Just a Regular Improv Class

Overall: Honestly not bad. Entertaining in a way, but there’s a lot of room for improvement

Characters:Characters are really flat, with their physical appearance being the main difference between the majority of them. 2/8

SPAG: No, no, no no no. I have most definitely seen worse but this could really benefit from hardcore editing. 2/8

Branching: Most pages have choices, most choices have at least a minor impact. 5/8

Plot: The plot exists and is sort of defined, it’s just not presented in an interesting manner. 3/8

Total: 3/8

**other comments**
> The door swings open quietly, and you step into the room, pausing at the threshold.
I’m not particularly a fan of the way this is worded, which doesn’t bode well– especially considering that it’s the very first sentence. It just seems unnecessarily wordy, and like there are too many commas; though, it is grammatically correct. There are so many forms of punctuation that perform similar tasks to commas: colons, semicolons, em dashes, periods, parenthetical phrases, ellipses… the list goes on. Variety is a good thing and commas are the lazy way out

I appreciate that you know when to use a hyphen between adjectives.

The second sentence also continues far too many commas.

Having a really hard time wanting to read past the first page

You use a lot of “ly” adjectives (ex. Loosely, quietly, animatedly twice). This is generally frowned upon.

>A woman with curly hair and a wide smile animatedly gestures as she chats with a younger woman in curly hair, who seems to be animatedly nodding and typing something in her phone.
There’s a lot to unpack here. First, you described these women basically the same way, and there’s a lot of awkward phrasing. It might work better if you tried to get rid of the redundancy and the weird adding of -ly to a word that shouldn’t end in -ly. If you tried to rephrase the sentence, you could potentially come up with something along these lines: “A woman with curly hair and a wide smile gestures in an animated way as she chats with a younger woman whose hair resembles her own. She nods as she listens, simultaneously typing away at her phone.” Doesn’t that sound better?

A comma splice is when you join two complete sentences into one sentence by the use of a comma, and it’s grammatically incorrect. Sometimes it gives a stylistic effect, but this just feels poorly-done.

>Across the room, two others share a quiet exchange, their voices too low to make out, their faces relaxed.
Separate these into separate sentences for a less clunky feel. I.e., Across the room, two others share a quiet exchange. They talk too softly for a bystander to easily make out the words they say, but their faces are completely relaxed.

I’m not sure what vibe you’re trying to give from this whole page of description, or what the point of the information is. Feels like you’re just describing to describe with no concrete or defined intentions

>For a moment, you stand alone, uncertain where to go or how to join in
The comma after “moment” is unnecessary. Try writing this whole page without commas and only putting them in where the sentence doesn’t work without them

>No one seems to notice the hesitation, their attention still focused on their own conversations.
Kinda a comma splice but the second half has been robbed of its ability to be a complete sentence due to the lack of the word “is”. I think you should use one of the non-comma options I’ve listed above. I’ll show you how it looks with each one (minus the colon because it doesn’t work here). “No one seems to notice the hesitation; their attention is still focused on their own conversations.” “No one seems to notice the hesitation— their attention is still focused on their own conversations.” “No one seems to notice the hesitation. Their attention is still focused on their own conversations.” “No one seems to notice the hesitation (their attention is still focused on their own conversations).” “No one seems to notice the hesitation… their attention is still focused on their own conversations.” Obviously some of these sound better than others, but all are grammatically correct.


>A few minutes later, the door opens again, and a Chinese girl steps in, smiling nervously.
The door opens again a few minutes later, and into the classroom walks a Chinese girl with a nervous smile.

>Her outfit immediately catches the you's eye—she’s wearing baggy jeans and a sports jacket that perfectly matches the color scheme
I’m sure the “you’s” is just a typo. Also, — is an em dash. Good job there. I guess I’d word it more along the lines of “Her outfit immediately catches your eye— her baggy jeans and sports jacket match perfectly.” just to save time.

There’s a lot of telling and not a lot of showing going on here

So… many… commas…

Not the direct description of their race being the first listed trait for all three of these people.

>"Hi," you begin, "First time here?"
Period after “begin”.

I like that you try to use dialogue tags other than “said”, I don’t like that it feels forced and awkward enough that I can tell.

Can you tell me what it means for someone to nod understandingly? If the description doesn’t bring an image to your head (which I understand no description bring images to the heads of Serbians, but otherwise) then don’t use it. Perhaps say “nod in understanding” instead. If you CAN think of a physical way to describe that action, use that instead. It’s almost always better to describe what it is the person is doing rather than just tell us what the intended effect of the action is. For instance, instead of telling the reader a character is nervous, have them laugh a lot, chew their nails, tap their feet, check their watch, or do something else that we all know means a person is nervous. Show, don’t tell.

