The Knight Order of the Golden Sun

A fantasy storygame by RNDGamer

Commended by mizal on 10/30/2019 7:10:41 PM

Player Rating6.64/8

"#42 overall, #2 for 2019"

Based on 244 ratings since 10/19/2019
Played 6,488 times (finished 208)

Story Difficulty3/8

"Trek through the forest"

Play Length6/8

"It'll be a while, better grab a Snickers®"

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

Contest Entry

Humor

Previously Featured

In the realm of knights and kings, kingdoms rise and perish. The ever-warmongering Lorimur and the over-ambitious Karadas, are both struggling for control over the entire continent. Caught in the middle of their conflict, lies the small city-state of Valinor. Because of its strategic position between its neighbors, it's caught between a rock and a hard plate. If it were to choose to maintain its Independence, its inevitable destruction would only be a matter of time. Under the constantly increasing pressure of both sides, it decides to become a vassal to Lorimur, the one most likely to win this race.

On a certain day, a group of knights send by Lorimur arrive before the city gates, they call themselves the knights of the Golden Sun. They have come here in pursuit of glory and fame. But make no mistake, they're not some common knight band, they are amongst the high and mighty. They behave like the lords of the land and countless servants and soldiers follow in their wake. Some may claim a title bought with money has no value, but they'll tell you otherwise, the current market price of a knight title is a whopping 1000 gold crowns. How could anybody call that worthless?

Some may wonder, 'Nobody has ever heard of them before. Are they here to help or to cause trouble?'

Then they'll politely answer, "Don't bother us with your silly questions and move out of the way, you filthy peasant!"

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Note: This is my first story and immediately a contest entry to boot! (Every random peasant could join without any consequences and I was making little progress in my real first story.) This is my entry to Corgi's contest 'The lords of the land', yes, yes, I shamelessly copied it in my description. Me and the spelling corrector have joined forces in a futile attempt to rid this story of the most obnoxious spellings-mistakes. And as you'll probably discover soon, since English isn't my native language, we failed every time there was no red line beneath the word. Although being a newbie and a non-English speaker, could be some really good excuses to get away with anything (since they're true for a chance), please tell me what you liked or hated.

Like every CYS game demands there are multiple endings, aside from a few mid-story endings, there are 7 epilogues. B, C, and D, are a win, while E, F, and G are a loss and A is the 'perfect' victory. Note that when I say 'loss' it doesn't equal a bad ending, it simply means you failed to achieve the victory condition of the story-game. Even a few short endings, can be considered a 'win', while they're not 'happy' endings.

Above all, this story is meant to entertain and shouldn't be taken too seriously, that's where the 'humor' tag is for. In case you fail to appreciate my twisted sense of humor and start wondering whether that was added by accident or not, your question has been answered.

Update: Bugfixes and spelling mistakes.

Player Comments

I absolutely adored this concept. Posh, spoiled brat nobility getting their asses kicked whhile trying to be valiant knights as punishment? Extremely well-done. I laughed a lot reading this one and I couldn’t possibly think of a more interesting way to put the lead-in. Descriptions of settings were stellar and I thought the POV switching was very clever, especially since the POV switching was directed to thtose on the opposte side of this infamous knight order. However I do have a few things to say regarding the story as it was written. Ah, the sad job of a judge.

The length was honestly very startling! I was very impressed. But sometimes the pages could get unnecessarily long, dragging on with the same details for a while. Towards the end, I felt like you weren’t quite allowing the reader to fail while making logical-based decisions on war strategy, and I was a little disappointed in that respect. There were only a few grammar mistakes, but something really caught my attention.

The character descriptions were a little uncomfortable. The amount of detail taken into the character appearances was dizzying. At times I hoped that you would cut down a bit at that, and sometimes it was necessary, but it reminded me a lot of John Green’s writing (not in a specifically great way).

As a whole, I did really enjoy this story. The concept was amazing and the writing was gold-star material. Just work a bit on these few obstacles and you’ll have a shiny, new, EPIC storygame in no time flat. Really proud of you for this one. :)

— At_Your_Throat on 4/28/2019 9:57:59 PM with a score of 130

Out of nowhere, a man by the name of RND Gamer comes and writes 4x the amount of the other Corgi (not cori) contestants. Is this man a legend? Will his tremendously impressive word count help or hinder his story? Read and find out for yourself, you comment-lurking leech. Seriously though, if none of it is copied and pasted, then I applaud the hard work involved in getting to that number.

As the description suggests, this storygame is written to be fun and humorous. I’m glad the author included that note since the title alone is obnoxious… and very similar to 3J’s masterpiece. Due to its nature, the beginning Disney movie cliché is very fitting. I mean, what’s more cliché than a princess trapped in a tower? Opening with a tavern brawl scene perhaps? It’s a fun, light-hearted opening scene though. Reminds me of a skit you’d see on SNL or a parody movie.

I’m neutral on the POV switching. On one hand, it’s a creative way to switch scenes. It’s like a movie in that regard. It definitely keeps you on your toes since this is the first time I’ve see anyone incorporate POV switches. It is a bit confusing at first, but once you adapt it’s not a problem. Still, I’d prefer some narration to give context along with any POV change.

