Meteoric (horror/death metal band WIP) (5/8 Chapters, 70k words)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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This is a beta thread for my work in progress horror story, Meteoric.

Summary:

You get fired from your job. Then your car breaks down. On the walk home, you nearly get hit by a meteor. You find a spirit possessing a microphone inside. He wants to make you a rich, famous musician.

Dark magic quickly proves effective in gaining fame and fortune in the death metal music industry, but like any other deal with a devil, you must supply a tribute of flesh. What’s more, you soon discover firsthand that the industry’s regular demons are very real.

Meteoric is an epic horror novel by Sam Young, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

  • Play as male, female, or non-binary; romance men, women, both, or no one at all.
  • Romance a charismatic bassist, a tough guitarist, a thoughtful guitarist, or a mysterious drummer.
  • Reap all the benefits the influence of a magical microphone can conjure, and suffer the consequences, or try to resist the temptation.

What and who will you sacrifice to achieve fame, fortune, love, and revenge?

What sort of feedback am I looking for?

  • Any constructive criticism or opinions about the characters, plot, pacing, narrative, game-play, stat balancing, etc, is very helpful.
  • Pointing out typos and bugs is invaluable. Context helps a lot in identifying these errors, so be specific if you can.

Theme: modern life creates horrors that even success can’t help you escape from, but good friends make life worth living

Beta link: CoGDemos

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy!

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Hello. Liked the demo. Here’s what I have to say.

  1. I wanted to ask if the name is really Feter ?
  2. It would make the look cleaner if there was a gap between the stat change and the text. Also squared off brackets will probably look better for stat changes.
  3. The premise is pretty interesting. I don’t really have much to offer since the demo is short.

Congrats on putting the demo out and good luck. I look forward to playing further into the story.

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Thanks @ZestyPixel

  1. Yes it is. The names will be foreign so sometimes they’ll sound strange
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This was fun. I’ve a couple of things too:

Stat questions:

  1. why does accepting the ticket without complaint raise deception?

Observations:

  1. why is the chip green? why is that a good thing?
  2. I think it should be “clods” of dirt, not “clobs” or is that just a typo?
  3. I don’t think you need to add alien to the description of the meteor
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Thank you

  1. I would say because you’re exercising restraint

  2. Because they’re rare and cool :yum:
    image

  3. I agree that does sound redundant

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Oh. I thought it was reference to a flavour or special edition or something like that.

I’m…not sure I’d eat that chip.

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I’m definitely here for this!!

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this seems really cool!

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I tried it. It’s pretty fun, and it’s nice to see the cover art again here.

Actually, is it possible to make the font bigger? It’s pretty tough to read at the current size, especially given the font type you have chosen.

image
(This edit was a rush job, so the imperfections are pretty obvious)

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Another intriguing story, Sam! I don’t have much to say about the characters or plot yet since it’s just the beginning, but I did notice two sections where you may want to put a choice.

Tapping the steering wheel absentmindedly, you flip through the radio stations looking for some decent music to distract yourself with.
Since music is important to the narrative, perhaps the reader should be able to choose what genre of music they are looking for.

A meteor you realize in awe.
You may want to add a choice here so there’s more connection between the reader and the MC as they experience the horror of the meteor falling – otherwise, it’s well written, but because we’re only being told it’s about to land on us, it doesn’t seem as thrilling as it could be.

Looking forward to chapter two! :smiling_face:

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Awww…poor mc, they really do have shit luck don’t they? :sweat_smile:

While my mc is totally down with the rich part the fame part would bother him, given his circumstances at the start he’d hardly look like a male model, which is gonna sting in an industry full of the pretty people. :worried:

As for suggestions I agree with @expectedoperator since the mc is to be a famous musician maybe give us a choice as to radio genre at the start as some foreshadowing, I would actually like for my somewhat brainy union-joining mc to have the option of talk-radio at the start. :thinking:

I also agree the meteorite bit could be made more impactful, unless it is intentional and the mc is disassociating there, which is also not an altogether uncommon reaction some people have in super high stress situations.

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I

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Major update:

  • Chapter Two (10k words) is up. This brings the total wordcount to 20k
  • New cover art
  • a handful of typos and syntax errors that testers pointed out have been murdered, and some Chapter Two bugs have been squashed even before reported :slight_smile:
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Can you choose a custom name for your band? (Not a big issue for me, just wondering.)

When the taxi driver asks you if you’re going to a funeral, it would make sense if the question was teasing or joking, unless she’s being dimwitted. People typically wear formal or semiformal black clothes to a funeral, not the type of stuff you wear at a band.

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It was a joke

The band names will be preset so I can include flavor text with them

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Is that picture one of the eclipse shots you got? It’s so cool. Anyway, great chapter! Even just with one scene the band’s camaraderie was clear, and I liked the conflict that’s being set up with Larry. I also enjoyed how you introduce the horror of Kanibor’s price as the band is celebrating around the MC.

Reaching to your back pocket, you run your fingers over your book with a sigh of relief.
I think there’s something missing in this paragraph – before this sentence, the MC is freaking out over the voice being real. Then without explanation, they are worried about having lost the book.

Get closer to the mic to inspect it and take pictures with your disposable camera.
This introduction of the disposable camera made it seem too sudden and convenient. It also conflicts with the previous chapter where the MC can’t take a picture because their phone is dead, since they could just then take out the disposable camera.

Looking forward to chapter three! :smiling_face:

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@expectedoperator
Yes it is!

Good suggestions. I’ll tweak a few things to make some of those points clearer

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Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘line’)

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This error appears when I select the option to write the custom name.
I played again and realized that it actually occurs in the other 3 options as well.

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I can’t reproduce this error when running through all four options myself. The game also passes quicktest and randomtest so I’m not sure what is causing the issue on your end

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