Player Comments on The Grand Pharaoh's Tomb

Preview: Can you explore the tomb of the Grand Pharaoh without falling prey to its dangers?
Recommended. Despite the grammar errors, this is a fun and interesting game.

=SPOILERS BELOW=

General notes:

Hm. I definitely liked this game. It's pretty good as it is. But I feel like it could be a LOT better with a thorough sentence structure edit and a little more attention to the spooky tone and internal character journey of the narrator.

The beginning of the story is very strong and promises an exciting Indiana Jones-esque adventure in the ancient ruins and dealing with rivals, shady loan sharks in down, and of course, the mysterious power of the amulet itself. Parts of the story deliver very well on this premise. The beginning of the exploration is quite exciting.
But as the story goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that despite the many branching options, there is really only one way any of the paths end: either you submit to the amulet or you don’t, and the consequences are the same either way no matter how you got there.
This isn’t a bad idea—I like the idea of a looping branching format to tell a short exploration horror story about how the protagonist is doomed from the beginning. But even then I’d like to see more variation on the different paths. For example, going alone could be a more personal psychological horror journey where you can’t tell what’s real or not. Going with a group could put more focus on inter-group conflicts and wondering who you can trust. The groundwork for all this is in the story, but it’s not fully realized.
This story suffers a bit from tone mismatch. At it’s core, it’s a horror story about the inevitability of serving the awakened pharaoh. But I didn’t realize this until I’d already explored the whole story. I thought this was an adventure story about our plucky hero trying again and again until they figure out how to defeat the pharaoh once and for all. This didn’t happen, and I felt like I missed something until I realized that the failure was the point. Again, the exploration-horror story is a good and original idea and I’d love to see how this concept develops—but I don’t think it’s quite there yet. It feels too much like an adventure story in the beginning for the player to get properly into the mood.
The story about the pharaoh felt vaguely incomplete. Again, I really like the idea, but I need a bit more to care. So the pharaoh is reawakening—so what? What are the stakes? What does he want? Why is he targeting the narrator? These unanswered questions made me keep waiting for a "true" ending that never came.

Scene & event choice: In the first part of the story, consistently excellent. You consistently pick good snapshot moments to cleanly and effectively communicate the plot and emotional beats. The effectiveness of this is held back somewhat by the choppy narration I discuss below. But it’s very much on the right track.
As the story goes on this breaks down. The protagonist’s emotional arc and beginning struggles with money are never followed up on. Despite the fun descriptions and interesting setpieces, the exploration of the ruins feels a little lackluster since there’s no external drive. There’s no competing group, a financial incentive that isn’t really dwelt on, and little internal conflict (before your friends get possessed that is).

Specific notes:
= Hell yeah, ancient ruins exploration! I am the target audience of this game.
= Not the “hookiest” beginning, but in a story of this length it’s more important to get the background out of the way and jump into the action and this does that very well.
= I like where you’ve chosen to set the opening scene and what you’re doing with it. It’s a quick opening that immediately presents a clear character with a clear problem.
= I like the small-font text. Intriguing and a good way to add another “voice” to the story.
= I correctly guessed that this first link was informational, but that wasn’t super obvious. I recommend adding a parenthetical afterwards to clarify that.
= Bultre is suspicious as hell.
= I feel like going back to town is a mistake since I know as a reader there’s something deeper going on here. But it’s definitely what I would do in this situation—I prefer not dying by getting locked in ancient tombs. Let’s explore this path first.
= “This is a suddent surprise!” Kind of undercuts the sudden-ness of it. On the whole, using ‘suddenly’ usually does the opposite of what you want it to.
= Either the re-routing here is terrible, or the branching is really, really good. Each page feels like I’m making a significant choice.
= I like the action sequence with the stairs. Very visually evocative. Unfortunately it’s held back somewhat by the choppy narration, but the concept is good.
= Eh, Babu and Ahmed don’t really feel like they add much to this story yet. They seem more like set dressing for the protagonist’s actions. I don’t really care when they go crazy/die. I’d recommend working on their characterization a bit more if that scene was intended to be impactful.
= Hm. I suspect there is more to this than a simple restart link. I’ve always thought the branching format works really well for time loop stories and I’m excited to see if this is taking advantage of that. EDIT: And I appreciate the endgame link on page 1 lol.
= Riddles in games like this are always tough, because you have to include the answer in the options, which makes them too easy. Some games have figured out how to get around this, by working path or spelling into it, but this may or may not be worth it to you. EDIT: Re-exploring this path, I appreciate that each wrong answer has its own death ending. I like the attention to detail. EDIT: Same on the full alone path.
= Hm. The endings here all feel kind of incomplete. So this pharoh is back from the dead—now what? The time travel thing isn’t super clear either. Why and how is this happening?
= Hm, looks like a lot of the divergences I thought were alternate paths were actually death endings. The branching is still pretty good though.
= Huh different riddles when you come here alone. Also it’s hilarious that a car is one of the options. Yeah, the ancient Egyptians definitely had those.
= Unless I missed something, there is no way to figure out the way through this maze other then guessing. That’s kind of annoying.

