Player Comments on College Dropout

Well...this was certainly an interesting ride through a storygame I initially assumed was going to be about zombies. Instead, I'm still not quite sure what I was up against. Well, it seemed to have lots of arms...or perhaps tentacles...and at one point, there was the description of a person, but that just had me picturing Slenderman, of all things.

This storygame had more paths than I was expecting, considering that during my first playthrough, I reached a good ending quite quickly.

I will say that, for what it was, I was a little surprised by how few death endings I actually found. It was good that there were quite a few ways to survive this storygame, although I did feel like some of the endings felt a bit...abrupt, perhaps. Or maybe even unfinished. For instance, after leaving the criminal justice building, the player character and the rest of the group are driving away from the college, and the story just ends there...no explanation about what happened, or where they're going.

I will say that, despite the danger to the player character, the stakes didn't feel all that high. I think it might have been because, while there were people being killed, no one close to the player character was affected by what had happened. During the course of the storygame, you have two people going with you...and depending on the choices you make and the paths you follow, you can end up with another person joining. However, none of them are in any real danger. There's one path where you have the option to sneak, attack, or run...and the sneak option is extremely easy.

While there were several different paths to follow in this storygame, most of them all ended in the same place. I would have liked a bit more of an explanation as to why the botanical gardens was considered to be the safe place. The creatures, whatever they were, seemed to be only confined to one main area, but I'm not sure if there were supposed to be other areas affected by the same creatures.

Really, this storygame felt like one part of a much greater world. It was entertaining in and of itself, but I was left with the sense that I wanted more by the end. It was an easy read, though with several spelling and grammar errors I couldn't help but notice, and if it does ever get expanded upon, I'd be interested in reading it.

I don't know what I was expecting when I opened this game, but tentacle monsters with many mouths and zombies wasn't really what came to mind. I played through a few different branches to see if anything got more fleshed out than the monster, but not too much happened besides surviving with other people or getting out alone.

So let's start with the positives. While not entirely original, the monster was absolutely the driving force of this story. In this sort of genre, a lackluster monster is a killing blow. So while this didn't break new ground, it did provide a decent threat/villain. The zombies were more interesting to me, however, since they reminded me of TLOU infected mixed with a Boomer from L4D.

Now for the negatives. There wasn't a lot of detail. Most of the sentences were very bland and it felt very bare. The characterizations felt very two-dimensional and the main character didn't really have a personality besides just trying to survive and a few comments about the mechanics major. Grammar is a bit rough on some pages with weird phrasing and sometimes misspellings (which isn't the end of the world haha). I also wasn't a fan of the lack of explanation throughout. We never really find out what's going on or why or what the creature is outside of "biological organic weapon" (which is one of those weird grammatical phrasing earlier since organic and biological is a bit redundant). the only other thing I had an issue with was the endings. It just felt abrupt and there wasn't any real conclusion outside of 'you survived' and whether or not you got anyone else out. While that's mostly fine, it would probably have been better for there to have been an actual conclusion with more characterization and emotion instead of a: hurray, you lived!

All in all, this story is not bad! I enjoyed reading it while being bored at work and while it could be significantly better it is a good start here on the site. Hoping to see more from you, for sure!

I mean, I wanted more…a lot more. What caused stuff? What was those “creatures”? Why did he fail OSHA? The last part is a corny dad joke of course…but still…way too short…like shorter than Peter Dinklage in a foxhole…it was shorter than a bow-legged caterpillar…