Player Comments on The Northern Settlement

This was a super chill story. You've definitely got to be in the mood to relax and enjoy imagining being in the outdoors for this one to strike some chords. Once you do, you'll find yourself having a good time.

I enjoyed the info page as setup, and appreciated it, cause this story definitely doesn't hold your hand as far as the lingo and worldbuilding is concerned. This works both to the story's favor and detriment.

Now, I did run into a lot of grammatical and spelling errors, and agree with Killa that your writing style is choppy. If you're going to spend all this time on immersion, varying the sentence structure and length is going to do wonders.

One sentence that stood out to me as a glowing example of this property was: "You walk past the fence that's been built up around the town that's just been started." Of course, there were other parts I liked, like: “While his hair might be gray and life has quite obviously not been kind to him, from the scars on his hands and the muscle across his arms and shoulders, you can tell he's responded by being unkind to life.” That kicks ass!

It’s definitely a mixed bag, but one that you’re more likely to draw sapphires from, than shit. 5/8

I think this game has a lot of potential, but could use several edits to tighten it up and prune excess exposition. There are many grammar errors. Sentence fragments, run-ons, missing commas, missing possessive apostrophes, sudden tense shifts, and the like abound. More than this, the word-choice is often repetitive (such as this string of sequential sentence-starters from the first page: You...Every...You're...You...You...You...You...Your...)

Many times, I found description spent on mundane things (the exact motions back and forth of characters, for example,) and every time things got a little interesting time seemed to be summarized (skipping all the details) or fast forwarded months or years ahead.

The game was also very slow to get going. There were several pages before there was a branch - even though a larger choice, to room or not with David and Melissa, could have been made sooner. Some of the early choices felt a little bland, but as the story found its momentum it got better. I did still think important choices (such as whether to take a dangerous job or not) were often skipped in favor of ones that felt a bit random.

I did, however, really like the epilogue I got (Foster Father.) I thought that was a nice conclusion, though perhaps almost too thorough in that it wanted to reveal the destiny of every minor character.

I think if this game had been a little smaller in scope, only covering a year rather than half a lifetime, it might have been more successful. Too many of the big events were rushed, in contrast to the slog of daily life that was often bloated. (Although, to be fair, this did set the mood of a rough-and-tumble settlement where every day is hard work.)

Some of the exposition when characters were giving it (in spoken or written form) felt flat, like their personalities were suppressed to get the information out. It's OK to leave a little mystery. Or use exposition as a reward, not a hurdle to get passed, such as leaving diary pages and letters for the character to come across in different places.

Likewise, description also sometimes felt flat. I noted at one point that I actually had less interest in the scene of a body found with his heart cut out as I did in one where they get excited over sparkly rocks, just because the description felt so matter-of-fact. There wasn't any horror or tension.

But I think this is a solid start, and the vaguely sci-fi frontier setting is a good one. There were many places where I felt I would enjoy it if just one or two things were tweaked, and it was enough to keep me reading until the end. I think my favorite scene was the confrontation between the characters and the 'mining union,' which just seems like something that would authentically happen in such a world.

It was a nice read. Followed Singh siblings' route and got the Foster Father ending, though that future wierd cult bit had me laughing.

As more story than game, this is a great imaginative effort. I feel it's based somewhat on American colony history, but none the worst for that. I chose to foster the indigs and was glad it turned out well. People could have turned nasty!

The start of this game is great, especially the prose. There was a lot of potential for maximizing the main character's personal power. However, the story loses it's passion as time goes past, not only are there only a few choices, but one of them is the clear favorite to me: the Singh path. That was an interesting read but besides that, the only part that was interesting was when the white creature devours the MC.

This still has potential though.

This is Sci-Fi? Seems more fantasy than anything to me.

First entry I've read where a clear effort was made. That said I didn't find the story too engaging, the start up was long while spending time relaying facts that didn't seem interesting at the time at least, and your writing style is a bit choppy.

Still a solid try.

Several errors with the usage of "you" variants but it was a nice story.

I'm happy to have got the gist of events but I would have liked to see what a sprawling story this could have been, if only there was more time to work on it.

I thought this world was pretty interesting, from the Indigs and the adorable Indig children to the animals that are bad to eat and vice versa.

I hope to find out more about the politics between the Vics and Frontsmen and Crew peeps ans such on my next read through.

Good job Derp hope I can read more stories from you soon.

I liked your story really well actually. The setting in the beginning was described well with inconsistencies being minor but deteriorated as you continued writing. I would have liked the bounty hunter theme continue with a few more choices that would make use of the hunting skills that we had. The first few epilogues were more descriptive also and I enjoyed but they continued to become less so. There were errors on many of the pages to where I started a little notepad to try and help with when they stood out to me. I did not mind the skipping of time, since it was a starter community, things would take time to build up and life would move slower which could be boring or too long to go through. Overall a decent read, good job. I got to a couple endings but I liked the sheriff one the most I think.

These are some errors that stood out to me a lot:
Starting the Singh Donaldson Iron Mine
-imediatly
A month Later.
-dealth
-colon is unnecessary
Begin your career as a bounty hunter.
-foetal
Take jeffrey simmons back alive.
-wrappen (also look at that sentence, it's a little funky)
Put Jeffrey Simmons out of his misery
-capitalization errors
Shoot the beast
-fiftey
-punctuation errors
Epilogue: A man of wilderness and wealth
-where and were