One Story Please

General Recommendation: I recommend this game, it’s a well-done concept with a good spread of different outcomes.
Preview: How will your choices as the heir to the throne affect the future of your nation’s monarchy?

=SPOILERS BELOW=

General notes:
If this full-length 20,000 word game is Darius’s rushed and last minute contest entry, I shudder to think what his original plan was.
This story does an excellent job meshing the worldbuilding with the narrative. Worldbuilding details are provided at a nice pace; they don’t cloud over the central action and dilemma but are still present. The background scenes do a nice job with this too, introducing more about the concept of a baptism and the importance of family crests, before going into more detail about things like the world’s creation story.
Similarly, the concept of democracy and inequality in the kingdom is being brought up slowly, with Eckart’s conflict in the first chapter, to the conversation with the tutor. The kingdom’s politics are introduced in a way that fits naturally with the protagonist’s life.
The pace of this story is good, building up gradually through the background scenes. This is done with worldbuilding, character development, the plot conflict, and the concept of technological changes to the world.
This story has a solid concept; the final days of an absolute monarchy, and it’s executed well with character and detail. It dips lightly into a wide variety of different areas (mythology, technology, relationships, politics) without focusing too specifically on any one area, allowing for a well-rounded potrayal.

Specific notes:
-Neat cover art.
-I like that “one story please” both makes sense in the context of the narrative, and as a joke about the contest.
-I tend not to be a fan of informational/flashback links, but we’ll see where this goes. EDIT: Done well; there are decisions to be made in these scenes, and these decisions affect the choices available later on. A good example of flashback links done well.
-I like that we can make choices in the flashback scenes, it prevents them from being an infodump.
-Eckart is being chaaracterized well and graudually throughout this sequence.
-Neat worldbuilding origin story. I’m fond of weaving time gods (writing one myself at the moment) and it’s an original concept for the world’s creation.
-The description of the difference between the two studies is a good character detail.
-Focusing on the characters of Eckart and Fulke is a good way to keep the focus of this story tight.
-Why is the narrator’s sister never going to be allowed to vote? Is it because she can’t pay taxes for some reason?

Grammar:
Generally good, with a few errors.
“Anymore” should be “any more” on page one.
“The fate of the nation lied” should be “lay”.
“Decree” of the gods, not degree.
Mastery of Language:
Good. The sentence structure flows nicely, and elegantly sets the tone without distracting.
There are a couple sentence structure issues in places.

Branching:
Good, there are four endings, which is more than most of the stories in this contest.

Player Options/fair choice:
Good, it’s pretty clear what the outcome of each choice will be.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
I got ending 2 on my first play through.

CONCLUSION: 6/8, a solid concept well executed.

Hmmm...

The three main characters were interesting. The writing and plot were engaging. The flashbacks into the king's childhood were probably the most interesting to me.

What's weird about this is that we presumably all know what choice we'd make on the very first page. I got pretty close to it after going through the backstory lessons, ending with almost a democracy.

However, some of the choices weren't so cut and dry. !SPOILERS!

On one hand, being compelled to commit a murder may warrant some semblance of mercy, and certainly information is easier to get from a living person than a dead one. However, the crime was still committed, and the assassins had ample time to report the threats they were under. I did a quick search and found that in the real world, in most such cases, threats against your person or family are only legitimate legal defenses for such a crime if those threats are immediate. What that means, I'm sure, has a precise legal definition, but to me it seems that if you have a chance to go to the authorities, and choose not to, then it cannot be a legal defense that you were threatened to commit the crime.

However, in the story you are not given all that information. A trial, perhaps, would have gotten to the bottom of it.

Or, maybe even a medium punishment: 10 to 20 years of hard labor, perhaps.

!SPOILERS END!


In any event, other than the first flashback, which was very entertaining to me, what I enjoyed most was the evolving relationship between the player and the two advisors. There was some obvious change in the characters as they grew up, but still certain aspects of their personalities lingered.

This is one of the rare storygames that I'm curious to see what happens if I choose a different path.

Definitely recommended.

Nice storygame, full of detail!

Despite being hastily written on sleep deprivation, it really was a good story with sufficient branching and decent plot. The characters were also decently written.

I loved this story! Grammar was a bit off in some places, but honestly, for being edited on a phone, great!

Personally I think this game should be rated a little higher at 6/8. It was a fun idea with a smart structure and flowed quite smoothly from start to finish. It was good reading through the different experiences / situations and the endings all made sense. A decent little story.

I wanted a free point

Not bad. After finding all of the endings, I have concluded that this mix of rushing and sleep deprivation isn't half bad. The storytelling was decent, and the world was really built up and not what I expected from something rushed. I wish that the character interactions were less jumbled and made a bit more sense.

Well this isn't much in terms of an unraveling adventure or plot, but I do feel that the story within a story narrative was something that was done quite well. It makes me hopeful for some kind of return of the king story. Because spoiler: I think I made him out to be a pretty decent guy.

All in all, this was a nice little story that could be read through in one sitting. A tale really about morals and such.