Player Comments on Transient

The biggest issue with this one was the linearity, although it was pretty rough in the proofreading department too. Unfortunately, being a story of only a few thousand words that is on a site for choice based games makes both of those things pretty hard to ignore.

Besides the usual issues with typos and punctuation, I encountered a few sentences that were just hilariously garbled.

"The only thing you can drink other than these days.

"I don't get why we have the high priest had tomake the church here."

"Ya know as well as everyone that the damn cult appeared after everything started going to hell even if they should are insane."

And as for the story itself, it wasn't bad or anything, it just felt rushed and like it should have been much longer. I don't have any way to know what might have had to be cut to make the contest deadline, but as it is all paths go to the old building and the confrontation with Kelric. Who along with Mary has no time given to be established with any kind of personality or have any real confrontation with the protagonist.

Herman is the closest thing to an actual character here, which quite honestly minimizes the impact of everything that happens and any potential threats to the village. Let us get to know a couple of villagers or even cultists. We're told all these people are starving pathetically or else tricked into killing themselves, but none of it really means anything.

As for the contest theme, well, ultimately you don't feel like too impressive a hero when all you do is show up somewhere, overhear a conversation, and shoot someone who's been distracted by somebody else. Herman is actually way more heroic than the character is at any point. (And also don't understand how pushing someone in a well is supposed to work when the very next page makes it clear you're still tied to a chair...)

But there's a good mix of action and detail, and the basic plot is fine. With some expansion and more branching to help with the pacing issues this could be a pretty solid story. Either way, I look forward to seeing more from this author now that they've got their first story out of the way and I'm sure now have a better grasp on this stuff.

I'm not going to talk about the game as a game--it's obviously rather rushed and suffers from the pick a door (left/middle/right) with no context and death behind. That's not good choice structure. But, eh, the game was rushed, and perhaps that would have been fixed.

I want to talk about the writing. This writer clearly has an eye for detail--there's a good writer in here. However, that good writer is being *totally* consumed by boring, repetitive sentence structure. This author needs to read their work aloud and notice that so many paragraphs have *exactly* the same rhythm.

Example: "After what seems like years the sand becomes earthier. Sweat dribbles from your brow as you raised your head to look around. Perhaps it's your eyes playing tricks on you again but you can just make out the outline of what looks to be a town. A glimmer of hope surges through you as your steps gain a boost of speed. You feel what few possessions you didn't remove rattle as you make your way towards what could be a town."

Note the "as you"; "but you"; "as your"; "as you" structure of these sentences.

More subtly, but still a big issue: "The paint has faded into an ugly red-brownish color and the parts of wood you can see are moldy. It looks as suspicious as hell. As if to respond to your thoughts, a small door on one side opens and someone steps out. Your instincts take over and you quickly sneak over to the opposite side of the building."

So almost all of those are "and" additive sentences, one right after the other. Too many of those in a row will kill your narrative momentum. I recommend working on learning more structures. Try other additive sentences. Use cumulatives and periodic sentences. Work on varying the lengths of your sentences as well--that "it looks as suspicious as hell" is really good! That's a nice short punch in an otherwise not interesting paragraph.

I was mildly intrigued on the first two pages of this story. It begins like a typical "lone hero" story: the unnamed protag emerges from the desert and prowls the street in search of a drink. But the saloon has no taps, just a strange vine. OK, that's different.

But unfortunately, that was as good as it gets. As I read through all the possible permutations of this storygame (several quick-death endings, two "prime" endings, and multiple ways to get from A to B) I found myself thoroughly confused as to what was going on. In some branches I learned I was an elf, but for the most part that detail was completely irrelevant. I also carried a gun (very unelflike), and the town had a sheriff and warehouses. This made the whole story, short as it is, seem like a bizarre genre-mashup--sort of like Tolkien meets Sergio Leone.

And then there were all the spelling, grammar, and syntax errors, which were bad enough that some lines were incomprehensible.

The whole story progressed too quickly for me to develop an interest in what was going on. There was a bad guy, doing whatever it is that a bad guy does, and a plot for some kind of municipal domination, or whatever. Since multiple paths led to the same endings, I skimmed through this material multiple times and still didn't get it.

Considering that this "lone hero" contest produced some high-quality stories, I can't feel much sympathy for for the writers who say, "I was rushed."

So, it's kind of hard to tell how I feel about this story.

It really wasn't the worst game I've read. But it had a lot of problems. The first problem is one of the easiest to fix. There were a few spelling and grammar mistakes throughout the story. Again, not the worst I've seen, but fairly noticeable. A bit more proofreading would probably go a long way in finding these mistakes.

The other big issue was pacing. Everything seemed to happen so fast that it became legitimately confusing trying to figure out what was going on. To give an example (spoilers) I learn that this elf is trying to essentially sacrifice humans to demons. Then the next page has me kicking him into the demon portal to be eaten by said demon. And the page after that is the end of the story. This all happened within about 200 words (probably less). And that was just one example.

And lastly, the plot and characters seemed a bit inconsistent. Characters seem to change their opinion of you on a whim, there seems to be little consistency with character personalities and it's all just very confusing.I'm still not quite sure what the evil elf's goal was in the end, or why he cursed the town.

Still, I think this has the potential to be a rather interesting story if more time was spent on it. Even just the proofreading would help the story out a lot. But it definitely needs some work.

You said this story was rushed in the description, and it very much was! There was absolutely no pacing, a new plot point was dropped on you every other page, the characters were unrealistic and pretty much walking plot devices, there was barely any choice in certain paths, the grammar was poor and the author has seemingly never heard of a paragraph.

Spelling and Grammar:

"everything started going to hell even if they should are insane." What exactly was this supposed to mean?

"You know this won't be free so if you ask your gonna pay. Got it?" I count two glaring grammar and spelling errors in this one sentence. No commas, and "your". This is the kind of stuff nine year olds are expected to know.

"invivibility" This is why you proofread.

Plot:

"You see one of the cultists trying to get people to join" Why exactly was this allowed? If the cult was cursing the town, surely the sheriff would have taken some action against it?

In Ending 2, you have two choices. Become a magician, or start over(which resets the game). There should have been at least two more choices.

In Ending 1, Mary holds a knife to our throat. Given we just saved her and her father's life, this was a bizarre and unrealistic reaction.

Characters:

Herman: Herman was, despite being the only character the PC really interacts with, an unrealistic plot device of a character. On one page, he hates us. On the next page, he loves us. This is all done purely for plot purposes, and it shows.

The unnamed elf: There is really no reason why this elf was able to persuade humans(who are supposed to be prejudiced against elves) to join his cult.

All in all, this story will serve as an example of why you shouldn't rush your work, and why you should proofread and plan your story before you start writing.

This story isn't bad. I pretty much died with the other commons, down a trap. And even if it was rushed I enjoyed it. Good luck with the contest!