A Day in Hell

A modern storygame by madglee

Commended by TharaApples on 2/14/2022 2:13:37 AM

Player Rating5.15/8

"#209 overall, #6 for 2001"

Based on 759 ratings since 02/14/2022
Played 1,092 times (finished 75)

Story Difficulty3/8

"Trek through the forest"

Play Length3/8

"A nice jog down the driveway"

Maturity Level7/8

"Anything goes"

Some material may be inappropriate for persons under age 18. If this were a movie, it would probably be R.

Tags

Humor

Previously Featured

Serious

A day in the life of Matt, a 20 something year old man whose mental faculties are so strained that they may snap at any moment.

{Edit 2023: So old now. My gnarled fingers can barely type this note. Ah, the roadblock reset nonsense I jammed into this story way back when. You'll probably find a lot of old stories that have those reset links. I went through and took them out - sorry it took 20 years. Now with Editor's Notes!}

[EDIT: 2014: I wrote this story to test the functionality of the basic editor, way back when I first joined in 2003. So take it for what it is. My humor runs toward the dark and the black, so you may not find it as amusing as I. At the time, I had been in my late 20's, living with the most irritating person in the entire world. So, so, so irritating. This story was a way for me to sublimate my understandable urges to kill her into a socially acceptable outlet. The parts of the story which are true include her complaining that the smell of bacon and the sight of grease was the same as "boiling animal fat and toxic fumes," all the while attempting to make subtle sexual advances and holding the fact that she was my landlord over my head. The situation ended badly, but not as badly as in the story.

Enjoy.]

v 1.0 Published story, 2003.

v 2.0 Updated some things, fixed a broken link, added a bit of content, probably created discrepancies.

Player Comments

When in doubt, kill more people. Truly, an important lesson for us all. ^_^

— Avery_Moore on 10/27/2020 5:43:52 PM with a score of 0

A Day in Hell is an artifact from a different season of CYS. While it is a good story, it is not hard to see why it is no longer featured.
First off, the little looping trick where the reader is kept from End Game links certainly adds to the hellish atmosphere more than anything else. Forget the roommate; despite my intention to read through every choice anyway, I wanted to bludgeon Madglee with a pan for doing that at times. I know why he did it, but it pisses me off regardless.

The writing itself was decent, and there were not any grammar errors that I found really noticeable.
While the story had a lot of endings, which is nice, many of the choices had no impact on the story, and there was a lot of re-branching. Additionally, all that copy-pasting became glaringly noticeable when in one path Stan’s body is said to be in the dumpster when the player never even meets him in that path.
If you are going to force readers into replaying your story if they want to finish it, the least you could do is not be so lazy and at least make sure everything always makes sense.

I would have liked to see the terrible roommate do a bit more other than play music I don’t like and complain about the smells of bacon grease and cigarette smoke. As it was, the only real motivation for me to smash her head in with the frying pan was because smashing heads in with frying pans just sounds like so much fun.

I did enjoy the transition from going about your day as normal to killing everyone you see. That was amusing and enjoyable. The ending with the nice wine was also quite funny.

I did enjoy my day in Hell, and this was not a bad story, but I think don’t think I’ll be coming again.

— Cricket on 6/6/2019 5:03:31 PM with a score of 0

I game with multiple endings and consequential choices! It's such a relief to run across one in my tour of CYS that was. I liked the humor and the writer's voice.

Some of the very best characterization you'll find in any of its contemporaries. This story was still featured when I logged on for the first time back in 2011.

Funny enough, I would have liked it better if we'd had more time for her to piss us off. Her obnoxious behavior was not nearly oppressive enough for long enough. We needed more! I wanted to want to kill her before I went and did it. Is that too much to ask for?

Frying pans aren't really my thing either. Why couldn't I punch her in her ex-Mormon throat or strangle the life out of her? Those are the kinds of choices that matter.

— ugilick on 5/20/2018 11:17:28 PM with a score of 0

well that was soo fun

— Phoenixthe1st on 7/15/2024 5:36:52 PM with a score of 0

I remember reading this story WAYYYY back when I joined this site in 2014. I completely forgot about it until today, when I was going through the modern section to earn a trophy.

While it may not hold up to stories like Eternal or The Tale of the Foolish Princess, this story is definitely a classic. Even after 20 years, it still does better at world building and suspense then a lot of these newer stories. I do admit I wish there had been more of a build up to why he committed the murder, because it was slightly disconcerting to see the main character go from acting, speaking, and thinking completely normal, to beating in his roommate's head with a frying pan for being an annoyance. The love for his mother does add some character depth, however, and the roommate Stephanie is a mormon, so killing her was definitely enjoyable.

5/8. Thank you for the trip down nostalgia lane!

— benholman44 on 5/15/2024 2:27:21 PM with a score of 0

What happened to 'Mommy, can i go out and kill tonight'? I'm just curious because I was looking to play it.