Player Comments on Sir Osis

Sir Osis was one of the most enjoyable games I’ve read here. The reason for such joy is the light-hearted tone, the cave of time style, and how smoothly and nicely the story flows. Really, I have nothing but praise for this.

Light hearted tone: This is told from the perspective of the narrator, describing the life of Sir Osis of Liver, a lazy knight that has the choice to go on an adventure, in order to exterminate villains. I don’t want to give away too much, so SPOILERS AHEAD.

The jokes from both the narrator and Sir Osis, of how he denies his physical weakness, his laziness, among others, combined with the narrator telling of his actions with a chuckle on her face. A quote from the beginning that I found particularly amusing is: “He had so many important things to take care of, like how he couldn’t open his eyes longer than three seconds.” There were also very enjoyable short sentences, like “Perhaps he should stop there and wait a while, he figured.


So he did.
”

Cave of Time style: There isn’t much to say about this, other than the fact that I enjoyed exploring all the branches, they were all 2 choices, which makes me feel like I’m reading a miniature End Master epic, just with more humour. Every action or choice felt like it belonged due to how well written this is.

Flow of the Story: This is a story that really covers the details of the decisions of Sir Osis, along with the environment. This is paired well with the humour to create a satisfying feel to it. I can laugh at every turn to the specific actions of Osis that would show he’s a crazy pea-brain, and that he really weighs heavily on his decisions, an attribute that gets carried over to the emotions of the reader.
Oh, and of course the dialogue doesn’t trip it up, and instead is used to fuel the reader’s curiosity.

Overall, I loved this story, thank you to Cricket for the fun read!

I learned something new in the first sentence alone. A thrush is a songbird. Who would have known? I thought Cricket was going Shakespeare on us creating her own words. I know it’s only the first sentence, but this is the type of memorable thing that reflects positively on a story. For the reminder of my life every time I hear ‘thrush’, I’m going to think about Sir Osis. Well played, Cricket. Well played.

Shock factor is also included in the opening. The author goes into great detail about the pleasantness of the morning. We read about all the possible factors that contribute to a poor day. And yet the main character, Sir Osis, hates it. Like, why would a knightly man with assuming honorable characteristics hate such a good day? Read it to find out, dummy. And that’s what I did.

I think I saw this mentioned already, but the formatting is a bit distracting. It’s an easy fix too, but I’m guessing the contest deadline played into its apparent rushed import. No need to beat a dead horse on this issue. Unless it has blue eyes and a white walker rides atop it. Then you burn that MF.

I like the decision to go with a third person POV. It’s a nice change of pace from the typical storygame on this site. I will say the past-tense element sort of hurts the ‘game’ aspect since we’re reading about things that already happened in a passive voice (lots of ‘was’).

One thing I really enjoy about Cricket’s writing style is the amount of attention given to little detail. The first story I read of hers in the Creative Corner was the same way. I remember a lot of the comments being “the pacing’s too slow” or “it’s a lot of text about nothing”. With respect to those people, they’re flat out wrong. The attention given to seemingly miniscule detail is part of the reason why Cricket’s writing is memorable and not boring. Think back to my first paragraph. The detail given to a songbird in the background created a positive response that would not have occurred if was taken with a surface approach.

Knowing Cricket a little bit, I’m not surprised she took a humoristic approach. I sort of expected an archetype anti-hero with an “f u and your mother” attitude. Sir Osis is vastly different. His bumbling, care-free demeanor is creatively shown through his actions and not the author telling us about him. You get a sense of who he is by the things that he does i.e. peeing through a window and getting most of it outside. Cricket must have done her research because that’s something every guy has done... Unless Cricket actually incorporated ‘his’ own life experience here.

No surprise that Cricket’s first storygame is deeply entertaining. Hopefully we see many more stories published in the near future!

I enjoyed controlling Sir Osis’ adventures. He had some pretty entertaining mishaps, I liked it when he noticed tracks and panicked, before realising they were his own. His cardio work-out as an excuse was a nice touch. The Silver Arrow of Fortune was also pretty funny.

As well as the Sir Osis charater being funny, so was the writing. I liked the language techniques you used such as “with all the speed of a drunken butterfly” and also found “Here was the blacksmith, the weaver, the tailor, the church, and any nice thing you would expect from a respectable village except for a brothel. As his lord did not allow that within his walls, the brothel was set up immediately in front of and to the left of the outermost gate” laughable, although coming from Cricket that sort of humour should not have been much of a surprise.

