Hello! I’m working on a game called Captain’s Log - Space Adventure. You play as an officer in the Astral Alliance who has been promoted to captain after a controversy almost ruined your career.
Game Description
What will you do now that you find yourself in the captain’s chair of a starship tasked with exploration and diplomacy? Forge your name in the history of the Astral Alliance as a hero… or a traitor.
Plan
The demo includes only the introduction: setting up the world, setting up the character, setting up your ship and crew. I want feedback before I get any further so that I don’t have to backtrack and redo so much (this is already my 2.5th attempt at writing this story).
The game is meant to be somewhat episodic, with each mission being it’s own (mostly) self-contained story. The missions you are given depend on your successes/failures/relationships. In between each mission, details about the over-arching story involving your past with Dupont will be revealed. Of course, none of that is in the game quite yet.
I’m specifically looking for feedback on these things, but all other feedback is still appreciated.
What do you expect from this first mission? I’ve written it twice now but the pacing has sucked both times. The mission is not included because I’m not happy with the current direction (and it’s rife with bugs) so I’m going to redo it after getting some feedback on my current writing style/direction.
Do the characters seem distinct from one another? Compelling to learn more about? Have any of the introduced characters peaked your interest at this point?
How is my writing style? Is it too simple? Too repetitive? Fine?
Does the world seem engaging? Are you interested in delving deeper?
Finally, I certainly hope there are no game breaking bugs, but those pesky things tend to have a habit to prop up. I’m not superbly worried about grammar/syntax/spelling issues at the moment, but please let me know if there’s anything major.
Thanks for checking out Captain’s Log - Space Adventure!
Ran smoothly on my playthrough, no bugs or typos that I noticed. Pacing seems excellent and you managed to introduce a lot of key people in a fairly natural way. It may be too much, too soon for some readers though, given that you get briefings on them AND face-to-face time in quick succession. Maybe wait until there’s a real reason to meet the med/security/engineering officers and stick to the two guys on the bridge for now? That said, they were all definitely distinct from each other.
You write well, the setting is nice, the choices are there. I think you’re on course.
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, pacing is my biggest struggle I think. The next thing the player does is a mission so I want them to have all their crew members specialties in their arsenal, but I could see if moving some of their intros back a bit would make sence. Frontloading intros might just be a requirement for this type of game though
You could always have your first real introduction to an officer come when you need to call upon their skills. Meeting at least one of them under mission pressure will add some variety to the meet-and-greet routine. Then after the mission you make the time to formally meet your remaining officers.
If you really want to be fancy, go speak to the mission-critical officer(s) afterward too. It will allow to contrast an officer’s behaviour during a crisis and during a quiet introduction. I’ve a feeling the shy engineer might be very different under the two circumstances, while the brusque doctor might be exactly the same in both environments. I know it’s some extra coding to account for mission choices, but it might be worth it.
I played through to the current end. I’d love to play a good Star Trek styled space adventure, and so far this one hits all the right notes for me!
Feedback
Do you mean “what do you want to see?” or “what do you think will happen?” Doesn’t matter, I’ll answer both.
I’d like to see some of the rimworld’s culture and how their people view the Alliance. I’d like to see how the officers interact and affect the mission. And I’d like a taste of what could go wrong. At the moment, I’m curious what the challenges will be, and how they’ll be resolved.
Based on the plot, our crew will begin negotiations with Fuel Guys and be interrupted by an attack from Zealot Guys, and then be forced to make tough decisions about self-defense and taking sides.
Please forgive my memory. I can’t remember names. I should take notes next time.
Yes, absolutely. I can remember all of them - a significant feat!
The first mate is the least memorable, but it’s good for at least one person to be sort of neutral. He does have some interesting sides to him anyway, like the report he wrote.
Most interesting are the scary doctor and scatterbrained navigator.
I didn’t notice any problems. I was able to stay focused and follow everything.
Pretty much. It’s about what I’d expect from a Star Trek styled setting. The key will be setting up interesting scenarios in that setting.
I didn’t see any bugs, but there were a couple grammar errors.
