The Ghost People

I had a really fun time with this game! All my notes on individual pages were freaking out in one way or another, and even though there wasn’t a ton of branching (like, badly, but more on this later) it was a good story. I think providing the context in the description was a good idea, because even as a history person I... don’t really know all that much about prehistoric humans.

Characterization – 8/8:

I loved (or loved to hate) all of the named characters. Our protagonist had a strong “voice” which can sometimes get lost in a story-game. Even the side characters, despite clearly being used for a specific purpose, felt like they could be real people and didn’t feel one-dimensional to me. Brulok and Thekko made for excellent foils to each other. One of my notes from Blessing was that the grudges of fathers were passed to the son. Whether you meant it to be some sort of commentary or not, their beef made sense.

Speaking of Thekko – I didn’t like him to begin with, and then at the end of the game I was like wow... this guy has ISSUE-issues. Some of what he said was over the top, but didn't reach campy territory, and read as a genuinely messed up person. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt at first, because sure, it makes sense that you wouldn’t initially trust somebody from the group that had kidnapped your people. After that though... hm. Maybe threatening to rape and bathe in someone's blood after spearing somebody else through the chest is NOT the way to go about it. Tl;dr I hate him and he needs to go to a conflict resolution class... or maybe hell. Great work.

Wenonah is based. Good for her for bashing that guy's head in with a rock. Kunchka is also a real one.

Setting: 7/8

The setting was awesome. I liked the fleshing out of the different creatures and giving them a little moment in the narrative. :^) I also thought the totem stuff was interesting, since of course they were an animistic society. Through the narrative, you nailed the feeling that people were doing what they had to do to survive, but tried to keep to those moral and spiritual standards, ex. The use of Long Tooth’s pelt in the mountain section.

Plot & Conflict: 7/8

I think you did a good job with this. The only criticism I have is that the pacing felt a little weird when we meet Winonah. I understand we were getting lost in the sauce of a budding romance while gathering our strength, but it did feel kind of long. So did the events when we were dealing with Thekko later on. Not the combat itself, just... in general.

Branching: 2/8.

There’s unfortunately not much to say here, and it suffered as a story-game by being too linear, even as a contest submission. The first choice we got to make was essentially meaningless, though it did include some different world building stuff, so I’m not completely mad.

Grammar, Punctuation, & Spelling: 7.5/8.

Good. No notes, except you used “wretched” when you meant “retched” (Awakening) and misspelled “stopped” as “stoped” (Blessing).

Payoff: 5.5/8

Likely unsurprisingly, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the epilogue. It wasn’t terrible by any means, and it was sweet that we name him after the protag, but I feel it did cheapen the ending a little and brought my score down a little. I don't have a lot to say about the good ending, aside from I got it on my first playthrough and it was a satisfying ending.

As for the other ending: So, I’m not going to lie, I totally thought that Winonah was killed, so I was really happy when it turned out she lived. That was a crazy ending, with Thekko flipping out like that. But then you killed her for real!! My legit gripe though is that the person that happens on them is her dad. Stranger things have happened I guess, but it just didn’t really make sense to me, especially since it seemed like they were farther from the encampment than that? This one also specifically made me kind of go “eh” about the epilogue.

Originality & Style: 8/8.

I liked the images. It’s not something you see often, and I especially liked that you took the effort to coordinate them by the setting. It gave it a little pizazz, that did not go unnoticed or unappreciated. Your writing style was also enjoyable to read, and you did a good job at balancing showing vs telling, and your descriptions were... well... descriptive, but didn’t bog the action down. Your sentence structure was also varied enough that it all flowed together really well, and I don’t think I had any kind of antsy moment where I had to put it down for a minute because I got a little bored.

Overall rating is 6.42/8, rounded down to a 6. I liked this story a lot – it's a shame there wasn’t more game to it.

Reading the previous comments to this story, there was clearly a mixed reaction at the time it was first published. People praised the background images and book-like font; people were displeased by the lack of branching and a lack of tension in the story.

I agree with both findings, but I rated this story a 7--because whatever this story might be lacking, it isn't much. Although I don't have any specific recommendation as I write this, it seems as though it would not take much alteration to make this one of the finest stories on the site.

What kept my interest through this 14,000-word story was my interest in human evolution, and particularly that epoch when there were multiple varieties of the genus Homo running around.

We as modern humans have a poor concept of time; we think of the Roman Empire as being "ancient," for instance, even though those days were about 2000 years ago.

