A Hero of the New World [WIP, Updated 2020-08-25]

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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Hello! A Hero of the New World is a cyberpunk-ish/post-apocalyptic-ish story about becoming a hero (for various definitions of “hero”).

The story takes place in Niagara Arcology, one of the remnants of “baseline” humanity after a devastating war with “posthumans” about 70 years prior to the events of the game. A new normalcy has emerged in this world, one marked by massive inequality and concentration of power. You are a brought up in this world, and through no fault of your own, you gain something akin to “superpowers”.

There will be romance, although it will not be a focus of the story (all the potential ROs are canonically bisexual). There will be politics, including moments where you have to choose sides (or just run away).

Characters/potential romance options
  • You! You are a recent resident of the undercity who gets caught up in civil unrest, and develop some sort of powers…
  • Dr. Evelyn Huang, MD. PhD.: a scientist who takes care of you after you are incapacitated. She seems nice so far…
  • Lorien Rajakumar: Another superpower user, the only one you know of, who works for the authorities and helps to train you. You’ll find out their backstory eventually…
  • Rosa Saez: An organizer in the (literally) underground political opposition. A one-time engineering student who has taken her skills to the revolutionary movement.

(these are characters who have yet to be seen)

  • Leon Zhou: Another radical organizer, and former soldier in the Niagara Guard. He and Rosa grew up together, and they can date eventually (also they’re both trans).
  • Max Kazimierz: A revolutionary leader who has disagreements with Rosa and Leon.
  • Councilor Carla Bernstein: The speaker of the city’s governing Assembly; a member of the reformist faction in the government.
  • General Janus Reinhart: the commander of the Niagara Guard (basically the paramilitary police).

(there are others as well, but I don’t know how important they’ll be yet…)

Questions for readers:
  • In general, how is the story so far?
  • How is the worldbuilding/lore? Is there too much lore dumping, or not enough?
  • How are the characters? Are they interesting so far? Do they have distinct enough voices? How is the narration style?
  • Should there be romantic elements this far? Should there be options for expressing attraction to some of the characters this early on?
  • How are the stats? The personality stats are kind of a placeholder; I’m not sure if/how they’ll be used. Are there any suggestions? The philosophy stats are going to be more important though.

Current status: ~10k words, covers over 1/2 of chapter 1 (with most likely 5 total chapters). So far, the story is pretty heavily railroaded, but it will open up later on. Updates will probably be rather slow, as I have a full time job and also multiple other interactive fiction projects (Pageant, plus like two other choicescript things).

Demo (2020-08-25): https://dashingdon.com/play/autumnc/a-hero-of-the-new-world/mygame/

Thank you so much for trying out my story!

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I think there should be more exposition on the different factions, I know there is some in the stats menu but not everyone will look there and it may be confusing. I also feel like it moves too quickly, in the space of a few choices we go from looking out a window to shooting balls of energy and maybe flying

Aside from that I enjoyed playing and am looking forward to your next updates!

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Very interesting thus far. Pacing is good as is in my opinion.

That said, there’s a bug where the game just goes to a “play again” menu after the second choice in the “fall” test.

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Are able to go through the hole game by not joining any side is that a possible path.

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I like it so far, bookmarked! <3

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Hello! No updates yet, but I’ve been thinking about the game and how it might be made better. Right now, I feel like there’s not really any cohesion with the stats and how they affect the story. Thus, I would like to tie the choices and powers to both the philosophy and personality stats in a coherent way (so some power usage types will be associated with different philosophies and so on).

In addition, the opening feels a bit weak, and I’ve been thinking about how to improve it. Would it be better to have a flash-forward to a potential future scene rather than a vague scene from the past? Also I’m wondering about how to introduce the setting and politics in a more organic way, but I don’t have good ideas yet…

I haven’t been working on this game as much I have been on other things (mostly Pageant, besides my actual jobs), and I’m not a fast writer in general, so updates might be somewhere between slow and very slow.

Unfortunately that’s where the demo ends right now.

Yes, there will be a “run away from everything” path eventually, but that has its own challenges.

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