Player Comments on Artemis Starfighter Adventures: 1. The Centipede Pit

A nice setting and a fun idea from an established author are a promising start! Hm the choice between becoming a starfighter pilot and a profession ditch digger is a bit of a no-brainer but the mention of the giant centipedes definitely swung it for me 😊 The three J’s remind me of the five D’s of Dodgeball (dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge). I feel this race would be so much easier if I could just push the fat kid over (though, from the sounds of it, my guy is no skinny waif either). Kirk gets extra friend points for using the word “gnarly” unironically.

Well, screw that, I tried taking my training seriously and died of a broken spirit! Clearly the moral of the story is never try (then, as Dodgeball also teaches us, you will never be disappointed). On top of that giant centipedes ate all my colleagues, which does suggest, at the very least, I have a good shot at winning employee of the month. So, I go back and study. And get eaten by a giant centipede. Second moral of the story: don’t study or giant many-legged invertebrates will chew your face off. Go play games with your friends instead.

Now, this is just a bit of a hunch but I sense there is a certain path that the author is very keen for me to take. And I don’t want to take it. The whole point of cys stories is that they branch out with multiple choice options or (as in the case of mine) they at least give you more of an illusion of choice. This one is basically a linear story with a few amusing side branches thrown in. The writing quality is very good but it has not been fully adapted into a genuine cyoa so I’m going to bail early (also, I don’t really like science fiction. But that’s just me).

Okay, so getting the negative part out of the way first, one of the things you're going to realize quickly reading this is that there's VERY little true branching here, this is almost pure gauntlet style from beginning to end. YMMV on how much that annoys you of course (I'm sure RK will love it!) but just be forewarned.

Now of course as is pretty much a necessity with a gauntlet game, it's damn near impressive with the number of ways it comes up with to off the protagonist over and over again while still keeping it lighthearted and goofy as you're burned alive or bitten to pieces by alien fauna, this is a game for kids after all!

The whole thing is pretty breezily written, and a little silly and random at times; you basically know what you're getting when the first page tells you that you're a Schozzie on the planet Schnoz with your friend Cardinal Imam Rabbi Kirk, and are consigned to a life of digging ditches because that's what you dad did. (Ahem. How DID your dad dig DITCHES on a starship though btw?)

I thought 'Woolloomooloo' was also supposed to be a silly space name, but then I saw references to vegemite and learned that it was actually, really, legitimately just Australian, I shit you not.

The silliness was all honestly kind of refreshing and a little bit of the breath of fresh air I needed after a pretty depressing couple of weeks following the news. Also, looked up the author on Amazon and that all seems pretty wholesome, so that's nice, especially when as I recall the last author trying to shill their books in this way some years ago turned out to frequent Stormfront.

To the author I'll just say this is a pretty fun addition to the site, and I think most would enjoy seeing the rest you have planned. Maybe try to limit the number of sentences that start with "You" in close proximity, and if you work on making the branching a little more involved I think it would generally be received better.

(Also just as an aside, since we live in a time we unfortunately have to be very paranoid about this, I just wanted to make sure you knew we are very much against the use of AI here. So if you imcorporated any or might be planning to do this bad thing: do not do this bad thing.)

A random space adventure.

This is a fan fiction sci-fi game in which you can have pretty wild adventures. The game was fairly decent in some respects, but I found it lacking in others.

On the positive side, it seems like the author somehow put a decent effort into this project leading to a length 6 game with 27k words. There are almost no grammatical or orthographical mistakes. Some scenes are entertaining if you bring a little imagination.

On the negative side, the description, the game, and even the author's profile read like an Amazon ad. Yes, in fan fiction it is a point of pride to give credit to the original content, but this is too much of a good thing. The writing may be correct, but it is also somewhat soulless, with abundant exposition and a lighthearted style that kill the tension.

Branching and plot are fairly limited. On each page something happens, then you are presented with two to four equally plausible choices. Most of the time, all but one of them lead to an end page. The continuing branch then presents the next problem. There are no choices that pose moral dilemmas or are otherwise character-forming; in the absence of a strong story arc, this becomes boring after about three pages.

I can imagine that this game might be more entertaining for readers who already know and like the protagonist from the original content, but I can't really recommend it otherwise. Still, as a first game, it shows potential, so I hope we will see more from this author.

When the game starts with "You dream of space adventure. You want to be a starfighter pilot, battling aliens and space pirates in the Proxima Star System... Of course, getting onto the 3028 Schnozzie Olympic team is one option for getting off the planet. Every four years, the games are held on Oishi Prime, the capital of the Proxima System, and home to the Oishi Fleet headquarters. If you try hard enough, you might earn your way there. And if you can get there, it’s the perfect place to enlist as a starfighter.", I chose the option that goes along with this narrative and the game abruptly ends. This doesn't make sense to me.

Is this Mike Herr or some random person writing soulless fanfiction and posing as Mike Herr? I can’t even tell anymore, folks. Since your profile and storygame description read like one of those descriptions you see at the advertisements placed at the end of book copies, maybe it’s you and maybe you’ll have more success just selling it elsewhere.

As for the story itself? I didn’t really care anymore and just skimmed it, maybe thanks to the gift of comment spoilers. Some other people noted the branching was less of a CYOA and more of a “guess which doesn’t kill you” situation, so maybe it’s a real issue. All I know about the tale itself was that I’m a potentially snot-nosed kid trying to win the “Olympics”, and maybe you should write it with more flavorful and breathing prose so I can be interested enough read the rest of the story and rake in more details (as in, develop your own voice and shine above dead and corporate writers).

Overall, just sell this book like a “real book” instead.