Player Comments on The Secret of gods and Satan

I have a lot to say about this story. And I mean, a lot! I finished the game, it took me a while, and, well, let's get into it. I wrote the review as I read it, so some parts of the review may conflict with later parts, but that's because you(the author) resolved some doubts and problems later on.

Like Gower said in his review, at times, there are huge walls of text that can be intimidating to the reader and generally puts people off. It’s not often, but when they do appear, these large and dense paragraphs get really difficult to read through. However, I’m not really going to hold that against you as I really want to completely read and rate this story after seeing all those forum posts. I doubt that was your original intention, but you garnered a lot of interest in your story after your bold, ridiculous, and outlandish forum posts talking about how you discovered an entirely new philosophical idea, even if it’s merely the horrid fascination one expects to see upon observing a literal trainwreck in action. At least, that’s the mindset I had going into this thing. Whether you changed my mind or not, we’ll see.

First things first. Page 1. You're advertising to us with this page, there are so many times when I click off a story because the first page is dull. The tone that you’re starting off with is a bit preachy. Also, the forum writing sections aren’t realistic, I mean nobody talks like that. Also, who’s “they”. You post your comment, and then a “they” rolls their eyes at you. I don’t think you mean the anonymous commenters, does the manager go by “they/them” pronouns.

Also, the first 3 choices don’t really change the story, you get the same reaction regardless if you support trans-rights, express criticism of trans-rights, or simply get off your phone.

The story really does pick up after Merlin comes. The dialogue gets a lot better, which makes me feel that you have a stronger grasp and command over fantasy dialogue, rather than modern-day internet forum dialogue. I really liked the exchange between our main character and Merlin. It was also really creative how you brought Merlin back, and the set up for this story seems incredibly promising! More of those dense text-walls appear, but the actual language in each individual sentence flows well, you write descriptively and your writing is engaging for the most part, I would just fix the formatting. There’s definitely a nice rhythm to it, that’s for sure.

The mythology is creative, you intertwine moral philosophy within the fantasy quite nicely. Animals that are killed peacefully leave you alone, while animals you hunt come back to haunt you. To avoid being tormented by these spirit-animals/gods, you can sacrifice one of your own, and in return the spirit stops haunting you and you get the positive quality of your sacrificial victim. The sacrificial victim goes on to haunt the entire tribe, but that’s a small price to pay. This is an interesting analogy to how corporations in the modern world use people, consuming them until there’s nothing left. The lives these megacorporations ruin through their greed haunts them in the form of lawsuits and occasional public outcry, but they continue to reap the rewards of their ill-earned gains.

The story takes an anti-violence stance and anti-sin stance, that at times, borders on the absurd. At the same time, you at least have some nuance, acknowledging that people need to kill to survive sometimes, so that was a nice touch. I’m not sure if I agree with everything you said, but the point of the review is to assess whether you deliver your point of view effectively, and you definitely do. It fits within the story, and it’s engaging enough.
You also build suspense throughout, particularly in the “guilt-possession” scene. At this point in the story, we just met the inuit boy and you and him were almost attacked by a corpse, and then we get briefly introduced to a taste of what is yet to come. To the best of my knowledge, an Anirniq is a monstrous physical manifestation of our vices, so some monsters are fear actualized, others greed, lust, that sort of thing. We all have these negative qualities inside us, so when we die our ghosts come back and take the appropriate form depending on the specific vice we embodied. Can an Anirniq be a mixture of different vices?

In the seal sequence, you make a brief mistake when the shaman is narrating the story. He’s telling his flashback from his perspective, but the pronoun “you” is used. This is likely because you just copied over what you’d previously written in the other branch(where you leave the seal alone and the same things happen). Hey, I’m not judging you, but at the same time, watch out for those mistakes. But it was so creative how you used the seal as a metaphor for the dangers of “unbridled excess”; the ringed seal is a manifestation of the dangers of losing self control. The way you embedded your message was creative, although I don’t agree with the message itself because it seems to portray a very black-and-white view of the world(either you enjoy partying and you’re an uncontrollable drunk or you’re a pure and virtuous person). Maybe you’ll expand on that later in the story, hopefully introducing some nuance.

