Player Comments on Searching for Sunsets

Initial Thoughts: Fucking Gay

This was very well written. I usually have a bias against romance games, as the genre in general is not my cup of tea, but this one managed to keep my interest.

The prose was very good. Everything flowed well and the story was coherent. I liked all the options. There were plenty of endings you could get without it just being a death. I got a laugh out of the manure killing you if you don't find it satisfying to cut open. Overall though, the branching is a bit lacking in any meaningful ways except not getting a love option or dying. Even the first link is just a way to slip in an extra page.

The punctuation could have been a bit better. There is no in-between with the overuse or underuse of commas in the story, but that is something I also struggle with. The first page has a strange half paragraph break. Other than that I didn't really catch anything else.

You captured the medieval romance trope pretty well, even with the gay option. My only complaint is that the other elements of the story end pretty quickly. I would have appreciated a bit more substance between the character meeting all the romance options and suddenly over a dance at the ball they decide to marry him, especially the valkerie that tries to kill him like a week before and sticks around for some reason. If I'm going to play a love and DATING game, there had better be some dating involved so I can decide who's the best option. How am I supposed to decide who's the best for Vincent if I can only briefly meet each of them beforehand, then get stuck choosing one and only slightly getting to know them better without dancing with all of them? Like what the hell! This is a ball, for god's sake. You can dance with multiple people in the length of time it took medieval royalty to finish throwing a ball.

Overall this story is perfectly good as is, but I think it needs more meat. More drama. More DATING! 5/8

Our character: I found our character hard to understand at times. Even in the beginning of the story, you see him scoff at his parents causing his father to fume and his mother to be disappointed and near the end of the same page is the character thinking "but you’d do anything to be in their good graces again." I'm not saying I want the character to start "monologuing" or anything. But something akin to bringing our own character's reasoning to his decisions. Like what particularly does he scoff AT. Sure you could say he scoffed at the "Do you want to tarnish the honor of our entire bloodline?” line. But any normal response would be to answer the question rather then immediately scoff. Perhaps our character has had this talk many of times before and has grown to the point where he can nearly recite the exact words coming forth. Perhaps he hates his father for his strict parentage. Or perhaps he feels that his actions were so minor that they would 'hardly taint' such a high class individual such as himself. Perhaps its a combination of all three. Either way some incite over our characters actions WITHOUT the need of dialogue from other characters asking would allow us to better implant ourselves into the character's mind, especially for those who don't end up picking the option with the reasoning (the first one that comes to mind is if you choose to go to the gardens instead of the kitchen straight up, you don't get to know WHY the character feels how he feels if you dont end up reading the dialogue with Catello Russo)

Story: The actual story is a pretty premise admittedly. The descriptions were adequate and got the point across well enough and the dialogue was much the same way. It started out with a exposition filled dialogue exchange between our protagonist and his parents about his partying habits. One of the first things I've noticed is how a decent bit of it is streamlined, which isn't inherently a bad thing as long as there aren't any decisions that don't lead to anywhere without providing SOME sort of progression or background info. I've only discovered one such example of that during my time playing. SPOILER: During the decision, to chase after the thief, You are given a variety of different options of how to handle it. I chose the one option that a "immature prince who doesnt really care about his nobility status and would rather party" would choose. Which was to basically say "screw it, I'm going back to sleep" but the game basically said "YOU CAN'T DO THAT! YOU GOTTA TELL SOMEONE" when the main character hardly changed at all. At most, he hit a bag of literal doo-doo with a shovel and that's suddenly suppose to change his whole outlook on his position as a noble? Even on the other route I took where he met with the blind harpist, he didn't seem to change himself as much as he just got a crush on the girl after a rather humorous scene of him accidentally covering himself with shit. I would've enjoyed a more natural progression instead of sudden one.

Overall: Despite my qualms with character progression. Not a bad story by any means, its descriptions were adequate some of the scenes were decently funny and for a first story? I think its actually pretty good. I can definitely see it being brushed into a pretty decent story if more writting was given to expand the characters, world and story a little more. Overall, its no academy award winner but its not bad at all.

Like another reader mentioned, it was difficult following character emotions at time. The word choice in the beginning argument with the parents seemed a little dramatic.

But it was an enjoyable story that deserves more attention. Thank you for sharing.

This story was cute and well written. It's a lot better than many first-time stories. I found the writing to be quite charming. Thank you for this story.

I’m going to give this story a 5, but it’s not very well polished.

Good: some of the sentences were well-crafted, some romance parts were emotionally resonant, there was some branching

Bad: punctuation, more telling than showing than there should have been, some of the branches received less attention than others, too much randomness and lack of player agency in things like deaths and what happens after each player choice- like, there’s not enough logical relationship between the information that I’m given about each choice and what happens in the story if I pick that choice

It's alright. I do love a story about being a spoiled prince, and it's not bad for a first Storygame.

This was wonderful! Character development was bountiful, there was a large amount of branching, and it really felt as if every choice you made mattered. Thank you to the author for a well written story.

This was pretty good! I liked it.

Absolutely lovely! This was such a blast! Every choice took me somewhere I didn’t expect, and it made the whole thing so much fun. You can really feel the creativity and thought you put into it—it kept me hooked the whole way through!