Into The Darkness

First Impression: OMG why is this so gay! I might want to stop reading this...

I kept reading though despite that. Despite knowing that sex and intimacy are not the same thing, but I digress. It's your story and I probably shouldn't be taking any of this seriously. Whatever tho right?

Anyways...things got better once I got to make my first choice. Maybe it was the build up or the lore but I anticipated where the story was going to go. Your interaction with Raven after you take the key from him and decide to trust him seemed pretty nice (as that was my first path).

Once the projection stopped though and I started playing through the other paths tho, then problems started to arise again tho.

Like your prose is basic but overall good. I don't mind that you have the MC reflect on how he feels a lot, even in the narration where it isn't necessary and I can tell what's going on without it, but that stacks on multiple playthroughs, and more importantly it started to feel a bit redundant.

What really stood out by the time I was done with all the paths was how little most of the choices actually mattered. There's admittedly a lot of paths where the same events happen but you word how they happen differently based on minor decisions you made earlier. This is my first time seeing this, and I can see why its not done often. This is a good idea on paper but...

On repeat playthroughs, like I said, it can feel redundant.

Ideally I think choices that don't matter should be mindless and choices that do matter should have thought put into them. The way you set this up kind of breaks that, as I found myself wanting to skim a lot of what you wrote despite it being "new story" which is a pretty bad sign I think! Though I will say I appreciate the logical consistency between endings, as the ending where you die makes sense since you have less time to get out of library compared to the rest of the routes.

Not related, but its pretty hard to feel like the big bad of the story, Thorne, is a real threat when there's only one ending where he kills you (or at least that's implied). This robs the endings of their agency when only the last two choices actually feel like they matter! (Sometimes only one in some cases, unless I'm remembering wrong) I peaked at another review on here that said "I read all the endings on my own choice instead of feeling like I had to to make this review" and got excited, and now I just don't see it...

Also having Raven just be a flat out good guy who appears on both the go left and right routes kinda ruined my initial thoughts on him, which was very different that what he ending up being. I guess this isn't an objective critique but like...

You don't really do much with the reveal, as you can still only recruit him on the go right path. Yeah not really a flaw, just felt like a missed opportunity considering where you decided to put your effort into.

I suppose this story really is designed to just be played once or a few times, cause under that scenario its great! The choices that don't effect anything do a solid job and immersing the player to make them "feel" like their choice mattered...if that makes sense...

Finally, this feels like a second part to a larger story, or that's its missing a prologue. Not that I'm complaining about it but its weird for the MC to care a lot about names and places we don't know and we're just asked to go along with it. This is definitely not the first story to do this, but other stories seem to do this more seamlessly somehow, I'm not sure how though...

All in all, this is a solid story if you don't fixate on the details too much like I did! Your attention to logical consistency and slightly above average SPAG and vocabulary certainly didn't go unnoticed! I'd like to see you write something a bit better I guess...but I won't pressure you into doing that for obvious reasons!

Good job though all things considered! (yeah I know this is a contest story btw!)

lol :P

Pretty gay but decent writing. 5/8

You did a great job with the branching. And you started off the story very strong, with quite a bang.

I really like that you didn't write too much in the beginning and instead made it snappy and concise.

You did a great job with the branching of this story. I liked the way you incorporated sensory details and descriptors describing the characters like when you talk about the smell of wood dust. It feels like a bodice-ripper fantasy romance novel, and although those aren't really my thing because I'm not really the target demographic, I can understand and appreciate the skill and care you took to write this story. You made really good use of the time alotted to you in this contest, and nowhere does it get sloppy or rushed.

There's also a logic behind the choices, which I like. On the page, "Wait until nightfall", you have 2 choices: go left or go right. Sometimes authors make one of those a good choice and one of them a bad choice, but it's completely random. Here you explain that if you take the right passage, you are less likely to cross paths with Thorne.

I also like the way you wrote the action sequences like the fight between you+elrond vs Thorne

I don't really know much about this world or Thorne, so in addition to all that branching(seriously, good job on the branching, it's hard to do), flesh out the main story a bit more so readers can be more invested.

You have an engaging an interesting writing style, and the content of the story is well-thought out. The pacing is also good.

My overall rating for this game that I gave is a 6/8. This game has a target audience and I'd say that the game did a great job reaching that audience.

Our tale begins with a necromantic orgy. And the more your read, the more you realize that everyone is fucking everyone through the veil of separating the living and the dead. The world is a veritable smorgasbord of wet spirit slapping and ghostly moans of pleasure. If you like necromancy and you like sex, why wouldn't you like this?

What I liked: The author doesn't beat you over the head with exposition describing the world and the relationships of the characters. Instead it tells you the story through dialogue, and doesn't hold your hand. This is an important skill, IMHO, because it makes the world feel independently alive, as if you're just witnessing a piece of something that exists without you there to see it.


What I didn't like: The homoerotic necromancy romance got a bit too sappy in some places. And I would have liked a more in depth exploration of Thorne, why he's such a vile POS, and more about this Academy and what's going on in the world. When we want to review a bunch of stories, we tend to love the stories that are blessedly short. But this one needed to be longer. I know the play length is a 6 (roughly 30,000 words), but a lot of that is because there is a lot of branching. I feel like the main storyline needed an extension.

But, if this is a small part of a series, then that last complaint is irrelevant.


Overall, this was pretty good. There's potential for a more expanded examination of this universe — if you can stomach the spiritual romance. Some people love that, some people don't.

I would have rated it higher, except the next higher rating was 'better than Reese's Cups' and you made me crave Reese's Cups first thing in the morning, fren XD

(Also, I really would have liked being able to escort the new frens all the way home. But that's okay.) I really really liked it though!!