I really loved the inherent logic behind the design of the ringed seal. Particularly the idea that writing a story down gives it structure, and therefore gives the creatures within, structure and rules. That makes them more internally consistent with their thoughts and behaviors. But an auditory story, that is passed down from generation to generation, is a lot more vulnerable to alteration. It isn’t as fixed because the idea of this creature is shared among many people’s minds, but there’s no encoded tangible record holding all these details, so these creatures tend to act stranger sometimes, depending on which person’s imagination it’s following. Even if there’s just one person that’s literate, they can write ideas down and provide more order and structure to shared beliefs, since at least one person has it down in a tangible form. That was really novel, I got to give you credit for that. The way your explanation is received though will be divisive, some people will like it, others won’t. I can definitely imagine it not being received well primarily because it’s really dry. It worked for me because I was going into this story trying to understand whether your story was really all that you promised, so I was already in a more charitable mindset to understand and analyze it. You could definitely make it more palatable and fit it into a fantasy setting better, to be a bit more crisp and engaging.

As the story progresses, we get clear rules that delineate how the Gods in this world behave. The rules tend to be parables and sayings from Christo-judaic philosophy, and essentially, the story advocates for being a good and moral person, cognizant of the environment around you. At the same time, you don’t cross the territory into being naive. You do make the world a bit gray; sometimes, making the right choice results in the village starving.

I also really loved how the same spirits evolved over time into becoming Gods. The essential nature stayed the same, but as people adopted a written record, the outward manifestations of the Gods became more concrete.The way you portrayed the greek gods was creative, especially the damned souls of Tartarus(Ixion and Sisyphus). That was a new take, how they’re the sane ones and the gods themselves are crazy. The riddle was so good. I honestly found it by blind guess, but your explanation afterwards showed that it was really well thought out. I like the idea of Pan being the true leader of the gods, since Pan in ancient greek means “all”, so that makes sense. Fun fact: Pan originally meant “rustic” in Greek, but through a linguistic evolution later it changed to mean “all”. It was also really insightful that all the gods are driven by fears, and Pan causes panic, so in a way, he’s the true leader of the gods. This comes back later, when it turns out that Satan is simply a reincarnation of Pan, with the same cloven hooves and goat horns. The ancient Greek world feels panic because there’s so much that they don’t understand, so they invent myths to rationalize natural phenomenons like the weather, the cycling of seasons, or the night-day cycle.

So far, this story is incredibly well-written and researched. My review is really long, but there’s so much I didn’t get to cover. You touch on so many deep and complex themes: religious persecution, false faith, vegetarianism, animism, guilt, fear, power and although it’s hard to write a story with all of those, you manage to somehow do it. Ultimately, the story shows that embracing Christ is the only way to overcome the inherent undercurrent of pessimism present in all the other pantheons, that no matter how much we evolve, things stay the same. Unless you embrace Christ. I’m not sure how to feel about that final takeaway, but credit goes to you for the effort you put into this.

Yes, you made some crazy claims in the start, but I’ll say that you definitely delivered on some of them. You wrote the gods well, imbibing them with different qualities with deliberate thought. You also showed how the gods evolve over time, and that essentially, their inner selves stay constant, but as time changes so do their names and exterior qualities. The monsters even come back in modern times(20th century), as H.P.Lovecraft(yeah, he’s also in this story, I have no idea how you managed that!) externalizes his deep rooted fears into monsters of unfathomable darkness. You skillfully loop it all back to now, how with the advent of the internet and the rise of social media, people are no longer getting their thoughts and ideas from books but rather from social media, and news channels spreading divisiveness and hate among each other, which inevitably leads to panic. That was an insightful observation. But there’s an optimistic message about how all these monsters are, at the end of the day, created from our fears, flaws and insecurities, so they can be fought and overcome. Side note: I didn’t expect to see Qamulek(the creepy monster in the bag in Inuit times that causes the whole village to starve) as Slenderman, a modern internet legend. I know I’ve been saying this a lot, but that was creative as hell!