Grammar & typos: There are a lot of minor grammar errors that could be typos or mistakes. These are pretty straightforward so I won’t bother pointing them out. I’d recommend another editing round. But they break immersion a lot and definitely lower my score.
Language:
As usual, I’m limiting the bulk of my in-depth language feedback to the first page.
Hm. There’s something very choppy about the language here. I’m not sure exactly what. But there is a pattern of subtle ambiguities that makes it just a little hard to tell what is going on. There’s a number of places where the grammar is slightly wrong, or big words are used slightly incorrectly or unusually. It’s in a way that is still understandable, but jars the reader and breaks immersion briefly.
Your hold on the present tense for current actions is not solid—you slip into past tense a few times. It’s always a bit jarring when this happens. I recommend watching for this when you edit and switching it to present tense.
There’s a number of other places where the language could be tightened or made more direct for a stronger effect. This is wordier than it needs to be, and strong concepts overstay their welcome by being dwelt on for too long. There’s a lot of places where you state the same thing multiple times when once would do. This makes the reader inclined to skim and lose immersion.
General advice: I recommend reading your work out loud to get a sense of how the sentences flow together. This should help with the tense & grammar oddities.
I’ve also pointed out a number of specific examples from the first page to show what I mean:
“Your investor has declined any further patronage.” <= Saying someone has declined patronage means they refused to accept someone else’s patronage. What you mean is that the investor has declined to offer any further patronage.
“Century old braziers light the area around you - a familiar scene these last few weeks.” <= I could tell immediately there was something wrong here, but not what. Only after careful inspection did I come up with: 1) Century-old should be hyphenated, and you probably want centuries-old since this tomb is more than 100 years old. 2) The hyphen should be a longer em-dash and without the spaces on either side. 3) The clause after the dash slightly alters the framing of the clause, forcing the reader to reorient. Pivoting to the scene’s familiarity is jarring on its own, since you then spend the rest of the paragraph continuing to describe the scene. Remarking on the scene’s familiarity at the very beginning or very end would be smoother. Beyond that, the tense changes slightly, and it’s missing some transitional words. Overall these two clauses feel like they don’t belong in the same sentence.
“Your left over lighting equipment’s power cables….” <= We don’t get to the actual subject of the sentence until the power cables, forcing the reader to reorient from focusing on the lighting equipment. I’d recommend swapping the order: “The power cables of your left over lighting equipment…”
“The primitive light source causes shadows to dance all around you on the stone walls, as iconography.” <= I couldn’t figure out what the hell was wrong with this sentence until I googled iconography and remembered that it’s the study of icons, not the icons themselves. “Like icons” would work better.
“Tears begin to form and race down your face…” <= The verb tenses are at odds with each other here. ‘Tears begin to form’ is several steps in advance of them racing down someone’s face. It feels like the action happened way too fast. You could fix this by deleting “begin to”, or if you want to draw it out, just spacing these events further apart in the paragraph/sentence.
“As if some sort of mechanism is coming to life after inactivity for a long while.” <= Eh; a bit obvious? Try communicating this without directly stating it.
“The newly opened passage way has revealed a staircase leading down deeper into the pyramid.” => Some redundancy here. ‘Newly-opened’ and ‘revealed’ communicate the same thing, as do ‘down’ and ‘deeper into’.
And so on. You get the idea.

