The withered rose

General Recommendation: An originally crafted idea and world, this game should be a fresh experience even for those familiar with the genre.
Preview: Can you successfully pass your trial as a squire becoming a paladin, and what will you do once you have?

=SPOILERS BELOW=

General notes:
After having read two of Mara’s stories, I’m getting the sense that her games are all very rich and original in their worldbuilding concepts. Like Planet Mopper, this game presents as weird and crzy world unlike any fantastic setting I’ve ever read before, and throws the player in headfirst.
The main issue with this game is how confusing it is. The depth and originality of the worldbuilding means that extra care needs to be taken to ensure the player doesn’t become lost in all the new concepts being introduced. Things come at the player just a little too quickly here. We don’t learn much background information about the paladin crow goddess, we don’t learn why the world is radioactive, and we don’t learn many more details about the princess’s past or involvement in galactic affairs. Granted, some of this may be explored in the sequel, but a lot of it just feels like a want of information.
Much of this information could be conveyed in the game’s initial scenes, or flashbacks to paladin training. You’ve got the right idea with the game’s introductory sequence, it just needs tightening up.
This game may work better as a linear story. There’s enough variation and chance for death in the middle that it still qualifies as a storygame, but there’s very little branching and the only real plot divergence comes in the final choice. Selecting a single outcome to refine into a linear story could help tighten up the confusing aspects of this story.

Specific notes:
-Starting off with a bang with that radation prayer. It’s a very vivid and engaging way to start the story.
-Dialogue quotes are inconsistent, making this difficult to understand.
-I like the idea of a crow justice god.
-The player is really thrown right into this game. This is a good thing in that it prevents worldbuilding infodumps, but has the negative effect of making it very difficult for the player to understand what is going on. Some background information about the world and protagonist’s situation is necessary.
-I like the high-tech paladins. It’s not a frequently done idea and it’s cool to see it explored in this way. I like the tank being refered to as a “steed”.
-Ooh, I’ve gotten to the child murder scene! Exciting! Sorry, but I don’t think it’s morally justifiable here. Not a lawful good action. Certainly in keeping with the laws of the paladin order, but the paladin order itself does not seem to be lawful good.
-Given the technically advanced nature of the world, I’m quite curious about who this “goddess” is. Clearly it’s someone very real and powerful, but I suspect not truly divine.
-The townspeople’s dedication to the goddess is interesting, it’s clear they’re terrified of her power.
-Lol, “creepy statues check”.
-Playing as a religious zealot is always surprisingly fun.
-Phrases like WTF and holy cow are a little out of place, but I don’t mind them given how this setting is already so different from traditional fantasy.
-The second half of the game is quite linear, other than Frenah’s death or resurrection depending on earlier choices. It would be nice if the choices in the game’s second half had more of an impact.
-I like the sequence with the “vampire”, it’s a more interesting dilemma than the scene with the innkeeper’s son.
-Does the choice of which paladin order to join have any effect?

Grammar:
Not great. In many places dialogue quotations were outright missing, which made the game difficult to read.
Mastery of Language:
There’s some definite sentence structure issues, many of which are distracting and directly pull me out of the writing. This story really needs to be gone through again for flow issues, because there’s a number of places where unclear writing prevented me from enjoying an otherwise engaging scene.
The true test of sentence structure is to what extent it helps or harms the reading. Here, the sentence structure is definitely harming the reader’s experience to a significant extent.
That said, there are a number of clever bits of pharsing and intriguing analogies. It would be cool to see what could be accomplished here with a grammer edit.

Branching:
Not good. This game is quite linear, composed of mainly flavor choices, which lowers its rating somewhat.

Player Options/fair choice:
In the save-or-die chocies outcomes are well foreshadowed, but many chocies don’t impact the plot at all and are just flavor.

WRITING ADVICE:
I strongly, strongly, recommend that if you plan on taking this down, you do a thorough grammer edit. The grammar and clarity issues really take away from enjoying this game, and I definitely rated it lower than I would have if I hadn’t had to constantly parse out your meaning from the unclear writing.

CONCLUSION: An original and thought-provoking idea, just one that needs a more thorough edit for reader comprehension. I’m currently rating this a 4/8 just because of how difficult it was to read and understand everything, but with better grammar and more clear worldbuilding explanations it could easily be a 5/8.

I have read quite a few of Mara's stories on this site so far, and they are all absolutely sui generis.

This particular story is very difficult for me to sum up in a pithy few sentences, or even in a longer paragraph, but here is what I can say about it--it is certainly a choice-y game; clearly a lot of work has been spent on coming up with choices that lead in distinct directions--there is unique text for each choice. No fake choices here, and every page is absolutely filled with descriptions of action and characterization. The prose is almost Finnegan's Wake-esque. I feel like I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night, some of these phrases from her game on my lips, and I will scream them, and my family and near neighbors will listen and fear. What I'm saying is there are turns of phrase here that I have never heard before. I do not always know if I have the knowledge to wholly picture what they are describing, but they are vivid.

There's a stylistic decision made here to disorient the reader by using quotation marks only in certain places and leaving off or delaying the other, additional quotation marks that are often paired together with the first. This makes it hard to know if I am reading narration, dialogue, or speech attribution, or a sort of swirld of all three. I think this was done to create a whirling, dizzying effect--where am I? what's happening? who is speaking?--which I would imagine a squire undergoing trials (which I believe was the topic of this story) might feel as well. If so, that was a pretty cool effect.

Of all of the storygames I've read recently on this site, this is definitely one of them, and one that I will remember. I appreciate and can clearly feel Mara's effort. Mara's stories always makes me feel something--strong emotion and a deeper appreciation for witty description and turns of phrase.

"contained violence in the way he caresses her hair like a porn actor trying to seduce a palmed unicorn"

Yep, this is the whole vibe of it. Honest to god, maybe it is because I'm too stupid to properly read, but I have no idea what was happening half of the time. Let me guide you through my thought process.

Okay we have a mecha suit and a princess, okay, let's go along with it. She has a mission, few buddies, teammates.

A few moments later:
Wait this space opera stufff has also gods, wait they are palladins.... okay?

A few pages later:
Now they are in a post apocalyptic wasteland. They can actually do attacks by praying very loudly I guess and there are portals for some reason...

A few pages later:
Why the fuck is there magic. So we have mecha wizards now???? Wait, who was that evil dude again, oh, your friend died but not really, because the goddess heals her?

Do you get what I'm thinking? There are lots of interesting elements going on, but they aren't really allowed to breathe which just leaves me very confused half of the time. It was as if I was reading three story concepts smashed together. All these bizarre things could work in a more campy story, but this story takes itself a little too seriously for that to be the case.

Anyway, it is readable, no egregious spelling or grammar mistakes, there are paragraph break and such. Sometimes the descriptions can be a little jarring like the one above. This was supposed to be quite a serious situation, but the sheer silliness of the description just breaks the tone for me in not a very good way.

Anyway, it is a story with a beginning, middle and two endings to choose from. It was not really my cup of tea, but someone else might be able to enjoy it.

This was very creative with an engrossing storyline and a good amount of detail going into this story. It was a bit surprising with all of its twists and turns and I wasn't sure if it's a Fantasy or Sci-Fi story at times but it's an entertaining read.

How can there paladins and technology in the same story I don't understand.

After your several questions about which ways to murder children could qualify as lawful good, I wasn't so sure what to expect here, but this isn't bad by any means. It could use a bit of polish, and the tone can be fairly inconsistent, but that being said, I enjoyed your writing (as per usual) and do hope you'll revisit this contest theme at some point on your own terms.