The Devourer

This felt like one of the more complete stories in the contest. There was a good amount of branching and just the sheer amount of writing accomplished in such a short time is something to be proud of. It was started with just eleven days left till the deadline, IIRC.

Of course like any story there's room for improvement. It's been mentioned that the colored dialogue was unnecessary and distracting, but it was actually more the things the characters said that I took the greatest issue with. By far the biggest flaw with the game was how unnatural and unrealistic the dialogue was, and that's such a major factor in how a character comes across. Rachel was written very well I thought, aside from the times she's giving infodumps or running around shouting 'THE DEVOURER!' (or burning her dog alive, cheerfully pretending she's not holding a loaded rifle...) but characters for the most part have just one personality trait, taken to an extreme, and pretty much all are weakened by this.

The meeting with the Council in particular stood out in my mind. The Council woman really struck me as a copout of a villain. It's so comfortable to not only have an antagonist completely, obviously wrong, but transparently evil, sociopathic, AND incompetent (yet never questioned), all at the same time. The situation at North End doesn't seem immediately, obviously desperate, yet without a moment's thought or hesitation she becomes completely singleminded about doing something that could become easily fatal to them all, and in such a way that pointlessly alienates and makes hostile the person who knows the most about the subject. And then sends her out with zero precautions taken or any sort of plan in place, either for exploiting or stopping the Devourer. (And the existence of the Devourer itself and what it's capable of is never put in question, so it's not a matter of ignorance.) Survival being such a powerful motivator, it's difficult to believe not a single other person at the meeting suggested taking five minutes to consider alternate plans. (Or said something like 'my condolences' in between the sneering and *Scoffing* (in emotes) to the woman who'd been through multiple tragedies like, that very day, that they were now apparently all depending on to complete a mission of utmost importance, essentially alone.)

Okay, so I feel the Council's behavior was unrealistic and illogical. The reason I've spent a big chunk of this review going on about this is because unfortunately, the entire plot going forward hinged on this. If anyone at the meeting had acted as you'd expect a person in charge of a settlement like that to act (with a shred of common sense, competence, class, or even self preservation...) then there could be no story.

So yeah, this particular issue gave me a lot of frustration even though on the whole I came away seriously impressed and looking forward to the author's next project. IMO this is the best sci-fi story we've had in awhile, and the fact that the scenario and technology it's speculating about are more on the side of realism made it really stand out to me, when the stories in this genre we get are usually more of the action adventure variety with space ships and laser. Adding to what feels like a very well researched subject, there are loads of details throughout that really reward multiple playthroughs. The author has put a lot of effort and thought into this setting and the story and it shows.

This was one of those rare reading experiences where at the end of the story, after getting (probably) every ending, I felt like I had a very clear picture of what the author was going for and what their priorities were. I am willing to confidently assert that The Devourer is the result of a very imaginative person with a clear picture of a fictional world, who sees language as their tool for introducing their readers to this world. This author doesn't necessarily have a great love for writing so much as for storytelling. He has a love for his world, his characters, his plots and for his readers, but not specifically for the words he uses to deliver the former to the latter.

I don't for a second mean to suggest that The Devouerer is written poorly! Not at all. In fact, the author is a relatively competent writer and there were no mistakes bad enough to break my immersion. The writing was solid, but there was no flair, and no gambles taken with complicated and emotive sentences. It became clear by the story's end that the actual writing was never the focus for this author. This is by no means a condemnation of this very good story, and if you read my previous reviews, you'll find that I generally have much more substantive complaints, but I felt it necessary to write this down because it made such a strong impression on me.

I have three more small complaints and then I will write about the positives. Firstly, the colored text was obnoxious and didn't add anything to the story. This is the sort of creative decision that seems to be made simply because it can be made, but the only impact is that it draws me out of the world and reminds me that I'm simply reading, and not actually experiencing. Secondly, I am personally against the usage of mandatory reset links. I don't believe that authors and readers are competitors and I'm of the opinion that preventing users from ending the story is a sort-of childish ploy with no good ultimate reasoning. Finally, I thought that the supporting cast could use a little more work in some branches. In a couple of branches solid character development occurred, but in others, characters seemed to be quite one dimensional. This is one of the largest challenges in interactive fiction, so I don't hold the author too responsible, but I really want to touch on everything that I can. One way that the author could fix this is to work hard on making every line of dialogue more interesting and impactful. There was at least one line ("Mr. Drew") that stood out to me as lazy.

Okay! So far, I've done a lot of criticising but that's because I really enjoyed this story, and this is the author's first, so I have the potential to make a serious impact on how they write going forward. In short, this was very good and it did a lot of things well:

1. This was a completed piece of fiction! There were no loose ends. Could it be lengthened and re-worked? Surely, but it doesn't NEED to be because it's done. I can't say how unfathomably annoying it's been to read so many incomplete works so it's a total breath of fresh air to get to sink my teeth into a complete work. This was written in no-time flat as well; an extremely impressive endeavor!

2. This had complicated IF elements and multiple endings with a huge variety of user choice being taken into account, especially for a story of this length. I really appreciated how far ahead the author thought and how clever some of the decisions were. There were numerous pages that I didn't expect to be able to affect, and then later found that my choices really changed the way they played out. This was an excellent usage of the medium!

3. The author's world itself was excellent. I loved how the protagonist was not all-knowing and their deepest and most sincere beliefs proved incorrect in some branches. This was the sort of detail that proves that the author does think in shades of gray and I really appreciated it. Even among the website's best story's, I have often found this quality to be lacking.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this story. It was marvelous for a first game and impressive even without that qualifier. When I consider the timeframe that it was written in, it becomes all the more so. Thank you for your contribution, StrykerL!

I very much enjoyed this story. There were some minor issues with grammar but they didn't do too much in ruining the overall flow of this piece, and I suppose that's thanks to the plot. It's something that could be possible and I didn't feel like I had to extend my belief too much to imagine the setting and the looming threat in the story.

Stryker, you do a rather wonderful job with world-building and adding information and exposition when needed, so I never found myself getting lost since this information was spread throughout the story.

I had the pleasure of reading this in its early stages, and I'm rather impressed with what the final product turned out to be. There's not much fault that I can find in your storytelling, as this was quite emotional at times.

Also, Rachel is pretty much one of my favorite storygame protagonists now. I liked her backstory, and I found her strength and perseverance to keep pushing on rather admirable, but I felt that the other characters could've been fleshed out a bit more. At times they felt rather flat when compared to her, so I couldn't feel as connected to them.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this quite a bit and I look forward to reading more storygames from you in the future.

Enjoyed it. Somewhat quick read, but fun!

Well, shi- er, shoot! This is really good. Sad thing with Axe but other than that it seems reasonable enough to happen

A wonderful original story with a wide variety of outcomes and an impressive first attempt. There are places I could take issue and advice I could provide to improve it, but it stands on its own merit fairly well. Stylistically, I appreciated the change in text color & the ability to investigate the backstory as it became relevant. Looking forward to your next attempt.

EVERYTHING BLEW UP(:

I prefer the spite ending rather than good ending I don't know why it just feels right for me.

So, this is a weird story game, but very complex. I died, but it's not a bad thing. Hopefully 2040 isn't this bad for real, I'd rather keep my world.

Well written an enjoyable Story.