I think you’d get a lot of mileage out of eliminating distant narration. Here’s some examples of what this could mean:
First, a good example: “This is wrong. This is all wrong.” <= This is good! You’re stating narrator thoughts directly instead of adding distance. Doing this more consistently would be even better.
“You make the decision that it is time ot give up.” => “It’s time to give up.”
“You feel the hot wind being blown in from the outside.” => “Hot wind blows in from the outside.” Gets rid of the needless “being” and “you feel” that add narrative distance.
“As the tears fall, you notice they seem to disappear into the stone” => “As your tears fall, they seem to disappear into the stone.”
“Chalking it up to not being in the right mindset, you continue on.” => “You pull your focus away. You’re probably just distracted. You continue on.”
“Your mind is racing at this point.” => Show us, don’t tell us! The next sentence: “You found something—after all this time you found something!” does this excellently. You don’t need the first sentence, all it does is increase narrative distance.
“Unsure of how this even occured and maybe in a moment of hilarity, you giggle with excitement and feel the rush of vindication.” <= This is a great moment, and you can get much more mileage out of it by reducing narrative distance. You don’t need that whole first clause, and you can communicate the ‘excitement’ and ‘rush of vindication’ with narrator thoughts. Like your very next sentence: “You knew there had to be more.” Follow it up with something punchy: “And you were *right*.”
My recommendations on the whole: Get rid of clauses like “you feel”/“you notice”. Shift verbs to the present tense & eliminate phrases like “begin to” “being [verb]”, etc.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
On my first loop I went back to town, then went with Babu & Ahmed and rejected the offer to serve.

CONCLUSION: 4/8. I wanted to rate this higher, but there are just too many typos and grammar errors. This could very very easily be a 5/8 with a simple grammar edit. It could be a 6/8 with a more thorough sentence structure edit and a little more attention to character arc and differences between the various branches. Raising this to a 7/8 would require a much deeper look at the character and world, and really honing in on the tone.

This story starts strongly with the first page, but the writing quality dwindles as the story goes on. There are various SPAG errors adorning the pages that follow and that combined with some of the wonky phrases really bring the story down. This is probably just due to the time constraints of the contest, but it was distracting me and bringing my enjoyment down as I read it.

The essence of the story itself is brilliant though. My favorite part was how the pages were used to create a ‘time loop’ on one of the bad endings, showing off the power of the amulet and its ability to warp time. It’s interesting when you consider that because of this there are no ‘good’ endings in this story.

I also really liked how Dire took the time to write out different endings for each of the wrong choices you made in the riddle part of the story. The riddles also vary whether you go alone or with others. Though one of the possible doors seems to be missing when you go with a group.

I also wish there were more outcomes in the maze other than eventually finding your way through it. It would’ve been nice to see some death endings riddled throughout it and even a potential map to help you get through it easier.

I think the idea of the story itself and some of the mechanics used should bring it up to a 7, but due to the SPAG errors and some iffy writing I would consider it a 5.

Glory to Kannok.

Let’s begin with a disclaimer: I’m not a professional writer nor a seasoned reviewer, so take everything with a grain of salt. As for readers, this review will contain spoilers, so I highly suggest reading the storygame first.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

There’s a brief description that outlines the protagonist’s motivation and goals. The stakes are introduced, given the character’s commitment to their goal, and readers also get a sense of the setting. As this is a branching storygame, we know the answer to the rhetorical question would be ‘both’, depending on the paths we choose.

Unless you’re submitting more than one entry within this storygame, there’s a typo in the description: “This is my submissions for End Master’s Prompt Contest 3”.

Onto the story itself. It begins with text in a small font size and italics. That’s an interesting formatting choice, though I’m not sure what it means yet.

Then, there’s some backstory describing the situation that the protagonist is in. Good use of interspersing the protagonist’s thoughts throughout the narrative. This adds personal stakes, allowing the reader to empathize with the character and care about what happens to them in the story. I like the sentence where ‘alone’ is separated by a comma, drawing emphasis to this, as if visually ensuring the word alone is…well, alone. It’s even more thematic considering the first choice readers get in the story is between solitude and companionship. The metaphor of snakes is good too, seeing as it’s egypt-related.

The outburst of emotions following a description of the location is a nice way to pace the story. It almost seems like the protagonist is attempting to distract themself from the situation by observing their surroundings, but at the end, they cannot escape their thoughts. A slight error: I’m not sure ‘over delivered’ is the right term here. If the protagonist over delivered to their benefactor, wouldn’t that be a good thing?

