The Chronomantic Adventures of Professor Gower: Office Hours

Well this was a wholesome bit of fanfiction.

The writing and grammar of the story were decent, and it was interesting to see a story that portrayed Professor Gower in a way that didn't involve some level of insanity. Or perhaps it did. This is all just the fantasy of an insane man. I like that.

The structure was very linear. I am pretty sure there is only one winning ending, and it wasn't hard to reach at all. All choices have only one correct option, save those on who to visit, and the other leads to a game over. Because of this, the structure is lacking no matter if "The Chromatic Adventures of Professor Gower: Office Hours" is considered as a CYOA story or a game.

There wasn't much in general that stood out to me about the story itself. I got the general impression that I was watching an episode in an educational children's series.
Some of you faggots who read reviews before reading stories might be into that, but I was not.

Overall this story wasn't bad. I just wasn't all that interested in it, and it lacked in what makes a storygame a storygame.

Stories on time usually aren't that good in my opinion. It's a difficult subject to write about. But this was written well enough to keep me from tossing it aside and eventually really liking it.

When going in don't take this too seriously, it's a fun story to enjoy when you have free time.

In order to get the full experience, you'll need to be well versed in literature throughout the ages or look them up. I can definitely see why someone who has practically no knowledge of these characters wouldn't enjoy it much.

The difficulty, at least for me, felt a bit strange. Without spoiling anything, in Euripedes content, for example, the author was extremely concerned about something while completely uninterested in another. Choosing to support the other leads to a game over. There doesn't seem to be a reason I'd ever want to pick such a thing. An easy choice if you pay the slightest bit of attention.

In Homer's bits, you could either do a limerick or do something more advanced to impress his kids. The limerick outrages Homer, the other deeply impresses him. The choice here is minefield difficulty. I felt I may have missed out on a part of the experience because I was not completely familiarized with both authors. A quick wikipedia check and a synopsis of the stories they write won't do justice for the depth of the character shadowdrake27 is attempting to reach.

I particularly liked Homer's story. If there's any complaint I'd make regarding this, it's that the episodic adventures the main character go through are paced a bit too quickly. Just as I'm enjoying one episode on this adventure, I fall into the next. There's so much potential in the adventures and, to me, they end on notes that feel very incomplete. Another criticism I'd have on this is that descriptions are repeated in a rather irritable way.

Though I believe some of what the author was trying to convey was lost on me, I really did enjoy the adventure for what it was.

Having had some time on my hands, and an empty office, I actually played this particular game about ten years ago, and it was a pleasure back then. It has been difficult for me to wait until now to comment on it, but naturally I did not wish to cause a time paradox, having meddled enough with literary endeavors.

But at last, you have published it, and I can comment. Naturally, there's some difficulty in your having revealed what I use my office for when office hours are slow, and the treasures I keep therein--I shall have to invest in more security, I suppose. But I suppose that your having peeled back the curtain a bit on my secrets will keep my courses fully enrolled, and that's for the best.

Your knowledge of what I do is spot on. Almost eerily so. You catch the bitter, *annoying* tone of Euripedes almost a bit too well, almost as if you were there, and I have the sense that you too must be caught up in my time adventures, Shadowdrake, that you must have been there as well. I would venture a hypothesis about you, but I would not wish to deprive the readers of your narrative, so I will remain silent for now, although have you could have known what I said to Natalie when she came to my office makes me wonder.

She, of course, was dreadfully jealous of Marie, but I explained to her that the past is the past, especially when it's the serious past, as with Marie. But I'm glad you didn't go into that business with Marie in any detail.

I do hope it does not affect the threads of time to tell you that the next four games in this series are top-notch--the one after that a bit weaker, I'm afraid--and then the one after *that* becomes the #3 game on the site.

The tag says Science Fiction, but that itself is a lie! We all know that Gower is actually a time-travelling professor. How else would he know so much about history?

It's a fun and well-crafted piece of fun fiction that is a bit like Gower meets Doctor Who, though with a gentler treatment of the character than in Gower's own storygames. The structure is fairly simple but elegant. I like how the artifacts tie together at the end. In addition to all the literary allusions, there are neat callbacks to earlier appearances of the Professor.

love it so eiksided of whet you crate nixed.??

That was really fun! It's not really a storygame, what with the lack of branching and all that stuff, but it was still a fun read nonetheless. Thank you for writing this one!

Well, I certainly really liked it. The writing was polished, and investigating the different historical periods was interesting. I think perhaps I might have enjoyed this a bit more if I had read through the works being discussed in this CYOA, that way I could relate to the references being made. But it was still an enjoyable read for someone unfamiliar with the pieces.

