Vincha

I already kind of liked Celcini's work on what A Terrible World and with him being crowned the winner of the religion contest, I wanted to see his debut story or well the first thing he published on this site. In short, this is what you get if you mash in your average 90's movie violence with the hypermasculinity of 300 and a big dose of norse mythology. It surprisingly works Pretty well and has also a good amount of branching. I like seeing buff people smash the shit out of each other with sticks, so it was right up my alley. If you like that kind stuff, read it.

The first thing that springs into mind was the dark humor that is very similar to A Terrible World. I think the best showcase of that was you kicking the god's shrine and the angry God lightning striking you out of existence. That certainly earned a chuckle or two out of me. Oh yeah and the fact that Enya keeps flirting to the not so enthused Velimir. The humor kind of keeps the story from becoming a too painfully depressing. It therefore never felt like a chore to read. Again. Also slapping me with the surprise incest damnit. (At a second read. Eh, there was sadly foreshadowing with him ongoing at his little sister)

One theme that I often see in Celcini's writing is that the reader becomes painfully aware that the powers that be don't give a fuck about us or literally anyone. There was this God ridiculing you in the shrine. Then we have in one of the endings a all powerful summoned beast called Leshy who literally devoured everyone except you. I can be hyperanalyzing this, but it feels like the game Pathologic which also dives in similar themes.


One slight criqtique, the formatting of the picture in the vision page is a bit awkward to read in mobile devices, I frequently encountered the same thing when I try to add pictures in my own story games. I recommend to stick to a maximum of 500 pixels to be safe.

As for the characters, I love Zlatko's and Enya's history together, gosh, they are bickering like an old divorced couple. One thing that I really like is the consistency in their characterization and motives. I noticed that in Zlatko, during my first route I simply chose to use the artifact and kill all those Byzantijnse myself and after my victory Zlatko friggin killed me because he wants the power himself, same thing happened when I teamed up with Enya to destroy the artifact in a later route hehe.

Oh yeah and last but not least Velimir. He is the most smooth brained horndog, triumphing in degeneracy even more that protag of the succubus story of Ogre11 did. I can't say that I would like to be friends with that motherfucker, but the fact that I can be so disgusted by him says enough about the strong impression he leaves for the reader. The possible options you can choose just cements his idiocy even more. "Yeah, these Bandits would totally let me through hurdurhurdur. Yeah, totally good decision to drown my sorrows and fuck my sister." The only good thing about him are his muscles and even those cannot save him from dying all those stupid deaths.

In short, very funny story, mashed humor Pretty well with the dark setting and subject matter. Fun read, would recommend.

General Recommendation: An entertaining and unique story, notable for its original setting and ideas.
Preview: Can you protect your slavic tribe from the invading Byzantine army?

=SPOILERS BELOW=

General notes:
One of this game’s main strengths is the main character’s voice. It’s clear what kind of person he is from page one, just by the tone with which he muses on his current situation.
In a similar vein, another strength of this game is the strength of the setting. The setting never overwhelms the plot and characters, but it’s clear the author has a strong idea of the kind of world he’s trying to convey, and the world always feels consistent and flavorful. Telling a mythic fantasy adventure story using a real-world setting and cultures provides a unique and fun reading experience. The fantastic elements are fun and intriguing, adding mystery and suspense to even the parts of the game where they are not included. The different civilizations, races, creatures, and types of magic, are all fleshed out with intriguing details, I’d be interested in reading more stories set in this original world.
The pacing of many scenes feels just slightly rushed, but this doesn’t cause any problems, letting the reader move quickly to be introduced to new settings and concepts, which is this game’s strength.
One thing this game delivers well on is the introduction of intriguing mysteries and their resolution. The questions “What really happened to the Vinchan civilization?” and “Why are the Deliblato sands like that?” both have intriguing answers that fit well with the tone of the work and the world.

