Propheteering

Overall, I liked this story, but there are some things that I have mixed opinions on.

Disclaimer: This is just my personal preferences and my opinion.

On one hand, I was impressed with the originality of the idea and the writing. You did a really good job with the concept of this grifter having to escape the long arm of the law.

On the other hand, the writing starts out really dense and hard to read. Again, I thought the quality of the writing was fantastic, but I think because of the pacing and denseness of it, I had a hard time staying engaged.

There were lots of thick paragraphs but I struggled through it because I knew something really good was coming up. I mean it was still fascinating, just challenging to read through.

And then the paladins capture me.

Frustrated, I restart the "Hide" path and go on to the "Run" path, where the same thing happens.

In both the paths where the Paladins capture and torture you, you don't pull any punches depicting the torture the main character goes through. You do a good job of making us feel it. But it does get excessive. I feel like with the grim dark torture stuff, there's a balance you want to strike so you're still hitting the reader with the impact without dulling their senses. By this I mean, when I read paragraphs on paragraphs of torture, I don't really feel it as much, like the punch isn't there. Again, this is just my personal opinion, because there are many great elements in there.

Particularly, the really raw and visceral way you describe pain. This entry is 100 percent grimdark, and it's creepy, in a good way of course. You achieved your goal with the well-written descriptions. For example, I thought these lines really exemplified the best of grimdark: "It doesn't hurt when he cuts your head open, right down the middle. The two halves of your face sag, sliding to the sides of your head, giving you a field of view like a horse. Within what is now your periphery, you see the mage insert something into your brain, and into your heart."

Also, the jaw rip off scene. I mean, the paladins ripping your jaw off and then being possessed by 13 Gods, who send you into 13 different hells! Fucking crazy! It was quite original, and ultimately I did like it, it could just be trimmed a bit.

I like how you showed the Paladins' religious hyprocrisy, that was a good touch. They call you an evil heretical grifter, yet they fucking torture you in the most sadistic ways.

I liked the "Demons" path the best. There were some fun options in there, particularly with the large demon. Urga certainly has the hubris to assume he could control a hellish force like that, and get him to do his bidding, so it was satisfying seeing him get his comeuppance.

The smaller demons path was also fun. Especially the ending where you end up taking over the world a la Necromancer, with the army of smaller demons.

Overall Impression: 6/8. Expand the paladins paths. Maybe also show us some reactions of the disciples finding out that you were a scammer. Maybe a redemption arc, or maybe him getting arrested by the Paladins, breaking out, or something like that.

“Are you some deaf vagabond?”
Why yes actually, and I’m here to review your story.

Synopsis:
Play as a charismatic cult leader, who I imagine takes after Megamind in appearance, and attempt to survive a raid by the church of the Greats in this short but sweet story game. Will you end up a a puppeteered plaything of an eldritch deity, or raise a revolt to destroy the monarchy?

Positives:
-The humour in this game is top tier and rivals some of the best stuff on the site in my opinion. Especially the gag about the three handed head demon losing his legs and being renamed, the ‘summoning book for retards’ and the paladin’s dialect got a giggle out of me.
-The description of the demons and all their nefarious activities was certainly well written. Maybe too well written: I’m starting to suspect that, just like the character, you have come to enjoy sinful sodomy sex.
-I like that, throughout the branches, certain key story features stay the same. For example, the church always fires a huge boulder onto the building and the eye-raven-head demon always appears if you leave the portal open for too long: regardless if you’re there or not. It would be cool if you could manipulate these events in your favour, however. Perhaps if you added future paths to the ‘run’ starting path, you could convince the priests to fire the catapult early to crush the paladins. This would reward the players who have gone through and read all the paths.

