Moribund School Day

I was looking through horror games for something to review, but I knew it couldn't be just anything. I'm not desperate enough to just post a bunch of words on a RANDOM 5 year old story only a thousand or so words long, that's for later. I had to pick something truly special. I had to review only the most terrifying and sordid tale ever put to the page- And I might just find it on this website.

Thing is, there's nothing here exactly telling you which story IS the scariest shit on the entire site, so I just kind of, uh, picked the game with the highest difficulty. Now I've played the beta for Berka's fish-based card game before he took it down, I know there's quite a few games on this site that are just beyond my power to finish. And that game was like a difficulty *6*, by the creator's own admission. I thought maybe it would be quite an achievement if I got to the end of this game, which boasts a MIND-BOGGLING 8/8. So regardless of how scary this game actually turns out to be, I'll at least be able to say I finished it. And even if it's not scary right now, maybe it'll turn out to be a sort of kafka-esque nightmare from the endless struggle of attempting to get to the end. Either way I've been promised SOMETHING by this introduction page, and frankly I'm not sure what.

So, what did I read...? Was it spooky? Was it truly one of the mightiest challenges on the site?

Well, turns out, the guy's goals were in the right place, he just didn't quite get the ball there.

There's not a lot to say about the prose. Aside from the paragraph spacing (*What* paragraph spacing?) there's nothing technically wrong with it. Nothing my sleepless brain could pick out, anyway. But, it was a little dry. There was no character interaction, there wasn't any real dialogue or anything. Our character motivations are 'Survive' and 'Don't Die'. And there wasn't even really any *action* action either. There was potential for suspense in the beginning for all 3 or 4 pages before it was clearly established that we were having (SPOILERS) some kind of zombie apocalypse (/SPOILERS) but no attempt at tension was made. We weren't given any characters to invest in, except a named character being threatened by a mysterious stranger, but she didn't have any speaking lines because nobody in this story does. The story was not told to me, I was not there. The story was blandly summarized to me from a distance, and even the narrator didn't even seem that intrigued by what was happening.

Aside from the general sin of making a zombie game, I honestly believe there *were* ways to make this work. It just didn't happen, unfortunately. It wasn't scary, certainly not the pants-shitting experience I was looking for. I didn't even so much as fart voluntarily, but that could be an issue of dietary fiber more than the actual horror content of the game itself. Still, internal palpitations of fear is a good way to measure the viability of any horror story that contends to be the scariest one on the planet, and this one gave me none.

And how difficult is it? Well, aside from one death, I beat the game perfectly and saved the school on my very second run. I don't feel particularly compelled to see if the other paths are more exciting than the good one. It didn't feel like an 8/8 but that's probably just because I'm very smart and nothing challenges me anymore.

So I assume that the things the students had to band together to fight against were zombies, correct?

There's some issues with grammar in this, thus this story would have benefited a great deal from some more thorough proofreading. But still this was pretty fun, this was definitely one of the rather interesting stories on this site that I've read.

The pictures for the most part seemed rather random, but I assume that they were meant to be humorous. Some were for the most part, but others made me arch a brow while reading to be honest. Still, they did give this story some more life in the long run. I would suggest utilizing pictures in a more focused manner in the future, because you really want to make sure that what the reader is reading fits well with the dialogue that they're reading.

This story has a interesting premise with a unknown threat suddenly attacking a school, but it certainly would've been better if the writing in this was more structured and cohesive.

There's some effort in this storygame, but this certainly could be better.

yes

nice

.... It sadly was too dull to even be funny bad, it really teethers on the point of making me offended by the linearity it forced the reader upon. The death scenes weren't even that good.

It's a short survival game. Mildly frustrating because there's no hint as to what might be the right choice in a large portion of the choices.

I won!

I really wish this was longer

It was the perfect length and was very interesting. I also liked that you could choose either defensive or offensive and still win

noice