Specific notes:
-The story’s opening is a little recap-y, telling rather than showing. It’s not really a problem as the information is efficiently communicated, but in the future you might want to start with action or dialogue rather than information. For instance, this information could be communicated through a combination of dialogue and reminsices in a scene where the narrator is being informed about the return of the Byzantine forces. The opening scene almost does a good job of doing this, intersepersing with scenes from the tribal elders, and providing external prompts for the narrator’s thoughts as he walks towards the shrine. It doesn’t quite pull it off, however. With another round or so of editing to tie the narrator’s thoughts in more tightly with his current location and situation, this would be a strong opening scene.
-I usually dislike informational links, but this game might benefit from an quick informational link explaining what the real-world Byzantine empire and slavic tribes were like at this point for non-history-savvy readers.
-You really want to split up your dialogue into seperate paragraphs. Having more than one character speaking in the same paragraph is quite confusing as a reader.
-“Just as the creature pounces on you”. What creature? This should probably be “Just as a creature pounces on you”.
-The opening scene does a good job characterizing the narrator through his thoughts and words rather than simply describing him, I have a good idea of his personality just off the first page.
-I bet Klem is going to end up being more competent than the narrator is giving him credit for.
-It’d be better to provide the information about Todors through description, the parenthesis draws the reader out of the story.
-“Grumble” is probably better than “Say annoyedly”. Generally you want to avoid adverbs in dialogue tags, as they are a form of telling rather than showing.
-I like the bits of lore that we’re seeing. Vincha is a cool name. I like the potrayal of the different monsters and creatures, and the structure of the tribal life.
-The narrator seems to under-react to learning from Zlatko that he was fooled by his vision about the creature. I’d like to see a bit more of an emotional reaction, unless you’re deliberately trying to potray an extremely stoic and/or emotionally repressed character.
-Hmm, well I don’t trust Zlatko, but I don’t trust the creature either.
-This story might benefit by having some of the narrator’s thoughts told in italics, just to switch up the pacing a little.
-Lol, “You awake in the morning having not been eaten by some horrific creature”.
-I like how more and more information is revealed about what really happened to Vincha over time. First, they’re potrayed as an advanced and enlightend situation saved by a creature they summoned. Then, we learn that they were actually destroyed by that creature. Then, we learn that they were actually conquorers who enslaved other races.
-It’s too bad you don’t have a choice about murdering Enya in the epilogue. Yeah, she was a sexually manipulative bastard, but she did keep her word about saving everyone in the village. It would make the most sense to just tell her to leave without killing her. EDIT: Oh, we’re burying babies alive now. EDIT: Ah, this is the famous incest ending. EDIT: Well, I’m not a big fan of games that force the reader into making unethical choices without really giving them the option to avoid it. I suppose that was the point of the grimdark fantasy contest, however.
-I like the variety of different non-epilogue endings you can get along the way. They’re mostly logical, and entertaining.
-Amusing that Enya can speak “<3” in conversation. Must be a witch thing.


Grammar:
Alright, though there are a number of places where words are used incorrectly.
Mastery of Language:
Choppy and inconsistent. The writing style feels like it’s almost excellent, just rough and unpolished. This is probably just something that will improve over time as the author writes more works/gets them more heavily edited. I understand this was written in only a few days, so that could account for the choppiness.
There are tons of places where I would make minor edits to grammar or word order to improve the flow of things (on almost every line), but I’m not going to bother to individually point those out. I think this game would benefit a lot from having a second person go through it and make these minor sentence structure edits, all it really needs is a thorough polish. What works well is the pacing and character voice, which are generally more difficult to master, what needs work is the nitty-gritties of sentence structure and wording, which generally just take effort and practice to improve at.
-There are a number of run-on sentences. I recommend splitting up some of the longer sentences in this work.
-In places, the chunks of dialogue seems to last for longer than is realistic. You may want to break up long phrases of dialogue with dialogue tags (he said, etc.), or brief responses.

Mechanics & Coding:
-There’s a formatting issue with the different font’s dialogue.

Branching:
Alright. There is a “main” linear path, but there are a number of non-death side endings when you deviate from it.

Player options/Fair choice:
Generally good, usually the consequences of actions are foreshadowed and the player isn’t forced into anything, though there are a few exceptions.

Nitpicks:
-It’d be nice if the numbers like 20,000 and 2,000 had commas in them.
-I’d be curious to learn how much of the mythology and history in this game is true and how much is made up. A “fun facts” page at the end saying what’s true and what isn’t could be fun.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
I first reached the ending “The Rashkan King” without dying.

WRITING ADVICE:
Get a beta reader to do a thorough word-by-word edit of your work, or if you can’t find one, read through your work out loud to identify choppy writing. Your writing style in this reads like the unpolished and uneditied version of a very engaging voice, it just needs some intensive work done on it.

CONCLUSION: 6/8.

This was actually a pretty good story considering that English isn't the author's first language, and the timeframe it was written in. It's a pretty solid dark fantasy, although it's not grimdark.