But our species first appeared somewhere between 100,000 to 200,000 years ago--millennia upon millennia of human experience, of which no written record exists, when we were a people living in tune with natural rhythms. And before Homo sapiens there was Homo erectus, a population of humans who existed for something like 1.6 million years.

But despite my interest in the subject, I admit I was not quite fully engaged with the characters, or the setting, or the situations. It's not that the writing was poor; rather, I think a bit more time could have been invested in developing those three elements. The basic premise is solid, but I'd very much like to see a redo.

As for branching, I came across no false endings until the final confrontation, when I ducked instead of dodged, or something like that. So either there are multiple ways to reach the ending, or the right choices were telegraphed a little too clearly and I never had any hesitation about what needed to be done.

But maybe this is a case where story branching could be used to build out some of those elements that I and other readers feel are lacking in the current story. Maybe in one branch, the People of the River go on a hunt--in which the reader picks up some details about the era, as well as the personalities and politics of the tribe. Or another storypath where you venture further into the territory of the Ghost People, and experience more of that culture. And another branch where your mission gets hopelessly derailed in a struggle to survive against some natural element.

The beauty of a branching story is that no one path needs to explain everything and be all-satisfying; indeed, such stories SHOULD invite the reader to get lost in the various possibilities, with something new and unique to be found in each iteration. It's not necessarily the arc of that one master storyline that matters most, but the totality of all the storylines, and the multiple perspectives they provide.

Enjoying a branching story is like appreciating a sculpture; the reader wants to walk around and see the changing perspectives. If a sculpture is a three-dimensional representation of space, then a branching story is a three-dimensional representation of time.

So I really hope there is an update to this story in the works. And if that is the case, I'll second the motion to ditch that now-optional epilog, which strains credibility. If modern humans were capable of memories that long, we wouldn't have public school districts resisting the mandates to teach human evolution in the classroom.

Well, there are a few things to be said about this game. It is pretty good contest entry, and a good story period to boot. Quality of writing was nice, and there were very few, if any, grammatical errors.

This being said, I do not think it is deserving of an 8 rating. I was actually going to read Mizal's story just before this, but I'd heard this story was getting a lot of attention, so I thought I'd come check it out. It certainly deserves attention, but, well, put simply, I think this game is overrated.

I feel like the people who rated it eight, saw the font, the backgrounds, and the use of items, then proceeded to disregard everything else. Now keep in mind that I'm not saying this is bad, just that it isn't excellent. Excellent aesthetics? Sure. Excellent plot? Sure. Excellent execution? Not quite there.

I simply didn't really FEEL very much of anything. The characters weren't all that meaningful to me, and I didn't really even consider not fighting the Thellek for a second. My family didn't create that much of an impact at all on my decisions. Maybe if the romance was based off of a mutual Florence Nightingale effect, then I would feel more for the relationship. Oh and more choices during that process would enhance it greatly.

And immediately afterwards we have the climax of our character's sole goal. Saving our tribe mates, but what do you know? You only end up saving them through a piece of deus ex machina.

Last thing here...what was that ending? Having it turn out to be a dream is super cliched, and well, knocked my rating for it down a peg. Would've been better if you'd just ended the story after you saved the village and merged the peoples.

All in all, it was a good story. Maybe even great, but it didn't wow me.

Good, but not amazing.

Noice.

I know this one has sort of a mixed reaction, but let’s go over the major things.

First, I liked the writing and especially the setting with this one. There aren’t nearly enough stories set during prehistoric times and this one did a good job in that regard.

One main problem was how linear it was. A lot more choice additions would have really improved things. Then there are the times where you die and there is no “end story” link. Hate it when a writer does that. There is already an option at the top to restart a story, or use the back button. No need to have a link for it and there is never a good reason to prevent ending a story prematurely. It’s just annoying.

Finally there was the ending which just really ruined the rest of the story. (I and several others have mentioned it in the forums so won’t go on too much about it here) A better way to have ended it would have been just leaving it still in the past.

As for the use of pictures, I’m sure those helped score higher points with some people, but I think a focus on adding more choices rather than the pics would have served better.

Sorry for those who played this storygame recently and saw blank pictures. The hosting site I used changed their domain, so the storygame had to be unpublished and I had to manually fix every single picture. I hope if you did play it without the art you will try it again. A lot of effort went into that aspect of this. Sorry again for the inconvenience.

I liked the story over all, the ending was a bit weird but creative at least.

An interesting story and well done. Even though I think it is somewhat short, the setting you provided makes the story unique and great.

In my comment, I meant to say “maybe if it WASN’T the Florence Nightingale effect. Not if it was. A distinction I feel I needed to make.

Damn this was good.