I think at times you could have varied sentence lengths a bit more. There were a lot of long sentences of similar length in quick succession of each other. This meant that in parts the story started to take on a monotonous and I found it starting to become hard to read.
On a similar note, I also thought that sometimes (not often, but I’ll mention it anyway) the story could have done with a little less description and moved on a bit faster.
The times that you did work in shorter sentences it worked well and effectively and helped with the flow of the story and I think using shorter sentences more would really improve the readability of the story.

I did get confused about the abundance of Mary’s in the story, but it was also kind of funny to keep encountering Mary’s in different paths. At first, I thought it was the same person, which actually could’ve worked out too if stay-at-home-path Mary broke up with the husband that was mentioned in go-to-the-village-path Mary.

I’m not really sure what ‘Cave of Time’ style is, but I liked the choices at the first part of the story. After that, it seemed to get a bit like ‘choose the right path or die’. Examples of this are when you choose between leaving the prisoners and freeing them, and also choosing between attempting escape and waiting for an opportunity. Choosing the wrong choice there, and also in a few other places abruptly ends the stories.

There were pretty much no grammatical errors that I noticed. I did catch some misspelt words (‘lofe’ on the ‘Wait for Opportunity’ page and then some missing dialogue tags on the ‘Leave them’ page) but aside from these little typos it was pretty sound.
I did notice that there were font changes which were quite distracting at times and seemed to randomly switch between pages.

Overall, I think this was a pretty good effort for your first story (I mean, we can’t really count Ineptitude…) and I’m excited to see what’s to come in the future from you :)

An interesting tale with interesting branches, Cricket. I've enjoyed what I've read.

In a nutshell: A good story, consistent setting between branches, classic branching, no true ending, and a "sweet" narrative as Gower describes it. There are spoilers below.

Sir Osis. Of the Liver, no less. Right from the beginning, it's clear the main character is an idiot knight, which stays consistent in everything the character does and what most people think of him. While at first the narrative felt a little too sweet to the reader, I settled into it quickly enough. The narrative humor in the story worked well with it. The story progression of just bumbling around a bit in the setting gives off its own sort of charm, one that works best in short stories like this.

The story featured classic branching, which was alright. The ending where the caravan is mugged and Sir Osis returns home felt like a little abrupt; the rest seemed fine. I also appreciated the use of Old English phrasing, such as "I advice you".

It was decent overall, and enjoyable.

This was a super amusing storygame.
Good luck Cristet, best wishes.

I really enjoyed the imagery and the great used of language, and I especially loved the descriptions of the old man with the potions. All criticism I have is a recommendation to reread and double-check for any misspellings and typos. Overall I really enjoyed it and am happy this story was shown to me.

Nice boy would like to congratulate you for making this gamebook. I mean

I liked it, It reminds me of A Yankee in The Arthurian court. The flow is nice and has that snarky intelligent tone and the descriptions are fitting and descriptive. My main criticism is there are not enough descriptions of places and characters that makes some moments feel that the action goes too fast. Great fun

Rereading this was a delight. I liked a lot of things in this story, to the point where there is no way I can cover all of them in this review. If you are the kind of autist who reads reviews before storygames, how about you like don’t do that. This story won’t take you more than an hour to read all of it’s paths so just go do that instead of spoiling yourself.

In any case, how should I put this. This story is fucking holarias. The beaver that gnawed off your dick was my favorite thing in this game. This story is just comedic gold, and that within itself justifies reading it. I mean writing a funny game is hard, and even if you do it well, some people won’t find it funny. Though this game certainly did it for me, and chances are it will for most people.

Though this story does focus a lot on comedy, it is very well written as well. Some of the descriptions in this game are just stellar, and if I am willing to use that word you know it’s good. You could write a story that is on paper is amazing in every way, and then fuck up on the writing and create a pile of shit. Thankful, this story is not like that and is able to take advantage of its ideas.

In conclusion, I don't have much to say that already hasn't been said. There is a reason that this game has been reviewed by so many people. I can say with confidence that this is one of the best comedic storygames on this site. It is clear that a lot of passion went into this, and the result is marvelous. While under normal circumstances I would give this game a 6, I won't do that this time on account of how hard it is to make a good game with a focus on comedy.

7 out of 8

This was a very enjoyable story. There isn't a whole lot to criticize it for, but there is plenty to praise it for.

I really liked how humorous it was. The comedic elements never felt forced or out of place to me. A knight riding a stubborn pony named Alphonse or a old lady complaining about the effect plays have on the youth is all very funny, but never manage to take you out of the story with its absurdity. I think this story really shines by treading the line between absurdity and realism, and I think it's very impressive.

