Pan

Well, how do I go about this? I would say that what's present here is definitely more 'story' than game. It probably comes out a bit odd, as the things that are created here, they fall under the whole 'story-game' mantle.

Personally, my only real qualms are that it doesn't feel like there's any option given to the reader to manipulate the story that they're reading more. For a short story, I would say that what's here is wholesome and a story that’s pretty topical at the the time of this review. I found the characters to be cool, and as a reader, I would have liked seeing them in different situations if there was more ways for the story to go.

I do like the idea of cultural exchange in this story, though. Characters both learning from each other, and also teaching each other. At the end of the day, I think there's a nice message in this story that made me rate it a bit higher than I usually would have in a story-game in which I may have had similar points of minor contention with.

Oh, and on the technical side, I ran into a page that looped no matter how much I clicked it. I think you may want to go back and fix certain things like that.

This isn’t a bad work, but I feel like it can be better if there was some more polish, and a choice or two more. I think that short stories can have a place here, but on the basis that there's at least some choice that can give the reader potential outcomes that wildly differ, and or even give a reader different conclusions, be they bad or good.

All right, so here we have it, the one and only entry to the foreign language jam.

I guess I'll just address the cons that I'm sure Digit is already aware of first: loads of typos and grammatical weirdness, and even more importantly, bitch, where my choices at?

Yes, as is not uncommon for things written for a deadline, it's easy to tell this was written for a deadline. I've collected up all the typos and the meandering late night written on the phone sentences and will PM them, and have rated this based on the understanding that they will be fixed. (You also really should read Gower's article on dialogue punctuation. (https://chooseyourstory.com/help/articles/article.aspx?ArticleId=4309)

But the choices are a bigger problem. You really, really are going to need more than one. Any choices. Inconsequential choices, fake choices, whatever, just give the people something to click. There were a couple in there just giving info, which is better than nothing, except that the one for Mexican sweet bread is broken.

You could add something like a choice of whether to tell Tico about Mariah, or to tell Belle (followed by her telling him, so the plot changes not at all), and a choice for ways to try and save Robert from the bratty preteen. Make the character have to choose whether to quit and go back to school or not. Although this is overall a very chill plot, essentially a slice of life story, and so small decisions are fine. Give us a couple of phrases in Spanish to choose from when talking to Belle, for the educated reader who probably already has Google translate up in another tab.

Even though a lot of the story was written in a way that summarized events and technically breaks the 'show, don't tell' rule, the characters and situations all felt real and natural. Everyone in here felt like they could be an actual person you'd decided to write about. It's all very wholesome too and told in a relatable way, something that makes the story easy to read, and I'm guessing from the ratings makes readers more inclined to warm up to it despite the glaring flaw of it not really being a CYOA in its current state.

You mentioned taking it down, but I really don't think it should be. One afternoon of editing could whip it into shape, and it's otherwise a very pleasant story of a kind we don't get often here. The Modern category is quite honestly godawful and half of it should be purged, we need more like this.

Oh, and while you're doing those edits, maybe some teensy additions to the description to include info on the actual content of the story?

It's more a short story than interactive fiction haha, it's very cute tho.

This really isn't a CYOA. But it's easy to read at least. An undramatic story of helping a friend of the family's out with his bakery and befriending his blind daughter.

It isn't bad, but it feels like a normal story that was just split up into pages and pasted to the site.