Speaking of proofreading errors, there were a few on the first page: “suppose” is supposed to be “supposed”, it’s “it’s” not “its”, and “peek” not “peak”.

There were good descriptions which added to the immersion. And just as the protagonist was about to accept defeat, believing it was all over, they accidentally pressed against a part of the pyramid that revealed a secret entrance. This inciting incident leads to the first choice.

The page starts and ends with italicized text. My guess is that it’s probably used to represent the voice of something that lurks within the tomb, but we shall see.

WRITING STYLE

The story utilizes a deep point-of-view, where the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings are interwoven into the narrative. For instance, this occurs on the information page about the pharaoh. I appreciated how it wasn’t just purely a textwall of information, but it reflected the protagonist’s process of finding out information about the elusive Kannok, along with their motivations for this. This furthered characterization. Another thing I enjoyed was that this was all explained the way I imagine a history student/ historian would, from the natural curiosity shown through all the unanswered questions to name-dropping past pharaohs of Egypt without stopping to over-explain much about them.

I notice the descriptions include lots of active verbs, often personifying the surroundings and natural environment. You are ‘greeted’ with the dunes, the air ‘feeds off’ the moisture of your tears and the sun ‘kisses’ the top of the dune. This adds to the atmosphere, making the setting feel almost alive. It’s also a nice detail that later in the story, forces of nature are involved in a number of death endings.

On the page about ‘Setvanet’, there’s a brief moment where the story shifts to past tense (second and third paragraphs), though I didn’t catch any other tense changes. Another word choice error: “unknown to how the locals will react to see you again” (you could replace ‘unknown to’ with ‘unsure’). Also, it’s “quite” not “quiet”. Although there are a few more word-choice, spelling and grammatical errors scattered throughout the story—likely due to contest constraints, I’d assume—I won’t list them all here. Though if you plan on editing your story and would like me to point them out for you, do let me know; I’ll be happy to help.

Quick note: ‘we’ is used for first-person point of views, so maybe switching that to ‘all of you’ or ‘the three of you’ would keep the point of view consistent.

I enjoyed the way tension was stretched out in the scene where Ahmed, Babu and the protagonist were trapped on the rising stairs. The use of the ‘thuds’ and short, simple sentences about the protagonist’s observations quickened the pacing while prolonging the suspense. Even after this, they faced a new problem: being cut off from the rest of the group. This is a great technique to keep the reader invested, as the protagonist’s life is continually placed at stake.

A slight improvement might be to avoid repetitiveness. I’ll briefly paraphrase advice that was given to me a while back: when the same information is repeated, readers might lose interest and it slows down the pacing. An example: there was a part of the story which mentioned “the door directly before you describes a trial of wits and logic”, yet the same information is repeated again when the protagonist says “The first door talks about wits and logic”. The same thing happened with the second door. Another instance of this: the sentence “there must have been some sort of truth to what happened but no one would believe you if you told them” and later, “you know that no one will believe you if you told them, so you must show them.” Though, I’ll add that this is not a prevalent issue in the story and is more of a minor nitpick.

In many death scenes—or those where the protagonist suffers a fate worse than death—the descriptions are quite uncanny and otherworldly, which depict the characters’ descents to insanity really well. Part of this is because of how the protagonist takes note of seemingly ordinary details, acts accordingly, observes something else, acts, and only when it’s too late do they realize that this chain of events led to a horrifying outcome. In a way, this ‘innocuous sequence of events leading to tragedy’ structure can be said to apply to the overarching story, but more about this later. The metaphor of the voice being described as a ‘puppet master’ in this path is so very fitting. An example of this: the protagonist enters a room with statues, sees a chair, and notices nothing remarkable about it except that it’s a stone chair (nice reference to the stone which seems to absorb all the protagonist’s tears at the start). They move towards it. There’s also a crown. So the protagonist puts on the crown and sits on the chair. Nothing happens. Then the statues appear to be staring. Only then does flesh begin melting off their hands and they turn into one of the silent observers for all of eternity. I like this technique and might steal it for future stories.