But it isn't all comedy. Sir Osis truly wants to be the hero he believes he is. And it was honestly sad to see how he reacted to getting beaten by bandits. There are a few times throughout the story where you just kind of feel bad for Sir Osis. But he just gets back on the horse (pony) and keeps on trying to be the knight he wants wants to be, which makes it better. Unless he dies. Which happened a few times for me.

All in all the writing was very good. I really enjoyed the numerous analogies with regards to our horses speed ("as fast as a drunk butterfly"). I think the mixing of some modern forms of speaking worked well in contrast to Sir Osis' "heroic" manner of speaking. There were a few spelling mistakes throughout, but nothing huge. There really isn't much to complain about with regards to the story in general.

This was a fun story. Not too long, but enjoyable throughout. I hope you make more stories in the future, if you want to. You are very good at it.

I enjoyed the lighthearted, witty misadventure of Sir Osis of Liver. My only complaint is that it was very heavy-handed with the tongue-in-cheek. "Too much sugar", if you get my meaning.

I quite liked this story. The length is reasonable without being too much to swallow at once. The big issue with the giant stories on here is that while they may be objectively better, you have to devote a lot more time to them than you would a shorter one. The length I prefer most is around 10 to 15k words as it is perfect to just sit down for 20 or so minutes and just read it.

The comedic tone was great as well. It made it an easier read, because you can enjoy it without putting much thought into it. Don't get me wrong this story has it too, but between all the epic, giant world fantasy stories, and the deep, philisoicallical stories on sometimes it's good to just read something that is fun.

I don't have any major complaints with the story, and I love it for what it is. The writing was great, and the fact that it is a homage to your grandpa makes it better. 6/8

I'll freely admit, I went into this story thinking "Osis" was some Isis/Osiris reference. Thankfully the "Sir Osis of the Liver" pun was revealed on the very first page, because apparently I needed the help... even as I enjoyed a crowler of craft beer while enjoying this story.

And enjoyable this story really is. Sir Osis reminded me a lot of Dogberry in Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing," particularly as played by Michael Keaton 26 years ago(!) in the Kenneth Branagh film version. In other words, Sir Osis thinks highly of himself, but almost completely lacks self-awareness; he is compelled across the countryside by his inflated sense of self-worth, and only in his interactions with the various people he meets does the reader get a sense of how Sir Osis is truly perceived.

I didn't keep a written tally, but I believe I read through 13 endings--which is not a bad number of storypaths for a 14,000-word storygame.

This particular story has two primary branches: what I'll call the "platypus" branch and the "caravan" branch. Both are worth reading, although judging by the prior comments I'll guess most readers followed the "caravan" branch.

I'll further guess that the author was most inspired by the "caravan" branch as well, as the writing quality in that half was the most polished. Personally, I enjoyed the "platypus" branch more, largely because of its pure absurdity, although the writing suffered of over-explanation and the occasional excessively long paragraph.

As I understand it, the author is relatively young, so I did enter this story with my expectations adjusted accordingly. I started writing CYOA stories from about the fifth to ninth grades, long before the CYS site existed (a few years before the internet went public, even). I still have those stories, and while I read Sir Osis I could recognize myself in the youthful technique.

As everybody who has spent much time on this site is aware, there are more than a few juvenile stories that are published on a weekly basis, where the "writer" thinks it's a big joke to publish whatever crap entered his or her mind, most of it being highly derivative if it has any quality at all.

"Sir Osis" is nothing like that. Yes, the author is young, but she went to the trouble of creating an original story complete with 13 (if I counted correctly) unique endings. None of them, as I recall, ended terribly well for Sir Osis of the Liver, but then Sir Osis of the Liver probably never ends well for anyone... . The only endings that I thought were implausible were the twin farmer/sailor endings, where Osis abandons his knighthood to become a humble laborer; I assumed his castle and his patronage were still there awaiting his return, and all he had to do was ride home and step back into his life as if nothing had happened. That seemed like the type of conceited thing Sir Osis would do anyway.

Also, I assumed throughout the story that since knighthoods are earned instead of inherited, Sir Osis must have accomplished at least one notable thing in his life. That said, I didn't let this detail bother me, since the character needed to be independent enough to roam freely through his world, but low enough in station to have legitimate fear of some of the people he met on his journeys. And as the entire story is satirical in nature, it's best not to dwell on details anyway.

What truly stood out for me in this story was the dialog. The best scenes were the ones in which Sir Osis interacted with other people, because this was where his true qualities were made clear. The author could have given us a line to the effect of "Sir Osis thinks he's all that and a bag of chips, but his lesser just suffer him with politeness."

