I’ve just begun work on my first game and I’m very excited to have the first(albeit very short) demo ready. I just wanted to see how many people like the setting and direction its going in. Basically it starts in 264 B.C. at the start of the First Punic War(after a brief background explanation to explain how you were conscripted). Hope you like it!
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/223195975/web/mygame/index.html
When you choose to kill the prisoners or let them live you get text from both choices afterwards:
You think back to your family, oh how they must resent you for what you did, but you had to. For your father. You remember the tears in your mothers eyes, oh how she wept broke your heart. Then you think of your sister, who refused to speak a word to you. Can you really blame her, though? You killed Romans. They may have been murderous scum, but the Roman judicial system would have still given them the same punishment. You resent yourself for putting you and your brother on this boat. You think back to your family, oh how they must resent you. You were innocent, though. You didn’t murder any Romans. It matters not though, the motive itself was incriminating, enough. Who would even believe you? You remember the tears in your mothers eyes, oh how she wept broke your heart. Then you think of your sister, who refused to speak a word to you. You only wish you could convince her that it wasn’t you. You resent the worthless murderer who put you and your brother on this boat.
Oh, your right! Thanks so much for pointing that out. I’ll fix it immediately.
Fixed it. If i change the demo will it break the link?
this games is awesome keep it up.
A general change of tack, I think, would be useful here: To be able to weave details more subtly, into a narrative. There is a risk, at present, I think, of readers being bombarded with too much information, in a block of text, rather than through more gradual immersion.
No, changing the demo won’t break the link as long as you keep the index file name the same and don’t move the folders around.
Not sure if I know what you mean, Drazen, I was already trying to be subtle. It was pretty much being told in a narrative- at least from my perspective. Where do you think it needs to be more subtle? I’ll give it a look.
It’s amazing mate love the game
@Kirrim Well, it seemed to me that your writing style was a little bullet-pointed. There didn’t seem to be a developed flow from one thought to another, so much as several snippets presented in a row. The issue is more with articulation, than content.
Ooh, I will be keeping an eye on this!
Obviously, we know that Rome is one of the big historical figures but the real reason I am excited about this is because it strongly reminds me of the author Simon Scarrow and his Eagle series. Excellent books - I highly recommend them if you want to read historical fiction centered around the Rome legions!
I like your writing but I would like to add weight to @Drazen’s comments. I feel that it goes by too fast from one event to the next event. You could stand to expand what you have and make it longer. Allow us to make more choices possibly along the lines of how we feel about so-and-so.
I imagine you will already have ideas as to how to do this because this is YOUR work!
Good luck!
Thanks for the advice, I’ll go back and see what points I can expand on and see if I can add more options for how the PC feels, but I imagine having your father assassinated would really only invoke anger and a sense of a need for retribution 
Unless that’s not one of the times you felt a need for more options… Was that a spoiler? I’m new to forums ._.
Well, to be honest, I don’t want to influence the game too much so I’ve held back from adding further input.
It’s vital that you are able to make further progress with a clear vision of how you want the game to proceed.
With that understood, I want to add a disclaimer - You are free to use or disregard the advice below because it’s going to be how I would do it but may not be necessary how YOU would do it!
First, let’s address the issue of the emotional connection of the Father being assassinated. It doesn’t work! There is no strong emotional reaction! Why? Because I, as a reader, with my outside perspective - Having started the game, the death happens on the second page!
Where do I get the time to build this emotional connection with the Father? I don’t! So, I think “Oh, ok. My characters’ Father is dead. Let’s see what happens next.” and not “Oh dear, this is sad. How will I avenge him?”
So while you may feel that actually, the Player should have an invested emotional connection - What you have is too distant for us to be involved in.
This brings us to an issue. I quite like the opening you start with which is in essence ‘in media res’.
We are getting directly to the core conflict of the story. That’s good! Better than good. It’s an excellent opener, don’t have any doubt about it.
But how I would do it? I would take the story all the way back to when the character was a child and/or a teenager.
Let us experience the life of a Roman family. Let us build this connection to the Father through a variety of activities.
For example - the Father might have taken you fishing or maybe to the colosseum/amphitheatre or even introduced his child to his buddies at the senate. Whatever you want!
Let’s call this the ‘prologue’ or in other words - the Character Generation section.
After that is completed then you could begin Chapter 1(which would be what you have now) and go into further details regarding the assassination.
At that point, it’s highly likely that the Player would’ve developed this emotional connection to the Father and therefore his assassination will hit all the emotional frequencies you wanted!
It’s as simple as that.
Good advice Marius.
Yup I agree
So are you a boy or a girl JL?
Thank you so much, Marius, that’s great advice! As I was reading that, though, I came up with an alternative idea that I’m not quite sure how it will play out so I would love your feedback on it again.
My idea is to add flashbacks of your father that play out as you progress through the story and, depending on which decisions you make that change your characters personality during the war, let those decisions depict how your father was so the player gets a father that coincides with his play style and thus, is emotionally attached to since it agrees with their play style.
This is just an idea, though. I’m not sure how it would actually come across to the player, seeing as they might want to have a father they disagreed with at every turn and had a bad relationship with. Although then they probably wouldn’t be so moved when he is assassinated, but such is the way of a multiple choice game, right?
I never realized that writing a story like this came with such hard decisions to make, haha. This requires some thought, I hope y’all have some feedback.
Expanding on my idea, I could also make a family that embodies the opposite traits of your family. Say, for example, you play the game as a noble and heroic Roman. This would create an opposing antagonist-like family that you come to conflict with further down the line kind of like I’ve seen in some of the official Choice of titles(that I will not name in fear of accidentally angering some players and inciting a possible lynch mob 
).
Well enough silliness, back to the game.
This could pose as a parallel plot line to be build up with constituents of that opposing family playing the role of political antagonists who may seek to destroy you politically(as opposed to Carthaginians who would like to quite literally destroy you).
Both of those ideas sound great! (Flashback and the antagonist family).
It all comes down to the execution of the idea.
Just have a think about it and see if you can figure out how this would work in terms of gameplay.
If you pull if off successfully, those ideas - if properly implemented - will add a good amount of depth to your game and will have thematic strength.
Don’t be afraid to experiment! If you have problems doing it in a certain way then take another route and that may work.
PS - The antagonist family is a really good idea. Another conflict for the Player to deal with that ties into the plot is excellent.
PPS - Flashback is also good because it allows you to keep the ‘in media res’ opener. You would have to make it clear that any such sections is a flashback to avoid confusion.
Thanks for the help 
If I do the flashbacks to keep the in media res opening, I’ll have to reorganize it in a way where you pick your family before the father is assassinated, but that wont be much of a problem I think.