Group 1's Stream Lab

I heard of this storygame after going through a forum. And I found a quality me and the author share: we both suck.

This storygame does not educate or entertain me. I know this is about how 'healthy' rivers are, but this storygame was so vague on it's terms. It does not explain anything to me. There is no entertainment at all, it was just boring.

Besides that, this storygame feels like an eternity even though it's a 1/8 on the play length. All the 'Boss Fights' take up the majority of the game, and mostly there is just one right choice or answer. There is only one ending in this game. Assuming this is a school project made by a bunch of 7th graders, I advise those who worked on this storygame to never, ever make any storygames here. You are not welcome.

Final Rating: 1/8

Alright, for any readers stumbling across this thing, don’t bother. It’s an edutainment game that refuses to actually explain and educate. To the author, I will explain what I mean. Simply telling the most surface level version of the “what” of a subject does not educate me. I need at least a little “why” and “how.”

I really don’t know anything about the subject, this was a prime opportunity to genuinely educate me on something, but instead, you gave me numbers and asked whether the right one was higher or not. You didn’t even explain the terms. In short, this story completely and utterly failed to teach me anything. The little I would have learned was delivered in a way that wasn’t interesting, so I forgot it immediately. Really, what would make this better is if I drank water from a stream, not knowing if it was healthy or not and died of cholera or dysentery.

The entertainment part of education was not there. There were “boss fights,” but really, let’s be honest. They were quizzes. There was no description of what happened to the boss or any kind of fight sequence, just quizzes on which stream was healthier.

The one thing that kind of surprised me is that I was actually kind of interested when you introduced the topic. I drink out of woodland streams all the time with no real method of checking cleanliness other than the naked eye. If it’s clear, it’s good. You offered me knowledge, but gave me variables without defining what the units even were. At the risk of sounding stupid, I don’t know what ppm stands for here. My brain thinks it might be pounds per mile or pounds per meter, but those unit pairings don’t make sense (minute maybe?).

Obviously, there are no characters to speak of, but I certainly have problems with other story elements. The setting bumps around all across the globe without much rhyme or reason. The bigger issue is that of the plot. The scientist protagonist really has only one character trait: being a clumsy and worthless excuse for a scientist. What, did I not make a copy of the case notes. And why, unless this is a period piece, didn’t I put the case files on the computer?

The final issue is that the endings only had the option to return, not to end the game.

All in all, I certainly didn’t enjoy the story at all. You had the opportunity to make literal water interesting. Instead, you cobbled together this thing I just read. You actually made water more mundane than it already was. Just to spite you and this story, I am going to go out of my way to drink out of a standing pond. What is the ppm of that bad boy? Too bad I have no idea and will continue drinking out of it. You could have saved my life, but instead I will probably die of some waterborne illness or parasite. All you had to do was write a decent story, but you failed. If you built a better story on the framework, I might read it. Have fun with your clean water, you schmuck.

meow? rawr xP! RUUUFF!!!

this absolutely sucked. I came here from a forum telling me how bad this was, but I wanted to see. The comments are absolutely correct; this is probably supposed to teach you things, but it seems like more of a group making something last minute and showing what they learned instead of teaching it. The only thing that it even taught was that "the lower ppm the healthier the river". But what is 'ppm'? How do you measure 'ppm'? Why does it matter?!?!
In conclusion, this is neither educational nor entertaining. 0/8 if I could.

This game is infuriating and sucks to play. I want to strangle the author for making this garbage.

this is great

Informative, I guess? Boss battles were the most interesting gimmick about this story-game.

Still wouldn’t necessarily call it 'good'.

Meh.