The Gauntlet

Synopsis:
After being captured by a cruel country, you are forced to survive in a monster-infested sewage system. Fight everything from blood-eagles to huge toads, taking new items with you as you progress, in this free-roam dungeon crawl.

Positives:
-There is a lot of branching in the narrative, almost everything I did split the story in new and interesting ways.
-The idea of a country called Tyrannica is so fucking funny to me. Just imagine an evil ruler calling their country ‘Eviland’ or ‘Badplace’. This isn’t really an issue, setting the tone for the rest of the story, as it doesn't seem to take itself too seriously (which was good! This was such a fun read).
-Foreshadowing is fun: you use it well. The fact my sword and shield are heavy and cannot be quickly carried impacting my fate later on was pretty cool. I only wish there was more of it: maybe the lairs of the monsters have distinctive sounds or smells or something so I know what I might be facing in battle.

Things to improve:
-You use the adjective ‘enormous’ so much. It’s fine at first, but once you notice it becomes such a banal way to describe things. It also fails to set up scale: almost all monsters are ‘enormous’, even though they differ in dimensions considerably.
-Adverbs are used almost obsessively. Again, this isn’t a bad thing, but looking at it critically it almost clutters the prose. Perhaps eliminating some of these adverbs would be beneficial.
-On the ‘you throw the gold in your pockets’ ending, there is no end game or reset link. Annoying, especially since this was the last path I had to go through.
-There are several small spelling mistakes. I’m not writing them all out but:
1) On the ‘And what? Find out!’ Page, you misspell ‘sweet’ as ‘sweey’.
2) On the ‘long tunnel page you write ‘several minute’ instead of several minutes.
-Some of the endings are a little lacklustre. Especially the ones where I die. I just get told ‘you got eaten’. It would’ve been way cooler if there was some description here, even if it was only short. Also, confusingly, if I take the lower fang or upper fang when I kill the snake, even though the outcome is the same (it is slain), my ending is drastically different. In one I become a king (cool I guess) and in the other I’m a god (arguably a bit better). How did either of these things happen?

More than anything I think this is a testament to how the telling of tales has changed on the site. Written while I was still a kid, it’s kind of like looking through an ancient artefact and then comparing it to the modern equivalent. If you want a sense of perspective this might be the CYOA for you.

This is an interesting start to the story. I’m not really sure how there is a dungeon built entirely out of steel. Well, I could see that if we were in some futuristic setting where people can make lots of steel and have time to build such things, but I get more of a feeling that we are in a medieval setting, and I’m not sure how they would manage to make an entire dungeon out of steel! But anyway… wait, I’m in a dungeon as a captive, but I still have my sword and shield? I guess they don’t really get a lot of captives around these parts. But hey, at least I have three choices on my first page: I can pick any of three doors that are too heavy for me to open…then why am I picking one?

I did appreciate the different options that were available in the story. I really liked that I could make choices that affected the story, even if there were a lot of different ways to die in this story. It was still fun exploring the dungeon and going back to try different options each time. The story was light-hearted more than it was a serious story, but that’s what made it fun. Thank you for sharing the story with the site.

Wow, this was pretty engaging, and this had the right amount of choices for this storygame to be quite enjoyable. This really reminded of a classic dungeon game, in which the player is quite vulnerable as they attempt their best to brave the dangers of a difficult situation of the sort that was presented in this very storygame :)

I felt quite a sense of accomplishment when I finally escaped at the end of this. I must say that this was a keenly written adventure and it has definitely earned my praise. Very impressive, indeed.

I thought this was a waste of time.

Good job, 5/8. I think I read every page in this story, and it was all pretty good. The April Fool was especially funny.

it was good

very hard

Use the right door, take the spear kill the toad and shield yourself!!!

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!

THIS IS VERY BORING AND IT IS A DEAD GAME. STAY AWAY UNLESS YOU ARE A BIG NEEK!!!!!!!!!