Your Fate Like Clockwork

Your Fate Like Clockwork is a looping corridor of twists, turns, expansive world building and a nearly incomprehensible lore; despite all of this, it manages to run like clockwork!

The amount of detail given to this small town is an iron clad testament to the skillful writing and colorful world building. From the start, the existence of one nervous, illiterate guard tells us this place is either a nothing shabby-town of sorts, or in ruin. The large but empty streets, the closed off shops, and the existence of the grand but abandoned castle set in stone the picture for us; this was obviously once a bustling medieval city fallen to ruin. Our protagonist themselves, intelligent and observant, gives us enough feedback to fill in any blanks. This isn't just present in the opening though, this perfect blend of narrator show and protagonist tell is present throughout the story.

The story itself is way better than it should be; this game is essentially a two part, in depth novel, with part one being the town and part two being the castle. Both of these parts build up well. In the town this build up in plot is mostly linear; you start by being introduced to the woman who called you here, and begin your investigation. As you gain more insight and discover the clues, the climax rapidly approaches as the town itself turns against you in an action packed escape scene. The castle area is a little less straight forward; one can go from a seemingly mundane hallway to fighting an unholy monster in the flip of a page! The lore expeditions here are heavy handed as well, but with the bits and pieces gathered in the town, you'll be happy to discover more in depth bits of information. Overall, the pacing in this second section is wildly different from how it's structured in the first, but I think this is a good decision on the authors part, and effectively stops the second act from feeling like a slog.

If I had one major criticism, it's the characters throughout the story. The town basically feels like an investigation with the occasional NPC. The castle is just a march to the antagonist, with no side characters present in the slightest. You basically get three other secondary characters, a smithy, a priest, and a doctor. Depending on how you play, you can uncover more information on their relevance to the plot, or lack there of, but it's mostly unsatisfying, and replaying for these bits was the least fun part of this experience. I do realize, considering the plot, that this may have been intentional, but it stuck out to me nonetheless.

Overall I rated this a 7 out of 8, and If this is a taste of what's to come from you as an author on this site, then i look forward to following your journey. Best of luck!

Jesus Christ!

I was not prepared for this story. I need to pause for a little and come back to it a bit later, perhaps while I'm not eating breakfast.

Otherwise this story has been amazing! If I hadn't read a comment before I started, I would not have suspected that this was a first attempt. The worldbuilding is top-notch, the storyline is captivating, every paragraph is incredibly descriptive, and the gore certainly hasn't disappointed me. I feel like this story being my first jump into this site's horror genre is going to make other stories a bit weak by comparison.

I did catch a few minor spelling mistakes. The one I saw the most is the second storey overhang bit. The correct spelling would be second story.

10/10 will come back to this again when my stomach has settled more. Great job readwithjeremy. I wait hopefully for more brilliantly written Storygames like this one!

There's a surprising degree of polish for a first effort. One wouldn't imagine that this is apparently a writer's first attempt at the cyoa genre.

What is here is some rather remarkable world building, along with some tense action scenes that are quite descriptive. When you're hunting otherworldly threats, it makes sense for the choices to not be straightforward, but require a degree of the reader paying close attention on whether or not they should attempt at being brave/foolhardy and moving forward to the threat, or smartly deciding it better to play it safe and return with more tools to overcome their situation. However being someone that is cautious and apprehensive might also not be the best choice to make, depending on the situation. I feel this gives every choice some heft to it in terms of consequence or reward.

Also the writer is surprisingly open to criticism and concessions that aren't even mandatory for one to make. However with that might I feel that this story is one that is worthy of being played through multiple times.

I certainly do not think that one time is not enough to see all that this story-game is worth. I definitely will be returning for a second, third, and even fourth play-through. Time would tell if more read throughs are necessary. :)

This is a great story and even better writing! You have some clear talent as a writer! I only tried a short play through (only one ending and a few story lines), but the story was very well written! I don't have many suggestions, I only noticed small grammar issues (rarely, maybe once or twice in several pages) that could be corrected, but they did not affect the story. The best feat of your writing shows when you create small details about the characters, town, and our adventurer through specific decisions, such as when I attempted to betray the town and leave, he was soon ambushed and killed, but as the adventurer was dying he worried briefly that the watch he had been given would be lost and destroyed. The attention to detail and character is great, and I thoroughly enjoyed your story! I will be reading and playing this again, thank you for sharing this great story!

LIVERPOOL 7 - 0 MAN UNITED

At the end of my last critique, I meant to say good luck. Sorry about that.

I really loved the beautifully Lovecraftian world-building in this Mystery/Dark Fantasy story-game. There was a lot of thought in creating the back-story for this werewolf haunted village with its ghosts and fish creatures and witches. I also enjoyed how well-crafted the scene where our protagonist meets Vivien in her shop. I do think you might want to cut some of the excess description in some of the more tense passages. I like to use a lot of declarative sentences in my own writing, but sometimes it's best to balance them with a few more interrogative sentences-- like the hero asking himself some more questions as he tries to survive-- so as to break some of the rhythmic monotony of the paragraph upon paragraph of declarative statements. With these types of sentences there is a kind of Da da da da beat that can cause the reader's mind to start wondering after a while. Even Ernest Hemingway was guilty of this at times. I really enjoyed the writing overall, and I thought it was almost reminiscent of those old text-based computer games of the late 70's and early 80's that Infocom (of Zork fame) used to put out. It's fun how you give the protagonist he opportunity to find clues so that the mystery can unfold. There were a few parts where I was somewhat railroaded into going to the next section followed by the next section, with the character making decisions but with me shorn of any agency in the game. Please just take all of what I say as constructive criticism, which you can feel free to take or leave as you see fit. Overall, I think you are a very creative, hard-working, extremely talented writer, and I should like to see you put out more ambitious stuff. Thanks for sharing and good luck in your future endeavors.

Wow.

One of the best stories I've seen on this site. The plot enraptured me, surprising me at every turn. The characters were well written, the world well built. I firmly believe this story is as close to perfection as it gets. If I were to point out any "issues", I would say that the layout of the words made it hard to read, but that's just me nitpicking. Thank you Jeremy, for this wonderful work of art!!

My goodness, there's a lot of content here. Every time I thought I was nearing the end, there would just be more and more to do, thanks in part to the "reinstate" feature. The detail is vivid and interesting, not at all too wordy in my opinion, although I understand that it may be a problem to some. I enjoyed the atmosphere created, and the worldbuilding is very good too. Plus, there's loads more stuff to this storygame that I still haven't even read. So I'd better get to it!

Wow that was very fun and a definite premise you have, I like where the story is headed (even though I could not beat it). This is one of the better stories I have see on cys so kudos!