Player Comments on The Exploits of Fail-Man

Very mixed thoughts about this story, and they stem from a pretty bad first impression, to a good rising action and pretty great climax, and an ending I was fine with until the last page.

SPOILERS:

It almost feels like an entirely different person wrote the beginning pages, and particularly the first page was rife with errors and signs of a bad "random lol" game. The introduction of Mia as a character didn't do too much to change my opinion, and as a whole the story didn't really pick up in my mind until he went to prison.

But it does get better, and I think the main turning point was the introduction of Stardom and the killing of pretty much half of the superhero group. This shift replaces Fail-Man's support group with people who actually see his value, and he begins to not get shit on constantly.

I get that he's Fail-Man, and that's sort of the point, but it's tough to really feel his failures when there's no contrasting moments.

The climax is pretty cool, the villain is tbh a little thrown in there but her powers are cool and so is her lackey, so that's fine. I also grew to like every member of the current squad of superheros, so when they were getting ragdolled or even killed, it was actually a little worrying, especially considering you weren't hesitant to kill people earlier in the story.

I did want this story to have a happier ending for Reggie, so it was definitely annoying to see that he gets axed in the true ending, and that my second favorite character, Stardom, is offed or captured completely off-page.

Still pretty solid overall, although that beginning section definitely lowered the score for me.

The core of this story is interesting, with some nice world building. The main character is a superhero with good intentions, but who 'fails' as often as he succeeds. Ironically, he has great powers of observation when he takes time to think things over, but many of his failures trace back into him jumping too quickly into a situation.

Formatting wise, the story was a bit hard to read, as there were massive gaps between paragraphs. There was a lot of tense shifts, especially in the first half, and a number of grammar errors that made a few places confusing.

I enjoyed the second half a bit more than the first, once there was more of a mystery to solve/danger to fight more than just random or bad things happening to Reggie. I do wish there had been more consequential choices, but there were some nice moments in the mix. Reggie's pseudo-friendship with Stardom and their moment with Mia in the restaurant was probably my favorite scene. (Although Mia as a character I did not like at all, I do appreciate that there was a hint of empathy from Reggie here and not just a typical "don't you regret leaving me" bluster.) Stardom, overall, was probably my favorite character, so I would have liked a little more resolution about what happened to him.

I also think it might have been nicer to not have the last page and keep the ending just before that. The epilogue (Core ending #1?) felt tacked on and like it undermined the whole time I had spent playing/reading through the game. If instead of this, the golem plotline was finished up with a final showdown, I think the end would have been a lot stronger.

The biggest weaknesses of the game, for me, were the lack of choices and the 'lol random terrible stuff just happened and people are crazy and cruel' elements. The strongest elements were the hints of a wider world and nuances and the dynamics/politics between the empowered and humans, which gave off a bit of an X-men and the Incredibles vibe.

Okay, so there's two distinct paths with a number of dead ends splattered in between. Not bad ends, and the story itself is fairly creative with its history. It was actually kind of funny at times. Your grammar and punctuation are solid, although informal at time.

It's long. That's not a bad thing, but it felt more like I was reading someone's book rather than actually playing a story game. And as mentioned by some other commenters, the scrolling. There was so much scrolling. My fingers actually kind of hurt. Since there was a time constraint, the amount of pages give it a pass, even if there aren't many choices.

Onto the characters... Reggie, our MC, is someone you're supposed to feel bad for. He's shit on throughout the game, and the main storyline ends with him dying. He's married to Mia, someone who I honestly could not care less for. She sucked and I really didn't want to get revenge for her nor get back together with her.

The other characters were good, although a bit all over the place. The sudden introduction and deaths of them in the main route was a little off putting. I did like Katerina's whole bit, though.

There's a lot going on in this story, but ultimately I think you've got a nice story with some interesting characters. More choices would have helped this story, and maybe a little more sense with some of your humor.

It is really original both in plotting and in the 3d person and tense used. However, here both details make me totally out of immersion. The game also has a total lack of descriptions and barely any choices. The fast pace helps several scenes to be really dynamic and makes others totally rushed. The dialogue argot is so over the top that makes the story absurd but funny.

There has a big lack of choices like killing our wife or directly divorce

The first time I read this, I found it hilarious and started laughed at every other page. Now I'm reading it seriously and, uh, not so much. Despite only having two real endings, there are multiple plotlines interwoven in the story, which is a treat for the reader to experience.

The grammar is a bit of a mess, especially on the first page. The writing switches between present tense and past tense at one point, but thankfully it doesn't continue the trend.

It was interesting that you have one plotline where a major character dies, and another branch where they can survive. All from the contest of one phone call. The characters were intriguing, but most of them weren't around for very long. I especially enjoyed Reggie's teammates and was glad to see more of them throughout the story. I think you did very well at introducing new characters - by the end of the first page, I was already warming to them.

Not really a fan of Mia though. I mean, when the reader first meets her, she's throwing verbal abuse at Reggie and being a total shithead to him. So later on, when I find her dead, why should I want to get revenge? I've never even see her good side. She simply isn't developed very much at that point, and now she's dead. Maybe there wasn't enough time for that, I don't know.

Even if I do save her from being taken hostage, I don't remember her being particularly grateful to me. In fact, the opposite happens and she leaves me, which was a bit of a dick move considering I saved her from being shot. I guess Mia could have been handled better. At least she does turn up again later, so there is still potential.

Really, my biggest gripe with the story is something of a formatting issue: there are huge spaces between every paragraph or so. I have to scroll down for about five minutes to get to the end of one page, and it's like that for the whole storygame.

What's more, there's not a lot of choices. Having multiple pages with no choices at all isn't exactly going to hold the attention of your readers. There's nothing wrong with a bit of length, but I went through about four pages in a row at one point and all of them were filled with tons of spaces with no choices. Even "fake" choices are better than nothing (and I know I saw a few like that).

Still, there were time restraints and the amount of content is what makes up for it.

I'm not entirely sure whether this storygame is a parody or not. Sometimes there's jokes thrown around and swearing galore, and everything's hilarious...and then the next moment, you're in jail and all these guys are threatening you with rape.

One example of this: the scene about catching Deus having gay sex with a man just comes out of nowhere. I don't know if it was supposed to be funny (I didn't laugh) but the way that Deus just brushes it off and acts like it's entirely normal just looks plain weird. Like sure, he's being fucked by a guy in the same room, but he's just so casual about it when you see him. Like it's no big deal that you saw him, like maybe he just goes around sleeping with men all the time. Oh, I don't know. I'm just glad there was a point to it.

Overall, you had some great plots and characters going on here, but not a lot of choices to keep the reader occupied. For a first story, it's pretty good and I would like to see more stories from you.

Some mistakes here and there, but the story and wit are pretty good. 5/8

This clearly suffered from time constraints, seeing as how there were many pages which didn't even have options to choose from. I also feel as if a lot of the scenes were generally pointless (like Dues and the stranger... what was that??). However, I did find myself laughing on occasion and I like the quirkiness of the concept. I also thought the ending was really clever. I believe this game could have been really decent if more work had been put into it.

At first this sounded like it would be one of those horrendously random stories...but you did a very good job. The dialogue was interesting, and while I felt like there weren't as many choices as there could have been, it was still a great story. The cannon ending #1 kind of took me by surprise..but good twist.