Planet Mopper

General Recommendation: An intriguing speculative fiction with lots of original plot ideas and characters. The game’s most distinctive section comes at the end, surrounding the narrator’s efforts in designing a new planet.
Preview: Can you, Guybrush, a lower-class citizen in the empire take advantage of the circumstances thrown your way to create a unique planet and improve your life situation?

=SPOILERS BELOW=

General notes:
This game can be divided into two distinct sections: The first half, which gives the player background information about the world, and the second half, where the player uses this information to design a planet. The first half has exclusively flavor choices, but the different pieces of information the player is exposed to color their experience in the game’s second half.
The depth and creativity of the worldbuilding is this game’s greatest strength. All of the concepts and locations are quite original and thoroughly conceived. The idea of a society structured around a competition to be deified is an intriguing concept, one that makes the player want to learn more about the history behind this competition and its origin. This game is full of intriguing concepts, but many of them are not fully explored. For example, we’re given a unique and though-provoking protagonist with original abilities, but he never has the opportunity to use those abilities in creative ways.
The protagonist’s ability ofcreating cleaning supplies is a very original and clever use of the story’s concept. Characters with unusual or “useless” powers are always a lot of fun to play or read as, because they’re forced to use their intelligene to use their powers in unconventional ways. Guybrush is used to thinking outside of the box to take advantage of his abilities, as shown when he thinks about using sulfuric acid to escape the robots. That said, I would have liked to see this original ability used more fully. Once Guybrush goes through the portal and enters the final stage of the game, there aren’t many opportunities for the player to figure out how to use these unique abilities.
The empire itself seems very oddly structured. The government is happy giving away the opportunity to become a god to citizens, and opporesses those with “useless” powers. It seems a very illogically structured system, one that surely can’t support itself. Ordinarily this might detract from immersion in the game, but as the protagonist Guybrush is adrift and lost within this confusing system, its odd structure adds to this disoriented atmosphere rather than detracting.
The second half of this game where the player designs their own planet is a unique concept for a storygame. Rather than focusing on player actions, this section is very exploratory, giving the player a wide variety of different options and outcomes. The player’s decisions really matter and have a strong impact on what happens. It feels very exploratory and fun.
There is not much unity of theme in this game. Guybrush’s goals are not thoroughly developed beyond just surviving, and the different phases of the game have very little to do with each other. It feels a bit like several related games stuck together than one complete story.

Specific notes:
-Lol, Guybrush Macporridge.
-The opening scene does a good joob of quickly establishing both the setting and the protagonist, while avoiding overwhelming the reader with details. Guybrush’s immediate situation is made clear to the reader, and several tantalizing hints about the rest of the world are dropped.
-Why would society “punish” people for being born with bad powers? That doesn’t make much sense.
-The idea of a protagonist as a lower-class god is quite amusing.
-I like the concept of the space station Divinity. It’s well-imagined.
-Red grandmother is an interesting name for the mafia.
-Seems odd that Guybrush is immediately being offered a leadership position in the mafia after showing up with the intention of pawning a severed head.
-…Corgi? THE Corgi?
-The concept of a device that can create an entire world for a person to be a god of is interesting. I’d like to learn more about the theory behind this concept, and its role in the story’s larger world.
-The passage where Guybrush runs through the portal and remembers his prior life is well written.
-I like the implication that the planet Guybrush creates is earth.
-It doesn’t seem like going through the portal with or without Emma has much of an effect on the plot, which is disappointing.
-We never learn much about Emma beyond what she tells us in her original scene.
-Lol, “You are being crushed.”

Grammar:
Some of the sentence structure issues veer on grammatical ones. There are a number of typos.
Mastery of Language:
The sentence structure is poor, distractingly so in place. This game could definiately have used another thorough readthrough with the red pen. I’d probably rate this game higher if I didn’t have to constantly re-read passages to understand inconsistent sentences structure.
There’s a certain amount of telling where showing could have been done instead, such as with describing character emotions and intentions rather than letting the reader figure them out through context and body language.
Desipte this, the game has very rich descriptive passages, which could easily be impressive and well-written with a thorough round of editing.

Mechanics & Coding:
The image at the beginning is too big for the page size. It would have been nice to see the image resized to fit the page.

Branching:
There’s a lot of branching at the end of this game surrounding how Guybrush designs his new planet, but the paths leading up to this are all quite linear. Joining the red grandmothers, selling the head, and any of your interactions with Scraps have no effect on the endgame. All of the choices in the first part of the game are purely flavor and even ones that seem like they should have further-reaching consequences don’t impact the game’s second phase.

Player Options/fair choice:
Generally good, the consequences of actions are foreshadowed.

