Player Comments on Fake It 'Till You Make It
Do you like dry humor? Do you like reading competently written stories? Do you like Dungeons and Dragons? Are you a "cave of time" branching style fan? If the answer to any of those questions was yes, read this goddamn amazing story and ignore the advertised play length.
There are many different endings and you DON'T HAVE TO READ THEM ALL AT ONCE. Read through one path, or two, or however many you want, but just start reading this game already. I can only assume that's the reason it flew under the radar because committing yourself to read an almost 60K word story can be quite difficult, at times. That is also the reason why this is the second-to-last contest story I've read, the last one of course being Mystic's goddamn novel. Hell, I basically knew I'd like it given the prompt and the comments that exist so far, and it still took me too long to get around to it.
This is one criminally underrated game. I can only hope that the ratings will improve as it gets closer and closer to 50, because god damn, this deserves an average rating way better than 5. In fact, summing up all of the scores and dividing them yields an average of 6.14, almost a full number higher than what it is right now. I know that the way CYS ranking works is dark magic, valuing members with a lot of points over random noobs, but it's still quite unbalanced.
Let's start discussing the actual game though, now that the meta stuff is out of the way:
I was sold on the very first page, because of the one thing this game does extremely well: Humor deftly woven into the story. This story will not make you laugh by using one-off jokes shoved straight into your face and awaiting your response. No, it is a very consistent stream of "dry" jokes and humorous dialogue, reminding me of the movie Airplane. I suppose I may be subjectively hyping this story up too much, as it just happens to be the specific type of humor that I like... But simply due to the law of large numbers, I assume most people will have a joke or two land for them.
To give a couple of examples (I heavily recommend skipping this section until you play through, even more than the story spoilers lmao):
// begin comedy spoilers
-The fortress of Dark Lord Demonix, the king of evil, destroyer of cities, and all-around Bad Dude™.
Immediately you can see that the story does not take itself seriously, not even a little bit. And I love it.
-"'Athom Aetherium'. That's not even my real name. My real name is Paul."
That line was just so god damn hilarious to me, just this dude dead-ass being called Paul in the middle of varied fantasy names. And speaking of the names...
-Bearenbudge'erren, Quissto'nestlinkite, Gormanytara'atar, Selemanne'ire, aka the Elite Four (was that a pokemon reference?) are also funny because of how fucking absurd their names are. Even the author gives up calling them by the given names, due to obvious reasons, opting to go for nicknames such as "bear" instead. Again, that was hilarious and is the type of "out of your face" humor you can expect in the story.
- "The reason the prophecy was spread... The reason I ended up in this situation... It's all because of this one woman's twisted obsession with her own bowels!?"
This is such a god damn absurd line, and something I would expect to see in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, or even my own game (which has been commented many times as being "surreal".
- "I'll... I-I'll, uh, fire a Hyper Death Laser Beam at you!" responded to with: "That's advanced magic. No wonder you've neglected a weapon."
How can you not love this line? Again, it's not the humor that will make you go "ha ha funny joke". It's the humor that is funny because it is so absurd.
//end comedy spoilers
It'd be a crime not to mention the party banter and the way characters (usually) are constantly amazed by "Athom's" genius scheming and amazing powers. If you enjoyed this storygame, I heavily recommend the collection of "Overlord" light novels by Kugane Maruyama. It has a ton of D&D influence, just as this game does. The main character over there is extremely overpowered, but that's not the god damn point anyway. And if you're a weeb without much time to spare, there's also an anime.
The branching is excellent, almost every single choice leads you down an entirely different path. The "proper" choices are usually obvious if you put yourself in the proper state of mind for the story. Of-fucking-course choosing to play with the deadly kitties was the right choice, and of course you have to go 1v1 the deadly copy-cat member of the elite four, since if she copies you she will end up powerless.
That is another major strength of this story, which was expected I suppose given the length - You constantly find out more and more information about various stuff, that you may not even happen across on another path. And despite there being so many different endings, the story is extremely consistent throughout the different paths. So to get the most out of this story, definitely read it all the way through (again, probably in chunks though, reading is like a fart - if you force yourself to do it, it'll usually be shit).
