Player Comments on Venetian's tears

I hate it I hate this I hate it I hate this I hate it I hate this I hate it I hate this I hate it I hate this I hate it I hate this I hate it I hate this I hate it I hate this I hate it I hate this I hate it I hate this I hate it I hate this I hate it I hate this I hate it I hate this

Well, certainly a intriguing concept! There is definitely room for expansion, as many others mentioned. Good work with another one, Mara.

This was...weird, but I love sci fi, the apocalypse and robots so it hit all the sweet spots.

The image for the card was broken btw.

I love it. I was immersed in the story. Keep making stuff uwu.

The setting is the most intriguing aspect of this game.

I would have enjoyed exploring the sunken city of Venice more and to see how this world exists on a daily basis. While the protagonist character is bored with everything around them, the reader is experiencing it for the first time.

Spoilers:

This game was unique, to say the least. I got a whole buncha different vibe's from this story. I got some depressed vibes, some vibes of superiority towards the humans, some rapey vibes towards the clone, and some angry vibes at the ending. This story most definitely plays around with your emotions, and I really the way you changed the mood and pacing regularly. I also loved the way you lead the reader to believe something with the caption you used for each choice.
For example, when you put "show your true feelings" as a caption, I thought sex oh no, but instead, the main character takes out it's anger on the clone. Very wise.

It feels like the story is a whole lot longer than what you wrote it to be but, that's not a bad thing. You go into such good description that it feels longer when you were really just using good words. That's a potent and compelling ability to have. It makes a short story feel more fulfilling and long-lasting, and I respect and hope to develop that in my writing too.

Now let's get into the wrong of the story.

Your title could be a bit confusing, it's actually an excellent title, and it makes a lot of sense with the overall depressing context of the story. Still, I think that there is too much left vague in the title. A lesser intellectual might get confused and stuck-on the title and not be able to understand that Venetian is the main character. If you had added the name of the main character at least once in this story. That would really solve the problem's with the story.

That really is the only bone I have to pick with the story, the concept is really, REALLY, good and I enjoyed it very much. It was a very depressing valentine's day game with a thrilling twist at the end. The plot twist was honestly very well developed and unexpected. In all honesty, I thought the show your true feelings option meant something like wank of to your clone, but no the ending I got was completely unexpected. You set the tone and pacing perfectly before changing the tone to a very stimulating angry mood, and quicking the pacing. I also love how you made the suicide and the death of the clone vague using words to describe indirectly instead of directly.

That's something I like about your writing, you ignore social boundaries, and you create an amazingly creative story.

Who else would wake up and write a story about a lonely android trying to revive his partner(which apparently looks like him/her), and the human race? Then take's a break since it's valentine's day and somehow end's up killing their clone and themselves.

Who else can think of something as creative as that?

Needless to say, the writing and grammar is beautiful. So there isn't much to complain about I think this is a solid 5/10.

This was a liiiittle bit strange, but Mara you always have these unique and compellingly weird ideas, especially with your sci-fi.

The setting established is really interesting, I know you deliberately had to keep this short for the writing jam but I wanted to read more. It felt like what was here would have worked so well as a piece of a larger story. The interactions with the inert clone android were, uh...unexpected, in various ways, but I'm imagining now a story that begins earlier and focuses on trying to research the time machine while slowly going insane from loneliness and obsessing on your duplicate, with what you have here as just a few possible outcomes.

Wanting more after reading is a sign an idea is pretty cool and evocative though so don't take that as a bad thing.

Not sure if you're planning to edit this, but here's a few typos I came across:

and the shady slate0 roofs

looking for a way to refine the quantum leap time trave.

The page with the “Anything Goes” lyrics has a broken italics tag.

Suddenly, you look at Valentine's whip gift. // Not a typo but this sentence needs reworking. 'The whip you'd meant as a kinky surprise for Valentine's...' or something would be clearer.

