Player Comments on Claire of Lune

I thought that the little poem that served as the blurb was really intriguing, and when I started reading this storygame, I found myself really engaged by the first person narrative in the first page.

I assume that the crazies were zombies...or perhaps similar to Reavers from the TV series Firefly, given what it's clear they end up doing to Claire in one of the potential paths. However, even though the crazies are a more intangible danger (at least to start with), the more immediate danger comes from other normal humans...or, rather, I assume they're normal humans.

I would have liked a bit more information about the intruders, since they seemed to just be trying to escape from the crazies, but had no real background to them. They were obviously strangers to Claire and her family, and I was just seeing them through Claire's eyes...but I felt there was a lot of potential for conflicts to be explored and even resolved between the two groups, since it seemed like both wanted the same thing: safety and peace from the crazies.

There were hints that there were people who'd become crazy, but kept something of their mind, and it kind of seemed like Claire had gone that route during one of the possible paths. I couldn't say for sure, but given what had been done to her, it seemed to make a lot of sense.

The atmosphere of this storygame was quite engaging and I found it easy to read, but I really do wish the storygame had been longer and had allowed me to see more of the world and the other characters around it. The world of this storygame felt really small, even when the intruders stumbled into the house and the crazies appeared later. I would have liked to see more of the town and the people there; not just Claire summarising people at the beginning who then have very little to do with the events that later unfold.

I would have liked a bit more detail spent on Claire's family as a whole. Her character was developed really well, but her parents and brother didn't really feel like people I should care about. I didn't really feel any reluctance to run and leave the family behind, and when the intruders responded with violence, I didn't really feel anything when the characters died. And I didn't really care about the father becoming a crazy in one of the potential paths.

Overall, I felt like there was a lot of potential in this storygame, but I would have liked to see it expanded more, with further details of the world and the characters.

My first maturity 6 story that I read without being underage (16+) XD
This is a story of a girl’s battle against the crazies, the world, and herself.

CONTENT: 6
:) The setting was solid throughout, without sudden faults or logical fallacies in the plot that distracted the reader from the story. Every branch was tightly related to the overall themes and purpose of the story and the characters. Most of the plot lines were consistently executed. I liked the struggle with her father most as that one showed your potential and was the richest in content. The feelings of Claire was the most complicated out of the lines yet expressed well without overdoing it. I also liked how you compared the bright, simple life in the old days before all of this happened with the present. This helps the reader feel the disappointment of Claire in how the world turned out to be.
:| You didn’t have to say ‘brother is annoying’ or ‘mum is strict’, especially when you showed their characters through the story so well later on. To me the brother wasn’t a bit annoying in the whole story. His real self wasn’t really shown to the reader as his appearances and actions are all after the intruders entered the house.

LANGUAGE: 4
:) You were able to establish the mood well sometimes. I liked the descriptive scenes of a happier life back in the old days in one of the paths. The gore simply got to the point. It showed how much of a shock this event was to Claire yet not being so gruesome so that the reader cannot enjoy the story and focus on the main plot.
:| The main problem was grammar and absent punctuation. Tenses were all over the place, and most of the sentences began with ‘I’ with abrupt endings. Maybe you were trying to show a state of mind of Claire through the writing style, but I couldn’t really get what you were trying to express very clearly. Try to link your similar ideas with longer sentences and the story will read much more fluently.

BRANCHING AND GAMEPLAY: 5
:) Each branch was of a satisfactory length, and the pacing was mostly fine. There was good variation between each path without choices looping. Although most endings resulted in the death of Claire, the events in the middle varied greatly. Each branch revealed more about the setting and the overall story.
:| Some of the paths were quite linear, with some having only one or two actual choices. While it is understandable that a new page shows a new phase of the story, some were a bit excessive and were really just a way to ignore unfilled gaps in the story.

OVERALL RATING: 5
Well done! I see a lot of potential in this. Looking forward to more writing from you!

based on 29 ratings since 11/22/2017
played 1 times (finished 0)
your rating: unrated

Not much to comment about the game itself, but... how could there be 29 ratings when it is only played 1 time and finished 0?!

Excellent writing, but I want to know what happened to Claire's mother and how the place came to be like that—wrecked and with crazies running around. The story really pulled me in. :D

Well written though as a story it feels more like a prologue than a complete entry.

Holy cosmos, am I sleep deprived or drunk? Only idiots think you can fire a bow. Sorry Wibbins, don't know what that was about, but I'm going to have to re-read every entry I've read today from your story on. Brain running in reverse. Been a long week...

Wibbins, I am deeply disappointed. A girl does not shoot a bow. A girl looses or fires a bow.

Reminds me of Romero

I forgot to replace the first page's title with "The 1902 Winter in the American West". I won't modify the story until the contest is over, but I figured that information would make the story slightly less confusing.