Were the names Lily and James being together an intentional reference to Harry Potter or am I just broken

A note that the grammar problems I’ve mentioned did not stop, it just started feeling really repetitive so I stopped pointing them out

NO! NOT BACK TO THE START! LET ME FAIL

Disclaimer: to the author, take everything in this review with a grain of salt. I’m not a professional writer and only somewhat of a seasoned reviewer. To the readers, this review will contain lots of spoilers, so I suggest you read the storygame first.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

There’s a well-known piece of advice about writing what you know. This story is based on the author’s Improv classes, so there would be familiarity with the subject, and I’m interested to see how real life events are adapted into a fictional story. The author claims it would be enjoyable. Let’s see if this holds true.

The story opens with some description of the setting. I like how it begins with the location—a well-lit room—before focusing on the characters and conveying the general mood. Soon, it’s revealed that the protagonist is taking in the scene, observing everyone and everything, as he is hesitant to approach the groups gathered around. This links characterization to the description. Then, all of the resulting choices are realistic given what is shown of the protagonist’s character.

WRITING STYLE

I enjoyed the use of active verbs, like how the “hum of conversation fills the air” and people are “scattered loosely around the room”. This makes the prose feel more dynamic. When paired with sensory details like sight and sound, it helps immerse the reader more.

Yet, I noticed an over-reliance on adjectives. For instance, this sentence has an adjective tied to every noun: “The space is well-lit, with the afternoon sun filtering through the large windows, casting long shadows on the scuffed wooden floors”. This weakens the writing, as it is a form of ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’. Instead, you may consider using more specific nouns or literary devices such as extended metaphors. Also think about which adjectives are the most important when painting a picture of the scene. Remember, the more adjectives you have, the less impactful each one becomes. Note: this applies to adverbs too.

CHARACTERS & PLOT

Because I’m an introvert and conversing with people is draining, I first chose the ‘go to the toilet’ option. I enjoyed how the protagonist uses this time to ground himself and mentally prepare for socializing with his classmates. However, this option proves to be unwise, as he returns to find the class has started and has to endure the embarrassment of being late. Unfortunately, this page seems to be missing links to proceed.

The first two choices appear to be the same content-wise, with slight variations in wording. When meeting the other characters, all of them have distinct and realistic personalities, and none of them are archetypal. But I noticed a few continuity errors. First, when talking to Mei, the protagonist introduces himself, followed by Mei’s introduction, then he proceeds to introduce himself once again. Unless he has some sort of short-term memory loss, that should be edited. On the page to speak with James, it starts with “After chatting with the blonde girl”. Despite this, the protagonist hasn’t spoken to anyone on the previous page and even if he speaks to Lily, there’s no choice to speak to James after. Or maybe he’s just secretly a time traveler. Then in the improv game, the names of each character is used. But the protagonist (and reader) would have only met one of them, not all three, so he’s likely to still think of them by their descriptors as opposed to their names.

The games like Sound Ball and Two Strangers on a Park Bench are interesting, and they teach unique lessons about Improv too. These kind of remind me of the games I played in Drama class back in middle school. In the second game, I enjoyed how realistically the improvising went—it sounded exactly how one would imagine students acting a role would be. It was slightly dramatized, stereotypical versions of each role, yet not completely unrealistic. And the alphabet game is something I’ve played before, except with numbers; the goal is to try to get the highest possible number.

I loved how the item was used at the end! I believed there was a bug in the storygame, until I saw the item’s description: “To communicate better with your fellow improviser! Use when needed.” That was quite clever.

Overall, while it could benefit from proofreading and playtesting, it’s a short and sweet storygame about Improv class. It’s what you would expect from the title and description.

It's been a while since I last read a storygame and reviewed it, so I wanted to find a shortish one to practice on for a second. Unfortunately, this reminded me of the worst part of storygames. I hope you edit this or something because the concept is unique if nothing else. The issues are plentiful as well, unfortunately.

The first one is of course the choice to go to the bathroom that goes absolutely nowhere. Why even include it. Of course, the choices in this game are all an illusion anyway. There is only one path. The choices are simply a flavortext. This would be understandable in a longer, better story, but this story is short and bad.

Honestly. This story is not the worst I've ever read, but is honestly middling enough that not even the mistakes that were made are boring. I don't know. Maybe just try harder?

This is a fascinating story, I like the unique writing style. Some of the points don't exactly make a ton of sense. like how would someone like 8 years old create a hit videogame. Maybe im missing something

You really need to fix that link on "go to the toilet", the writing isn't bad at all but games with dead pages are usually taken down.

Several options assume you have already selected other options and I got stuck in a loop during the alphabet game.

i went to the toilet and there were no more choices so i dont know that to do now

There's a dead link on the first page.

A very accurate title. I didn't really spot any spelling or grammatical mistakes which is always a plus.

Rather than embellishing any details, this story just seems to focus on providing a realistic experience on what it's like to attend an improv class. In a sense, this feels like an edutainment game.

In conclusion, I'd say it's worth a read if you are curious about what goes on in an improv class