//begin story spoilers
The first ending I got (while obviously taking care to pick "correct" choices) was The Hero Ending (18). I actually thought it was a pretty decent ending overall, despite the fact that you die in it, but you defeat the evil Demonix and can consider yourself a hero. The only thing I was sad about was poor Kreon, he was a good friend, despite being naked.
But then, going through the other endings, I figured out that I actually probably only delayed the great evil, given that Demonix isn't the actual big bad evil guy. Rather it is the mysterious "smoke" which probably fucked off to god knows where and found another host. Hopefully, it hit a fish or something, and the river was forever terrorized, leaving the rest of the world safe.
//end story spoilers
One thing I do have to admit, however, is that despite obviously having nothing but praise for the story so far, I've only read "half" of it, aka the paths where you don't split up. I was kinda spoiled from the other comments that I will join up with the "dead" party when I do split up, and am very much looking forward to meeting those new characters. I just don't feel like forcing myself to do it right now because it's fucking 3:55 AM and I have been typing this goddamn review for nearly 45 minutes, it is still not done, and I have work in the morning. But I WILL be coming back at some point, that is for sure.
And if I may talk about the "other party" for a second, I find it curious that all of the endings I got so far have been numbered as the "later" ones (14-25 I believe). Does that mean you originally wrote the paths with the other party first?
I can only hope that I will get the answer to the sentence "Also, Demonix's monster attacks ceased for some reason. I still don't exactly know why he started them." in the other paths, but even if I don't, I suppose I can figure out the answer given what I've read so far. I'd just like it definitely confirmed and spelled out because I'm a "sallow vulturine turbofaggot who wants to follow a dude through his whole fucking life unambiguously like any trashy soap opera" according to Sent.
If I have any negatives, and I do, they are not major ones.
For starters, the mastery of language could be better in a few places. I've spotted a couple of examples of very fragmented and awkward descriptions and phrasings. And if *I* noticed something like that, given that I've got major issues with that myself, I can only assume the high-brow judges that read this were harsh on the story for that reason. The grammar and proofreading were top tier though. I've only managed to spot a single typo in this piece, and given the length that is quite impressive. Nobody should rate this less than a minimum of 5 for those two reasons alone (the length and the editing).
Another negative has already been mentioned by Ugilick which is the extreme "genericness" of the setting and the characters. Descriptions are kept to a minimum, and I fucking love you for it subjectively, but other readers will want more. The characters are mostly caricatures, and you know what will happen with every single one of those: We've got the classic hot support elven female mage, the brutish barbarian, the agile tielfing (rogue??), and the "fearless leader". Of the elite 4, Bear was the least interesting by far (and I wonder why the fuck he didn't just keep all of you stuck in that forcefield until he got backup), but the other three were extremely fun imo. The overpowered little girl with the deadly kitties, the coward which is actually extremely op, and the goddamn psychopath copycat all did their part in making this story work. They are extremely predictable, but as mentioned this story does not take itself seriously, so I actually believe it to be a strength of sorts - the game leans on its genericness and absurdity and makes it work, but I am aware that may be extremely subjective.
I've noticed that the author has been missing from the site for over a month, and I dearly hope he wasn't discouraged by the lukewarm reception to this, frankly, amazing story. You're not the one that is wrong here Ryboi, it's everyone else!
Conclusion: Read this god damn game right now. It will make you laugh and even if it doesn't it's rather competently written. Reading it is surely a better use of your time than reading some shitty fan-fiction or whatever else you would otherwise.
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Celicni
on 9/19/2022 10:04:21 PM with a score of 0
"Yeah. That's, um, the magic of comedy."
This is a comedy first, and a fantasy adventure second. The characters make up an amusing party, their banter, attitudes, and actions play into the jokes. The minmaxed melee types have an excuse, but the caster? For shame! The comedy hits consistently. This is certainly a great first storygame, and I suspect the author has done quite a bit of writing in the past.
The story has a very narrow focus and takes every opportunity to deliver on it. It does so with a variety of paths and outcomes. Tonal contrast is used quite a bit to emphasize to what degree the protag is in over his head. The story features some gruesome ideas, and interesting character building details. Some characters stood out way above the rest, specifically their motivations and backgrounds. Others were merely archetypes. The most underwhelming character for me is generic “Overpowered Little Girl.” Maybe I missed some endings that do something interesting with the character.
