Posted! This covers about the first two-thirds of the prologue. The last third is your father at the Siege of Wull and the actual birth of your character. I’m trying to think of ways to make the mother’s tale a little more exciting. Let me know what you all think.
Nah, my friend. That link won’t work. (Regardless of which browser you open it in, I believe.) To upload your game with a working link, follow the discussion in this thread:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/r4vowwznfu0iy3l/A%20Middling%20Life_%20Genesis.html?dl=0
Can you play me now? lol thank you @ThisisSymbolic
Yosh! You did it! I was afraid my help would’ve been of, well, no help. And I will play. Someday. Or in a moment! Depends on what the gods want from me today. (Though I do intend on trying it out eventually. I mean, I did like one of your posts, and you’re the first post I liked, so…)
EDIT: My social awkardness is showing, seeing how I forgot to say ‘you’re welcome’. You’re welcome.
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I am honored to have received your first like. And it was a little touch-and-go there for a minute but it did all work out.
I derped. Ignore this.
(Through some manner of sorcery, I somehow managed to press the enter button…)
As I was saying, having played a bit of the game already, I can safely say I think you’ve uploaded some good content so far! The writing is excellent, and I like the somewhat ancient, somewhat formal tone your story has. I took a look at the stats page as well; I saw what you did there, and the opposing pairs were smartly done. Not knowing what the theme(s) of your story is, though, leaves me wondering what the purpose behind these pairs are.
How will they affect the player’s game, and, most importantly, how will they be put into effect? I can see how with Lust, where the more of the easier it’ll be for the character to seduce people or something, but being an envious sloth doesn’t sound to good? Are characters punished for venturing into the seven deadly sins? Or does being envious have its benefits, such as the player being more conniving?
As for the seven virtues, will they have their benefits too or simply serve as a nuisance and nothing more e.g. you have too much humility, so now you’ll be spat on from here on out? Just curious, 'cause I don’t doubt there are some choice of games that punish you through and through for behaving in a certain manner, which I can’t help but find a waste of stat potential.
Your world is interesting, but you’re stuffing too much information at us at once. It’s overwhelming. How to tone it down? Well, other than doing away with the prologue altogether, I can come up with no solutions for now. Also, the choices, I can tell, seem to just be in there for the sake of being choices and nothing more. Like choosing the type of weather and the name of a lady. (Why can’t you choose your own name/gender, by the way?)
Also, there are a lot of random quotation marks thrown in the prose where they shouldn’t be, and there are times when a big ass paragraph should be split, like during the King’s speech. (Was it the King? I could be wrong). There’s also this error with italics I found:
You think yourself some sort of god
King o' War, an' King o' Ours
Well I tell you friend just from mine to yours
Let's go a round, Let's go around!
[i}Put that hammer down!
I said let's go a round! Let's go a round
I said put that hammer down!
In the ground! In the ground!
That's where you'll be found!
Let's go a round! I said put that hammer down!
See it there? Yep. Anndd, that’s all I’ve got for now until I have more time on my hands.
The prologue takes place on the day your character is born. The man and woman are your father and mother, when you’re born you’re certainly be able to choose your name. The option to write in a name for both of your parents will be there in the future, I just didn’t want to dabble there until I was comfortable. There actually isn’t a fake_choice in there all of them actually set up important parts of your character in the future. Thank you for letting me know about the different writing fobs I’ll make sure to tone them down. Dang it, I thought I caught all my typos on the italics.
Originally you were going to be able to choose to hear your mother’s story or your father’s story first but I wrote myself in to a corner with that and removed it for the time being.
As for the seven opposing virtues and vices it’s going to hopefully give a sense of the value of moderation. Being too virtuous can lead to Honor Before Reason, doing the right thing at the expense of yourself. Being too prone to your vices could lead to gaining many mortal benefits at the costs of things such as friends, family, etc.
Thank you so much for your input. And if you don’t mind me asking which options did you go through the first time and why?
For example of how everyone of those first choose matter, I’m a writer before I’m a game designer and right now I’m writing the end of the Siege of Wull and there may well be twenty different options for how the battle goes based on what time of the year it is and what your father’s occupation is. And yes I’m aware that’s a bad idea. lol.
What is there error and where is it occurring?
It’s happens when I finish the animals choosing and checking the status before it
Might I suggest you add appropriate spacing between paragraphs? Right now before even attempting to play I’m being smacked around the face by great walls of text.
When I compiled it all of the other pre-made scenes were added in by accident. My story ends so far after the baby starts to come, I’ll solve that for my morning update.
@LordOfLA thank you I’ll solve that as well.
I’ll just warn you now, this is really long.
There’s one major issue I have plot/world wise. The story starts off with:
"In the eyes of the gods all people are equal, man or woman, they are judged not based on gender but on actions. "
But then it goes on to say:
“In Henlan men have often suggested that the most glorious death to die is one where you are flanked by your brothers with a weapon in hand. Merchants and Miklamen tell tales of a long dead nation where only people who died in two ways were given gravestones. Men who had died in battle and women who had died in childbirth.”
