Survive or Conquer

A fantasy storygame by 37davidg

Player Rating4.32/8

"#425 overall, #17 for 2014"

Based on 74 ratings since 12/18/2014
Played 1,362 times (finished 101)

Story Difficulty2/8

"Walk in the park"

Play Length3/8

"A nice jog down the driveway"

Maturity Level3/8

"Must be at least this tall to play"

Contains content that may not be suitable for persons under age 10. If this were a movie, it would probably be between G and PG.

Tags

Dragons!

This adventure is an exploration of the three different types of political thought that were present through European history.

In the story, you're a prince/king who is heavily influenced by three characters, one of which prizes honor and valor in the spirit of Beowulf, the second who is practical and prizes the art of war above all else in the spirit of Machiavelli's The Prince, and the third (your father) is a more well-rounded king who thinks rulers should also value skills like rhetoric and drawing as argued in Castiglione's The Courtier.

The plot is that your town is threatened by a dragon and you must figure out how to best draw on the advice of your three assets to defeat it and save your town from certain destruction.

Good luck!

Player Comments

Wow, this was an enjoyable and well written story, and in my opinion is a bit underrated. It was interesting enough to play all the paths and wish for more.

The characters in this story were pretty well developed. Even the secondary characters had decent backstory and were more than just one dimensional objects for the main character's interactions.

The narrative of the story was well presented. The dialogue seemed to flow naturally and the pacing of the story was good.

Spoiler below:

There was a decent amount of choices in the story, and a variety of ways to get to the ending. However, several of these choices looped into going to speak with your father for help and followed that same end. I wish that the endings were different for each of the choices of how to go about preparing for the dragon. Also, since the story was good, I would have liked much more along each path.

Overall, a very entertaining story and a good game. My only major issue is that I wish there was more of this story for me to enjoy.

— DBNB on 5/17/2022 1:45:28 PM with a score of 0

A very enjoyable story; well-written, interesting plot, and there was a strong grounding in research.

— junapple on 4/5/2021 4:39:02 AM with a score of 0

Like the amount of choices you get

— Jakethebro on 2/14/2018 4:43:36 PM with a score of 0

Section 12 reached fairly soon... Good plot but really short. ;)

— TestingJest on 10/22/2017 11:16:44 PM with a score of 0

Wow...just wow! Fantastic writing. Short and satisfying story.

— mshub1246 on 4/16/2017 6:03:12 PM with a score of 0

Enjoyable game. :)

— Quorrah on 1/15/2017 6:26:55 PM with a score of 0

This story was pretty good. The writing was quite impressive and any issues with grammar wasn't at all noticeable, as the writing hardly if ever stumbled. While this was your "slay the dragon" kind of tale, it was done well and it had enough choices to give this quite a bit of replay value.

I only wish that there was much more to read through, because this certainly had quite a way with words :)

— TharaApples on 10/31/2016 4:03:53 AM with a score of 0

This was a pretty cool and quick adventure, I'll probably play it again. It feels like it has multiple endings. I especially liked the crossbow part, that was really interesting.