two actual choices. I recommend reformating and rewriting it as a short story.

Specific notes:
-Could use some more dialogue tags.
-The intro sequences does a good job establishing the narrator’s personality and life situation.
-I like the implication that the paladin is incapable of subtlety. Oh, it seems he’s acatually oathbound to always tell the truth. That’s an interesting concept for a character, I’m curious to see where this goes.
-I like the comparison between serving gold and the gods.
-This story is very linear so far. I recommend trying to get the player’s first choice earlier in the game.
-The bad guy’s origin and motives are never eally explained. Due to the short length, and the fact that readers will be familiar with the concept of motivelessly evil demons, it’s not a huge issue.
-Why exactly does the narrator think Rigg is trying to kill him? He has zero reason to think that.

Grammar:
There’s a few typos but the grammar is generally fine.
Mastery of Language:
The dilogue itself is fine, but there’s a noticable lack of dialogue tags and description attached to it. I recommend working on tagging your dialogue with charcter actions and a few tags other than “says”.
The sentence structure is fine, there’s no issues and it flows well. There’s nothing particularly good or clever about it, it just serves its purpose.

Branching:
None, it’s a linear game.

Player Options/fair choice:
Quite good, it’s always clear what the choices mean.

WRITING ADVICE:
I recommend reformating this into a short story, since it’s really not a storygame.

CONCLUSION: I like the concept and writing for this game. If it were longer and less linear I’d probably rate it a 5. 4/8 for the linearity.

I enjoyed the contrast between the protagonist and Riggs, and their banter was interesting. I also liked the straight, oath-keeping paladin archetype. The story was short, so there wasn't a lot to do, but it was still a believable adventure.

On the first page I was overjoyed to see the word "discreet" used correctly. Often times people say "discrete" instead. But then on the second page, my heart was crushed by the word, "discreate," which means to unmake or destroy. I'm kidding, of course, as it's obviously just a little typo. Joking aside, my one real criticism is that the ending seemed a bit anti-climactic. SPOILERS!!!! You break your oath and stab a guy in the back. That in and of itself could be interesting, but there was no real explanation for why the villain was there, where his power came from, and what his motives were. And the final battle seemed mostly out of your hands.

Nevertheless, this was a fun little jaunt, with it strongest trait the characters themselves. There's always room for this kind of dynamic, and it was handled well. Best of all was that Riggs ends up having a sort of honor after all, despite the protagonist's initial judgments. He may have not been sworn to any god or king, but his oath seems to be toward righteousness nonetheless. /SPOILERS!!!

The story isn't long, and it's fun. Would recommend.

Ah yes, you were asking for some plot pointers right? One thing I like to do above all else is to plan out character relationships and conflict. What I can easily tell is that the main crux of the story is between the evolving relationship between the palladin and Rigg.

Overall, I like the set up of their dynamic, you being the straight man with a stiff upperlips and Rigg, being the lovable choatic rogue type.

However, a lot of the most vital turning points of their relationship is actually told, not shown to the reader. There are also leaps of logic as if some part of the story was cut. Let's disect it with the various turning points in their relationship.

TURNING POINT 1
In the beginning of the journey, the palladin and Rigg argue, both of them don't seem to like each other. Then we all of a sudden have this line:

"After that the ride grew quiet. You aren't sure if maybe you're being too hard on Rigg, he is risking his life after all, but just the thought of him makes you sick in your stomach."

This could have been a brilliant line, but it is a little misplaced, no? Rigg hadn't done anything yet to warrant a change in heart.

It would have been better if they were ambushed by some momsters during their ride. Then have Rigg choose to not leave the palladin behind and use his knowledge of these monsters and the lands to get them out of their hairy situation. (This was the reason why Rigg was chosen after all, it saddens me that this fact wasn't used in the story at its fullest potential.)

TURNING POINT 2: prejudice

This passage irks me the most.

