Re-election Campaign

Initial Impressions:
First off, I love the concept for this story, playing a politician with the potential to be evil, a true simulation of what being a politician is about. The concept is rich, if it's well executed this will probably be one of my favourite stories on the site.

Character Introduction & Early Pages:
The first page does a great job of characterising the protagonist. He's presented as superficially charming and also someone easy to irritate but he's great at masking it behind niceties. It's evident straight away that his reputation and public image is paramountly important to him, he gives off the vibes he'd do anything to "look good" to the public, a true narcissist who is also cunning and pragmatic. Kudos for doing all of this within the first few paragraphs, really impressive. The first page likewise does a great job at explaining the protagonist's rationale for his actions and ambitions without it feeling overly expository, perfectly woven into the setting and grander plot to flow nicely with plot progression, kudos.

Setting & Town Hall:
The ribbon cutting event does a great job at setting the small town/small community setting, and showing the community dynamics and their overall lack of care or faith in politicians at large. The town hall meeting has it all, great characterisation through the protagonist's inner monologuing staying true to his character as a morally grey pragmatist.

Buck Campbell's ranting and raving is engaging, fun and makes the setting feels lively and realistic, the sense that this is a small town community where everyone knows everybody and their own little quirks is well portrayed.

Character Dynamics:
A lot of what is making the story so engaging so far is definitely the juxtaposition between Mayor Jordan's public face and us getting a glimpse into his true manipulative thoughts and general disregard for the townsfolk; he's a very interesting and complex protagonist. Humour is subtly woven in, each character has a distinctive voice, the protagonist Mayor Jordan comes across as professional and slightly patronising (at least publicly) Buck is crude and boisterous with no filter, and Marie is measured, formal and persuasive to the public, kudos, most really struggle with doing this, a true chameleon you are.

The Starbucks Scene:
The Starbucks scene does a great job at further adding atmosphere to the small town (showing big corporations are outcompeting the small businesses), it likewise does a great job at describing Lepski's beaten down and weathered appearance. With sentences such as:
"The last few years have not been kind to her. Heavy bags hang under her eyes and the auburn hair that was once her pride and joy is pulled up in a messy claw clip. But there's nothing that could make her ugly."

"Donna's eyes are sad. She looks fragile, like she's a bad day away from having a mental breakdown. It makes you want to reach out and comfort her, to hold her in your arms and tell her everything is going to be okay."

These two sentences are especially descriptive, one certainly could not say it uses too many adjectives or info bombs us too much on her appearance, it hits a nice sweet spot which allows us to visualise her core expression and demeanour on her face while allowing the reader to fill in the blanks.

Not only is the description tastefully done but it also subtly humanises the protagonist as not a complete narcissist manipulator out for his own gain, but as someone who is capable of empathy and affection for people, even if selective.

Plot Development & Memorable Moments:
HMM, the kid calling us out for being a vampire is unnerving, and potentially hints at something the Protagonist has not revealed yet?

Buck is actually a nice guy for deciding to build the bench for us for free, I love him.

Just imagining the scene of us ripping out the "vote for eckle" signs is actually comical, made me smile.

"Look, the last lady gave me $50 to put up her sign so unless you can beat that, fuck off."
The plot thickens, this is a great way of showing that eckle is also corrupt, which adds even more depth to her, heightens the stakes and gives the protagonist more justification in the readers eyes to do evil shit to her.

Humor & Dialogue:
The duel scene is funny and adds so much humour and levity to the choices we can make. It's humorous in a way which is silly but doesn't feel like it takes from the seriousness of the plot/stakes, a fine balancing act.

"Marie, realizing the crowd is eating it up, glares at you. 'This isn't Black Adder. We're not fighting to be king of England.'" LOL, I love this.

"Exactly," you snap back. "You think you can waltz in here, stir up a mob, and take over my town? Think again. I won't let Cougar Valley fall into the hands of someone who hides behind protests and megaphones."
He'd get my vote. Truly based.

"BILLYYYYYY!!!!!" His mother rushes over to the kid.

LOVE how you decide to elongate words even if it's not necessarily grammatically correct for emotional effect.

There's something oddly comical about Mayor Jordan's two facedness. He's definitely quickly becoming one of my favourite protagonists due to it. He's very memorable.

Endings & Plot Twists:
Hell yeah, we're taking her 10k!!! If we're smart we could use it against her.

Wow, love how you made an actual image for "vote Marie Eckles" for mayor.

Wait, are we Miss Lipski's Husband!?!? But we faked our own death? That would be a crazyyy plot twist and would explain our fawning over her.

"Suddenly, a hand grasps your raised ankle. Your eyes fly open but your reaction time is too slow. Margo rips the oxford and socks off your foot, revealing what's underneath." HIDDEN FOR SPOILERS*

Wtf, i reached my first ending, i'm so confused. Time to restart!!

Got my second ending "It's alright, Bob," you say, giving him your first honest smile in years. "Even when I lose, I win." hmmm, unnerving, what's he hinting at? Can't wait to find out.