The writing was pretty good, especially the introduction, which hooked me instantly. I enjoyed the narration from the PoV of Velimir, because the tone felt very fitting for the story and setting. There was a pretty small amount of grammatical errors and it didn't disrupt from the writing, although proofreading wouldn't hurt. The only real issue with the writing was there were a few modern idioms used that don't make sense in context. For example, a witch talked about "the nuclear option". Nuclear weapons didn't exist in the 7th century, so this breaks immersion and feels really out of place.

Story wise (spoilers ahead), I got one epilogue, and then went back and got another one because I was curious. The first epilogue I got was the one where Zlatko goes mad with power, and that one's pretty standard. Nothing really crazy happens, and I guess it's fine. The second epilogue I got was where you FUCK A WITCH and then FUCK YOUR SISTER. That one was simultaneously disgusting and hilarious. Celicni, you have scarred me for life, so I think that's a win for this story as a dark fantasy (because what can be as dark as that age gap? Blegh).

Also, with this storygame, unlike others, the correct path seemed really obvious, but I'm unsure if other readers feel the same as me.

Overall, this was a pretty good story on the shorter side!

Amazing book, and I need sleep, and What The Actual Fuck Why Is the MC Cheating On His Queen With His Fucking Sister!?!?!? I mean, not blaming him, but still! Great game though, kinda would have enjoyed a book to go collect the artefacts and some rpg storyline, plus the awesome game mechanics along with the artefacts. Still, all whom have said this would be a world for a DND campaign, you are absolutely right.

Okay so, it's pretty rare to have stories set in the Byzantine Empire around 600 AD. Or, mediaeval fantasy stories that have actual historical fiction and aren't just "medieval" themed. So this one was a treat, the fictional worldbuilding was pretty great and layers well with the historical elements. There were some ahistorical bits here and there (Examples: The Byzantines wouldn't have been able to send 20,000 men that far north in 626! Also they would've been called the Romans) but nothing that takes you out the story.

And this story isn't a wall of text historical fiction, it's the fun kind that doesn't boggle you in too many details. That said, I have a few complaints.

Firstly, this story is too horny. Secondly, the main character's 14-year old sister exists purely for everyone to thirst over. Like, she has no other purpose in this story than to give fanservice, it's very weird. There's not a single path in this story that doesn't shoe horn in a detail about how sexy she is or has one of the characters lusting over her. Yeah, a wee bit off-putting ngl. I'm not sure if the fact that it's otherwise inconsequential to the story makes it better or worse, because on one hand it just feels even more unnecessary as a result, but on the other hand the story can be enjoyed while ignoring it.

On another note, I like the format of this story being mostly the build up to the main event. Okay, so now I'm going into spoilers (warning)

there's a little bit of me that wonders why there's like three romantics in this story, but there's a few interesting paths that get barely any detail. That one path where the MC eats the artifact is really cool but there's no forking or choices after it. Idk it would've been interesting, I wish the story did more with it. I can say the same about a lot of the choices you make, many of the story endings feel like they, rather than a forgettable love interest, the MC's 14-year-old sister, and the witches horniness, could've gotten more focus. At times I wondered if this was a well-written porn story.

Very entertaining. Enjoyed it!

This story is well written and fun to read. Even though it is grimdark, I liked the humor that I found present in many of the paths that I took.

Also, I really enjoyed how the world and understanding of the history opened up the further you went in the game. I know this is what usually happens in any story, but I felt that the pacing of how the information was presented a piece at a time was done well. It caused me to really enjoy exploring the world this was set in.

The characterization was done pretty well. Each of the characters had a distinct and understandable personality that fit well into the narrative. I also liked that from the beginning vision, the creature Leshy looked like the savior of Vincha, but by the ending you find that it was also their destruction.

The branching was well done. As with his other stories, Celicni does a good job of providing nicely varied endings depending on choices. The endings were fun, and I liked seeing the different depraved endings come about even when you thought you made the "right" choices.

Overall: Well done and fun to read. Definitely recommended.

Diego sequel

It was a fairly decent story, the main character was both a deplorable jackass and enjoyable protagonist;
you could make a continuation with Diego where he grows up strong magically and physically, and Velimir finds out he's alive or something.

My favorite scene from this was when he decided to be a “granny fucker”. Amazing story.

This was a short, but fun bit of storytelling. I think maybe I should have headed back to the village from some healing and maybe next time try not to piss off a God...oops.

"You have died...by pissing off a god."