Player Comments on Into The Darkness

A quick darkly gay adventure

As a preamble, let me say that I am not gay, but I also don't have a problem with people being gay. As such, I could enjoy the game. People who are gay will enjoy it more than I did. People who have a problem with people being gay will enjoy it less. In fact, if you are one of the latter cases, just move along to some other content.

The game is well-written with many skillful dialogues that make for a light and engaging reading experience.

The setting is thoroughly dark academia, and I loved how grim and magical the world feels. The writing brings it to life and hints that there is much more happening behind the scenes. Great.

The protagonist is a likable character. The antagonist, Thorne, is introduced early and is nicely hateable.

The side characters seemed to be all uniformly nice guys (they are all guys), and their voices and behavior are very similar, except for Arendin, who has a bit more personality.

In comparison with Broken Bonds, which is very similar in many ways, I liked Broken Bonds slightly better because it had a more well-rounded plot.

Into Darkness starts with an in medias res beginning where you are thrown right into a situation where so many things have already happened that it felt like zapping into the middle of the sixth season of a show that we had never watched before... but I actually liked that; it made the world feel big from page one.

We drop right into a gay sex scene, which seems to happen for a strange reason: we get naughty with a guy not because we love him (though we do), but because we love somebody else even more (who is dead). Now that's what I would call slightly awkward... but ok.

The main part of the game is very branchy, which is great. However, it gets lost a little bit in micromanaging too many small decisions, and as a result, the substantial 30k words only make quite a short story, with many, but relatively similar endings, and little space for character development. In the end, we have achieved a little victory (or not), but the main conflict remains unresolved.

Although the game comes with a big warning in the description that talks of sex, torture, and dominant/submissive themes, the story is actually quite tame. The sex is limited to the beginning and handled very tactfully, which is good. Later, we might see a person or two whipped, but these scenes don't carry a sexual connotation at all and are not very visceral. My feeling was that the game was holding back. Thorne is a nice antagonist, but if we saw him actually enjoying the torture that he inflicts on others, he could be truly terrifying.

Also, the good guys are on their best behavior. In the scene where the elf (Elrond, of all names) knocks Thorne out with his magical powers (which turn out to be a fist to the chin), the protagonist seems all too happy to carry on with their business "before he wakes up." I understand from another path that Thorne is really an ancient being who can just form a new body at will. Still, if I were in Arthur's place, and the person who killed the love of my life and other friends was just lying there, wouldn't I want to stomp on their face just a little bit?

One way or another, the setting, plot, and everything seemed to call for some Game-of-Thrones-level shock value but then shied away from that. It felt like a wasted opportunity---good art can be provocative. Particularly with the dominant-submissive scene, so much could be shown tactfully without the need for messy visuals. For instance, the protagonist might overhear the dialogue between Thorne and his victim, and Cat, of all people, has the dialogue skills to make this fly.

In summary, this game is great in many ways, but it would have profited from covering a longer arc. Moreover, if it stopped pulling its punches, it could be stellar.

Your story is well written and each character has a good and consistent voice. The text has a good flow and pacing, and you handle the sex scenes with surprising delicacy, especially given the other comments on the story. I was expecting something pushing the limits of what the site allows. Especially given the inherent gay qualities of the protagonist. I think you handled that potentially fraught relationship quite well and with sensitivity.

The world building is interesting, with many intriguing hints and references to things that I wish were explored more. This really leads to my main criticism of the story - that it feels like it is a short story/novella bridge between two more interesting books. Both the adventures that lead up to Arendin and Rain’s death’s and the alluded too fight in the present and the future sound much more intriguing than the relatively mild things that happen in this story. It is an interesting approach to have a primarily passive protagonist.

It is an interesting choice to have everyone around Arthur to be so much more competent and active than he seems to be. I would expect it to make it hard to root for him, but it surprisingly elicits a more protective feeling over him. The threat of the Ancient One also seems somewhat overblown with how easily he is neutralized when he shows up, at least in the four endings I’ve seen. While I can see how it might be imposing in that he can’t really be killed, there is no real demonstration of the great and terrible power he wields. All of those events seem to have happened either before or after this story, which is somewhat disappointing.

I hope that you intended to write either a prequel or sequel to this. I would love to learn more about the plan Arendin had come up with.

First Impression: OMG why is this so gay! I might want to stop reading this...

I kept reading though despite that. Despite knowing that sex and intimacy are not the same thing, but I digress. It's your story and I probably shouldn't be taking any of this seriously. Whatever tho right?

Anyways...things got better once I got to make my first choice. Maybe it was the build up or the lore but I anticipated where the story was going to go. Your interaction with Raven after you take the key from him and decide to trust him seemed pretty nice (as that was my first path).

Once the projection stopped though and I started playing through the other paths tho, then problems started to arise again tho.

Like your prose is basic but overall good. I don't mind that you have the MC reflect on how he feels a lot, even in the narration where it isn't necessary and I can tell what's going on without it, but that stacks on multiple playthroughs, and more importantly it started to feel a bit redundant.

