Player Comments on The Christmas Crossing

Ok so I tried to get every ending so here it goes.
The first thing I'm going to say is that I really like this story.
It's hard to make a historical choose your story game work that is historical, but you managed it well.
The plot was well done, the characters seemed ok to me, and the different endings were well done.
I've looked at other comments, and they have said what I'm going to, but I'm going to say it anyway.
You need more commas. Many, many, many more commas.
If you are interested in improving your sentence structure in the future, go to the help and info link, and find the sentence structure articles by Gower. It explains all about independent clauses, dependent clauses, and much more than I can explain here in a single comment.
That information will be vastly helpful to you, since the one thing you are missing on is commas.
A simple example is that anything with the words and, or, or but, must be followed by a comma. Those are only the simple examples though.
Another thing that I learned from the help and info section, I can't remember the exact article title, is that when you are quoting someone, you must have different paragraphs for each speaker, sort of like this.
"How are you doing," asked John to Fred.
"Not well. I found out that I have covid."
Sorry about that buddy, I hope you feel better soon."
Notice that Each line separates what each person says, and there's no need to say John said, or Fred said, except for perhaps in the beginning.
These are just some simple changes that would make this story a little more readable. Hope this helps.
Over all, I really like the game, and hope you don't get discouraged by this comment, because I really do like the way you did it.

General Recommendation: I recommend this game, it’s a quick and fun read.
Preview: You play as a soldier in Washington’s army during the bleakest part of the war. Can you decide where your allegiances will lie, and will you survive the choice?

=SPOILERS BELOW=

Plot & Characters: This is an original place and time to set a story, and it’s nice to see this kind of attention devoted to the historical category. It’s clear that you’ve done your research on this, I liked the amount of historical detail you had. It really helped set the tone of the work, but without intruding on the player’s experience.
The plot is simple and engaging, fitting the tone of the writing without getting overly complex. This story is the perfect length for its concept.
The characters were distinct and overall consistent through the work, and you had neither too many nor too little. The characters were explored enough to make them feel real and three dimensional, while not bogging down the story in detail. The one exception to this might be Max, who seemed to act contrary to his prior characterization a few times, but that’s a minor nitpick, and it may well have been a deliberate choice on your part to emphasize the brutality of the war.
I also thought you did a good job handling Washington. It can be tough to approach potraying real-life figures in fiction, but you didn’t shy away from it, nor did you over-focus on him.
The one thing I would say is most of the death endings seemed short, and plenty of them (like, say, getting struck by lightning) seem pretty random. It would be nice to see more attention devoted to the dead end pathes. It was funny in most cases, though, so it’s forgivable.
You did a good job with the narrator’s inner thoughts, and hit a good balance between giving the narrator personality and not intruding on the reader. This both made the story engaging, and made me feel like I had a lot of personal agency in my choices.
I also liked that you can either keep loyal to your friend, or your cause, not both. Dilemmas like this are ever-present in real life conflicts, and it was nice to see that reflected in this game, with even the good endings being imperfect and real.

Grammar: You have multiple character’s dialogue in the same paragraph which is a big turn off, and usually enough to make me instantly click out of a story. I kept going on this one because I’ve heard good things about it, but you really want to seperate out your dialogue in the future.
The overall grammar and sentence structure isn’t great, you’re missing a number of commas where you need them, and have the wrong tense on several words. This makes several of the sentences clunky and easily tripped over. This may well be because of the submission deadline for this contest, though. If you'd had more time, I would've recommend going thoroughly through this with a red pen.
I recommend italicising inner character thoughts that speak from the I in order to differentiate them for the reader.
There were a couple spelling mistakes, though the issue was more grammar than spelling.
Language skill: Grammatical issues aside, I think you captured well the voice of 1700s colonists. Many works in this time period make the characters either too archaic or too modern, but I think you hit a nice middle with their speech style. The dialogue in this really shines.
I usually find characters with written accents or affectations annoying, but you did it well.

