Player Comments on The Spanish Armada

Holy crap this thing is jam-packed full of historical facts and data. The first page alone taught me more about the Spanish Armada than public school ever did! Not a huge fan of being forced to pick up the cast list though. It seems like a strange way to introduce other historical characters. I just don’t like the word ‘cast’ in this case because this isn’t a play, movie, or TV show. I think the writing quality and historical data doesn’t match calling it a ‘cast list’. The writing is super professional and informative, but the cast list brings it down a notch in my opinion. I will say that the idea to put the historical figures into an item is a great idea. There were several times where a name was mentioned and I had to Conor McGregor them (who the fook is this guy?). The fact that each person was included in my inventory was a huge help. It was accessible at any point during the game. Just wish it was called something different (ok I’ll shut up about that now). I think the author did a tremendous job depicting the grand scale of the Armada. I mean one ship is huge, but we’re talking about hundreds here! I did get the feeling that my choices mattered, although I’m a few pages in during this sentence and haven’t crossed an end game link yet. Either I’m really good at this game, or the author made an easy game... most likely the former.

I don’t normally mention spelling and grammar in reviews unless it’s awful, but I feel inclined to mention there weren’t any problems in this storygame. If an Edutainment has issues with spelling and grammar, it ruins its credibility of any included historical facts.

A great factor that the author included was giving the option to see the fates of the Spanish Commanders in the conclusion. It turns out I made bad choices and ended up dead, but I guess you can't expect a lot from a Plat level League of Legends player. I thought including the fates of the commanders was a smart thing to include because the goal of an Edutainment is to inform in a fun way. Despite making awful choices in game (which I learned first-hand), you get to see the results from true historical events. It would have been cool to add a point system to see which decisions were actually correct. Maybe all of mine were wrong though and that’s why I died. I think this storygame was very well done for what it was. It’s not life changing, but it’s informative in a fun format which is all you want from an Edutainment.

First, congratulations on completing your 20th story! Great job. This was an interesting subject and indeed, as you mention in the conclusion, it's interesting to consider the possible outcomes had things gone differently. How different might the world be had England been defeated?

So, I enjoyed this. I'm a big fan of "Life's hard. Then you die." This was a situation that reflects that. Sometimes (often), nothing lines up and the mightiest will fall.

What would improve this? I'd start with some changes dealing with the presentation. On the first page, you write "PLEASE PICK UP THE CAST LIST" above the item, followed by the link to the next page. It commits one of the greatest sins: breaking immersion. This could easily be dealt with by cutting the instruction and putting an item restriction on the link to the next page. When you pick up the item, the link would appear during the page refresh. Another option with it would be to cut the instruction and allow the player to grab the cast list or move forward unmolested. I would recommend the latter as the item has no bearing (as far as I could tell) on the story.

Another thing is when you use the cast list, you don't provide a link to the previous page, relying on the default message or other controls to return to the game. This has the same impact on immersion because the player leaves the primary content area to get back to the game. It's better to just include a standard link, otherwise it feels just a little bit sloppy.

There were a few minor proofreading errors that I found. During the Duke's reaction to the storm, you wrote "that was has just happened" when I believe you meant "that what has just happened". When the protagonist falls to his death, you switched verb tense mid-sentence with "lost your grip".

One other recommendation, vice correction, is that some of your sentences run a little long. Not a big deal, but it might make it a little easier for the reader during certain scenes to keep them bite-sized. Overall, the writing was good.

I think you're a good writer, clearly interested in what you are writing about, and I am impressed by how much you have contributed to the site. Great job!

While I loved the idea and the way the choices and the story were put together, I just couldn't get into it due to the writing. It falls in that awkward place inbetween a history book and interactive fiction, failing at the former due to not being comprehensive enough with facts, reasons and motivation of the historical figures, while failing at the latter by being too dry and summative.

In the end, the result lacked impact. I couldn't get into anyone's head and imagine myself having to make the tough choices you carefully had laid out. While I liked the conclusion page, seeing where my previous deaths lined up with the actual choices of the Spanish captains, a great improvement could be in the actual deaths pages themselves talking about the captain in question.

Another great improvement would be to take time between the historic movements, letting life on the ship breathe, making me care about the men under me and the armada, and making me hate the huge ego's of the other captains that doomed so many of them to their deaths, while organically giving me more information about the choices and strategy in question, especially for those that aren't familiar with 16th-century naval warfare.

Sheesh, I’m the only one who didn’t die, get captured, or get arrested. Besides that guy who just left. Lucky me!!

Educational and fun to play.

Firstly, I liked how the reader has control over the story. There are various paths, all containing historical information and the hard work is shown. I died very early in the game, so I went back to check other paths out and it was really detailed, all the events were listed out page by page, with their respective dates and I think this would have gotten very high marks for a history project!

Playing as a character, there were many choices to choose from and I felt the power of the war, killing so much people and injuring many. The most important part, and the most I learned, is why people sometimes become selfish - to survive. Helping others, I always ended up dying, and I understood that you have to sacrifice others to save yourself in war.

Overall, I can see the hard work put into this storygame and I can't wait to explore more edutainment storygames. 7 marks!

Very informative and well put together overall

Your Edutainment stories are usually fun to play and informative, and this one was no exception. What I have to point out, though, is that it's rather evident that this was a small story you threw together in little to no time, as you said in the description. There's nothing wrong with shorter games, but this one lacked one last step of polish to be considered on par with some of your previous ones.

You made more errors than usual (apart from the grammar ones, I also remember reading about the Spanish Armada attacking Spain) and the finale was of course known and fixed, but it still managed to shed some light on the kinds of difficult decisions those men had to face during their troubled journey.

Not one of your best but still a nice historical storygame.