Player Comments on Undead Persona

The story itself and pacing were both very impressive. There were a few issues I did have with this story, however.

For starters,why is it that Kelso, with all his intelligence, would allow our protagonist to decide whether or not to help? After all, doesn't the fact that the Professor used mind control on his creations prove he does not trust them to serve him willingly?

The story also doesn't explain how the control was broken in the first place. Yes, laboratories with the creations in them were destroyed, but dies that mean that the means to take control of these creatures was destroyed too? If so, why not rebuild the means of control and create new ones who are implanted with it?

Also, Gideon struck me as the 'voice of reason'and a diplomat in this story. It would make more sense for him to work with the protagonist to fight the professor, rather than attempt an assassination on two accomplished fighters while injured. Seemed like a sloppy way to write off his character.

As mentioned elsewhere, Cecelia didn't really have any character traits outside of being a lovesick puppy.

Despite my complaints, this was a good story. Decent amount of branching, a wide array of characters, a comprehensive, engaging plot. This story definitely deserved its success.

I actually think that David as a character should have been expanded upon instead of Cecilia and would have been a better love interest.

Think about it: a man who wants to kill you so badly and thinks you're a monster, is forcibly turned into a ghoul (probably horrified what he's become) by you and then cannot help but feel a certain affection towards you all while questioning if that love is because of that forced bond or if this love was a product of genuine connection.

You know, the whole David death scene would also have more impact hehehe. The thing about the Cecilia romance is that there is no narrative weight behind it or any theme related to the story that would tie this subplot to the main plot. With David and yes Selko too they both are related to the themes of identity "what does the protagonist want to be".

You could have David portray the human side of the protag while Selko represents their worst more monstrous qualities. And I also think that the character interactions with David and Selko are much more engaging and funnier which makes those two more endearing to me.

You know, with all those ridiculous things like power suits, church zealots and werewolves and vampires, I just wished that there was some more self awareness how weird this mash up is or that you just hammed the weirdness even more.

Some of the background descriptions also need more work, at times I really did not have a clue what some locations are supposed to look like like the chapel. You could have added some cool details like that the church is actually an old abandoned mall but refurbished with tacky white paint to add to the apocalypse feel.

Darn I just want someone to write a David romance branch. I call it: Undead Persona needs to be more gay and campy.

It started off great; a few typing errors here and there, a bit of confusion over who spoke, but a very interesting premise with rich and delightful characters. The setting felt real and was well-written, with some excellent imagery, and there was a constant feeling of threat and conflict, which kept me on my toes, however . . .

. . . Cecelia was the start of the downfall; she was not developed *at all*, but came across as a love-at-first-sight Mary Sue (even odder when it alienates some people, as well as seemingly goes against the character, and breaks the genre of the story somewhat). I found Kelso to be a potential love-interest, much better than she was, and that it was even hinted at (the fact the hero's gender WAS ambiguous made this easier to believe, too, as he could be gay or straight as one wished to interpret, depending on what gender one assigned him).

Cecelia also marked the point I twigged who the Professor was, which ruined the upcoming element of 'surprise' and big 'twist' . . . I found myself skipping the text of the battle, no longer interested, and forced to endure more of this relationship with Cecelia (seriously, they'd known each other ONE WEEK, why would I - or they - care about their 'romance' when I have a huge battle raging on and deeper philosophical debate to consider)? I managed to guess all options from that point on to get to a good ending, simply as the narrative went from 'original' to 'predictable'.

Yes, it turned out the Professor was EXACTLY whom I thought he was . . . I would have been happy with that, had it been a chance to deeply explore one's loyalties, sense of identity, and the grey side to 'right/wrong' . . . instead it became a black-and-white choice with little explanation as to anything, making everything beforehand seem pointless.

So much potential as a story . . .

Wasted . . .

If this was rewritten WITHOUT Cecilia (or she was given - you know - a personality or some likeable traits), I would give it a much higher rating, but . . . frankly . . . Cecelia pissed me off so much - with her Mary Sue, Love-At-First-Sight, 'Soul Mate' crap - I felt that I was being sucked into a "Twilight" fanfiction by a teenager at that point and wanted to bang my head on a wall.

Probably won't replay.

nicee

terrible

Other than the misspells that are littered throughout the story, it is probably one of the best stories I've read on this site.

Honestly? This story kind of sucks. Everything feels arbitrary; the characters are one-dimensional, the choices feel weightless and the story fails to engage.
I need to stop trying to read stories that don't even bother to proof-read for spelling errors and such. Cool concept, but minimum effort makes for a shit result.

Are there any endings where he regains his memories?

i think its a bad book

Everything was great other than spelling mistakes or grammar. So I had fun nonetheless!

Ok

It just froze after I died, even restarting my compuiter didnt work. Then I reroueted my internet connection.

Fabulous. The story was well done despite a few spelling errors, congrats

Good story with plot-twist.

I liked it.

Excellent

It was long and beautiful. The fight scenes were very descriptive and gave me a good grasp of what was happening. The story was also different, one of the twists involving Kelso. The poem in the end was also a very nice touch.

Fun, with unexpected twists of the plot. I would definitely recomend it.

Was definitely a fun story. I enjoyed it a lot :D

Aside from all the spelling and grammar errors it's a good story, though a bit predictable. Played and got all the endings.

"Hi"- David

great 10/10
took about an hour and 15 minutes to complete

fucking aye! this was dope... I got sucked into this story good job dude

It's generally okay, but the religious overtones can get a bit grating at times. Overall good story.

Very rich and entailing.

^(My attempt at big words)

Even better on second playthrough. still going for best ending

Very fun and interesting. Intricate plot is detailed, yet easy to follow. Great Job!

