When Rock Meets Watermelon

The short version: this game is loaded with charm and worth anyone's time to take a look at.

I had some small nitpicks, mostly involving character motivations and realism which is a subject I am particularly autistic about, but the overall effect was such a pleasant one. I enjoyed exploring this world, and some instances of really good writing mixed in didn't hurt either.

But let's get this out of the way: both "Watermelon" and "Cocoa Lire" are distractingly silly names. Distracting as in any time either would pop up in a sentence I'd have to stop and mentally make the "really?" face. Maybe some of the others were silly too, but compared to THAT they were barely noticeable.

I thought it was very strange that a member of the royal family, with a crest identifying himself as a member of the royal family, was in a bar with no guards, being mocked and threatened by random lowlifes. (He also seemed surprisingly open about sharing details of his lovelife with some random commoner, even before he knew who you were.)

I thought it strange also that the first and only option for trying to speak to an army commander, was to sneak into a military base and into his tent in the middle of the night, instead of like, at least TRYING to send a letter to try and arrange a meeting.

"Treason" also, as I've mentioned, may not mean what you think it means.

But the game is full of some really nice bits of writing as I said. You have a way of setting a scene and creating atmosphere with just a couple of lines, whether it's about the reddish sunlight seeping through cracks in the walls, or the deathly silence of a shadowy pine forest.

The characters too, all of them were brought to life in a believable way even though many only had the briefest appearance. (Watermelon herself might have ended up the weakest of the bunch. I did get a clear idea of her personality, but a lot was just summarized to me as things my character already knew rather than being imparted through interaction. My first playthrough I didn't even get to speak to her before events moved forward.)

I'm not sure it's entirely clear in the early investigation choices that you're meant to do all of those things, or all of them in order. The first time, I decided to have a drink and then the more efficient option of talking to Rock directly; he gave me a clue about searching the library, but of course by then it was too late to do anything with that information.

I ended up liking Rock quite a bit, but still, I have no idea why he handed me the key to the Winter barracks. Because that might have been ACTUAL treason.

I had a sense the ending confrontation was a bit rushed. Maera and Cairn's drama sort of came out of nowhere, and Cairn made sure in the middle of the confrontation to spell out to her in detail this info they both already had. It was however, very satisfying to pick out the most effective spell, and have it work immediately to flatten the bitch. Although it makes the route with all those superfluous items sort of pointless (and I'm unsure why one route let you poke around the town as you walked through, and the other did now) I did like the way items were used here as a general rule. Not many games bother, and even fewer use them well.

Death by malicious goats was very unexpected, but I mean it shouldn't have been, you warned about that right there in the description!

Other than that I reached a neutral and goodish ending, and then the true one. Given Fayre was pretty meh on the whole idea of marrying Watermelon in the beginning, I was surprised his heartbreak was such a thing in the epilogues. But if the seven you mention don't involved deaths, I've still got some poking around to do, I know I definitely haven't explored every option yet anyway.

It's possible this review came off more critical than intended, I realize most of this is just nitpicking. As I commended the game, you can see that I liked it quite a bit, and found it pretty wholesome and heartwarming overall.

I expected actually something way worse from you based on your short story entry, but it's actually quite good. Quite surprised about it. It seems like you invested all your efforts into this piece.

I like the central conflict which is between the prospective marriage of life and Rock, an elf and a human. Interspecies marriage is in this world frowned upon, so yeah, very bad news for that couple. Especially the beginning scenes and ending deal with it quite competently.

However, I kind of find it doubtful that this scroll about a previous elf human marriage was just lying around in a library haha. Plus the middle part felt a bit dragged on where you explore the town. Normally I like those kinds os stuff, but it's gkind of weird to see a character who's in such a hurry bum around so much.

Oh yeah, one tiny nitpick: the names are a little bit too kiddy in my opinion. I laughed a little when I realized that Watermelon was a friggin name and yeah, thought that I would get used to it eventually, but I didn't.

Overall, surprisingly good take on your prompt, engaging beginning and ending, not-so-good middle part. Keep it up, Goodnight_a!

This story was written in a really nice and highly readable style with interesting characters and situations. A good and fairly original use of the Fantasy genre :)

Genuinely funny, with a thought-through plot and rich writing

Expected a short story about a young witch persuading her friend not to go along with a marriage, what I got was long adventure story that ended in changing the marriage law and saving a village from a pack of wolves. Surprising, but not unwelcome. Reminds me of that one young-adult fantasy series by Sarah J Maas.

Overall it was not bad and delivered well.

Pretty good story. The writing was pretty good, ranging from elegant and memorable in parts to strange word choices in others. Some things could have been done better, but small errors are expected for a first story, like prompting us when to use items and telling us what would happen if we didn't, which I felt was too heavy-handed and took away from any puzzle-solving aspects, instead of just letting us use the items when we wanted to and otherwise offering us the base choices. The story overall could have used more polish, in particular the middle part. Especially vexing were the random deaths and bizarre discrepancy between being a resourceful fantasy RPG main character in some options and other options where I act like a bumbling idiot. Why wouldn't I just cast a nature spell instead of getting killed by goats? Despite that, this story made me want to read more stories from this author, especially when not constricted by a contest prompt.