Vapula

Upon reading the description for this story, I'm led to thinking that this will be a struggle between the forces of good and evil as they're locked in battle to gain supremacy over the other. That isn't the case here.

The story involves you playing Vapula - a higher demon that's in charge of a legion of lesser demons. Vapula, you, go on a quest to capture a soul because some lesser minion challenged your authority and you have to save face. Basically, it's a game where you are the demon that's out to collect souls. I'm not opposed to the premise of this storygame so much as I am its execution. Why do we have to have this whole set up in order for us to go soul collecting? Why Vapula? I can't help but feel that there were so many ways that this idea could have been used and the opportunity was missed.

The grammar and punctuation were okay. A few minor errors here and there, but nothing that made it unreadable. My biggest issue with the writing has to do with the constant use of parenthesis to describe things that don't need to be explained. For example, at one point we're dealing with a woman named Rebecca. Shortly after she's introduced, you're suddenly using the name "Becky" then you break the text with parenthesis because you felt the need to tell us that she likes to be called that. Why? It added nothing to the story and she wasn't even in it for that long. At another point, you break the text to with parenthesis to indicate a pause in the speech, but later use three dots "..." to demonstrate the same thing. Make sure you're more consistent in the future and before you start breaking immersion to add an explanation, ask yourself if the reader really needs to know that and how you can smoothly mix it into the story.

As far as the story goes, it leaves much to be desired. The story is about ten pages long in any one playthrough of which their are a few endings. I found it odd how on one page I'm made to feel like a powerful demonic commander, then on the next I'm nearly getting my ass handed to me if it wasn't outright kicked.

Like I said earlier, this story is you going on a mission to collect souls and I don't see why you couldn't be any other demon doing the same thing. I just don't get how claiming one or two souls will win the respect of an entire legion that already hates your guts. Also, there is a lack of variety in how you choose to get these souls. We're playing as a demon with 3,000 years of experience claiming souls and he's only able to think of two ways to corrupt people?

I can see that you did put some effort in this, but there's just so much more that could have been done with this idea. It's not a bad story, but it's also not a good one and it had a lot of potential. Overall, I give this storygame a 3/8. My rating would go up to a four if the constant parenthesis were taken out and those sentences restructured.

The story and plot point was very interesting, especially the variety of victims and different strategies that needed to be followed for each. Also, the inability to win over the last two victims(the office girl and the thrill enthusiast) made sense and a pretty good job was done in providing the reasons behind those endings. The story was engaging and I loved the fact that the reader has to think from a logical standpoint to get a successful kill. Syntax and grammar was good overall; other than one or two typos and shifting from third to first person point of view in one of the sentences, but those were very few.

Different victims had different locations throughout the globe and I think it would've been interesting to know about the views of the protagonist to things specific to that country(like it's cultures, culinary, etc.) after being dormant for more than a thousand years. A good backstory about how the protagonist gained power and how he himself was enticed to hell by a demon back when he was a human would have been interesting too; but it's your choice in the end to decide whether this would suit the plot or not. I'm guessing the bold texts indicate an authoritarian voice, if so then I don't personally think it's required to bold them since it somewhat interferes with the reading; but it might just be me. The part where 'He' himself talks to you seemed a bit off to me. You tried to incorporate old English but also modern English in the same conversation. Might just be me but it seemed a little weird.

Overall I liked the story and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I would love it if you explored more of this plot and made some sort of a sequel to this as I would love reading it! Given it a 6/8.

Note: I'm not the most reliable person when it comes to reviewing stuff due to my lack of experience. I'm sure the more experienced people here would be able to give a more detailed review than me. So essentially, take everything I said with a grain of salt.

Meh. Given the rating, I was expecting something more. 4/8

Good Effort

Fun game with lots of great stuff in it. It was on the short side, but seeing as how it was for a contest, that makes sense.

The frame story and the concept were great. I like how humans start out with good spirit and need to be corrupted in order to turn bad. I also like that God is inherently given greater powers than the demon and how Vampula thinks ‘that’s not fair’. My main critique story-wise is that Vampula (and his tasks) do not seem befitting of someone so high up in the food chain. He has performance anxiety and only goes for one soul at a time. For someone so powerful, trying to corrupt an entire nation or perhaps, at least, a dictator or religious head would seem more fitting. The branches you have (which were fun) would work better probably if the main character was an underling trying to prove himself.

I like your writing style. Your metaphors and vocabulary are great. My main critique would be a tendency to repeat phrasing and sentence structure too many times in a row (for example, lots of sentences in a row starting with “you” and “your”). Minimizing the repetition would help it sound even better.

The best parts of your game (for me) are the internal dialogues of the victims and the way Vampula manipulates them. I thought the anxious, depressive, and angry chains of thoughts were handled really well.

Looks like each of your stories has been getting a high rating. Congrats and keep up the great work! Looking forward to your next one.

This was a great story game, the main character and what they were doing is horrible, but still exciting.