Doggone Days

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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Previous thread: http://www.choiceofgames.com/forum/discussion/2274/werewolf-the-cursed#Item_46

What does it mean to be a monster? A beast stirs beneath your skin, and closes its claws around your soul - if you still have one. Day bleeds into night, and you feel the pull as the full-moon rises. You can’t run.

But, what can you do?

The choice falls on your shoulders.

Doggone Days is a horror/supernatural game and story that explores the themes of being a monster, both dark and beautiful. The hows, the whys, and for how long a body and mind can take it before humanity slips away completely, and what you do when it does.

You take the role of a person drawn into the curse of the werewolf through an accident, myth coming true, or selling your soul to the devil. You are armed with your skills, and your best friend Sam in a little town called Wrenbrook off the west coast of Canada.

The game is broken up into three parts, with three(The beginning, middle, and end)different branching stories connected to the origins of the curse, intertwined with the main plot. How you interact with the world around you is important, as is the relationships you will or will not form with your hometown residents. They could be your undoing just as well as an asset.

You have thirty days to find a cure before your first full-moon. If you even want to. After that, the story’s just beginning.

Writing Snippet:

You bite down. The cold press of the raw meat hits the top of your mouth, slides around your tongue, and trembles all your taste. Fingers sticky with juices, your nails dig into the underside and top of the steak. You chew. A vein wraps between your teeth, pushing against your gums, it doesn’t stop you. The kitchen fridge has become your hunting ground, its cool breath rasping on skin as its maw is opened wide. The light flickers, and you swallow down the prey of your pursuit.

It does nothing to satisfy the beast cloying through you.

Blood drips down between your fingers unfettered. It was a soft sound, but you can hear it with your senses blazing like torrid fire. It sends shivers down your spine. The pastoral theme of the linoleum tiles is marred by the red, like a great battle waged in their presence. Only, that it was you bringing the storm. And like all things in nature, you couldn’t help it. That night, with the stars full to bursting, the ghastly cravings itched at your teeth. The thick taste of iron was in your mouth, and you take another bite.

Werewolf.

Your heart thrums to the beat of a different creature.

How did this happen?

Artwork & Character information
Explore OWA
Concept art of your best friend in Doggone Days! As illustrated in the art, their gender can be chosen.

Sam’s most noteworthy trait is that they’re big-hearted, and immensely forgiving of the stupid things the protagonist can get up to. Reliable, but a bit of an air-head, and has a habit of using outdated slang(Sweet, bodalicious anyone?)When the whole world is against you, Sam will still be at your side, and would literally go to hell and back for you. Unfortunately, it is also their tragic flaw, and their own morality will rely on how you handle or don’t handle situations.

I will answer questions, bump this thread with new information and artwork, and will be releasing a demo for feedback in the future!

6 Likes
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oh you know you could have asked @jasonstevanhill to the change the name of your old thread :stuck_out_tongue:

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Ah, did not know that. Either way, the main post information would have been incorrect on the title.

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lol i din’t know it the first time either anyways when is the demo coming

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I can’t give a definitive answer for when the demo is going to be ready, but I am aiming at mid-late August at the latest so expect it sooner than that.

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Tone down your vocabulary and use less adverbs. We often tolerate purple writing in 18th century classics, but in modern writing, all it does is make things pointlessly inaccessible to the common reader. If they don’t have your vocabulary, they’ll need a dictionary as a reading companion, and if they do, they’ll think you’re married to a thesaurus.

Remove redundant details. Blood dripping down, for example. That’s called spoonfeeding the reader, or fattening the text. Unless this world has no gravity, it’s understood that dripping liquids go down.

Fettered, torrid and pastoral, for example, are out of place compared to the simplicity of the surrounding text.

Why does it matter that the tiles are linoleum? This is a needless detail.

‘Prey of your pursuit’ is awkwardly phrased.

Itching teeth is an awkward idea, to me, especially when the topic is irresistable bloodlust.

You switch tenses midway through the last paragraph.

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@Adnox Which words did you need to look up in a dictionary?

I didn’t find that section inaccessible.

Should that have been clawing not cloying?

