Of the Struggles Faced Under the Light of a Metal Shrouded Star

This was certainly interesting. I guess it’s about a famous musician, and there are songs written on almost every branch that are very fun, but this story had more issues for me than just being short. However, it was a clever concept. There was not a warning I could find, but if you do read this, just be warned that there seemed to be some religious and racist undertones that really turned me off from liking it. I gave it 4/8 but it wasn’t my cup of tea, so I can easily see the rating being anywhere from a 3 to a 5 based on the reviewers preferences. Anyway, the spoilers start now. Keep in mind the feedback is meant to be helpful and not mean.

Let’s start with the grammar, which was okay. Your grammar needs to be checked. There are a few long run on sentences that could be broken up. There is nothing wrong with using two sentences in one paragraph—even in action scenes. Also, there were a lot of typos with misspelling of words or incorrect words . I think a proofread would catch most of it but sometimes it affected the read. For example, the ending “You sand a song pleasing to your god” (sic). It’s right in the bolded section. I think this is mostly due to not proofreading as the author was rushed due to a contest.

Some bonus grammar notes:

Some redundancy is present throughout… like “grins excitedly” isn’t really necessary because if someone is grinning they are usually excited. It can be hatched from context clues as well. You just have a lot of repetitive statements and descriptions. To compliment you as well, you have very effective and dramatic use of repetition on page “Focus on the Numbers” at the end. It’s a haunting ending because of the good repetition.

who is talking? Using speech tags the first time someone talks on a page is very helpful. Some of the speech is missing quotation marks or very unclear who is talking. This isn’t always a problem, but it happens often enough that I got confused on a few branches.

“Some kind of slapped together plasma rifle” is not the best description… it’s a plasma rifle—and not a good one—but we don’t much else. What about it is slapped together? Maybe all the parts are different colors or it doesn’t fit together quite right… but give us something that is definitive and easy to imagine like “plasma rifle slapped together from 4 different broken guns to make one functional piece”

To compliment you again, You write a bunch of song lyrics for this which was cool and generally well done—I think—but I’m not a musician. It was a fun aspect of the story in most, if not all, branches. I’d love if the story had more about music and less about everything else that was in there because you seemed to be good at the musical part of this prompt.

I want to take a minute to complain about your characters. None of the characters are introduced well. They are all kind of just there… we don’t learn much about them or get attached. One even dies on a branch, and I didn’t particularly care. There isn’t much to any particular character. Development is very limited as well, but it’s hard to develop a character when we don’t know them at all. There are some small things we can piece together and some development… but the characters are really shallow. You may know and love these characters… but we only know what we read. I’d spend more time on the characters; their reactions and thoughts are important to make your reader feel attached to them and what they are doing in your story.

Now to talk about the story in general for a bit. The first page is clever with the main character being the “rumored son” being the host is talking about… it gives some background information in an interesting way, but it’s not that revenant to the rest of the story. It actually took me awhile to pick up on that fact because there isn’t a clear link from everything that happens after back to the that story. The game is short, but the first page can be easily forgotten before you finish the second page because of how unrelated they seem.

That being said, your choices were good. I liked how much they changed the story in a logical (but not always predictable) way. They all led to a unique path and a bunch of different endings. The little character development that did exist was seeing how the main character changed in each branch, which was fun. However, the first choice seemed to make the least sense. It seems like maybe the mother and father branch should be switched because your father was a murderer? I’m not sure. It was also a very quick and sudden time-skip from that choice to a completely unrelated scene… which was strange. I went back and looked for missing pages at one point. This also relates to what I said about about the first page seeming to be disconnected from the rest.

Lastly, I feel like I need to mention it. This story made me a bit uncomfortable with the religious and racist undertones. This was especially bad in the gang branches. Maybe my knowledge of gangs is just not good enough to relate… but that entire branch seemed highly offensive. Really anything under the fear of being like your mother. For example, I find it offensive (as a Christian myself) that on the branch you become a wild murderer is the only branch you turn to Islam and that all gang related violence was very racist coded (race was only mentioned on paths with gang violence and drugs and it was always one particular race). Maybe I’m misreading something… and admittedly this is not my kind of story… but I was uncomfortable enough reading it that I almost abandoned the story have one branch.

I think it's interesting that this storygame ends up going in two vastly different directions, depending on the choice you make right at the beginning...although one of the endings, it seems like the player character does turn into his father anyway, from having the affair to killing his affair partner. I'm not sure the other ending I came across in that path was much better, though, as I was left with the impression that the player character felt very unfulfilled, even though it seemed like going 'deeper' was the better option (or, rather, the one that didn't end with the player character shooting his affair partner and then himself).

The other path is, as I mentioned, completely different from the first. From leader of a worship band to a gangster who didn't even hesitate to shoot a defenceless woman in the face. In this path, I found it much harder to connect with the player character. I couldn't understand why not wanting to turn out like his mother had resulted in those kinds of choices.

I did like the sci fi elements to this storygame, and I would have liked to see more of those throughout. Things like the pastor having a cybernetic arm, and the nanobots, were interesting inclusions to the storygame as a whole.

I will say that the storygame was really easy to read, even the gangster parts of it. I came across four different endings and I'm sure there are more, but I don't think reaching for any of the other endings would have changed much about the storyline. Eventually, I would like to return to this storygame and see all of the other endings, though.

I really liked this story.

I love how we see the duality of paths. Depending on whether the MC is scared he'll end up like his mother or father, the story diverges into a gangster hood movie or a story about a christian rockstar trying to make it big.

I definitely liked the mother path. I thought it was incredibly fast paced and violent. And I liked the juxtaposition of the sci fi setting, with lasers that can kill dozens, with the intimate violence of the hood gangster genre, where one person shoots another point-blank, or conducts a drive-by attack.

I feel like there was definetly some commentary and deeper themes that probably went over my head. But I could definetly see that Petros put a significant amount of thought into his characters, and that there was a rhyme and reason for his character's actions in both paths.

In the 2nd path, I liked the dilemma the protagonist faces on whether to keep his music honest, or sell out for the numbers.

It's a pretty interesting story that manages to juggle 2 separate genres simultaneously. And the integration of the sci-fi aspect of hovercars, satellite lasers, and Big Brother style policing made the piece quite a novel and interesting one.

Boring ass story.

I'm not going to lie, I really enjoyed how this all played out. The only bad thing I can think of to say about it is the length, and even then it felt fairly fitting. I really like the way Petros portrayed the endings.

A unique storygame topic that I don't think has been done before. The story is interesting and includes a good amount of branching. There are little to no SPAG issues and the writing style, even with snippets of songs breaking things up, lends itself to a smooth and easy read.

I got both Last Duet and the other side of that ending. The drastic differences of a single choice are very notable, and the Last Duet was surprising graphic. The members of the band are fairly flat, although I'm sure that is mainly due to the deadline. This story is about a genre I have little interest in, and focuses mainly on an aspect of the music industry I am fairly unfamiliar with, but nevertheless it drew me an and held my interest throughout.

6/8 just for the title.

Well, it's disappointing that the Christian music industry declined to sell my music simply because there was a sliver of doubt in the lyrics. Especially since the Bible itself mentions Christ saying, "Father, father, why have you forsaken me?"

I suppose I should have done like the real Christian music business and followed the numbers. Maybe hire me some "Christian hot" backup singers, and stick to Millennial skinny jeans, dye my hair, and walk the line.

Never would have thought there would be a game that has a branch dealing with this topic.

I really enjoyed this! The characterization was great, and I thought the way you were told the endings were nice. The length was decent, although I wished it were a bit longer. I'm glad I was able to find my fortune. 6/8.