What really stood out by the time I was done with all the paths was how little most of the choices actually mattered. There's admittedly a lot of paths where the same events happen but you word how they happen differently based on minor decisions you made earlier. This is my first time seeing this, and I can see why its not done often. This is a good idea on paper but...

On repeat playthroughs, like I said, it can feel redundant.

Ideally I think choices that don't matter should be mindless and choices that do matter should have thought put into them. The way you set this up kind of breaks that, as I found myself wanting to skim a lot of what you wrote despite it being "new story" which is a pretty bad sign I think! Though I will say I appreciate the logical consistency between endings, as the ending where you die makes sense since you have less time to get out of library compared to the rest of the routes.

Not related, but its pretty hard to feel like the big bad of the story, Thorne, is a real threat when there's only one ending where he kills you (or at least that's implied). This robs the endings of their agency when only the last two choices actually feel like they matter! (Sometimes only one in some cases, unless I'm remembering wrong) I peaked at another review on here that said "I read all the endings on my own choice instead of feeling like I had to to make this review" and got excited, and now I just don't see it...

Also having Raven just be a flat out good guy who appears on both the go left and right routes kinda ruined my initial thoughts on him, which was very different that what he ending up being. I guess this isn't an objective critique but like...

You don't really do much with the reveal, as you can still only recruit him on the go right path. Yeah not really a flaw, just felt like a missed opportunity considering where you decided to put your effort into.

I suppose this story really is designed to just be played once or a few times, cause under that scenario its great! The choices that don't effect anything do a solid job and immersing the player to make them "feel" like their choice mattered...if that makes sense...

Finally, this feels like a second part to a larger story, or that's its missing a prologue. Not that I'm complaining about it but its weird for the MC to care a lot about names and places we don't know and we're just asked to go along with it. This is definitely not the first story to do this, but other stories seem to do this more seamlessly somehow, I'm not sure how though...

All in all, this is a solid story if you don't fixate on the details too much like I did! Your attention to logical consistency and slightly above average SPAG and vocabulary certainly didn't go unnoticed! I'd like to see you write something a bit better I guess...but I won't pressure you into doing that for obvious reasons!

Good job though all things considered! (yeah I know this is a contest story btw!)

lol :P

You did a great job with the branching. And you started off the story very strong, with quite a bang.

I really like that you didn't write too much in the beginning and instead made it snappy and concise.

You did a great job with the branching of this story. I liked the way you incorporated sensory details and descriptors describing the characters like when you talk about the smell of wood dust. It feels like a bodice-ripper fantasy romance novel, and although those aren't really my thing because I'm not really the target demographic, I can understand and appreciate the skill and care you took to write this story. You made really good use of the time alotted to you in this contest, and nowhere does it get sloppy or rushed.

There's also a logic behind the choices, which I like. On the page, "Wait until nightfall", you have 2 choices: go left or go right. Sometimes authors make one of those a good choice and one of them a bad choice, but it's completely random. Here you explain that if you take the right passage, you are less likely to cross paths with Thorne.

I also like the way you wrote the action sequences like the fight between you+elrond vs Thorne

I don't really know much about this world or Thorne, so in addition to all that branching(seriously, good job on the branching, it's hard to do), flesh out the main story a bit more so readers can be more invested.

You have an engaging an interesting writing style, and the content of the story is well-thought out. The pacing is also good.

My overall rating for this game that I gave is a 6/8. This game has a target audience and I'd say that the game did a great job reaching that audience.

Our tale begins with a necromantic orgy. And the more your read, the more you realize that everyone is fucking everyone through the veil of separating the living and the dead. The world is a veritable smorgasbord of wet spirit slapping and ghostly moans of pleasure. If you like necromancy and you like sex, why wouldn't you like this?

What I liked: The author doesn't beat you over the head with exposition describing the world and the relationships of the characters. Instead it tells you the story through dialogue, and doesn't hold your hand. This is an important skill, IMHO, because it makes the world feel independently alive, as if you're just witnessing a piece of something that exists without you there to see it.


What I didn't like: The homoerotic necromancy romance got a bit too sappy in some places. And I would have liked a more in depth exploration of Thorne, why he's such a vile POS, and more about this Academy and what's going on in the world. When we want to review a bunch of stories, we tend to love the stories that are blessedly short. But this one needed to be longer. I know the play length is a 6 (roughly 30,000 words), but a lot of that is because there is a lot of branching. I feel like the main storyline needed an extension.

But, if this is a small part of a series, then that last complaint is irrelevant.


Overall, this was pretty good. There's potential for a more expanded examination of this universe — if you can stomach the spiritual romance. Some people love that, some people don't.

Pretty gay but decent writing. 5/8

I would have rated it higher, except the next higher rating was 'better than Reese's Cups' and you made me crave Reese's Cups first thing in the morning, fren XD

(Also, I really would have liked being able to escort the new frens all the way home. But that's okay.) I really really liked it though!!