"You look at Rigg and see a fire in his eyes. What motive could he have for wanting you to continue on now? He's just a mercenary, he should want to make the job shorter. Did you misjudge him? As you ponder this a dark thought enters your head. You don't want to believe it, but it's the only explanation.

"Tell me mercenary," your eyes darken, "you only took this job so that you could kill me, isn't that right?""

..... why? Even the story seems aware of this leap in logic. I know that the palladin thinks badly of mercenaries, but Rigg has so far done nothing to warrant such a suspicion. Any regular person would think that a person close to him was killed by similar beasts or something or that he has some kind of trauma related to it.

However, this COULD have worked if there were some red herrings and seeds of doubt thrown around with Rigg doing all kinds of suspicious stuff like pick pocketing his possessions, knowing things that a normal mercenary shouldn't know of, see him with a letter addressed to another lord etc.

Place some rumors in the tavern that a mercenary has left his employer to die during a raid to sow some doubt in the palladin's mind.

Think just of something believable that can also be later explained at a later point. Make this the biggest part of their tension. (You can already show some small signs of the palladin's distrust of him by keeping close watch to his money and sword etc. Prejudice is not only yelling at them or something, it ties back to every single part of your actions. Unconsciously and consciously.)

TURNING POINT 3
Most of it is executed well enough that I don't have much to comment on. However, something that would have made the story even better is to have the villain's motivation be closely tied to the main theme of the story. (That is, prejudice and trust.) That is the reason why one will want to use a villain after all to show the contrast between him and the protagonist. Now, the villain is kind of your own average cackling mr. Evil for the feelz.

The moment the palladin broke his oath is I think the climax of the story, or it should have been the one. It would have made so much more impact if the decision to break the oath or not was made by the player. This choice represents the ultimate question "Were the teachings of the palladins more important to him than his companion and his new desires and changed beliefs?"

EXTRA POINTERS FOR LACK OF CHOICES AT THE BEGINNING
Perhaps you could break up the text in dialogue choices where you cholse how to respond to Rigg and all. Look at other storygames for examples how to spice up these parts. There is also a lot of good info on the forums as well.

All in all, a pretty entertaining story. I also spotted some grammar error and spelling mistakes, so try to prooofread it again at a later date. I hope that this advice would hslp you in your next writing ventures. Good luck!

That seemed pretty short but reasonably immersive and detailed, a fair amount of effort put into it. A little too linear and too short, the concept could have been developed further but not a bad effort.

Well written and easy read. Fairly linear, but decent character development, at least for the protag. Some additional options would nice, particularly towards the end.

This is a very interesting game and I recomend it to you too.

A decent entry. It need some polish though. There are more than a few spelling errors. I also wish there were more choices then just one that ends the story early and two different endings.

6/10

This story has very few choices--about two or three--and suffer from the problem of the choices being defined by "do the thing or run away"--and run away leads to the end of the game. Of course, if you do the thing, the game also ends, but, well, this is a really short game.

More to the point, I don't think the game is able to establish a hook at the start to catch and maintain reader interest.

Prosewise, I think using spellcheck would be a good thing. Also, I would work on bits like "You realize that he must be the one you came for. Cautious, you approach his table and sit down, "Are you who I came for?" A pretty big chunk of this story had workmanlike prose which felt--I want to say, plodding, sentence-wise.

I'm not sure, in short, that the set-up gives the reader quite enough reason to care about the consquences of the few choices that follow.

I'm not sure if I really have a say in rating story games, but I think that the story was interesting. However, it would've been more entertaining if there were more options/branches to the game. It is really good!

You has improved a lot. Still this game is too linear and static. Another issue is that you tend to repit same verbs and words a lot in the paragraph a example

"I appreciate it greatly. He is in the Great Oak Tavern at the edge of the city waiting on you. You can leave immediately."

As he leaves you pack the essentials. You grab your sword off its stand and walk toward the door. As you leave you frown to yourself, "What a troublesome assignment."


You used to much the word leave.

Overall, well done. You are improving