WRITING ADVICE:
The game’s biggest issue is the poor grammar and sentences structure. It really pulls the reader out of the game and breaks immersion. Another couple rounds of proofreading could go a long way for this game.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
I got the ending where you create a free planet, but nobody in the empire is interested in it and they banish you to the planet. Interestingly, I see this as a somewhat positive ending; you successfully create a planet free form the empire’s oppression that isn’t going to be conquored anytime soon. The image used also implies that it’s earth, which is neat.

CONCLUSION
A geninely unique concept for a game, taken in interesting and original directions. My complaints come from the fact that not all of the intriguing concepts have the chance to be fully explored in a satisfying way, due to the length and linearity of the game. It’s clear a lot of imagination went into this.

The author has a very vivid and creative imagination. The theme was that of God's ruling over the average Joe. The Gods were an advanced species born with gifts of creation. Those that worshipped them as Gods were not evolved or advanced enough to match the God species in any realistic way. Instead they worshipped and served, and died at the Gods whim.
There was a sporting event that would either declare the advanced life forms a God, or they would fail, die, or be mutated into monsters.
The main character was a janitor, born into the God species, but could only create cleaning products and objects.
There was a distinction in class with the top being the Gods, rejected or failed God's and the average. If I understood correctly, the average and the failed are rejected Gods were the criminal element.
I felt that the main character did not seem to learn anything that evolved them in a meaningful way. They simply changed physically. This individual was cruel, and continued to enact slavery of those he perceived as less than. It made the character seem flat and without dimensions to them. The story felt rushed a bit. The whole creation by God's was a brilliant idea. When the main character was building it's world and star, I thought it would have made it fun for the reader to have more options in it's creation. I personally would have enjoyed feeling like I had made choices that actually shaped the Gods creation a bit more.
It felt a bit superficial for the goal to become a millionaire. I felt there was a missed opportunity to build dimensions into the characters, and storyline. I sensed that the language the story was originally written wasn't English and didn't translate over well. Sometimes it was confusing. All in all, I have it a five. I do think this author has potential to write amazing stories that I would enjoy reading over and over.

This was a cool story.

It was a very imaginative and unique setting, as are some of the descriptors you used. I thought the weird fleshy fat lady was kinda funny, even though she was a total bitch lol

Another thing I liked was the poster telling Guybrush to work for the criminals. I remember you had made several and I was hoping the very unthinly veiled threat one was going to be in there but I didnt see it, liked it regardless.

I think one of my favorite parts (other then me being a character in it) was the.....WORLDBUILDING!

Literally.

The carbon planet had a cool photo, and I enjoyed the desert wasteland planet path as well as the descriptions for the lava villain planet.

Seems Guybrush and his powers would be used by others no matter what choices he made, poor guy.

The Murderbowl thing was cool. I will have to reread it to try to find Sweeping Bob. I thought in general the whole thing about the character carrying around a severed hero head was cool.

Thought the caste system was pretty interesting, the Imperial society is quite unforgiving and is full of many snobs and users, but it seemed Guybrush made a genuine friend or two on the way.

Nice to see that even a lowly janitor can make something of themself though.

A couple cons, there were some grammar and spelling mistakes in several places throughout. But you've improved so much in the past few months and I'm proud of you, keep it up!

I like this story and the general universe in general Mara. Hope to see alot more stories from you. I also admire your ability to remain consistent in your choice of story for these contests.

Planet Mopper is an expansive, intergalactic microcosm of a game about impressive powers and the ascension to godhood.

I really enjoy the concept and world Mara has created here; a universe of mary sues, an oppressive caste system, and murderous clowns. Weaving so many different elements into a short story game is impressive, and I look forward to seeing Mara improve their writing chops!

Speaking of, there are obvious areas of improvement to be had. I assume english isn't the writers first language, as there are plenty of spelling errors and typos. Despite the branching paths there are (I would argue there are three main paths to the end), these choices do not actually affect the endings. The endings themselves are customizable, but none of the previous choices matter once you get to (I call it this to minimize potential spoilers) the choke point.

Overall, the writing is superb and paints the world well. Work on ironing out spelling errors, and it'd be perfect! I am disappointed that none of the choices matter to the end sequences, and hope this isn't a pattern in the authors works.

Love it!

that was wicked fun man

The wording needs to be fixed as ideas are unclear. I like the core idea of a janitor making a planet, and the beginning is at least a bit engaging with some characterization and motives given for non-player characters, but by the end characters just don't feel fleshed out at all and the story seems to just be going through the motions to get to a quick end. As far as I read, the women are either sex objects or disgusting, which would be all right with me except the men are not likewise treated.

this is... awkward I'm 11 & this includes swearing? really? this not for kids

Lots of punctuation or grammatical errors that eventually broke my immersion. The premise is great and has much potential. I also saw several moments that sort of felt out of character. On characters, there weren't much to build them on.

This is an interesting storyline, but it was really difficult to read. There were many grammar, spelling and general structural mistakes. There were also portions that were not well transitioned and it left the reading struggling to figure out what happened.
I really did enjoy the storyline, but it needs some proofreading.