I do think the writing style fits the story. It’s quirky. Although English isn’t the author’s first language, it’s not noticeable. That being said, there are a lot of weirdly structured sentences and I’m not sure if one can technically ‘nip’ at their tea. If the story tried to be serious, I don’t think I’d be able to handle the structure. Luckily, it doesn’t try.

The dialogue and character interaction is sort of what you’d expect from a live play. It’s almost like every sentence a character speaks is outlandish and over the top with excitement. There is also heavy use of hyperbole almost like every dialogue option could determine the fate of the world (see what I did there).

I have to admit, there was a point in the story where the length was too overwhelming without anything majorly happening. I rushed through 15 pages randomly selecting links and didn’t die. I think the author should have incorporated more ‘dead ends’. There’s a shit ton of content, but no way to lose for a long time (unless I just got lucky). The reason I rushed through the pages was to see if my choices really mattered. I know they do when you arrive at the variable section, but until then I felt like my choices didn’t determine much. I wanted to know if making a bad decision would kill me. They didn’t at first, although I do realize they could have just earned me less points.

I think there was certainly a large amount of effort put into this storygame. Almost too much, if I’m being honest. That being said, the funny/weird story definitely fit the author’s strong points of writing. Although it was a large text wall to get over, it wasn’t unenjoyable along the way.

— ninjapitka on 4/15/2019 4:34:05 PM with a score of 5

I liked this story as a whole, It had some good plot twists that kept it interesting. I couldn’t tell what was going to happen at any point in the story, until they happened, maybe because it’s almost entirely dialogue, and there’s not really any descriptions or background knowledge given. I got epilogue B first, and then I got G and F in my second one (back button).

PLOT:
The overall plot was ok, but I felt like it was kind of linear. It really only divided up when you chose not to do something (like helping the ‘alchemist’). I also feel like this could be divided into several different short stories due to the way that you transitioned from one point to another. There was little deviation between the gender choices, but I could tell that it wasn’t like POF, using scripting, because there was a little more difference than just him/her and the name/title, so I’m guessing that there is a lot of copy and pasting. I didn’t really understand why the king would send his inexperienced son/daughter out, or even why they what the purpose of them going out was, and I wish that there was more of an explanation on what was going on, apart from the short little thing before I even start reading.

SETTING:
There was very little descriptions of where I was at. The most I got of the description of the capital is that is is grander than some other undescribed city. I didn’t even know that Valinor was on the water until the climax of the story. I really wish that you would have done some world building outside of dialogue.

CHARACTERS:
I felt like I had very weird control over my character. I could choose to do snobby things as well as heroic things throughout the story, which is a little weird for a spoiled prince/princess surrounded by his/her spoiled friends. I wish that my actions had more of an impact than just 2 seemingly meaningless numbers at the bottom of my screen. I did like how helping out/ being nice to some characters opened up some special choices later on however. There was a little description of the characters, but it’s not close to satisfactory. There wasn’t really any thoughts or emotion described. There wasn’t really any character interaction/chemistry and one of the worst things is that there isn’t a single love interest.

GRAMMAR/SPELLING:
I’ll blame the numerous mistakes on your claim of not being natively English, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t any. It’s very apparent that there are some, even without looking for them. I can understand what you’re trying to say, but me going back over a couple of times does take the immersion away.

All in all, it was an ok read, but it is definitely a lot heavier in the quantity department then the quality one. It took me around 2-3 hours to read, which is pretty good. I’d give it a 5.5, which rounds up to a six, solely because I can tell that you put more time and effort into it than the average noob’s first story.

— Austinc on 4/15/2019 2:11:37 PM with a score of 250

This was a very fun game! It wasn't too long, and it was intruiging enough to keep me hooked (Which is a feat itself in wordy games). I like how seemingly unimportant actions end up being a major plot point in the long run. PLus, Barbalous was surprisingly a very loyal character, which made me like him just a teensy bit.

— Vignettereader on 7/22/2024 1:08:30 AM with a score of 185

So first off, this concept is one of the best I've seen on this site. The idea of a bunch of spoiled brats who's forced to actually earn their keep is a great one.

Some of my favorite scenes are when the PC is riding through the destruction caused by Ragnar and realizes just how awful the people have it. It made me smile seeing the peasant boy they rescued strut around the castle like royalty.
Or when the plan of the Silent Watchers is revealed and the PC is infuriated, which honestly surprised me, as that was the first moment in the entire series where I could actually see the resemblance between him and his father.

In short, while this story is quite humorous, the author does a fantastic job of writing more emotionally intense scenes, and masterfully uses the links as cutaways to other moments in order to build suspense. Such as when the PC and his order were supposedly killed by arrows, only for a link to reveal the ones killed were a decoy in disguise.

The revelation of Orlag as a traitor was a surprise, although a second playthrough did cause me to realize there were hints throughout the story. It was a cleverly done plot twist.

If I have one complaint about the story, it's that the characters are not as fleshed out as they could be, and can seem two-dimensional.

— benholman44 on 7/14/2024 12:56:41 AM with a score of 200

Great story! Never abandons it's sense of humor and doesn't take itself too seriously, but is a pretty competent game that rewards making smart choices and makes them fun to read through. I played "smart, but kind" and got Ending B. Only missing plot-thread was that bandit lord who kind of disappeared after the arc was done and I kept expecting him to come back. Fun game tho!