“This whole place has pretty uninspired interior design”
This story has been told before. The lucky thief fumbles fantastically forward. The setting is generic high fantasy. The surroundings are a basic BBEG castle in nondescript swamp/mountain/lava “bad-guy” terrain. I would like the world to feel more lived in, and less like a one shot where the setting is especially non-essential.
What I’m asking for is tough though. The story is already a little on the long side. It would have to be achieved through concise prose, and charming details here and there. There are already some, but they don’t really achieve what I’m looking for. The setting feels very lonely...and empty.
“...as long as nothing tries to push us into that lava, we're gonna be a-ok.”
As mentioned, the banter between characters is great and well paced. I don’t really care for them using rpg terms like “buff and debuff,” because I feel it takes the reader out of the story, but it’s done with consistency. Consistency goes a long way. The dialogue and Interactions are measured and sensible. The facts of the story don’t really change depending on which of the many paths the reader takes. They are internally consistent. Even though the narrative is silly, it plays by its own rules. There are no troublesome jumps in logic as the protag fumbles his way through the story. That’s something I look for, and something I very rarely get to enjoy.
Excellent, excellent work.
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ugilick
on 7/10/2022 8:20:38 PM with a score of 0
My biggest question is what the hell is the deal with all of these low ratings? This story is really, really good. I think the prompt is the most interesting one in the contest, and it was put to good use too. I hope this story isn’t overlooked, because so far it seems to have been. I’d recommend reading it almost no matter what. There’s 25 endings, which I got all of, and if you only want a shorter story I think the average path length is like 5-10k. Whether you’re looking for a quick story or one with tons of choices this story is a great choice.
The biggest achievement of this story is the branching. It has 25 different endings that all seem distinct from each other, and it branches into a lot of different places. One thing that’s good to note is how consistent the game is between branches. There are details that make a lot more sense once playing through other branches, like the other party being dead if you stay together. It’s great to see a story game that embraces what it means to be a story game like this one does, because that’s hard to do.
This comes with the drawback of having less of an overarching narrative, but that’s a tradeoff and doing both leads to less branches. Like how there are 13 epilogues in Eternal, but thirteen times the words. The more you want to tell a complete and long narrative you have to either write way more words or cut down the branches. I’m not sure which style I prefer, but it’s refreshing to see so many paths in a storygame for a change.
The writing is well done too, sprinkling in humor with epic battle scenes. I’m surprised at the sheer number of fight scenes in this story, as at least for me they are extremely challenging to write well.
I will say that toward the end of going through all the paths it did become a little dull, which I don’t blame on the story, but simply me reading all of the paths. There’s so many words and so many different paths that it’s inevitable that that’d happen.
I liked the characters, they were a lot more pronounced in the stay together path, which makes sense. Tessa is my favorite, but all of the party is good. Not the biggest fan of the demon sorcerer guy, kind of ironic that I forget his name, but that’s probably just me.
All in all this game is really good, and deserves considerable consideration as winner of the contest. I haven’t finished reading all of the stories yet, so we’ll see, but this story is a great testament to what story games were originally made to be, a guy thrown into a situation and makes tons of choices that influence that situation. I still love the more focused, less branch heavy story games, but this was a nice departure from that and I’d like to see more stories of this kind in the future.
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MrAce321
on 7/8/2022 4:03:52 AM with a score of 0
This was quite fun: well written with engaging characters, a good sense of humour and interesting situations. The branching seems quite impressive and I am surprised at the low rating. This story should be in the 6/8 area rather than 5/8 but this will probably pick up with time, meanwhile great work :)
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Will11
on 1/5/2024 4:58:54 AM with a score of 0
10/10 very funny and endearing, I loved the characters and Paul was great :)
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koigoi
on 12/20/2023 6:53:06 PM with a score of 0
Only found the runaway ending so far, but I already know I'll love going through the rest of it. Excellent story.
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Yummyfood
on 8/9/2022 5:25:45 PM with a score of 0
Well written, fun, engaging, good selection of options, funny at points, nice action, likable characters, etc. Very noice
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— Jimmy Springfield on 7/12/2022 11:22:08 AM with a score of 0
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