Player Comments on The Veil

There was an amazing diversity of choices, especially in earlier chapters. The amount of coding and effort that must have went into this is impressive. It is probably one of the most interactive stories I have seen on this site; even the tiniest of choices are often recognized (and referred to) several chapters later. The topic itself was intriguing, and many interesting philosophical topics were explored. Overall, I highly enjoyed this.

I did spot quite a few bugs during the late game. For one, when you are doing training with the "schools", the game sometimes forgets when you've already mastered certain skills in the green and gold schools. Moreover, after I was invited to the black school, I found out after several pages that I'd reached a dead end (no links, no game over button, just an empty page). Apparently the only way to resolve this was to restart the story and make different choices in chapters one and two. I also encountered a page without links in one of the last chapters (was easily resolved by pressing the "go back" button).

Although I found a lot of the moral dilemmas presented in this story to be intriguing, I didn't like the fact that the reader had to choose the same option that the author saw as the most ethical, in order to unlock the "true end". (SPOILER ALERT: Why do I have to choose to agree to kill the bad man, but then I have to flake out at the last second?). It is a bit frustrating that in a game which takes several hours to read through, you might have to go back and make certain seemingly arbitrary choices in previous chapters, in order to reach a satisfactory conclusion - and there are a LOT of such choices that must be made, if you don't want to be locked out of the true end.

Finally, although I understand why (given the vast variety of choices present in this game), so many of them had to lead to a dead end, I was a bit frustrated when choices that I thought were meaningful were presented as "wrong" by the game. (SPOILER ALERT: E.g. it is "wrong" to think that we are fighting for love, and this will lead to me apparently being murdered by the organization I'm supposed to work for, but I will be allowed to live if I instead say I am fighting for order in the universe? This doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense). Also, I agree with one of the other commentators that there was quite a bit of religion bashing (this is coming from an atheist).

Despite these few issues, I still found the early and mid game quite impressive. I was shocked by how many choices there were in various scenes (some pages could have up to ten choices, and many scenes had multiple ways to progress - all of which were quite interesting to read!) Since I'm trying to make a game myself that employs similar mechanisms, I can empathize with how much work must have went into this, and I congratulate the author on this. For that, and for managing to maintain my thorough interest for most of it's duration, I've rated a 7/8. I think it has the potential to be better, if the author fixed many of these issues.

First, this story is near impossible to read because it is light blue text on white. I control-A'd each page to make it readable.

The idea behind this story is quite interesting. A boy who is-not-quite-normal gets caught up in things far beyond himself, including would-be-assassins, layers of reality, and the potential end of the world. Some of the description is quite nice as well, especially when speaking of nature or theoretical physics.

Action scenes were also written well and generally had good pacing. There were only a couple typos that I noticed.

On the downside, some of the dialogue is outright corny. It seems like characters oscillate between stupid and crass or overly clipped and formal. Many key moments were ruined by overly juvenile thought or speech.

The main character is also painfully juvenile, with no way to avoid some of his stupid antics. E.g. early on, at least in the run through I did, the main character decides to moon another driver, and it ends up very poorly for his girlfriend. Ideally, this sort of stupidity would be the sort of thing that the reader could at least choose to do, not be the sort of thing forced into the story to make a negative event happen later. I prefer when negative consequences are directly tied to the choice the reader makes.

[For example, this would be like if a story asked you to choose to put melted butter or flour into your cake mix next to bake a cake. You choose and bake the cake successfully. Then, the character (without your choosing) goes and smashes the cake on an ox's head because he feels like it then his girlfriend gets gored. Gross stupidity is rarely compelling, especially if you actually want the character to be sympathetic.)

Branching wise, there were many sections that were very linear, with no choices given for pages and pages. Choices were only sprinkled in now and then, and perhaps half those choices were either obviously wrong or led to immediate death. While there were some essential and consequential choices, there were not as many as I would have liked for such an involved story.

Overall, I found it interesting. It wasn't particularly fun, but it had some intriguing ideas and the action pacing kept me interested to see how it would all end. (I'm pretty sure I did not get the best ending.) I especially liked the more descriptive pieces about the way the Veil or the Void or reality worked. The corny dialogue and unlikable characters held it back, though, as did the low number of consequential choices.

The color choice in intristing, but still worth every cent!

Highly enjoyable will have to give it a go again sometime

-Very nice story
-Very many choices and paths to choose
-Interesting characters
-The world is built nicely and it is explained very well
10/10

Woah. Just Woah. Very depressing and gross. I didn't enjoy it at all.

This might very well be excellent, but I wouldn't know. It is literally illegible, with a faint text on a white background -- and broken image links on every single page.

I suspect this storygame is linked to an image hosting site, and either the images are no longer available, or the link changed. Either way, this story is now unreadable, and that's a fatal error.

I was planning on actually reading this, then I saw fucking cyan on white background.

Loved this story. I just love the concept of it!

Amazingly written, a great story and one of my favourite CYS games ever! 10/10 (or in this circumstance 8/8)

Well on my 2nd playthrough i finished... i got to the end the first time but didn’t master the blue... yea story is hard

I was sooooooooo close... if only i went for the blue

This is definitely the most intriguing of the contest stories I've read, and I'm incredibly disappointed that it didn't win or even get top 5. This would have been one of the rare stories I rate 7/8 if not for the frequent Christian-bashing. As it is, 6/8

Captivating story. Although there are typos, overall it is a great to read.

Thanks for reading, everyone. I should warn readers that if you don't have images allowed on your browser, the dark background may not show up, making the story hard to read. There could be other browser issues as well. As long as everything is default, the dark blue backgound shohld show. It is an image posted in global scripts, so unless you are blocking images for some reason, there should be no issue.

Speaking of images: I mistakenly only credited one (ran out of time and forgot). All images come from either Pixabay or my girlfriend, and several are photoshoped by me. Pixabay is a free sight that allows you to use any image WITHOUT crediting the photographer. It is a great resource.

Also, use the cheat links in each of the early chapters! They will help you navigate through the important decisions and help with achievements, if that is something you care about.

Again, thank you all who read.

Really enjoyed the story. Intermixes elements of physics and the supernatural quite well.

Well, I honestly thought it was quite difficult to read with the different colors of the text, and I found the story interesting. It does have potential to be better though.

This is an interesting case where I got invested in the story, then was left confused and annoyed when I lost, to the point where I didn't want to bother with another path. Apparently listening to the mysterious people who help you means your heart and soul aren't ready.

Only got to chapter two, and it seems there were at least five given you credit an image from the fifth chapter.

It was interesting, but not exactly engaging. Not that it was bad, it was well written and story meandered along with some good choices to make. But, I didn't feel any connections to the characters, which took a lot of tension out of the story in my opinion. Still, quite interesting and intriguing concept, and the climax was very satisfying.

Oh, and just a little nitpick, don't use light colored font on the white page. It was hard on my eyes and I took to highlighting the whole pages, which took away from the effect you were going for. Consider using a darker color, say dark purple or maroon.