This suggests that men are exclusively the warriors, and that the most respected men are war heroes and the most respected women are child bearers.
“…to birth sons to carry on our husbands lines and daughters to watch grow up into beautiful wives of strong men.”
The story states that men and women are equal, but the way the world is described it is very patriarchal, especially since women are not considered legitimate heirs to the throne, with Alexia, the eldest living legitimate child, having to compete for the throne against male relatives and an illegitimate brother.
“Having done it eight times herself and delivering seven healthy children in total. If one of the three of her sons had lived past the age of fourteen maybe this war could have been avoided.”
If people were truly judged by their actions and not their gender, why is it that any of the three deceased sons would have been considered eligible to rule, but all four of the living daughters are not? Since Alexia herself is a candidate for the throne and is leading an army in order to win it, it can be assumed she has about the same skill and drive to rule as any of the other three male candidates. But because she is female, she has to fight for her right to rule instead of automatically being considered next in line.
It’s perfectly fine for the story to take place in a patriarchal world, just don’t preface it with men and women are equal. And if you do plan on having gender be a choice, you’ll have to take in to account whether you’ll want to gender flip the world like in Choice of Broadsides, or write a different path for each gender since each will be facing different obstacles and have different opportunities. Or you can gender lock your story. Most people like being able to choose, but a lot of people will overlook it as long as it fits the story and the story is good.
Spelling, grammar, etc.
Just a suggestion, you might want to take out the word “serjeant” as I’m assuming you’re using it in terms of the feudal system, but it’s an obscure word that can be mistaken as a misspelling of the word “sergeant”.
You also use the Old English form for syr and hore, and they really stand out and take away from the immersion, at least for me, especially since you unnecessarily capitalized hore.
She didn’t want to identify herself as a former Hore to a stranger.
Several of the Hores in his service had given birth to children in this room before
You may think Old English fits the tone of your world better, but since you use it so infrequently, and for the sake of consistency and clarity, just stick with standard English. For the most part they just look like spelling errors.
When writing numbers, make sure the way you write them is consistent. The first time, you used hyphens to describe the age of your father and Jon the Younger as two-and-twenty. The second time, you didn’t use them when Leif One-Eye was saying he’s seen five and forty winters.
Before you choose your father’s name you refer to him as “your father”, but afterwards you refer to him as the name you chose. It makes the story jump from second to third person. Then when the King/Queen you chose tells him to kneel you refer to him as “your father” again and the perspective jumps back to second. It’s a bit jarring as a reader. You can use the father’s name when characters are speaking, but please try to keep the narrative in second person.
Choosing snowy weather gives you an odd spacing after “Standing near the door your father shook the snow off his furs”
Even if you choose that the weather is perfect, Leif One-Eye still complains about having “no reprieve from this weather.” And before the weather is chosen it says:
Making the morale issue even worse was the weather.
Why/how would perfect weather negatively affect morale? And after choosing perfect weather it says:
Which was what made it even worse.
The fact that there’s supposed to be a celebration is what’s making it worse, not the weather. If there wasn’t a war going on, I’m assuming the celebration would happen regardless of the weather. So perfect weather being bad doesn’t really make sense in any scenario. You should probably just take out the perfect weather option. In fact, if the type of weather doesn’t have any major effect, you could probably just take out that choice entirely.
One of the guards on duty ran to her calling “Woman are you alright?”
I know you probably don’t mean for it to sound derogatory, but it kinda does. Maybe you can switch out “woman” for “madam” or something more along those lines?
When choosing your mother’s occupation/background just have “I am” instead of “I am a” since you already have the a/an/etc in the choices.
This is when choosing arrowsmith for your mother’s occupation/background:
To my father Amr, on the Street of Hammers. Please help me my baby is coming." [mother] lied.
You’re missing a quotation mark, and probably should have “Take me to my father…” since the guard only asked if she was alright, then she said her name and it doesn’t make sense to continue with “To my father…” immediately after that. And I have to wonder, what exactly is she lying about here? Is that not her father, and where he lives? Is not her baby coming? You should probably just use said. If she said something along the lines of, “Take me to my father whom I work for…” then you could use lied.
This is when choosing handmaiden for your mother’s occupation/background:
He didn’t think it was proper to bring her up to the Dowager Queen, yet the Dowager Queen was also the only person it seemed proper to bring her to.
He didn’t think of/couldn’t take her to a midwife? The Dowager Queen is literally the only person capable of handling births in the entire city? Even if your mother is friendly with her, how is a random guard supposed to know that and figure that taking her to the Dowager Queen is the best option for getting her help?
These next ones will be sentences that need a bit touching up, I put my edits in parentheses:
It had gotten to the point that with two kings left(,) a large portion of the common folk in the army were discussing disserting.
…earning the friendship of many heirs to key (h)ouses and (t)itles.
