Player Comments on The Most Amazing Life and Adventures of Sir Arthur Quillwrym

General Recommendation: The writing, worldbuilding, and dialogue is excellent in this game, but I can’t recommend it since it’s incomplete. For those who don’t mind incomplete/linear games, this is a fun and engaging read.
Preview: Play as Arthur Quillwyrm, a young noble emerging into a world of adventure and political intrigue.

=SPOILERS BELOW=

General notes:
The worldbuilding in this game is excellent, and done largely through the characters, which is nice to see. The character’s speech style and names firmly set a very specific tone for this story. Many fantasy stories that try to capture this tone do so poorly, or without the historical accuracy to back it up, but this game does a very good job of it. The characters fit very comfortably in the world being crafted, and worldbuilding details are weaved in naturally through speech and setting.
The dialogue is especially noteworthy. On it’s own it’s well written, having characters speak believably, and with nuance, leaving things unstated for the reader to sort out. But it also meshes very well with the setting.
The one criticism I have about this game is it’s apparent linearity. The choice of who to support—your father, mother or sister—seems to be the only meaningful choice in the game, and in its unfinished state, the player can’t even make it yet. Other than that, all choices are pure flavor, with no impact on the plot. I strongly recommend increasing the branching in this game when you revisit it, or limiting the number of unimportant choices.

Specific notes:
-The word “embrace” is repeated.
-I tend to find stories that open with the narrator’s birth cliche, as they have no effect on the plot, but we’ll see where this goes. For a story attempting to capture the scope of a life, it’s a reasonable starting point. It was decently written.
-563rd year since the ascension is a good worldbuilding detail, as are the character names introduced here. They set a solid tone.
-I like the scene with the brothers reenacting famous battles. It does a good job to characterize both the brothers and protagonist, while providing some intriguing worldbuilding details. You’ve done a good job capturing how children of this age actually act.
-Having too many fingers is a good detail for the fortune teller.
-Phrases like “thank the Nine” are good worldbuilding.
-Leto’s name is changed from Letun.
-The montage method that covers the narrator’s life is done quite well. Showing him aging through summary and key scenes from his childhood is effective.
-This game’s click-to-text ratio is good.
-I like the way politics is being worked into the story slowly.
-The story becomes much less descriptive after the scene with the heretic, becoming more of an outline than an actual story.
-On a re-read, the linearity is disappointing. Pathes I thought would lead to seperate branches instead lead back to the main path. I recommend limiting the number of unimportant choices the player makes to increase replay value (this doesn’t apply if these choices affect variables—if they do ignore my feedback on this game’s linearity, and let me know, and I’ll try and play through again to get a different set of variables).

Grammar:
All good.
Mastery of Language:
In general: The writing is quite good, especially the dialogue between the characters.
“Constatine chuckles. ‘He just wants to play,’ he said.” You’ve changed the tense here, and used two dialogue tags, which isn’t necessary.
The sentence structure is generally good, just a little stiff in places. If you plan to take this down I’d recommend another editing round where you read through and check for sentence flow, as well as show/tell adverb-type issues. (For example: “Crossing his arms and looking at you haughtily.” You don’t need to say “haughtily” here, it’s clear from the surrounding context.). (Another example: “A voice as ancient as the world” could be better put as describing the voice itself, deep, melodic, echoing, etc.)

Branching:
Disappointingly little, the choice of which family member to support seems to be the only important one.

Player Options/fair choice:
Lots of player options, not much fair choice, as each option only controls the flavor text the player reads.

WRITING ADVICE:
Keep going! You’ve got an excellent beginning to a story here. Once you’ve finished your first draft, try reading it through out loud to work out the aforementioned sentence structure speedbumps.

CONCLUSION: I originally planned to rate this a 6/8. However, since this is incomplete, and much more linear than I assumed on my first readthrough, I’m changing that to 5/8. There’s a good chance I’ll increase that rating once you finish this.

Dear Ben, mother of the holy Nine, I can see that your time spent on the worldbuilding has paid off. It is really too bad that you hadn't finished it on time, because it would have been an automatic win for me.

What I really love is the oh so slow and gentle pace the story introduces the world to you. At first, you are a tiny wee lad and your life is confined to your house and neigbors. Slowly but surely more information is naturally fed to you. For example, we know that this society is a hierarchial one without even having to directly explain that due to the fact how your friend was treated considerably worse than you. The Gods and their myths are introduced to you in as a childhood story etc.

Soon you will come to serve under under a duke and now all the parts one has built up from the beginning comes back. What I truly love is that the author truly understands what a feudal society really is. The king, who did possess quite a bit of power, is not invincible. There was always conflict between him and his vassals.

Ahhh, just look at france for example and its history. Absolute monarchy was quite a recent thing as the nobility and the king would constantly fight to get more influence. This conflict is also brilliantly mirrored in the battle between the tradionalists and the royalists. The author has really put into a lot of thought of it.

Then we also have the continuous conflict between the church and the state, which is definitely a thing that happened. I couldn't help but think about the squabbles of king Henry of england and the pope regarding his divorce or the fact that the church could even refuse to crown the next king, making the heir apparent lose its legitimacy.

At last we have new upcoming ideas like democracy represented by the heretic's faction. I love that one of the justifications was badsed on religion and the will of Nine, because believe it or not even the most enlightened thinkers of this age were mostly all religious. So this theological argument really fits in with the feudal medieval vibe we have and ties back to the myth that was told back from the main character's childhood.

These three conflicts were real ass things that happened in the past and are so fluidly woven into the story that it makes me really smile out of excitement. The descriptions are fantastic and it is also a very pleasant read with little to no spelling mistakes.

The only light critique I have is that most of the characters are not really that memorable. For example, if it weren't for the clear and concise writing I would find it difficult to distinguish our childhood friend and Leto's dialogue lines from each other. Most of the people in Arthur's life don't have much going on except for their current political allignment. There is not a lot of emphasis placed on their feeli gs and such.

Well, but that is only a light critique because the most developed character is to be honest the world itself, so it didn't bother me too much.

All in all, I hope that this story will be expanded upon at a later date. Ahh, because I want to see the heretic route myself and read more of this political intrigue.

I enjoyed the descriptive beginning, it seemed to promise much attention to detail throughout the story. The characters were well developed, and the world building elements were solid.

SPOILERS BELOW:


However, it seemed like the choices offered did not really effect the path of the story, and therefore it did not really branch much. For example It really doesn't matter what I do when first meeting Pancho, we will end up playing as friends.

Also, I personally really dislike when authors put disclaimers/explanations inside the confines of their narratives, such as the last paragraph of the fortune teller where it explains that "once the stat system is implemented...". IMO just list this on the main story page, and put the best you can in the narrative.

I think that much of the shortcoming of the branching is the premise of using the entire "Amazing Life" as the story. This is quite an ambitious goal. I think the writing and characterization is pretty strong, and I would enjoy reading more if you finish it.

There is an Interesting premise, But It's a little wordy, The way you said "Grow older" was a little strange but nonetheless It was pretty decent overall. If I were to rate It which I did, It would be 5/10. Not great But with the limited time you had It was worth my while and pretty interesting. - Abgeofriends

Oh I also want to say that I like your title haha, love me some crazy 18th century style absurdly long titles.

The detailing is beautiful, and the storyline is very entertaining. You did very well!