You touch his body, now totally burned and broken while you cry. // Again not a typo, but man I'd really been reading this thinking the character was female. I don't know why, looking back, especially with the clone being a Max. Maybe just because this scenario made me think of Nier Automata, who knows.

I was getting a bit of a rapey vibe, until my character went haywire and *spoiler* shot up the brain dead clone. */spoiler* Given how short this story was, there was a good deal of information about the world packed into it. I was impressed with how lived in the world felt despite the brevity of the project. Not bad at all.

I only noticed one punctuation error (a comma wasn't spaced correctly). Otherwise, as far as I can tell it was more or less error free.

Not bad, and bonus points for being a bit creepy.

Glad to see another Mara title on here. For how short it is, there's a lot of story here. Backstory, conflict... everything's here and in under 2k words!

(I'll quickly note that there were a few grammar and punctuation errors as well as typos, but they were very small and didn't do a lot to disrupt the reading of the story)

The premise of the story was very unique. I saw the first page in the forums, and I was very interested in where you would take this. I was certainly not disappointed!

The first page drew me in very well. It quickly explained years of build-up to this very moment in a casual way, showing the sheer amount of time that's passed since then. You can feel the loneliness and the conflict before you even make a choice. I was left with questions and I wanted to know more, which made for an excellent first page.

The choices from there branched a good amount, resulting in several different endings. Again, there's a lot of story and branching here for under 2k words. I liked all of the endings, though there were a few places where a dramatic pause would have been nice. For example, in the ending where you whip and shoot MAX-02, there's a spot with an awkward tone change that could be cleaned up with a pause. Something like: "There's a silence as you come back to your senses and realize what you've done." This would add to the loneliness mood and the humanization of the protagonist.

The characters are done very well in this. Well, character, I should say. For having only one active character, there's a surprising amount of characterization. The narration clearly communicates the feelings of the protagonist, and as the reader, you can clearly feel his pain. The way the narration describes MAX-02 and the protagonist's feelings towards her, you can tell that there is a lot of history behind them. You've done a really good job creating dynamics between characters even though only one of them is alive. And yet stories with 5k words and multiple non-braindead, human characters still can have no story. Weird how that works.

Overall, I really liked this story. The mood is captured well, the characters and plot are great, and I can tell that your English is getting better. I didn't see any critical errors in the writing, and the vocabulary was excellent. I would love to see this plot explored more, especially the backstory behind the protagonist and MAX.

Good job :). 5/8

This felt like a lot more than 2000 words. That being said, play the game.

I didn’t really subscribe to watching an Android masturbate to its dead partner, but it was fun(?) to read all the sameness. Fun being a relative term.

Okay, on to the actual story: it certainly was something. You play as an Android working on a time machine to prevent human extinction, whilst your love is essentially brain dead in your bedroom. You can also get drunk. And you’re probably depressed, because you are, quite literally, the last thing alive on Earth on Valentine’s Day in Venice. It’s an interesting premise.

The characters, while there’s only really you (MAX is indisposed of), are well thought out. There’s quite a bit personality in this Android, which is a nice subversion of the usual Android personality tropes. Can’t say much about MAX, seeing as their brain dead, but you can feel the love for it. There’s also the leftover feelings for the extinct human race.

Moving on, the first ending I ended up getting was sleeping with MAX in both senses do the word. It was a little bit awkward for me to read through, but the end card and the general feeling around it was sweet.
Of course, that’s immediately subverted by the let your real feelings show ending: where you end up committing a murder-suicide. Honestly, it’s a little bit makes sense. The Android we play as acts human, and any human would get tired of doing the same thing for 50 years with no new results.
Third is where you take a shower and set the bed on fire. I’m going to be honest and say that I laughed a little bit at the ending. It came a little bit out of nowhere, but you did have a word limit.
Final ending is the most realistic one: drinking by yourself while a song plays in the background and accents how lonely you are.

Spelling, punctuation, and grammar are all great. I liked this game, and even though it’s short, it certainly has that Valentine’s Day spirit! I’m giving it a 5.