Your father (entered) the guard tower
There were some thirty odd men in (the) guard tower…
And never have I been treated so (poor) as {candidate} has treated us.
Let {candidate} fight Rurik by (them)self! (Ignore this if that’s just the way Leif talks)
Because {candidate} deserves to be the {King/Queen} (and) they’d be good at it.
(Also, are all the candidates addressed with the royal we? Or did you just not want to code for pronouns? 
)
True to his (name) the man lacked his left eye (Using SAT words like sobriquet throws off the immersion since most people will have to pause to figure out what it means through context, or the dictionary if they’re dedicated enough.)
I’d (ken?) most o’ us know your face, but few your name. (I understand what he means, but “ken” tripped me up. If you could tweak it a bit for clarity that’d be awesome!)
I had to sell the last of my herd when this all started. (Because) I know that when this is all done (This is for the father being a Drover; if the original is just how he talks, you can ignore this.)
If any of you would dare give (their) lives
Your father (rose,) face still red
She did try to continue her (nightly) walks (through) the city(.) (T)here was something beautiful about the city at night even though(delete the comma) {weather}. (having “the city at night” twice in a row was repetitive)
There were guards at each of the five gates (delete “in”), each (outfitted with) (delete “in the”) sturdy iron armor. (Any weapons?)
She loved your father dearly and did not know (delete “what she”) how she could bear the world without him.
if something were to happen to her or to their child he would be (delete “a”) crushed (delete “man”). (Suggestion: replace crushed with devastated)
The Dowager Queen sat and talked to Lady Car reliving (some) stories of the past few years.
all of her ladies-in-waiting having reached the age where (their) fathers had married them off
(During your mother’s) pregnancy(,) the Dowager Queen had kept her employed paying her (to) sit and talk with her, as well as teaching her how to read (delete “slightly”). (So the Dowager Queen paid your mother to just sit and talk with her? You should probably add something to clarify if this is because either the D.Q. has no one else to talk to and is desperate for companionship, it’s a random act of charity and your mother won the lottery, or your mother was a loyal handmaiden before but was unable to perform her normal handmaiden duties while pregnant so the D.Q. changed her duties to just being a companion because otherwise she would’ve been fired or something?)
Stats Screen
I’m guessing the “of” is where your name will be; I’d suggest changing it to “Unknown of Unknown” so that there’s a framework for the name instead of just a floating “of”.
And Health should be a line down.
Script Errors
Choosing Sten as father’s last name - startup line 297: non-existent variable ‘mastermason’
Choosing mother’s occupation as Thrall - startup line 421: non-existent command ‘set_mother’
And we’re done! Hooray! Did you stay with me through all that? 
Seriously, good luck with chipping away at this story; based on what you’ve said so far it looks like it’s going to be a massive project. Don’t be afraid to narrow the choices or be linear at times, you don’t want to end up getting overwhelmed at the prospect of infinite paths.
While I did think it was a misspelling, according to wikipedia, both are valid, both are still in use and they mean the same thing. The former considered obsolete but still used by the British Army.
I haven’t played the demo yet but I have been interested in the progress of this since you first posted. Is there a particular reason the game is gender locked or do you plan on adding the option to play as female later? I know I would be more inclined to play this if that option was availabe.
At the moment your character has not been born as yet, in this next update you will be and I’ve removed the only gender locking line. I initially considered gender locking in a way similar to Lords of Aswick, but following some research involving medieval women a little further I’ve degender locked it, changing it so that a female can rise in the same way as a male character. For example Alexia is no longer Queen Alexia but King Alexia, and if you play a female you can still be knighted and become a Syr.
Thank you a lot for your in depth review. You’re correct in guessing that some of the dialogue is how the characters talk and I’d actually been making changes along the same lines as a lot of your points thank you. The thing with the gender is that I’m walking the line between the politically correct gender-equal environment we have and love here at CoG and that the medieval world was not that. I’ve been taking steps to attempt to equalize it out more in this prologue. The weather choice actually does come into play because it sets up both when your character is born, their patron deity, and some details about the battle. I just couldn’t think of a type of weather that would fit summer since I’d taken storm for spring and heat for autumn.
For the whole gender equality thing, you can have the world based on medieval times technology-wise, but since it’s fiction there’s no reason why you couldn’t make up a totally new culture. One of my story ideas takes place in medieval times and while one kingdom is a more traditional patriarchal monarchy, the rival “kingdom” is a matriarchal democracy where the leader is more of an a guide and a mediator rather than a ruler.
As for the weather, I actually didn’t pick up on that you were going for seasons 
I live in a place where the weather can be rather bipolar and all that weather can take place in a single season. Instead of listing specific weather, maybe you could say spring weather, summer weather, etc.
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Same with the weather which was why it was so hard. Right now I’m trying a second approach at the prologue, I’m keeping the story the same, only instead of giving the in depth story from that perspective I’m going to try a more traditional, early childhood chapter with your character, cause in the end this is going to be a massive story.