Player Comments on Warped

Although “Warped” isn’t as good as its predecessor, “Fear the Psyker”, it’s still a worthy sequel in its own way. Ultimately, it was a good story even if the ending was incredibly disappointing, but I’ll get to that in time.

The story opens on a high note, right after the triumphant rebellion where Karth and his friends overthrow Kyros and the asshole slavers, and manage to forge their own destiny.

From there, the story explores the realities of running a ship. Karth has to deal with everything from funding the ship to dealing with prisoners to forming alliances to declaring war on certain factions. The story also shows Karth gradually improving his Psyker skills, which I really liked.

In the last story, Karth temporarily allied with Elizabeth, Elios, and Durge on the condition that after the rebellion, they would decide whether to find a planet to settle on after being emancipated, or to stay with the ship.

This is the first key branching point in the story. If Karth chooses to find a world to migrate to, the story prematurely ends with a variety of interesting branches. Steve did a great job with the worldbuilding of these various planets, showcasing his skill at building diverse planets with different problems and obstacles Karth and his friends have to overcome. I really liked these paths, since they were the only positive endings in the entire story.

Pacing-wise, the story feels sluggish at times and can get a little bloated. Compared to the last story, where the focus was on survival and eventual rebellion, this story takes much longer to get to the main conflict, which is between Karth + company and Kaam the Prophet.

Some of the sequences were entertaining, and I did like that Steve showed the building of the fleet and the mobilization of the army in great detail. Steve put an incredible amount of thought into showing all the aspects of the army. I liked the sequence where Karth decides on drug+alcohol restrictions in particular. It was interesting to see how the choices we made on how much leeway to give the crew affects the strength of the army. There was also a really cool sub branch where Karth decides to fund the army using drug money.

The stats mechanic was used nicely here! This was unique to this story, and I really liked it since I could see how the army was doing at any point. I also loved how each choice you made had a measurable effect on funds, morale, and strength, and sometimes the game forced you to make tough choices, essentially sacrificing one aspect to improve another. This was a really cool feature of the game since it raised the stakes. I felt that this game did a really good job of engaging the reader and forcing them to put a lot of thought into the decisions they made because of how it would affect the various choices. In this way, the story did an excellent job balancing the game aspect with the story aspect.

I really loved the vast world building that Steve did in this story. The story definitely warrants the massive 130k word count because of all the various planets we visit throughout the story. In the first story, this was briefly teased, but we largely spent most of our time on the ship. This story definitely met those expectations, and it was really cool to visit all the various planets in the galaxy. Each planet had a unique backstory that contributed well to the overall political turmoil of the galaxy. I really loved the power struggle between the Empire and the Forces of Chaos, and I thought that the intricate complex politics and all the various alliances were super interesting!

The only thing I disliked in this story was the ending. The ending, where Karth defeats Kaam but then gets imprisoned by his daughter Maya who as it turns out, is the real mastermind behind the whole thing, was really frustrating. Throughout the 130k wordcount, Steve takes the readers on an entire emotional journey. We get to know the cast of all the characters, form emotional bonds, feel for the characters' struggles, and experience Karth and Fay’s romance, only for it all to fall apart for a random twist thrown in the end. The twist felt completely unearned. I feel like with a twist villain, it’s important to set that character up from the beginning and make us feel something so the twist makes an impact. But this little girl is just shown as a psychic power battery for her dad, and then suddenly she’s actually the real villain. That was a little frustrating. And the worst part is that at the ending, Karth is back to the status quo. Once again, he’s enslaved by a megalomaniacal leader with delusions of grandeur. Except, this feels worse since he has powers and the ability to fight back, but the story makes it so there’s literally no battling our way out of this. The story restricted the choices towards the end, and literally displayed a choice saying there was nothing we could do. That was a very unrewarding ending that felt like a major letdown for all the readers who grew to love the story.

I was really annoyed by the way the story restricted us to this ending. Basically, there’s a point in the story where Karth chooses to ally with the “Dark Eldar” mercenaries. These mercenaries later screw Karth and co. over during an ambush attack on Kaam’s ships, and this leads to our defeat. So I tried to avoid that by not bothering to recruit the Dark Eldar mercenaries, but the game doesn’t let you do that! You’re essentially funneled into the bad ending.

