Survivors

I think at this point I've read several of Ogre's stories, and so far this is one I like the best, because it lived up to the way it was described. I didn't mind the shortness at all, since 18,000 words is a reasonable length to allow multiple read-throughs without a major time commitment, and the story wasn't quite weighty enough in its current form to support a longer story.

There are basically two primary branches to this story, and although there are an admirable 18 endings, there was some redundancy to them, as well as a bit of predictability. For instance, at multiple points I had the option to actively resist a unit of armed soldiers, or to attack a fortified armory, and in each case the consequences were just as horrible as I expected. Having read a bit more than half of the endings, I saw the pattern developing and decided to go ahead and click one of those End Game links.

Which is not to say I thought the story was bad, only that it was becoming binary: either I joined the military and was ordered to raid my home town, or I stayed in my home town and defended it against the military. This is fine for 18,000 words, but if there are plans to develop this into a longer story (interesting idea, by the way) then I would hope there would be more scenarios, more characters, and more developed plotlines to sustain that additional storytelling. If by lengthening the story we just mean twice as much of this back-and-forth, then I'd be less interested.

Overall, the basic elements of the story seemed more or less plausible. The "join the army" branch had a few elements that made me raise my eyebrows, especially the maps of the invasion plans that were just lying out where any old non-com could mark them up. Also, as a sergeant, Jimmy has way too much authority when his unit goes to the town. Sergeants execute orders, but they don't necessarily give them.

On the "defend the town" side, I was amused by this line:

"The army and people need this food. You people can get in line at the nearest government facility and get your share there."

I found this line--in which the "New American" army was confiscating private property and directing citizens to go get handouts from the "nearest government facility"--fraught with satirical political commentary. I hope it was intentional, but fear that it was just some apocalyptic trope.

Either way, I thought this was a good story, and I gave it a 6/8.

Apparently I read this one before (Since I rated it) but upon going through it again, I’m bumping that up a bit. This is an underrated post apocalyptic story. Probably due to it being short mainly because of the contest time length.

Despite it being on the short side, I think there was a lot of detail here with the characters and background. There was also more than enough endings and branching to do a few playthroughs. Writing is fine in general. Obviously major effort was put into this compact story.

Definitely would have liked seeing a larger version of this story, but even in its current form it’s pretty good.

Fantastic Work. I'll list the main reasons why I liked this:

1) The layout looked great giving it a real book feeling.
2) The writing was error-free, concise and very descriptive. The benefits and consequences of the choices made sense.
3) The sheer variety of endings makes this a very re-readable story, playing through it a few times I've read about half the endings so far but I'll definitely come back to this to read the others later.

You mentioned the length limits and it's true there are only six or seven choices in a complete story but if you're going to have a story with eighteen different endings that's a lot of branches and a lot of pages. I think this is a story that could be developed further quite easily by branching again and again, I'm giving this 7/8 because I think it could potentially be improved by more branches and endings but this is a small issue, even if this only had eight endings this would still be excellent because of the writing quality.

If Playa988's competition is still going this story is so good as to be practically certain of a place in the top 3 with a very good shot at number 1 :D Definitely one of the most impressive stories of the year so far.

This was a really good apocalypse game by my standards. As usual, my nitpicks are as follows:
GRAMMAR
Pretty good, actually. When I saw you used past tense, I took it as a challenge to find a spot where you broke and used present tense. I found no screw ups, so bravo to you. I did catch a few grammar errors, but barely any.
STORY
Better. I got a decent description as to what was going on, and you didn't just drop me into THE WORLD IS DYING OH MY GOD WHAT DO YOU DO. I understood character motives pretty well also.
LENGTH
Decent, with multiple endings. I do like the multiple endings thing, and your story wasn't too short nor too long.
In conclusion, you deserve a colorful sticker.

Man you have to think really hard to get the right ending! 8/8

I loved it

Nice. Wish it was longer

Great job ogre! This storygame made me feel good about the character, even if I didn't get a "happy ending". I felt like the game was one of the rare cases where it is actually a STORY and a GAME. Again, great job.

Overall, the story was really good. A lot of the choices had me sitting back and really weighing down my options. Jim's morality places a huge role here, and it sucks having to think about the well being of others when you are dealing with starvation, a lack of supplies, and a sense of danger yourself. I've played through about 4-5 endings, and while each of them didn't really have a "happy ending", I was pretty satisfied with all of them.

Huh, interesting. Your writing was pretty descriptive, though a little jolting at times -- you should consider using some more conjunctions in your writing -- and there were several grammar mistakes, but they didn't really detach from the experience. All in all this was a unique, quite replayable story and a nice addition to the contest. Also, what you did with the background and format certainly helped.