CHOICES

The consequences to most of the choices are realistic and foreshadowed well. For example, the protagonist’s evident lack of distrust for a businessman and his bodyguards turns out to be well-founded, as it creates the consequences where, if you still decide to trust them, they will backstab you (both metaphorically and literally, which made me chuckle).

Another thing I liked was the fact that the death scenes after incorrectly answering the riddles were all different. Some were even quite relevant to what was chosen: ‘night time’ making everything go dark and ‘thoughts’ removing heads.

PLOT & CHARACTERS
(This part includes heavy spoilers, read at your own risk)

There were two main side-characters: Babu (characterized as being the most trustworthy) and Ahmed (the one with the most expertise). This was a good way of setting the stage for some of the choices and events later in the story.

Maybe it’s a bit of a nitpick, but I feel that Ahmed’s sudden breakdown when choosing a door was out of character, especially since he’s portrayed as an expert in ancient Egypt. Perhaps if this occurred due to his expert knowledge—e.g. he knew that ancient Egyptians prided themselves on creating the most unsolvable riddles, hence he thinks they’re unlikely to escape the tomb—it would not only increase the stakes but ensure the characterization remains consistent.

Actually, ignore everything I just said. This is brilliant. In another path, where the protagonist chooses a different door, Ahmed seemingly for no reason goes insane and attacks Babu, saying that only one can take the throne. That makes so much more sense! After all, it is later shown how Kannok possesses and takes control of individuals, after luring them in and driving them to insanity. There’s the implication that Ahmed’s expertise of ancient history is the reason he was chosen in this path. That, and the earlier characterization of Babu as someone who is extremely loyal.

I must say, I’m quite impressed by the revelation/ plot-twist at the end. First, let’s discuss how the italicized, small-font text was used throughout the story. In some paths, it calls the protagonist a ‘coward’ or a ‘weak fool’, and in others, it gives them the gift of knowledge. Then we have the amazing foreshadowing. At the start of the story, when choosing to find out more about the Great Pharaoh, the mystery of Kannok was established. He somehow was mentioned at various points across the centuries, alongside famous pharaohs, though the protagonist wasn’t sure if those were merely his descendants or bloodline. Even though it’s never explicitly stated, the answer to this is heavily implied given the number of endings where the protagonist or another character becomes a vessel for Kannok. He possesses them, taking control of their mind and body. Another detail I loved was how the voice guided the protagonist throughout the whole story—and in fact, choosing to listen to it was the most strategic option—yet at the end, this leads to betrayal. The protagonist’s survival only mattered to Kannok until he reached the amulet. Moreover, in the endings where the protagonist chooses to reject it, he replies, “you will not reject me again”. Then the story loops back to the start. Not only does this create the effect of the protagonist now being trapped in a time loop—which is foreshadowed in one of the riddles, whereby the tomb’s ability to do this is revealed—but it also insinuates that from the moment the reader begins the story, the protagonist is *already* trapped in this time loop (hence the word ‘again’). Thus, there is no way out, other than to follow Kannok’s orders or to be killed. A true puppet-master indeed. As such, this story is a tragedy, doomed from the very first choice.

TL;DR

I recommend this storygame. Despite the grammatical and syntactical errors, it was an enjoyable read, and the plot-twist at the end was brilliantly executed.

For the time-constraints of the contest, this is near-perfect! I played this many times going through all the various routes. There isn't much in the way of variety with endings, but it really doesn't need one. The limited scope works in this story's favor and made for good pacing for each new run. I also really liked the inclusion of historical references, which made the setting feel authentic.

If I had to suggest an improvement, I think that making the riddles a bit harder would have made the puzzle sections even more engaging. Not that it wasn't already engaging, but I did recognize the riddles from other works of fiction, and those that I didn't recognize I was able to easily solve using the multiple choice format.

SPOILERS:

I like the idea of how rejecting the amulet will lead Kannok to force you to start over, as if you're stuck in a never-ending loop. I was glad to see that the idea of a supernatural force of the mummy's curse was used for this storygame. There is no escape for those who dare trespass into the Grand Pharaoh's Tomb!

I liked this one: the writing was taut and built the tension well, the shift in font from large to small was a particularly good idea which I haven't seen before. There were some interesting twists in the story and some good riddles, a few spelling and grammar errors snuck in but it didn't really affect the reading experience for me. The branching was good, the different endings interesting and overall I thought this was well-written and an enjoyable experience to read :)

I played every route...including the death routes...