I think the problem with posting such a small section is people feel as if they should criticise it when as part of a larger whole it may fit perfectly. I think it sets the mood extremely well. Now if the whole game is written like that I may change my mind, I’m not sure though. I’m usually averse to overwritten narrative and too much description but I found that perfectly readable.

1 Like
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@ADNox Good points. I appreciate your critique. I tend to over do it when I’m trying to make something ‘good’, and end up doing the opposite apparently. But incidentally, I don’t use a thesaurus. I will look over and edit it and hopefully come up with something better.

@FairyGodfeather Haha, no, the entire game is not written like that. I tend to be more concise, and less wordy. Honestly, I was just trying too hard.

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@Fairygodfeather

-I- didn’t have to look any words up, but many readers will have to. Most English students in a creative writing course I TA’d in would have to look a few of them up.

It seems you think I’m being harsh because I don’t hand-hold. Holding someone’s hand doesn’t help them; criticism does, and I wouldn’t waste my time giving it if Looshi wasn’t a talented writer.

Like many writers, though, Looshi seems to be flexing vocabulary and overwriting to show what he/she is capable of. That might impress an English professor and a writing community, but it’ll cost you readers, and they matter more. Your first tasks as a writer, depending on the intent/task, are to communicate and entertain, not to impress.

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@Looshi Oh I know about trying too hard. You wouldn’t believe the amount of times I wrote and rewrote the beginning to Julia Caesar. I don’t think it even matches with the rest of the game. I was trying to be all descriptive, which isn’t my style at all. I hate writing description. I spent hours trying to craft that first few paragraphs and they still weren’t great. But as part of a greater whole I’m happy with them.

And you should be happy with what you’ve written too. I do actually use a thesaurus. I love thesaurus.com I’d be utterly lost without it.

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I typed that before Looshi posted… see? He/she was trying to impress, and if you can write to impress, you can restrain yourself for a wider audience.

My criticism, as with anyone other person’s, can be dismissed entirely. The best part of this entire post so far, though? Looshi gracefully takes it without getting defensive; that’s a priceless trait. One day, we’ll be reading his/her novel.

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@ADNox No, I didn’t mean that as a criticism against you. I was actually wondering which words were the difficult words. I hadn’t noticed any, I’d thought the words themselves were all rather common words, so I was surprised when you’d said it needed a thesaurus to understand.

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… I used to give readers more credit, but then I facepalmed myself into near-daily headaches over how simple the vocabularies of English students at a high-ranked university were.

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hey i know i am a noob but what @ADNox said about erasing the the down form the blood dripping thingy i think for me personally saying dripping DOWN will sound better it kinda makes it flow better either that or i am just a very weird reader and i find strange things better :stuck_out_tongue:

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@ADnox
I don’t think you’re being harsh. I think you’re giving feedback. I did want to impress, but I also wanted to write what I wanted, first and foremost. I have a harsh inner critic, and that’s far harsher than whatever you could say haha. It’s all good. Part of it is my style however. I do read a lot of older fiction, and like giving the world around the protagonist it’s own character. But I will watch that, as well as my vocabulary. I honestly didn’t know I was using words out of the norm.

@Prototype
Yes, I do see the merit in that, and did not realize a how a simple thing could be redundant. :slight_smile:

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Another tip I found helped me a lot: remove connecting words like ‘and’ and ‘as’ whenever possible. The reader will still process details/images with the same clarity, but the writing flows better and it can quicken the reader’s sense of urgency.

The above isn’t for Looshi, since he/she is already doing that (kudos!).

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@Looshi

I, too, have a harsh inner critic, but I also have a near-masochistic longing for readers to give me brow-beating critiques. I want to know not only what they liked, but what they hated. Sadly, it rarely happens.

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@ADnox I appreciate your critique, I really do. All I want for Doggone Days is to be the best that I can make it, and if that means having it tore apart and relearning how to write, then so be it! :slight_smile:

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@Fairygodfeather

You told me literature is dead in another thread, yet you seem to have more faith in the average person’s vocabulary, and the need to not let words die by disuse. I suspect no one on this forum will have an issue with the excerpt as-written, but I’ve seen people stumble over words as simple as wan and inebriate.