DRIVE

Disclaimer: to the author, take everything in this review with a grain of salt. I’m not a professional writer and only somewhat of a seasoned reviewer. To the readers, this review will contain some spoilers, so I implore you to read the storygame first.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

There's no description, so going into the story, I have no idea what to expect.

The first page is very strong. It starts with a burn, the literal and metaphorical wound of the past—this shows that it has had a lasting physical and emotional impact on the protagonist's life. Then, the flashback. I liked how it all seemed to point towards one conclusion—death, or at least a severe injury—but what happened was equally as bad.

The scream confused me, as I believed the first part was a flashback. Then the italicized text was revealed to be a voice in the protagonist’s head who wanted to be avenged. It’s also implied to be the brother.

Random incomplete sentence: “Vance lies down next to you, wiping the snot.”

I like the chemistry between the characters and how they’re able to joke with and comfort one another, despite the situation. And Nat, the protagonist, is characterized well—even though she wants to be with Vance, she’s holding back as she believes she would just subject him to the torture. This relationship carries the story forward, making both characters appear more likable, getting the reader to root for them.

WRITING STYLE & SETTING

There’s a lot of strong worldbuilding in the story. I enjoyed the glimpses of the sci-fi setting, along with offhand references to past events (aliens invading, helicopters being extinct). There were lots of futuristic terms used that could be guessed through context cues, e.g. the Sponsor, Big Buck 138, Walkway 374. I'm glad the story didn't stop to over-explain things in an infodump.

Still, if I were being nitpicky, I’d say too much of the prose focused on description that sometimes overpowered the narrative. After all, do we need to know everything about the walkways and abyss? A piece of helpful advice I once read was that if you choose to describe something, you’re drawing the reader’s attention to that. And readers have limited attention spans. Thus, make sure description is either paired with action or dialogue, or is made relevant to the plot (e.g. character has to find a place to hide, or needs to know the layout of the venue for a future choice, or is describing a meaningful location).

“The game simulated recoil, imperfectly, as you knew from experience, and the noise—was quite lacking, since it was an arcade, with audio splashing you from all sides.” I like the description and how it showcases the narrator’s personality, but the em-dash seems out of place (though without it, the sentence may be littered with commas).

Aside from that, I didn't catch too many grammatical errors except one: Dialogue tags should not be capitalized. Hence, the sentence ‘“Shut up!” You roar.’ would imply that after saying ‘shut up’, the protagonist randomly roared (which I doubt is the case here).

CHARACTERS & PLOT

It appears both Natalie and Vance feel barely any remorse at death. This fits with their attitude at dealing with the GEN forces. Yet, their lack of worry about the situation and even the possibility of impending death is somewhat concerning. Contrary to popular advice, the stakes of any plot isn’t dependent on how many life-or-death situations the protagonist is thrown into. Rather, it is framed by the protagonist’s perspective: even a story where a protagonist’s main goal is to write a lot of reviews to win a competition could be seen as suspenseful and tense, depending on how much importance they attribute to it. Essentially, the more a character cares about a goal—and the more they seek to avoid the negative consequences of not reaching that goal—the greater the emotional weight attached to the stakes.

The story sets up Natalie’s character and her feelings for Vance quite well. She even has a backstory, which could portray the fate she wishes to avoid more than anything. Hence, during the tense ambush scene, perhaps the description could focus less on the weapons and more on the impact of losing Vance the same way she lost her brother. Sometimes it seemed like she was stating the facts of the situation, but not framing it in a way that readers could see how they mattered to her.

Was the part about the plant foreshadowing? Maybe I just have trust issues, but I suspect Vance (as he was the one who brought Natalie there and thus the only one who'd know she'll be there).

Characterisation was quite consistent, especially with Natalie, but there was one exception. It was stated that Vance was afraid of heights, yet this personality trait seemed to just disappear when they were climbing the stairs at the side of the building, many floors up. Yet, it was established that he's good at hiding his feelings, so maybe that could be why.

The part about Natalie escaping was actually rather fitting of her character. At the start of the storygame, I thought it out-of-character that the game DRIVE was apparently barbaric, which makes sense as they’re worried about surviving. But then, why would they choose to kill the GEN forces, who would have helped them leave the game? Ultimately, the protagonist wants escape—both from the game and from the voice. Pressing that button granted her that. Still, the ending felt rather abrupt.

The other ending was…well, abrupt too. It set up a choice—between victory or letting Vance win—yet we're just given an end game link. Was this due to the last minute contest rush? Either way, it's slightly disappointing that the big event which the whole story was building up to seemed to end before it even began. Using the typical story structure, this feels like it ended right after the inciting incident. Almost everything, like the voice, Vance and Natalie's relationship, and even the competition was unresolved.

This was a great story though and I would very much like to read it again when it has been completed.

Mmm. So I'm going to be brutally honest and say that while I have seen a lot worse on here, this story just... didn't do it for me.

The plotline is apathetic at best. Even when the main character is having internal rage moments or they're in the middle of some massive firefight, there just wasn't anything giving me a reason to be invested. It honestly felt like I was reading somebody's description of a movie scene they saw than something I should be emotionally invested in.

There was practically nothing in the way of character development, and a lot of times the characters act, well, out of character. Like when Vince 'squeals' at Nat that she did such a good job bringing the ramp down right after they just got done killing a bunch of people. I think there's high school plays with better dialogue than this.

Speaking of jarring, the font was definitely that. I understand that it was meant to discern the character's inner voice, but to be honest, it was done in such a way that it made me want to look away from the story rather than continue reading it. It helps to pick a font that is aesthetically pleasing, or at least doesn't clash, with the primary font you are using.

I will say that despite these criticisms, it was a decent read overall. A bit more time and effort into the story and the presentation of would .ake a huge difference.