Branching: On my first read through I expected this to be a very linear story, and was pleasantly surprised to find that there are actually a wide variety of different possible endings. Good job on making a story that feels both wide and deep for its length.

Player options/fair choice: Very good—the consequence of every action seems foreshadowed and expected. This may be even a little too good, since I could pretty much tell in advance what the result of each action was going to be.

WRITING ADVICE: The plot and characters your have here are good, but the poor grammar really takes away from my immersion. I recommend reading up on setence structure (some of Gower’s articles may be quite helpful), or getting a beta reader. Grammatical issues are initially tough to take care of, but once it clicks, it will vastly improve the engagement of your writing with little effort on your part.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
I got ending #5 without dying at all. I had fun playing this! The revolutionary war is one of my favorite historical periods, so that probably helped.

CONCLUSION: A short and fun storygame. The grammar could be improved, but it doesn’t ruin the story.

I’ll begin with a disclaimer: I’m not a professional writer, nor am I a seasoned reviewer (yet), so do conduct your own research and bear in mind that not everything here may be correct. As for potential readers, beware of spoilers galore.

Right from the start, the narrator’s personality shines through the story. As the main character regrets his decision to join the war, many vivid descriptors are used to illustrate the situation he’s in. I like the use of quotation marks around ‘heroic’ to show the main character’s shift in his view of war; he now has a similar perspective as his dad, who originally seemed like a character foil. The motif of death is mentioned quite a number of times in the first page, foreshadowing the high probability of achieving death endings in this storygame.

I’m not sure if this is a grammatical mistake, stylistic choice, or something else entirely, but the pacing comes off as a little strange to me due to there being long stretches of text without punctuation marks. For instance I can write this whole sentence without commas or semicolons which would mean it all has to be read at the same speed without pausing for quite some time, until I added that comma there. One possible suggestion may be to use punctuation to control pacing, especially to ensure sentences next to one another vary in length and style. As usual, this is simply a suggestion, so feel free to ignore or use it depending on specific circumstances. (I, for one, tend to overuse commas sometimes, so my advice ought to be taken with a grain of salt).

The formatting of dialogue broke the immersion for me a little. It took me a while to figure out what was going on. But that’s just me, and aside from that nitpick, the conversation is well written. Both characters have strong motives and personalities; it is also a great way to infuse backstory into the narrative naturally.

I find the end of the conversation with Von Steuben funny for some reason. Perhaps using a new line for each new speaker could enhance the reading experience. Although I wasn’t sure who was saying what at first, I liked how it revealed the cryptic nature of military operations. A lot of information about the attacks is kept from the soldiers. This foreshadows the next choice, where finding out information is important but highly risky.

The main character faces a constant inner struggle; most choices are between survival or loyalty to either your friends or country. There’s also the constant danger of getting killed in war. Setting plans that actually go well in ending 3 was a nice touch to show that there can be hope amidst a war, and that death isn’t the only outcome (despite it being the most frequent one). At some parts, I initially would have liked more foreshadowing, especially before a death scene. Yet the lack of it does make sense considering the spontaneity of war. Also, the main character’s ability to choose between selfish and selfless decisions is reflected through Max’s deceptive character too. In war, even ‘best friends’ will turn on one another, especially when they value survival above all else.

Oh, and I keep finding the ‘Congrats! You Died!’ rather funny for some reason.

There is sufficient branching in this storygame too. While I was initially concerned due to the first two choices either progressing the story or leading to a premature ending, the main branching occurred when the reader chooses between leaving Max or helping him. Not to mention that the premature endings were also well written, and even though some death scenes may have been a bit rushed to fit the contest deadline, it was complete enough to tell an interesting story.

I have to say, I enjoyed how ending 4 resolved the conflict brought up at the start of the story. Both characters completely converted to the other’s point of view, and although it wasn’t expected, there was enough characterization to make this believable. It did also make surviving the war rather rewarding. One minor nitpick: while choosing whether to save Monroe and Seamus did alter the story’s content, it didn’t really change the ending and they both survived regardless. If you ever feel like editing it, I’ll suggest changing the endings slightly to reflect that the main character’s actions could potentially cause one or both of them to die (maybe through scripting), even if it’s just a line or two where he mentions their names briefly. That might give the reader’s actions a bit more weight. Yet aside from that, the fact that there are two radically different endings is intriguing, especially since both make sense based on what the reader knows of the character.

