Player Comments on The Phone Call

Quick playthrough and fairly linear, although it does an good job of putting the reader in the hellish context of one who cannot help but punish themselves for what they consider their greatest failing, even when there was nothing they could have done in the grand scheme of things.

Well written and thoroughly proofread. Strong grammar and flow of text. Does a good job of using the looping facilitated by the mechanics of site to sell the recurring nature of the story.

idk what was going on lol

This game is underrated. Although the story was too ambiguous for me to interpret completely, I kind of got the vibe that the protagonist was in a coma after the car accident and replaying recent events over and over in their head, and maybe hearing what Alex was saying to us at our bedside or on the phone? The sensitive subject matter hit deeper than most, and I liked how the genders of the main characters were all neutral and could be either throughout. This story could be fleshed out and polished more, but I feel that it deserves a 5/8 (I have a soft spot for cyclical/looping games, like my favorite story The Paradox Factor and my own story The Fire).

This is a little underrated. It's probably because it's linear and not everyone's cup of tea. This is as described, bare bones, but they are of good quality.

This story seems underrated to me, I love psychological horror and this really did it well. The twist is unsettling and while the story is basically linear, it works here. You can't truly give the experience of being caught in a hellish cycle when there's an easy way to click out of it.

I see what you were going for the lines really show a raw emotional story (maybe a personal nightmare), Sadly the way it was presented was very disorienting and hard to follow and could use a little bit of touch ups but I think it has potential sooo just keep working at it.

First time I've ever heard pregnant silence used in a sentence.

Liked the aesthetic of the story and how it went along for the majority of the beginning, felt like it fell flat a little towards the ending but not to much for it to detract essence from the overall feel.

Like from what I first said I feel like some of the idioms and similes used were kind of confusing, but maybe it was just me.

Found quite a number of spelling errors but I feel like it shouldn't take all that much time to fix them in the paths that they were in.

Quite dissapointed in the linearity of the story so hope you try to make it more expansive next time you make a story.

Overall not bad.

Overview: this story game is about uncovering the secrets of your past via a mysterious phone call. Personally I enjoyed the story a lot, but here is my review!!

Positives:
-The story isn’t really fucking obvious from the start. I thought that maybe Alex (the one calling) committed suicide and the story was about your regret for not picking up/ listening to them when they needed you most, but learning that it was your death that Alex caused was a pretty good twist (even if there was very little set up as far as I am aware).
-There’s not any/many grammar mistakes (as far as I can make out) and it reads relatively smoothly.
-The relationship between the POV character and Alex is pretty well established and builds a lot of empathy for the character, especially when we find out they are being abused.

Things to improve:
-Some of the description is a bit weird, especially the bit about a scratch under ‘your largest organ’. That was slightly strange because I don’t think many people associate the skin with an organ, even though it is, and it doesn’t really make a lot of sense.
-This game is very linear, there’s essentially one path to take even though you can go through it in a few different ways, your actions don’t have any major story consequences.
-I’m deaf so have never heard a phone call, seems pretty ableist to me friend

Jokes aside this is pretty well written and well paced, can’t wait to see what you make next!! :)

Oh, wow. I thought about trying to do one of those review things I see other people do, but seeing as I’ve never written a story I’m not going to try to criticize others’. Thins is a great story, though!

Interesting story a bit confusing for me but still a decent read!

I’ll be writing this as I go along[Slight Spoilers Ahead, skip to paragraph 4 ].

It starts off with a phone call, okay. Not necessarily the most original concept, but it depends on how it’s executed. I smashed it! I’m also revealed a piece of information, about someone named “Alex”. From what i can pick up, there’s some sort of feud with the Protagonist’s friend(s), and this Alex is some sort of love interest.
Continuing on. I see that I’m forced to ignore it, as I fall asleep with this call again. Ignoring it, I get it again after a while. I see that eventually I’m forced to answer it. It seems that this Alex is on the other side of the line.
This is where the story is unraveled a bit more, there’s a confession, and there’s a response similar to answering the call, more and more story and possibilities are revealed, which is pretty nice. But then, it ends.

Overall, I feel that this story is interesting enough. It doesn’t give much detail at the start, and leads you along the way to choose all the paths and learn about the story, which is the good aspect. Unfortunately for this one, it ends there, after the story is revealed, after the information is dumped down. I would definitely like to see more as this shows great potential. It’s descriptive, intriguing, and it’s only downfall is the rushed-ness(It’s justified with the author’s self imposed deadline).

The story that's told her is a rather emotional one, and I found myself liking that aspect of this work. However, this is certainly rather linear, but fortunately, I feel that the rather moving story that's here holds this story up.

I would definitely not mind seeing another story that is made from this writer, as story-telling certainty doesn't seem to be an aspect that they struggle in.

I loved the concept of this story. This was definitely a psychological story than anything else. However, I felt there was lost potential in the story, as every choice I made seemed to loop around back to your other choice. It didn't necessarily feel like a choose your own adventure story as there is never really any significance in choosing one option over another. This would be THE criticism I would have with this story.

That being said, as a project to test the waters, this was well written despite it lacking context and a little bit more meat to make it stand out.

In the future, I'm looking forward to the authour's next works as this wasn't a bad story by any means. I'm confident that the authour will have success writing bigger and better stories. All the best to future works!

No real branching at all so that is going to hurt the rating, but as a psychological horror piece this really works. Was this a short story converted to a storygame?

Anyhow, between this and the Alone story posted on the forum, TP's got the short unsettling horror niche covered. Looking forward to the larger project this author is working on, but in the mean time I recommend taking a couple of minutes to read this one.

Wow, this got....strange. This should be in Horror. But very good, I loved it.

It was fun.

Grammatical errors, spelling errors, too repetitive, not enough choices. Disappointing.

Overall I feel like this was a good short story. There are a few minor issues like switching tense(I do that myself a lot), but overall it has good grammar and pacing.

I like the concept and the lack of explanation for the backstory leaves it open to interpretation, which is something I highly appreciate in a story game when done correctly. Personally, I feel like the player is dealing with their regrets over a poorly handled phone conversation that was followed by their friend's suicide.

My one complaint is that the story is very linear. While I like the idea of the time loop, there is no true branching or weight to the choices. No matter what, you loop back to the other choice before continuing. If the loop had involved some subtle changes rather than just a true repeat I think it would have carried more weight. I would have also liked to have seen a choice branch that allowed for a little more exploration of the player's guilt and how they are dealing with it.

Overall, it's a solid little story despite being linear. Great job! I give it a 4, though it would have been a 5 if not for being linear.

This is like a mini Christopher Nolan plot. The character is stuck in this odd loop, and slowly the reader understands what's happening.

The writing itself is pretty good, there's no glaring issues that I noticed.

Spoiler: The plot starts off with absolutely no information. You slowly find out more stuff about the plot, but it only leaves me with MORE questions. You die in a car crash because you're... annoying your partner? Now you're in Hell, and you're being tortured by phone calls from your partner? Are these real phone calls, or an illusion? Why are you in Hell anyways? What does the ending mean?

Additionally, you end up going through all the links in the story (I think), so this isn't really a storygame, just a story with a cyclical structure. A neat concept, but imperfect execution.

This had a really interesting concept and I liked it a lot. The grammar was good, the storytelling was good; this was a nice short story. However, I do have one problem, though.

What exactly happened with the reader and Alex? And who is Jay? From context, it seems like Jay is that one guy who dates girls just for his own benefit. I wish I could've known what the backstory to it was.

Overall, good job. 7/8! :]