Review 7

I think that the story starts off pretty strong, mainly due to the characters. Nat, the protagonist, is a foul mouthed, pretty shitty person and I like her for that. The way they rather casually deal with the "terrorists" while they are on a date really cements what kind of characters Nat and Vance are. Surprisingly for once, I actually felt that the two main leads do have a bit of chemistry and I could immediately clock them as a couple just by their dialogue alone. I like that the author doesn't beat my head with his fact. Her banter with vance was believable, endearing and not overly saccharine. The way they riff off each other does seem like a thing people who are very comfortable with each other do. One nitpick tho; I find a marriage proposal at the end of one of the routes a bit off. It seems very out of character for both of them to do that. I can accept an "I love you", but not something like that.

Other things that you could work on is how women talk with each other. - "Your ass looks great in that" I really don't think that this is how women talk to each other, especially people who don't seem that close. The rebuttal of Nat also sounds just very off. It was funny though, but for the wrong intended reasons.

The prose was as expected easy to read, easy to follow. However, I did struggle to find a real plot in this story or some form of thematic depth. The little plot that there was, felt a bit off. Vance and Nat allude to the trials; I like the way how you weave the worldbuilding in their dialogue, but after reading the whole story twice, I have no idea what "the trials" are. I was also a bit confused what kind of job Nat and Vance have, though I believe that they work for the Corp that runs the whole city? I like that you don't infodump information onto the reader, but at the same time a bit of 'telling stuff to the reader' is perhaps necessary for such a short story or find a way to relay the info in a clearer way.

At certain points in the story you used cursive fonts to relay Nat's thoughts to us. At first I thought that she had some sort of split personality due to the drastic different sizes of the font in comparison to the regular text and the way she responds to the cursive text as if it was a different person, so I was quite surprised that Nat wasn't talking to a demon in her head. The way the cursive font was used was also inconsistent. At times it was also used as dialogue for example in this bit: "Shut up!" you roar. I find it honestly a bit distracting and would have prefered if you dropped it all together.

Some endings were a little lackluster and didn't even feel like endings at all, like with Nat choosing a car. Somehow it didn't feel like a proper ending at all and more like the beginning of a new part of the story. I actually was surprised that it ended this soon.

I believe that you used this cyberpunk setting before in a previous contest. Haha, are these stories related to each other I wonder?

At last I want to comment that your action scenes are still very fun to read. The characterization also has improved a ton. I like both Vance and Nat, well not as people, but they were very entertaining. The only thing you could work on is making a tighter plot that is easier for readers to follow.

I'm not sure if it was me or not, but the whole thing felt a little rushed. I was reading through some of the other comments for this game, and it seems that it was rushed through for a contest which seems right, because it felt like there were many parts of this story that could have been explored a little further.
For instance, why is she hearing the voice of her dead brother if she is being given medication by the doctor? Is he exploiting her? What will she choose to do in the race? We didn't get very far with that either. Those are just a few examples.
I don't know if it was me either, but I felt as if we were going from act to act, with no, or very little transition in between. This may sound knit picky, I'm not sure.
Over all, I liked it, and would definitely like to see the characters, and the rest of the story to be more fleshed out.

Hard to give a crap about the surroundings or what's happening when the main characters don't care either.

I don't feel like I'm exploring their psyche either because most of what they are thinking about is plot related.

I apologize if there's some super deep 10/10 masterpiece written here that went over my head...but the presentation lacks focus...meaning I dropped the story on the third page...and I tend to be pretty lenient with that sort of thing so something must have went very wrong!

Direct message me if you want more detailed critism. Though I'm sure if I somehow end up liking your previous story more due to being in a different genre this comment will look very stupid. But I am being serious when I say I'm usually pretty lenient with this sort of stuff...I just need one hook to get me invested and I just did not find it here despite trying to look for it...

I'd imagine that the hook is supposed to be more meta...as in "Look at how these characters talk to each other in this very specific way! Isn't it cool how its a thing that's happening right in front of you?"

Like...yeah I get it...it could be cool...but I'm still not hooked for some reason...

I read all of My Immortal back in the day and actually enjoyed most of it...idk...maybe I'll change my mind if I read this sometime later...but if that happens I'll be sure to explain thoroughly why! lol :P

The tone of this story reminded me a bit of a teen action movie, which is not necessarily a bad thing as it's easy to read, interesting and fast-paced. I wasn't a fan of the spacing format chosen, thought some of the dialogue and things happening were a bit uncanny valley and the branch I was following ended prematurely but, reading through the circumstances it was written in (with a deadline, following a theme) I think this is a decent little story that made a good 10 minute distraction.

I won’t say a lot because it seems Wizzy is aware of a lot of the faults in his own story, mainly it being unfinished and riddled with SPAG errors, but I will say that I did like the uniqueness of the storygame and how knowledgeable he seems to be with guns. Though I did think the dialogue seemed a little juvenile at times and reminded me of certain young adult novels.

The cyberpunk atmosphere to this story is well-realized. I like the description of the action and the back-and-forth banter between characters.

The spacing format is a little jarring for me as I need to do a lot of scrolling to get through pages, but that's just a personal preference.

The story does seem a bit rushed (makes sense for the contest deadline), which leaves a lot of questions regarding worldbuilding, the schizophrenic voice and the stakes of the conflict. I love the idea of another version of this story where the players gets to make more decisions during the race that affect her performance and position.

Action packed, fast paced, and vivid characterization. Wizzy has done well to capture attention here.

From what I could see, though, the story feels about 30-40% complete. I would like to read more about the brother, the worldbuilding, and the DRIVE competition itself. Unfortunate, but understandable as it was rushed out for the competition.

Definitely a good basis that needs much development and flesh. Good work.

you suck