Regardless of minor typos and the aforementioned nitpicks, this is a good storygame overall. If you’re reading this review and haven’t read the storygame yet for some absurd reason, I’d suggest you scroll to the top and click the play button now. Well done on your first storygame, Axxius, and congrats on being the runner-up for Endmaster’s contest!

Very good story, just found it kinda boring. Add more figurative language!

pretty unexciting

sorry but the lack of commas makes this really hard to read

The story is solid and the writing descriptive without being redundant. There was a good amount of branching, with up to 5 "win" endings (at least that's how many I encountered) and other dead endings which are, way too obvious for one to stumble upon them. For non-american players, this is a good story to start with, if they have any interest in American history, in particularly, the Independence War.

In particular I liked the realism factor applied to the main character's family. Instead of showing us the typical patriotic family which would be supporting of their patriotic son, enlisting to fight for the independence, we are shown a realist father who discourages his son from following a foolish path, without having thought everything through (considering also the fact, that this is the boy's first time being enlisted as a soldier). He could be seen either as a "discouraging parent" aka bad, or a rational man who doesn't believe that a war against one of the most powerful nations in the world, would bring anything but the decimation and impoverishment of the colonies.

One thing (okay.2.) were the pacing and grammar, punctuation (comma usage), to be more precise, though it's not as if there weren't any other grammar errors too to be honest (only ~2% of the text). In short, the pacing was way too fast and the lack of proper comma usage, affects the readability.

7/8 for the plot, but 6/8 overall considering the problems it had with the grammar.

I'm naturally biased towards historical fiction, so I did enjoy this. I don't see a lot of stories set during this period that much anymore, so it was welcome experience! The dynamic with Max showed a lot of the heart of this story as well.

I like the variety of endings, though it does feel like the good endings occur regardless of whether or not you save the other soldiers.

There is a critical flaw with this story: the format of dialogue being separated with slashes gets in the way of that being enjoyed. Standard dialogue format does work for a very good reason. The lack of proper punctuation does also make some sections difficult to read, like how a lack of a comma can change the meaning of a sentence.

It's a good, short story that's weighed down a little by some technical issues. Without those, I would have rated this higher.

It’s… fine?!

bad ending

Good story and it does a good job of painting the picture of what it was like in Valley Forge at that time. SPAG issues were minimal, although there are many dropped words or repeated phrases throughout the story. There are a couple of very noticeable incorrect word choices, although the one that really jumped out at me was "Except the Promotion" in the final choice.

I thought this was pretty good: the attention to historical detail is always something I like and the choices were interesting and varied. There were a few minor spelling errors but overall I thought this was a good story and an enjoyable read :)

I was not sure what to expect from a historical story game, but this one was excellent. The writing was well done and descriptive, and did a good job of holding my attention.

Perhaps one of the reasons that I was unsure of what to expect from a historical story game is that history already has a set path with known results. This does not seem to lend itself easily to choosing your own adventure. However, I really enjoyed the way that this story allowed the reader to pick the characters path, within the context of the historical setting.

This story had some decent branching with the character path, and allowed for meaningful choices to be made. I felt that the main character was pretty well developed and had meaningful interactions with other characters in the story.

The writing was descriptive and did a pretty good job of putting you in the setting and allowed a glimpse at historical events from different points of view.

Overall, definitely a good read.

I don't know why I didn't start with the history section. A lot of the stories here are amazing!

This story was fun to read. I love all forms of history, but the American revolution has always been one of my favorites.

I like how detailed it is! And how you turned a story into a bigger and more massive one. I also like how long it is, I can read it and not get bored. And with the amount of deaths it makes it interesting