BECOMING ******** ??? what a plot twist. Wtf is going on here.

Overall Impression:
This story is going to be an 8/8, I can smell it, I'm so engaged I'm forgetting to write things down and analyse, that says enough. Well, I believe I've now gone through and found all the endings. Re-election Campaign is a thrilling mystery story with a villain protagonist. He character has their own unique voices, vibes and perspectives on the world, and cougar valley is brought to life through the small town atmosphere and subtle dialogue ques which Orange shows shes a master at. There's a great degree of branching in this story, so you probably won't understand the full story until you've got two or three endings before things seem to click. It's a story with lots of replay-ability due to things not being linear in this manner.

It's definitely my favourite work by Orange and one of my favourite stories on the site. For people that like to play the bad guy it's a definite recommendation from me. I'm stuck between giving it a 7/8 or an 8/8. I'm giving it an 8/8. One of the most memorable protagonists I've ever played as.

Won the election!

I really liked the whole concept of this storyame. It's not really a genre I would have deliberately picked to read, but I'm glad that I gave it a try. In my opinion, it definitely deserves top place in the contest!

The best thing I liked about this were the hints that something else was going on. I didn't pick up that something more sinister was going on until I reached the ending for the first time, and then it was like, 'Oh, that explains some of the things that confused me!" Really great hints of foreshadowing throughout, especially as I was questioning why there seemed to be things going on that the player character wasn't aware of and probably should have been.

I thought there were some really great parts to this storyline, such as the indicator of how much money the player character has to spend on advertising. I don't know if any of the other options would have resulted in more money to spend; I only tried the loan option during my first read through.

By the end of my second read through, I was left with quite a few questions. Playing a villain and having to act against what seemed natural to the player character was really interesting. I found myself having to stop and think about what decision to make, as the goal of the story was to win the election...even though I was curious about what some of the paths would have led to, like unleashing violence or challenging the opponent to a duel.

All told, I enjoyed both playthroughs of this storygame, despite it not really being the sort of genre I would usually read. Well-deserved first place. Thank you so much for writing and sharing this!

This was an incredible read! A full-fledged story game that has multiple plotlines going on; all of which Jesse can take advantage of to further his political campaign. I would absolutely recommend multiple playthroughs to fully appreciate this gem of a story game. Fantastic work!

This is unironically very good. A full-fledged story game with very very few grammatical errors and great replay value. Wow. I’ll have to come back and give you a real review sometime.

SPOILERS





It took the murder of a girl, and the thwarting of a sexual predator after he took another one, but I was able to win the election once again!


What I liked: First of all, the option for "unprecedented violence" was a great touch. It wasn't really realistic (I'm sure things like this happen, but very rarely), but I appreciate that the option was there. Sometimes you just want to stab your political enemies.

But really what I'm saying here is there was a good degree of freedom in this storygame. I liked that I was able to shape the character of the protagonist to an extent. I managed to walk the line between shameless opportunism and actual morality. This is, IMHO, the ideal politician. They likely won't win if they're a truly good person, but if they can at least flavor their naked self-interest with a touch of mutually beneficial morality, they could not only win but be a good leader for society.

I also liked that the main protagonist wasn't actually the most evil person in the story (clearly the sexual predator was). She was just an annoying strong woman who was good at politics.

I was a bit disappointed in Bob's fish frying adventures. I was rooting for the guy.

I suppose you can summarize all that by saying that the character designs were nice. All the characters were distinct and realistic, insomuch as you can do with a story like this. They served the development of the protagonist well. And ultimately, this storygame seemed less about a particular series of events and more about the protagonist. So, in that sense they all did their jobs spectacularly.


What I didn't like: Honestly my only real complaint is the size of the newspaper article declaring you a hero after saving the girl. But I mean, the point is just to read the headline, so it's fine. There weren't actually any real problems with this one. It's difficult to turn a simple mayoral election into something entertaining, but there was enough humor to do that well.



Overall, this is a good addition to the site. Especially because the topic isn't something done very often, and for good reason. Elections are boring compared to harrowing adventures of slaying a dragon or stopping an alien civilization from destroying the planet. But that only shows the skill of the author to turn a boring subject into something interesting.

Well done.

IDK what to say.

Maybe the real mayor was the friends we made along the way :)

Okayyyy- I really liked that. 'Re-election Campaign' legit gave me an outlet to be evil yet successful, or just a pissed off man who plasters on a smile for the press. And I love every second of it. Maybe it could be better if you went into more detail with whoever Emma is, or it could just be that i didn't explore enough endings to figure it out by myself T-T. Overall really good game, Orange!

OK I really, really enjoyed this game. The story is cool, I really got enthusiastic about being the good guy at my first playthrough. At first I thought it was a fairly linear game, but then the end hinted that there could be more, so I tried being a corrupt asshole on the second round and some different things happened that were also pretty cool.