Things to improve:
-Of the three choices on the first page, two lead to end game links. More than anything this was disappointing. I played the enticingly named ‘demons’ route first and hoped the other two would contain just as much narrative branching, but they were a letdown. On the subject of endings the following end pages did not have any ‘previous page’ links, which I’m assuming they should have: ‘Urga's (Hopefully Not) Last Stand’ , ‘No Octane Chase (As There's No Gasoline In This Setting)’ and ‘A Little Bit of Trickery’.
-There are definitely a few spelling or grammatical mistakes. Here are three I found, but there are more:
1) On the ‘Urga’s last stand’ page, you write ‘breath out’. Pretty sure this should be ‘breathe out’ since you need a verb here.
2) On the ‘Objective: Apocalypse’ page, you’re missing a full stop at the end of ‘The other paladins turn and see their enemies’.
3) On the ‘mob rule’ page you write ‘eachother’ instead of ‘each other’.
-This is just a personal thing, but the brackets throughout the story really broke me out of the experience several times. This definitely is a style preference though.

Overall, like most entries into competitions I’ve come across, this would benefit from a look over for SPAG mistakes as well as some additional branching. However, with the concept itself is cool and creative so it does deserve some credit. This game is good and I’m looking forward to seeing what else Wizzy manages to muster for future competitions.

This is an interesting one, definitely one of the better stories to be published in recent times. I overlooked it when it was first published, but clearly, I made a mistake.
It’s not very often that a storygame with such graphic descriptions can also manage to be funny, it’s a unique combination that isn’t easy to pull off. It’s hard not to be intrigued when a piece of writing can make you both amused and disturbed on the very same page. Heck, Propheteering even finds room to be funny in the middle of torture scenes.

The concept is very strong, compelling enough that I explored each path I could find and was still left wanting more. Urga in particular is pretty likable and works well as the protagonist.

I’m usually not a huge fan of getting an ending on the first link (though there’s a lot of things in this storygame I’m usually not a huge fan of), but even those first-choice endings have quite a bit of effort behind them, so I didn’t really mind. Even if a reader does happen to get one of those endings, I’d encourage them to hit the go back button instead of that end game link, because it really is worth it to explore your options and seek out a path that doesn’t involve being butchered.

For obvious reasons, this won’t be for every reader, and it’s very deserving of that maturity rating. But that being said, I’d encourage most people to at least give it a try. Even without all the disturbingly well-written torture segments and hilarious narration, there’s a pretty great story here that’s worthy of praise.

Nice work!

I started off this game ingesting all the drugs I could find for no apparent reason, then had my jaw removed and an axe comically shoved down my gullet by paladins, which I relate here as a tl;dr for future readers to indicate whether this game is for them.

There's an interesting tonal balancing act at work here, with all the gratuitous torture and gore mixed with a long winded conversational style, funny observations and the introduction of occasional absurd details: Stitching up a portal to hell with glue and string, a bored paladin chewing on your severed finger "like a toothpick" while watching the others cleanse you of heresy, and so on. Sometimes it works, sometimes (the paladin being added to the crown comes to mind) it just seems like a long torture scene for its own sake without any other layers to it.


I only found a small handful of typos, which is impressive considering this was published at (literally) the very last minute for the deadline.


It felt like there was a good amount of branching for the length, although all centered around the same event when I would have liked, for one, the church and what he was doing with it defined a little more (the only clear explanation is in the description rather than the story proper), and to see more than just the end of Urga's career.

Also, for a guy that's supposedly milking the faithful for so much gold, the temple sure is run down and falling apart, and seems to take place in an utterly impoverished third world shithole. For all these people too poor to even afford doors on their houses, being murder-raped by a swarm of demons honestly seems like it might be a step up, and so I would question how successful he truly was.

kind of annoying since one path had only dead ends

Pretty nice, though a wee bit short lol

One of the endings (the one where you take a rowboat out into the ocean) I'm questioning if I'm already dead. Anyone know if this is the case or not?

fun

This was one was pretty different in a good way with a smart sense of humour and a surprising amount of gore. I enjoyed it, it was an interesting read and pretty original so well done.

Pretty good. At least this ending didn't involve demon fucking.