The Arrival

I started to read this to review it, but then I read the instructions and went outside to play. Then I realized that when you said, “Go play,” you were talking about this very story game and weren’t trying to get me to go outside and exercise. For that I am thankful.

There is an interesting start to this story. I guess I’m a wolf or a dog, since I’m in a pack, so there’s that. But I do like that it starts right out with action and gets to going. I’m not sure what I think of all the early game end story options. I’m glad that they are clearly labeled as end of story options, so I know what happens if I pick that, but I think perhaps you could just leave those out. I mean, why have an end option – if that’s the case, the reader wouldn’t have read the story in the first place, right? But it is nice that they are clear.

The story was quite short, obviously, but it was neat. I really liked the concept of trying to explore and figure out the incredibly difficult mystery. Well, okay, it wasn’t really that hard. It is a little interesting to see that no matter what choice you pick, you get the same result, yet if you pick the correct option, the story does let you know that you’ve made the right choice.

I think this story has tremendous potential. Other authors can read this one to see how things can be setup and could easily expand on this idea and this type of storyline with additional options, additional endings, and could even put a few additional conditionals on the choices to limit who you can accuse based on who you have investigated. This was a neat start to a story, thank you for sharing it with the site.

Heh. I found it humorous, but short. Like one of those books people enjoy, but they have only 100 pages in them and then they're like, "What? That's it?!"

The fact that it's a mystery aspect story made it very interesting, especially with the whole wolf/dog perspective thing. I found it very creative and impressive you were able to put those together and have a quality storygame come out of it.

Sadly, it did have some downsides, such as being very easy since the choices didn't seem to effect the story much, only the end choices did for me (unless I refused to help with the case). Branching is key for storygames, remember!

I can't tell you how much I thought this was warrior cats at first. The first few words were about joining the pack, and I was literally about to die thanks to it. I'm very glad that wasn't the case. xD

There were also spelling mistakes, although I spotted little to no accidental ones, but there were ones that I imagine were on purpose (such as "stahp"), but a spelling error is a spelling error to me.

Overall, the storygame, despite being incredibly short was fun to me in a way, but more character development would have been nice, especially for a mystery storygame like this one.

I'm gonna say 4/8, pretty good.

Too short... 2/8

I usually like games that are played from the perspective of animals, but this... Yeah, there's a very distinct different between games that make me think, "Awh, cute! I'm a puppy!" and "Awh, fuck, the author's a furry." And that difference is that whether or not the character is an animal or a human makes absolutely no difference to the game. This was not a game played from the perspective of a wolf. It was a game where the author made the protagonist a wolf because "OwO! Furry, furry! Yiff, yiff, yiff!"

Besides that, what the hell was the game supposed to be about? I mean, why is the game called "The Arrival?" There is no arrival. I mean, I think you said something about the protagonist being the new arrival, but considering he knows all the other wolves names, he can't be that recent of an arrival.

But besides the weird and misleading title, the plot is... You find a box... That's it. That's the whole story. You find a box. You ask other wolves about the box. The box exists... Why? Just, why? I mean, you've got a pack of wolves to work with. Wolves are awesome, interesting creatures. Could you seriously not think of a better plot than, "Box"?

*SPOILERS*

I was initially put off from the moment I saw it was from the perspective of a wolf, but it turned out to be slightly less cringe than I thought.

The premise of the plot was fine, but wasn't really elaborated on much. There's not much of a story here. Obviously you can't really do much with under 1,000 words. My main problem was not with the plot, but the characters. Right off the bat, Kali is hostile towards you for seemingly no reason. She has no reason to believe that you had something to do with the box's appearance, yet she growls and glares at you when you speak to her. The other characters are just there and don't really do anything except for one interaction with them. Nothing really changes and the story takes place over like 10 minutes.

As for the writing, it could certainly have been better. You bolded dialogue for some reason, and there were several grammatical and punctuation errors. Of course I'm not expecting much, and I'm unsure why I even bother with these stories anymore. The branching was, in all practicality, nonexistent. Unless it led to an end game link immediately, all of the choices led to the same outcome. That's pretty boring, especially on a site that is made for stories that the player can control.

Overall, this could have been much better, but it's certainly not the worst I've seen.

I read these stories to the special needs kids at my school, and this one was perfect for one of the students. She was really entertained by it and the decisions were not to complicated for her. Thanks for makeing this story.

needs more content.

I really have no idea what was happening or what was going on.

It was a good but small... uh, I'm not sure what that was exactly. I didn't get bored reading it, mostly cause it was so short, and it was pretty nifty, but it could've been better.

You should explain what animal you are, you know, give it a little more insight. How did the box get there? What did it look like? You could've done it as easily if it had of been humans instead. If you wanted a story game with animals, put them in one where it needs to be animals. I also think you could've lengthened it to make it better.

4/8

Was fun, I tried a few times to poke around and see other options. Very limited outcomes.