Bad apostrophes are a pet peeve of mine. Like
Dyo used to be a communication’s officer,
Right now is saying “communication is officer”. I counted, like, four of these.
But that’s pretty minor overall.
A few extra comments:
It was a little odd to be offered a choice of alien to play as when I didn’t know anything about them. In fact, until that choice, I didn’t even know there were aliens in the setting. It’s not a big deal since you can check the options before picking one, but that was a minor whiplash.
It was odd to see choices I shouldn’t have known about. When talking to the engineer, there was a greyed-out option about a bet he made that I never saw. Of course I couldn’t pick that option, but its appearance meant I, the player, now knew about it.
But it did let me know there were alternate routes during the mall sequence that might change stuff.
Pacing seemed great for the amount of info you had to introduce, and it makes sense to talk to the crew before heading out. Without that sequence, I wouldn’t have the strong impressions of them that I do now. I think that’s important.
I hope this does really well. I hear sci-fi games don’t do as well here as fantasy, so I’d like this one to succeed. It shows a lot of promise so far. Best of luck.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with what I saw in this demo. The prose is good and, barring some misplaced commas and missing ellipsis, gramatically correct. Practically every page ends with a choice, which is a good way to keep the readers engaged. Characters seem distinct and, while I can’t say much about them yet, have potential to be interesting companions in the long run.
That said, I take two major issues.
Firstly, the first page. Unlike the first page, it’s written in past tense (even though it apparently happens after the main story?) and doesn’t involve the MC, which is a strange way to open your story. When I first read it, I didn’t know if I was playing one of the named characters, or about to enter, or watching a flashback. Maybe it’s just me, but I was pretty confused.
Secondly, I don’t know if I’m interested in “delving deeper” into the world, because I don’t feel like I delved at all. I don’t know where I am, what year it is, or generally what kind of universe my character lives in. The only way to get a decent chunk of lore about the playable races (including humans!) is to pick that exact race, otherwise I don’t know anything about them either. I know we live in an age of short attention spans where exposition is frowned upon, but there’s a reason why sci-fi novels are usually the longest ones—the reader needs to at least roughly understand the world to truly follow what’s going on.
Granted, that second opinion is probably influenced by the hours I’ve spent researching obscure astronomical trivia, but that’s just where I stand. If nothing else, you could add an optional glossary (or something sorta similar) to the menu, so that the players can learn basic lore whenever they feel like it. I got away with shoving a literal library into my game, you can afford to add a few notes.
It’s great and I presonally didn’t see problems with pacing, it felt natural. Writing style is very good, easy to focus on and clear. I love how you added possibility to play a certain races, it helps indulge in universum and tbh playing as human in sci-fi is always so boring (at least for me) especially when we have so many aliens around. Maybe you should add some info about them beacuse rn we can only read about some races only by choosing them.
And characters are AMAZINGl. I love Pax, proably my favourite compaion by now lol, I’m biased but I want to know more and more about them
I’m interested in seeing where things go from this first assignment, but in terms of what I expect from it… if this is supposed to be episodic, and this first assignment is in the vein of a “Pilot” episode, then I’d expect the scenario to lead into something that tests our Captain and crew’s ability to work with one another. Something that’ll either build trust or cause tension, but will overall set the stage for what to expect going forward.
So far the characters seem distinct enough, though I don’t think I know enough about any of them yet to know if I like one more than another. I’ve got a similar feeling about the setting, but I’ve been hankering for a good sci-fi IF and this gives me a Star Trek vibe, so I’m here for it. (Funny enough I’ve had a similar idea bouncing around for a little over a year now, I just haven’t really had the time to dedicate to planning it or taking a crack at ChoiceScript yet.)
As for writing I don’t have any notes on it that haven’t already been pointed out by others so far, but it was a pleasant enough read. I didn’t encounter any bugs. At least, If I did, they went unnoticed.
Overall, I’m interested in seeing where you take this, and I look forward to future updates.
Really enjoyed this and excited to see more! I think your writing style suits the setting and tone, and am so happy to see an engaging scifi IF. There are so few good ones, but you have a lot of potential here!