I also enjoyed the interactive sections, where you have to solve riddles and really think about it before picking a choice. Nothing in this story feels random, it is really well made. Just for the sheer creativity and ingenuity displayed, I’m going to give this one an 8/8. The premise of the story, visiting the ancient timelines guided by Merlin and observing how the Gods evolve from the Inuit gods, to greek gods, to norse gods, and finally to the Christian god was quite a journey to go through. It is a very original and thought-provoking premise to take, and I think you really ran with it! The ending: 3 main loops of the story are the Narcotic Loop, The reflection loop, the sin loop. Many dangers in modern society, of becoming self-obsessed, confining oneself to an echo chamber so you can no longer hear opposing viewpoints, and distracting one-self with easy dopamine-granting activities are discussed. And it all comes back to panic, humans try to deal with panic by engaging in those short-term gain, long-term harm behaviors. These loops are recurring throughout this work, told through various myths from various cultures, but all connect with each other in the end. That, in my opinion, speaks volumes about the care and time you put into designing this engaging story. This is a remarkable work, and you should feel incredibly proud of yourself for writing it. It is no small feat, that’s for sure! I’m really thankful that I got to read this story. It’s almost impossible for a reader to get all the meaning and insight this story could give in one reading. Unfortunately, I got the “sadly walk away in defeat” ending, I’m not sure what I did wrong. Regardless, this was a trip. I’ll definitely be revisiting it to see what I missed, and hopefully win the good ending where I defeat Pan once and for all.

Bird brained and ahistorical but kind of charming in its own way

My notes in review, as scattered as the purported theory this story was supposed to espouse and explain:

How is Qamulek/Qamalek supposed to be spelled?

Lots of weird wording or obvious incorrect word choice.

There are many reports of ghosts that simply move down a hallway or through a room.  How is that ghost driven by guilt, particularly when the ghost is unidentified or obviously significantly out of time.  This also presupposes that ghosts are real if we are to take the prelude and forum announcement seriously that this story has import to real world philosophy.

It is clear that on some of the decision branches whole paragraphs are just copied and pasted as they do not always mesh with the context of the story on one branch or there is an assumption that actions have been taken that may not have been actually been selected. Using the Badge or the not using the watch are fair examples.

Could do with a detailed proofreading or two.

If the definition of a perfect human is being free of sin and evil, how did the child sacrifices not also count as such?

Synthesisa is not something that can be played on.

The repeated Author's Notes felt unneccesary and jarring.

Biological sources are not the only sources of energy, perhaps you have heard of geothermal or solar power?

This is not only the most insane, weird, controversial, risky, potentially deeply offensive, spiritually serious, scientifically upending, philosophically inspired, personal, politically charged and mind-melting story that I have ever read, it is also the most insane, weird, controversial, risky, potentially deeply offensive, spiritually serious, scientifically upending, philosophically inspired, personal and mind-melting story that has ever been published by a living author.

I respect the sheer amount of ink that has been spilled here; the scope is impressive, and there's some interesting use of items to create innovative choices a few times.

However, it commits the cardinal sin here, which is that it is quite boring to read. I came to it with the intent to read it closely and comment on the merits of its plotting and so forth, but no, I couldn't do it. The sheer walls of text didn't do anything to advance the narrative as far as I could tell, and I found decent swathes of it impenetrable.

There's microlevel stuff (dialogue punctuation; having different lines of dialogue on their own lines, and so forth). But I think that's relatively minor considering my larger objection. I don't know. Maybe it's just not for me. I couldn't read all the way through it without glazing over.