There was a little bit of coding involved, which (SPOILERS): allowed you to remember the time bandits chasing after you, regardless of which of the three paths you picked first. I also really enjoyed the twist in the true end, where (SPOILERS): I came face to face with my future self. That was unexpected, and interesting.

I do feel like a bit more suspense could've been added to the narrative. The bandits chasing after you offered this a bit, but I think more could have been done here. I also wish more background had been given on these pieces and historical time periods, for those not familiar with them . It may have helped me catch more of the references.

Overall, this is a relatively short (apx. 20 minute) read that was both well-polished and enjoyed. Good work.

Of the various stories I've read from Shadow so far, this is certainly the best written. Is it the best storygame? Of that, I have some quibbles.

Certainly, the premise is very interesting: the "dour" college professor, feeling unneeded in his own time, goes hopping through history to bask fanboy-style in the company of his favorite authors. The original intent is just to meet these long-dead figures, but in so doing he becomes wrapped up in some adventure to help preserve some priceless literary treasure. Although I know nothing about the biographies of any of the three historical figures, I was able to follow along. Each was drawn well enough to make the story interesting.

There was enough of a basis for a story here to suggest several ways in which this tale could be greatly expanded. As currently written, each encounter with one of the figures comes across as a short episode, but obviously if we're going back to places like ancient Greece there is a lot of potential material to work with. The arrival of the time wraiths at the end of each chapter further suggests a much longer story.

But as a storygame, there is effectively no branching, just a series of advance-or-die choices, with each of the three main episodes looping back to the original "Office Hours" page. And the false endings are remarkably similar: upset the historical author and somehow erase that person's influence over all future literature, or fail to evade the time wraiths. Then the story resets, making this seem like a better-written but easier-to-beat story than "Inheritance House."

Like any story about time travel, the discussions on temporal mechanics will leave your head spinning. But I tend to doubt that the deletion of a single writer from the historical record would result in such devastating losses to the arts. For instance, losing one female poet doesn't mean no other woman would write again, or losing one Greek tragedian doesn't mean we would never know drama. This is like saying that if Thomas Edison fell off a cliff as a child, we'd never have light bulbs; in reality, the loss of one genius would just be an opportunity for another. Certainly, history would change, but the destruction to the timeline would need to be far more wholesale to shoot it as full of holes as suggested in this story.

In terms of writing quality, this was pretty good. There were a couple passages I could quibble with, but that's neither here nor there. I do want to point out a scripting issue on the "Office Hours" page, which the reader visits multiple times. I'm guessing most people are just skipping to the bottom of the page, thinking they've already read the text. However, it looks like the text is intended to change upon each reading, but what I observed was that the multiple versions of the same passage are accumulating with each loop.

In short, this is a smart and engaging story that I enjoyed reading. However, as a storygame the structure is nothing like the literal cave of time it describes.

(Spoiler Warning!)

Wow! Shadowdrake, you absolutely crushed it like blew it out of the water. This story is impressive. You managed to the impossible to make an exciting time travel game by bending the rules and changing the format for that I am really proud of you. This story was outstanding and really interesting. I very much enjoyed it, and here is what I have to say.
The Grammar was perfect throughout the whole story. There were no grammar issues in the story that were noticeable or seemed to be.
Now let's get to the juicy stuff. The actual story itself was muy Fuego. I loved it, especially considering how hard it is to write an exciting time-traveling story. I loved the way you depicted the famous authors of the past so well. Personally, my favorite timeline was the Euripides one while Homer and Marie are not far behind. I like how you made each character have individual personalities, and you brought me into the story. There was maybe a glitch in the scripting you could enter into the final time travel place before you visited Euripides, but it ended in death, so there’s that.
This story, although being really good, had a lot of potentials. You lead a whole life with a family and a job, so I understand you can’t put all your effort into the stories, but this story's potential is crazy.
Each timeline could have been adventures where he spent hours to days in the timeline so Gower could get the token and then leave. That would leave you with more room for characterization and plot development. I think that would take the story to the next level from being a top 150 story game to a top 50 story game.

One thing I did feel was wrong in the story was the pacing. In all honesty, the pacing in the story was very quick. It was a lot of words to read, but because of the smaller amount of pages, it felt a lot faster than it actually was. But the stories have a lot of potentials, and they could have been expanded to an even larger story.
Overall, your story is terrific and has a lot of potentials. I loved the work you did and how you manipulated the concept. I especially liked the amount of references that only avid CYStia citizens would understand. Your story is an excellent fun story to read, and I’ll rate it a 6/8.