The story takes place nine hundred years after the apocalypse. Drastic changes ravaged the atmosphere, the soil, even the genetic codes of every species on the planet. You play a diplomat, someone tasked with coordinating your community’s efforts for survival.
Currently, the story is about 10 percent of the way finished, including part of the epilogue. I’ve locked the epilogue for now, though, so the current demo takes you through the introduction and character creation, and partway through the first night. Any feedback or suggestions would be much appreciated.
I’m thinking of reworking the crisea portion drastically, and changing the puzzle type from loop to branching, which might suit CS and this particular style of story better anyway.
The completed story is meant to cover the timespan of three nights, plus the intro and epilogue.
And many thanks to @Lordirish 's CS Comp and those who chose its theme, which was the inspiration for this story’s creation. Thanks also to @Keira and other testers who helped me get it to where it is now.
“E rarely shows eir face this early in the Green Season. Selenn’s godde is said to rule over the inventors, the logicians, and the builders.”
I’m assuming “E” should be “She”, “eir” should be “her”, and “godde” should be “goddess”, but I suppose it could go the other way to considering every gender identifying word in the two sentences is mispelled.
I haven’t read past that, but it looks good so far
@Doctor Those are pronouns (not sure if that’s the right term) which are sometimes used to address a person of non-binary gender. You’d have to dig up the topic on the matter to be sure though. (or maybe I’ll do it once I’ve finished doing what I’m doing right now)
@faewkless That’s rather what I was hoping to achieve. ( : Also I will say, as far as the narrator’s perspective and because of the type of science fiction I’m attempting to write, in AWOL’s universe there are religions, mythology, and superstition, but there are not necessarily any gods or divine powers.
@Samuel_H_Young Just for the record, I did say nine hundred years after everything went sour, not ninety. ( : 0
@Doctor Those are indeed non-binary pronouns, @Cecilia_Rosewood called it correctly. There is actually a 'note to the reader ’ in the stats page clarifying this, as well. I’ve thought over a way to clarify it in-game without bashing the reader over the head in identifying Selenn as one of the non-binary characters, but I’ve not come up with any method I particularly like as yet.
To me, the biggest blow for the game is that so many choices are left unfinished, even within the scope of the game.
Yes, absolutely. First off, thanks so much for taking the time to read and comment on the game! Then, you’re absolutely right about rigging the bridge to the ending. I included it because the solution has to do with failure - and I was gunning for the ‘most interesting failure’ prise, in part.
I think most of the blocked off choices in the first section (the ones which say ‘to be continued’) take you into completely different sections of the world, which I’ve not written yet. And you’re absolutely correct about my jumping into the shallow end and figuring out it’s actually the deep end. This was started with the idea that I was making a short story with about 30,000 words of text and code total. Then the idea exploded and now I have about 44,000 words and it’s perhaps a tenth finished. I’ve always struggled writing ‘short’ stories, and with CS games I have a harder time knowing which bits to snip off with the editorial shears.
This is so great! The writing’s fantastic and the world’s devastating. I love that we can chose Candace’s gender and personality. Though I wonder if that’ll be relevant throughout the game. Speaking of Candance, I think this overall has such an interesting tone. The world’s incredibly bleak, but the way characters interact is endearing enough that I’m not scared off. Which, I almost always am when it comes to sad, dark worlds.
@pyla8 I’m delighted that their dismal little moon-world didn’t scare you off! Thank you so much for the feedback. Yes, both Cadence’s gender and personality are relevant throughout, at least in the scenes where Cadence is present. There will be at least one of those each day.
Part of what took me ages during the opening scenes was the fact that Cadence might or might not be present, and also coding the different personality types and their responses and stats. I’ve also considered changing the names - the life partner can have three very distinct personalities, with some variation on those, and I was thinking of changing the name for two of the types and keeping Cadence for the third. Not sure if that would make things more or less muddled, though.
So I noticed the thread name and will post my thoughts on this (I originally followed the story link on the CScomp thread).
It’s well written without grammar errors, or at least none that stuck out at me. I liked the use of Spivak pronouns. I found the story sort of depressing (depressing as in no hope, the world is ruined and MC’s people are all dying too soon). I felt so bad for MC’s partner, painfully moving about like that. Then your character only has three days left to live! NNNOOOO!
I’m interested to read the “to be continued” parts. Keep it up