For starters I'll say I really dig your writing style. And not just from this story...your short story about StoryMaster95 was something I really liked when I read it!

Case in point your good at being brief in a way that isn't jarring. Just the right amount of info to get things moving but also not too little that I feel like important info is being lost. Its not perfect by any means...but truth be told I'm not sure if the peak of my own writing is much better than this...it works well all things considered.

And its even better given the premise. Exploring a pyramid allows you to direct the story in a very direct and calculated way. I actually liked the maze (though that may be because I pictured in my head where I was as I traversed it. It arguably would be better if you could somehow die in it...but alas it was still good.)

I may come back and nitpick the prose in the future. I don't have much to say about the plot aside that I liked that you kept exposition to a minimum at the start...really helps kick off the initial immersion properly. The plot is pretty basic anyways so its more about how you conveyed it...which was overall enjoyable. (Anti nitpick I guess...really liked the death and rebirth room...felt very otherworldly and would have liked to have been able to do more in it. What was there was cool tho!)

Also really liked how you made the amulet's voice in small text. Its a very simple and subtle thing that adds immersion to the story as you never break the established prose to make it seem like the MC actually hears the voice...only feels it in a sense. In fact the story is full of stuff like that generally speaking now that I think about it.

For an actual nitpick though. I found it interesting how there was no good ending you could get. Like I get what you were going for...but I suppose I'm someone who generally likes having a happy ending in general...part of me hoped there would at least be one...or at least an ending that sheds light on the mystery of what's going on more to a significant degree. Like really...having a "Aha!" moment would be pretty cool...instead it just kinda...ends when you get everything. Idk if that's intentional but that's inevitiably going to happen if every ending is either similar in fate or tone. (Not that it was horrible...just...well yeah you get the idea! lol)

Getting sent back to the beginning in some endings was cool...would have been cooler if that actually affected future playthroughs...but I get this is a contest entry and you may not have even desired to do that in the first place.

I really should stress that most of your prose was not only consistent but also good...to the point that I was able to point out a few potential issues as I was reading that I'll probably leave a second comment pointing out sometime in the future. You did a good job setting up mini jokes in the sub text (stuff like you think about what to do next when you take a nap when you wake up and then its followed by "except you don't". It shows you understand basic pacing in how your words and sentences flow together ect.).

Also End already said this but...different death endings in the riddle section is pretty cool. I could tell you had fun coming up with different death scenarios that corelated with the wrong choices you made.

Also also...I like that you had a back button built in. I'm someone who likes to play any game by the creator's intent...and by default I assume that if I die...the creator wants me to reset. Only having it in some sections makes the distinction clear however...even if it wasn't intentional.

Few nitpicks off the top of my head then I'll wrap this up:

I remember a very specific line the "boss" character said that seemed unnatural. I can probably only think of one other line in the whole story that falls under that category. Point being you write your dialog very similar to the rest of your prose...to the point and clear. This isn't bad mind you...I can tell your playing to your strengths as a writer when you do that. Proper set up in some scenes (mainly the talk to the boss scene) helps mask this in a natural way. Overall its good though. Dialog isn't supposed to be 100% like actual conversation anyways... (Just DM me if you want me to clarify this point better! lol :P)

Speaking of the talking to the boss scene...one of the scenes after it...the part where you accept doing work. Out of all the paths to end abruptly that was probably the most immersion breaking for me. I get the logistics behind its...especially since its a contest entry. But compared to the other paths it feels less convincing...like...

I get the amulet stuff being abrupt. Would be cool to see how your possession effects the world around you...but its not all that necessery given the scope of the story. But I guess where my issue with the work ending is that it feels weird for it to be an ending at all. Like your trying to get money for your expedition...so...what's stopping that from happening? Time? Seems a little weird for the MC to complain about it...it feels like the option is there simply because it was offered to you.

Again those are just nitpicks. Actual writing advice would be minimal since it seemed like you accomplished what you set out to do. (So I guess it depends on what you want to improve on...lol :P)

Was a very nice read! Gets a 6 rating easily! Look forward to reading more of your stories! (Haven't checked if you written anything else or if you plan to write more...but I hope to be surprised either way!)

Thanks for writing this! Cheers! ;)