Instead, she provides several instances of dialog where the reader gets to draw that same conclusion without the need for exposition. I felt pain for the merchants and whatnot who were expected to treat Sir Osis deferentially, because that was what the social norms dictated--even though it was clear in the subtext that these were grounded individuals, more productive to society than this clown who lived in a castle and never had to work for a living.

Overall, this is a very worthy story. If I could give any advice to the author, it would be to work to become more concise. Over the years I have found working within strict word limits to be very instructive, because being required to make my point in, say, 800 words ultimately makes me a better writer than indulging in 2400 words. Not that "Sir Osis" rambles, but there are a few passages here and there that would benefit from the efforts of a skilled editor.

All in all, though, I am impressed. A young writer that can pull off a 14,000-word storygame with 13 unique endings must have quite a few more stories to tell. I'm looking forward to reading them.

This was certainly wacky. I've read bits and pieces of this on and off, but this is the first time I've gone all the way through the story in (mostly) one sitting.

It was funny, and deserved to win Sir Corgi's contest. It's also pretty positive, which is a nice change of pace from all the super edgy stories on the site.

Sir Osis is an absolute doofus who should be stripped of his knighthood.

The beginning was a little odd for me to read and I don’t know if that’s just me or if that is just the way you built your sentences.

My first ending was very passive with the bandits in the road only because I didn’t think pulling a hammer would work, given that they had swords, spears, and bows. For a bunch of guards to grab their weapons I thought they stood no chance, so I tried again. Would you look at that, I was right and still perished lol. I kind of like that. I have died way too many times and would make an awful knight it seems. The writing did get better in my opinion and I don’t seem to notice too many, if any, typos. I did start getting frustrated when every other or so choice led to my death or in some cases a very deep, deep sleep. I am glad however that sailing did not get to kill me, so thank you for that. More of the better choices that I believe a knight would have made led to his, Sir Osis, death.

All in all, this does make sense. I do like that you did this because a lot of the choices that killed him were because he was outnumbered or wounded in some way that made him slower or just weaker. I also think the woman who put you in an eternal sleep was kind of annoying only because there was no real warning or reason to not trust her.It would have been cool if you had added a little talk with the travelers about woman that are dangerous in this way or that, like a little foreshadowing.

It was not a bad game though. You could tell that you did put effort in it, although I think you kind of liked killing off Sir Osis of the Liver. Good Job Cricket.

Nice game!

I wanted a storm of crickets that attacked him though... wait, what?

I’m going to be real for a second and say that I was a little surprised that a story titled with the name of the main character turned out so well. It was very well written for the time frame that it was done, and I was very impressed. I think you appealed very well to us judges for the contest, and I applaud you for that. I was very impressed! Sir Osis is definitely a story worthy of winning the title for our contest. Tthe concept was very humorous to me and it was very different from the other stories I had read earlier prior to reading Sir Osis. The plot was a bit bland in my taste, and it felt a bit linear (but I suppose that can’t really be helped), but you did very well designing character personalities.

All in all, fantastic job! The endings that branched off didn’t leave me too unsatisfied, and the way you wrapped up things was good. The opening to the story was very unique and honestly, you deserve a standing ovation. I gave your story a 12/15 so you did great! :) Excellent job.

This was whimsical and had some clever moments. The main character reminds me of that old movie Robin Hood: Men in Tights. As a quick, funny diversion, this story is good. It isn't too long, and something like this definitely <i>could</i> be too long, so that's good. The pregnant housefly thing made me chuckle.

I had a really good time reading this. The humor was on point, and I really liked how human Sir Osis seemed. He wasn’t overpowered in any way, and was just trying to help people the best he could. I don’t really have any bad things to say. It was fairly short, but I liked it all the same. Great story Cricket!

I enjoyed a lot of the prose here; it's lightly funny with a snarky narrator. The casual narrative voice does a lot of the heavy lifting, for example: "He got to thinking; was there a reason whatever he was looking for would be voluntarily putting itself through this? Not really." The narrative snark there is interesting, making the narrative voice a character in their own right.

The point of view is often funny, but just as often made me want more detail, like "He was greeted with was a woman in very strange dress making a rather pissed-off expression...they all wore those strange clothes. Strangest of all however was that now and then someone would pass by who appeared to be blue. Now, the interplay of light and shadow can have strange effects on the visual perception of man." It *is* funny to have "strange" used so much, but at the same time, I don't know what to imagine there. Similarly, Alphonse "bore a resemblance to a horse in the sense that it was an equine" which is a good start to a joke, but elides description.

"Sudden end" stories aren't my cup of tea, but this one held my attention more than most because the story bounces along well, and the different strands of the story are interestingly varied. I thought it was a good read overall.