Dog Captivity

I saw this on the homepage of the site as a "new" storygame even if it was released several years ago. I'm assuming the author came back to the site recently to update this story and republish it for the world to see it once more. Curiosity took the best of me here.

Spoiler alert: 7 years later, it still sucks.

I'm not going to harp on the animal perspective bit too much because those kinds of stories *can* be done well if the author puts in effort. Not every story with an animal protagonist is doomed to be a 5-author catastrophe like Warrior Cats, nor a sparkly wolf narrative written by an over-imaginative 10 year-old, nor a too-true-to-life slog of a story where the animal has zero agency and nothing to intrigue the audience with. This story, unfortunately, doesn't get it right. I'm tempted to say it hardly counts as a story at all and more of a CYS Script experiment.

Here's the entire game summarized: you're a Golden Retriever (the kind of dog allegedly nearly every human being has, according to the author) and are bored. Go click around in between three parts of the yard until the TIME variable hits 100, then you get fed by your owner. Pick up items and eventually you stab your owner with a knife you found in a safe and run away. The end.

This story says you're trapped in your backyard in front of your garage (I'm questioning the logic of this already), but you can walk to the front of the house any time you want. You are too old to play with toys, despite the fact that...you're a dog and that's not how dogs work. All dogs play. I'm convinced the author has never interacted with a dog. You can also open locks with keys you find, that's fine too. With what opposable thumbs? No idea, doesn't matter here.

The writing here is dull, devoid of any description, and frequently feels confused as to where it's going (much like the average reader upon first glance). Each page is a generous 1-3 sentences telling you where you are in the yard and prompts you to head to other directions. The entire game is literally walking back and forth until SOMETHING happens and you trigger an item pickup. I get this may be intentional to emphasize the dull reality of this dog's life, but honestly I don't think the author even thought about it at all. It is tedious and not fun.

As a reader, your best bet is to skip this game. Or maybe, author, yours is to unpublish this and keep it in the archives.

Holy shit, this sucks.

All right, if by some chance you're desperate and you're looking for a game to play, and you like dogs and you think this might ne interesting:

You basically have three options that you have to do over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and...

Some retard thought this would be interesting. But really the most interesting aspect I saw was this bit of broken code: "TIME has no colon."

Deep, man, deep.

TIME... has no colon. Thankfully, time doesn't need to take a shit.

But speaking of time... when you see the time variable reaching 100, you should be using one of the four items you've collected: standing on your hind legs, the garage key, the safe key, and then the knife. Basically you just click around getting that variable up to 100, get the item, and then basically keep going until you the golden retriever grab a knife and stab your owner.

OK, I love dogs. I have a pit bull that will kiss anyone to death if you let her. The thought of a dog tied up 24/7 with nowhere to go is profoundly disturbing.

But remember:

TIME has no colon.

Neither does my wristwatch, come to think of it...

Not really a lot to go on with the description of this story, is there? I mean, I guess you could really be setting some expectations with “WEIRD” at the description, but I’m thinking a little more effort there could really set the story up. After all, there are hundreds of stories here on the site. The more information provided in the description section here, the better chance readers will read the story because they know what’s coming. Then again, I did read it, and that’s with just “WEIRD” as the description. Still…

I’m not a huge fan of animal perspective stories, though they can be done well. In this case, the reader is the animal, which is also a bit more difficult. The story does start out a bit jarring with a few sentence fragments – it might be more effective with complete sentences there. The initial setting is interesting and a little confusing as well. It starts out in front of a garage. In my mind, the garage is next to the house, facing the street, so your car can drive on the road. However, the next sentence moved the garage to the backyard…and I’m trapped. Is there a fence? I’m not sure. I can understand a garage in the backyard, but the next sentence says I’m in the yard on the side of the house. Am I in the yard? In the garage? In the back or side? It makes for a confusing start and makes it difficult for me to picture the story in my head.

There are also a few errors in word choice, tense, and spacing, which makes the story more difficult to read. For my first choice, I chose to go around to the front of the house. This, of course, conflicts with the idea that I’m trapped in the garage, back yard, or side yard (I don’t know which one). I think this all could be resolved with a much more clear description of the house and yard from the start. It could even be a view from above or something that really clearly lets me know there’s a house, a yard, a fence, a garage, trees, and anything else that is my domain. After all, it sounds like I’ve been wandering around it for a long time, so I could see many ways to illustrate that the dog knows the entire yard like the back of his hand so the reader can get a clear picture of being trapped (if that is indeed the goal).

Then there is the story – or complete lack of one. What is supposed to be happening here? The reader just has to wait a certain amount of time and then new actions are available to them? Why? What is the significance of the time blocks? The story really doesn’t make much sense. It felt more like this story was an experiment to learn how to use variables and items in the game more than an actual story.

Could be better.

No

Boring...

This game is fucking garbage.

I cheated to get to the End Game link by the way because it is in no way worth anybody's time to do so much tedious, pointless clicking.

A few points to make...

1.Nearly every living human being has a Golden Retriever? That’s news to me.
2.Anybody else have to do a double-take because they thought the dog’s name was Hitler?
3.No dog on the face of the planet would choose freedom over food.
4.Why do I have to waste so much time wandering aimlessly between three places before I can look up at that bloody bird?
5.Birds don’t bite. They peck.
6. There seems to be a lot of aimlessly wandering around, doing the same things over and over again, trying to trigger certain events.
7.… Holy crap, that took a sudden dark turn! O.O

I guess it was a relatively fun little waste of time, but I kind of get the impression that you couldn't made a much better game if you'd put a bit more effort into it.

I love this concept

This game was super linear, way too easy, and made no sense. Most of the game was spent clicking random buttons simply to wait for the correct time, which was annoying. You can tell little time was spent on this game.