There really needs to be more proofreading. A lot of the choices simply lead to death, so while I had a lot of options to go through, I couldn't really have a different story.

A very enjoyable game, with multiple paths. I look forward to more by the same author!

Fun indeed

It was pretty good, it could certainly use some proofing, but I enjoyed it. My biggest complaint is that there seemed to be lots of paths, but most of them simply lead to my death, instead of more endings or details. It was fun.

Very emotional,

Nice story. I say keep it up.

Very nice, I loved the plot, and I loved that you got to fight the professor, it is always fun to see things unfold and then the final battle comes. Very nice

I got killed by The Hands of The Church! Hooray!

Great

Malevolent Dictator! Nice. I also got Vengeful Persona and a few others. Read through, I think, all the possible webs. As per my comment on The Other World, won't comment further.

Wow. Took me a couple of days but I'm glad I got to the end. The thing this story does well is create an ever-evolving story with rich characters. Needless to say, it was a very good read.

The only thing that degrades this good work would be the constant typos throughout the story, disrupting the flow of the words. I'm sure with just a simple proofread you could have eliminate them all.

Also, this felt more fantasy than post-apocalyptic. What was the apocalypse in this universe? Though what I did like was combining fantasy elements -- like Vampires, with "future" elements, such as the Zealots and armor and such.

Overall a very well-written story. Good work.

Great story. Lots of paths, VERY long, and fun to play. 6/8

And Bearclaw, this is nowhere near as good as Ground (Motherfucking) Zero.

Truly wonderful storyline & plot! Very good background & descriptions of all the main characters, places, & events. The length was enjoyable. In my opinion, almost as good as Ground Zero.

It hurt the story though having MANY spelling & grammar erros (ye seriously need to get someone to proofread your work).

If ye get the spelling & grammar errors fixed then ye would, in my opinion, have a great work here & something worthy of being featured. Keep up the good work.

This was fantastic. You did an excellent job of creating a unique universe, full of memorable characters.

GREAT STORY!! Love the endings, shame everyone has to die though :(

Speedrun to a bad end so I can comment again:

Didn't really feel very "post-apocalyptic." Possibly some of the optional choices flesh this out a bit more?

Third playthrough uncovers choice forcing.

Technically very solid.

I don't think I'd tag this with "Romance." My interaction with Cecilia lasted all of two pages.

It's a very good story, and a worthy candidate for a feature slot.

A series of thoughts, poorly organized:

Some really nice characters. Occasionally a little too heavy on the author telling me how I felt about them, as opposed to letting me make my own decisions.

A satisfying amount of text per page, without feeling overwhelming or being hard to read.

Played through twice.

8/8 length is hard to get, especially for something written with a time limit.

Like a lot of epics, it suffers a bit from "third-act lag." I ended up with a lot of pages in a row that only had one "real" choice, and a couple of others marked "optional."

Pretty cool from what I read so far. Got the Malevolent Dictator ending.

Really solid submission to the competition. I am pleased. Am gonna go back and read other paths for sure.

A very nice game.

A fun premise, I like it. I'm a bit unsure of how 'post-apocalyptic-y' it is, though that may be because it's one in the morning and I'm somewhat dehydrated because my body seems to think any water I give it is an excuse to vomit.

I did find errors, mostly punctuation and a few that were spelling, but nothing that really bothered me as I was reading. Definitely better than ... nearly everything that's been posted lately.

The story pacing was good. I do find it a tad ironic that there was a link called "make a decision" and the next page only had one link on it. xD Not really making a decision there...

I was a little disappointed that I -had- to come up with the alternative plan just to live, but the game offered tons of choices and interesting options. Just so you know, though, there's no end game link for dying by the hands of the church when you "answer sarcastically" unlike dying from your mentor. Pretty sure that's unintentional.

Over all, this was a great, interesting, and well thought-out read and you should be proud.

I found this very enjoyable, the writing was good and grammatically sound. I don't really read much vampire-based stuff so the story was relatively fresh for me, if not revolutionary. It is fun exploring the different paths but it seems more could be expanded a little more, I found the ending a bit speculative. Nevertheless I found it an enjoyable read and a good story game :D

Not gonna lie here on any single bit.

In truth, your style was decent, besides the rather awkward usage of elipses and commas. You tended to trail details and thoughts off a little too prematurely, and I can find at least one sentence every two pages where you made a sentence way too choppy with a misplaced comma. You've also got mispelled words, so you might wanna run your pages through with a word processor for a bit. There's also plenty of moments where you could make your descriptions and wordings more concise / digestable for the reader (depending on what you want your audience to be, it could go one way or the other). For "The Greater Good" epilogue, you did a lot of tell, not show in terms of how you could be influenced.

As for the plot itself, I'd have to say it was unsurprisingly predictable. Maybe it's just me comparing your work to Ground Zero or something, but I was hoping for a bit more on the ways choices could diverge from a given storyline. Most of the epilogues were pretty similar in the general course of humanity's growth. I know you'll be brushing up on this, but the current endings you have so far would not make this entry incredibly strong. Whether or not that changes in the future depends on your corrections.

Also, ghouling a certain obssessive mutt doesn't change the fact that she still dies, though it was stated in that scene that ghouling would make people relatively ageless, like you. I'm not sure if that was unintended or not. I think there's also a link with no end game link upon death, so take a quick scan over that when you can.

That's it for a first glance, and I know you've still yet to finish the Zealot path, so...

I guess a 5/8 would be my initial grading, but given that you're probably going to slave over this for a while, I bumped this up to 6/8 for optimism and potential.

TL;DR I'd call this the par for an OK contest entry. Definitely has the potential to be possibly a featured game if you fleshed out maybe two other main branches.