Player Comments on Night Shift

- - Quick Review - -
This is a very interesting story! I was impressed by the number of true endings for its length, and the number of ways it can go is fun. It is worth the time it takes to read it. In my opinion it would be the most fun to not go back every time after you get a question wrong and just restart completely to try again, but it’s a personal preference thing. I would certainly recommend if you like mental exercises/challenges, knowledge tests, slightly disturbing horror, or for some obscure reason have an obsession with crazy things that can fictitiously happen while working a night shift. Oh, and if you’re worried about the 7/8 maturity, don’t be. In my opinion it’s really not that bad, there’s just some disturbing and gory parts.

SPOILERS FOLLOW THIS VERY SCARY WARNING

- - Highlights - -
First things first, this game is fun. It isn’t the most fleshed out, artistic, detailed, or worked on storygame ever, but it serves its purpose well and I’d say it’s an enjoyable experience.

The horror factor also strangely works for this story. It feels like it shouldn’t, but it does. While it doesn’t build the same lurking dread, I think it’s still more of a slow-burning fear that classifies horror for me.

I also like just how many options this story presents from the very beginning. There are very few pages with only one link, which is good. Granted there was a lot of looping and the story’s design made this relatively simple, but it was still a well-done and worth mentioning factor in the story.

The time stamps were another fun factor in this game. They allowed the reader to know how close they were to finished with the game (sort of) as well as provided a solid measurement for how long each task took them. It was a nice touch, and I didn’t notice any errors with it.

For a storygame that was a little light on the word count, it was packed with a pretty solid amount of detail. The horror scenes were descriptive, the feelings were real, and the imagery was very present. That being said I don’t think it was overly gory and in my opinion the maturity rating is a little harsh for that reason.

It was an interesting concept that failure to complete tasks like sweeping or math resulted in either torture or instant death. This really increased the stakes to do well in these tasks, and I personally really enjoyed it.

- - The dark dark depths of— the problems I had with this story. ScArY - -
Despite its successes, I did have a handful of issues with this story.

First of all, SPAG. I noticed left out apostrophes, wrong punctuation, unnecessary letters, small things like that. One particular example is that on the page “Stay at the Counter,” the comma after “seems” in the second paragraph should be an ellipsis.

Second of all, I would like it to be a little smoother in the way it fits together. The way it flows is a little hard to follow, and I think this would be much improved if there were more details on events to carry the reader between tasks. It’s a little choppy, and I think if that was improved it would raise this story a whole rating for me.

Another thing— characterization. While it wasn’t the most necessary element for this particular style of story, it would’ve been nice to have something about the mc. Since this is a horror story after all, it would dramatically increase the impact of the horror elements to create a stronger connection between the reader and the mc.

- - Final Thoughts - -
I know this was a pretty quick story, and for that I’m pretty impressed. Even looking aside from that, this is a solid story, with a relatively low error rate in relation to its length. While it could have been done better (especially in a longer time frame) this is still a fun storygame and worth the time it takes to play. Congrats on making a nice and complete story with several fun and well-done aspects to it Bezro!

Wow... First review... No pressure or anything though, right? Well, I'm going to try to do alright with this here- sorry if it's not great.
This feels like it should be in Puzzles/Games rather than horror. I liked the horror when it came up, but I sort of made smart choices 99% of the time, and got next to nothing. I didn't notice any SPAG errors, and all the variables seemed to work. I got the win ending. Thanks for a fun play, Bezro! Side note- I knew my PJO phase would be worth something someday! :)
6/8 because it was short.