There were some alternate endings during the fight with Kaaam, but I strongly feel there should have been multiple “True Ending” paths to give the readers proper closure.

I really felt that this was a great game. I wanted to like it as much as the previous game, and in some aspects, it even improved upon the first one. But the slow pacing that at times felt bloated, and the unrewarding ending, took this game down a notch. I still recommend this game, just be prepared for a disappointing ending.

I loved this sequel, although I hated the "Broken Soul" ending

Fuck you for the ending.

Really good experience until the finale, that ending was terrible.

SPOILERS
So after two stories following Karth's rise to power which included him taking over a GLORIANA class ship and overpowering/outsmarting a Space Marine chapter master and Chaos sorcerer it ends with being beaten by a super duper more special then you Malice girl? What is the logic for this? What is the justification for this? You basically wrote in a power-fantasy story then completely blue-balled the ending. Maybe i'm missing something but cucking the player just leaves a Nurgletier taste in my mouth. What could possibly be next as a sequel? Spending the first half of the game breaking free from Maya just like with the guy from the first one? That just sounds tiring.

The True Ending was so sad

This is a story about betrayal and subversion.

There's a few "happy endings" you can get here or there where you build up your people after all the hardships they've gone through.

Just remember, you're the bad guy killing other bad guys. In the 40K universe no one wins, there are no happy endings, no one has a chance. Especially the bad guys.

Goddammit, all the endings other than the one at the start were bad. At least you get to survive if you got the True Ending.

Another bug I noticed is that strength doesn’t actually do anything. To test it out, I deliberately lowered my strength to 0 and continued to play on, and nothing happened

The story is fun enough the first time through, but I do have several complaints. First of all, it’s only fun the first time through. There is only one main path, excluding the short paths where you settle on a planet. The story had many chances to diverge into seperate paths, and there were even times when I thought it would, but it always looped back to the same storyline, with only a few minor name changes. It reeks of missed opportunities. Additionally, there were lots of issues with the editing process, and if I were you, I would fire your beta-readers. Throughout the story, I encountered unfinished sentences and paragraphs, paragraphs appearing on pages they’re not supposed to be, at least 1 instance of a misdirected link, a page with no link, and an action that was supposed to reduce morale by 15 increasing it by that amount instead. There were also times where names became mixed up, which brings me to another complaint. The reader isn’t given enough time to become acquainted with (and thus develop an emotional attachment to) the various lieutenants on board, especially if the reader didn’t read the prequel or (like me) read it a long time ago. I often found myself trying to recall who a particular person is and failing to do so. Overall, with all its flaws accounted for, I rate this game 4/8.

So the true ending is being enslaved because of some crazy trick ass bitch. With all of my soul I beg for a third. This is an incredibly well written series. For the part of my soul that wants to conqueror Malice, let there be a way.

Praise the Dark Gods, this is an awesome story. The only positive endings, I think, are at the beginning, leaving the ship to rule a planet.

Death of A prophet was a very bitter-sweet ending, Kaam along with the twins dies, but so do you...

Great sequel and another captivating story from Steve. Please make this a trilogy and the series will be perfect.

This was a very fine addition to the story of the psyker. As always the characters were well written and the plot had several twists (usually working to screw the characters over) in the true style of Steve.

I noticed from one of the comments that there are more than one true ending, so I'm assuming that I must have screwed up somewhere to get the very bad yet true ending that I did lmao.

Any ways hope to read more stories from you.

Uh... yeah, great story, except I'm confused as to whether you would consider which of the following to be the true ending? The Birth of a God or Death of a Prophet? ;D

Well made, and I noticed that karth was less sociopathic than most pf Steve's protagonists.

I enjoyed reading your story. It not only gave me an idea for what I could attempt but also brought back fond memories of the 40k universe that my friend introduced me to in college. You captured the mood and had an interesting cast of characters. Good job! I can’t wait to read more!

*claps* Nicely done Steve. I knew my beta-testing helped.