Just under 10,000 words of story content now. (13,483 including code). Just taking a break before I work on the protagonist’s test. I’m quite happy with it so far. Just having to plot out the test bit soon.
So here is another question. Obviously I’ve hinted you’ll be facing daemons at some point. At one point the player will make a choice that will determine which daemon they will face. (my original idea was to let the player have a choice of four daemons (taken names are; Jack, Elizabeth, Abel and as yet unnamed fourth daemon) but as I’d like to attempt a choicescript equivilant of a “nemesis system” where the daemon will adapt/change to your choices. I’m starting to think to just focus on one daemon “Jack” then once the first draft is done then work on the additional daemons.
Opinions on the demo and answers to the question are most appreciated.
Interesting concept you have here. Its not often you see a story or game about Enchanters. Even more so about runes. I think one of the most notable times I did play anything about it, was from an old PS3/XB360 game called “Enchanted Arms”. But I look forward to seeing how your story plays out.
I wasn’t able to finish reading it, due to my stomach whining for food lol. But from what I read, I did come across a number of spelling and or grammar errors. There were also numerous spots throughout, in which there need to be comma’s placed in the sentences. But I didn’t make note of where, since I was focusing on spelling mostly. I’ll finish reading the rest later and help point out any other spelling errors I come across.
Summary
On this one, the first to should be changed to you.
Spend should be changed to spent.
My Haven was a girl on this part, so straighten should be straightened. He should be her. Forgot to mark it, but “brushs” should be changed to brushed. Also if you want, you could change the “when” to “as”. So it would read, You bow and Haven returns the gesture, as she straightened up, she brushed her blond hair out of her dark green eyes.
Your should be you’re. And watches should be watching. Also the w should be capitalized.
Were should be was.
You should put a “the” between fact and Emery. Forgot to mark it but grabs should be grabbed and stops should be stopped. Lastly you should put a “from” before falling.
Thanks for that. I find myself rushing through to reach the daily goal so I’m probably not paying as much attention as I should. I’ll keep my eye out for others.
Okay, I’ve fixed those errors. Now working on more daemon hunting scenes. Which will be a nightmare to code (So fun!) because even though there is only a choice of four daemons, you can take them on alone, or with Haven or Emery and eventually you might be able to take Quinn with you. So each daemon hunting scene which will consist of four distinct parts with various branching and at least one choice will need to be written twice (one to cover being alone and another for being with your second.
But its now over 22,000 words (with code) so it’s progressing nicely, this is proving to be a good writing exercise for me.
In many ways, I think Daemanglass is a coming of age story. My MC lives in a society where he is expected to be an Enchanter, to follower the family tradition and do one’s duty in fighting daemons. But as I played through this game, I realized that I never once heard my MC say they wanted this life. This life of being an enchanter that has been thrust upon him.
My MC’s position is no better than being born to parents who have high expectation for you, my MC’s goals seem identical to that of his parents to the point that I dare say he is living the life that his parents want him to live without ever reflecting whether indeed this is what he wants. It is like becoming a doctor because your mother and father are doctors, and they also expect you to be a doctor. This is further illustrated by the fact that the parents only give the MC validation only when they are proud of him when having accomplished a task about enchantering: this is seen when your father compliments the MC for answering a question right or when having beaten the trainer. The mother too is not without guilt, she complimented Quinn for noticing small runes in the vault as if I, her son, must know everything there is to know about runes in the family vault.
That being said, I see the Daemonglass being a metaphor for freedom. When Jack is released, he is ecstatic to be free once again. It made me think that a glass can be a mirror, a mirror that reflects one’s self. At the end of the day, does my MC not share a similar position to Jack? Jack is, or was, trapped just as my MC is trapped in this life of being an enchanter.
The game of course is incomplete but I think it has potential to make the reader contemplate their place in this world. I could be analyzing this game to an extreme point but I thought I would give my two cents on the matter
Just one more thing, instead of having to kiss our friend in order to get the waiter of their back, could I not just pretend to be her (in my play through my friend was a girl) boyfriend? I could call her by some cheesy pet name that will probably make her cringe red. Kissing her was a bit much, even though my MC probably liked it.
Interesting thoughts. And very true that the MC never says they want to be am enchanter. But its actually worse than you think. Because the MC isn’t a chosen one they aren’t the subject of a prophecy.
Daemons have not been seen for over a century. There is nothing saying they will come back. Just the irrational fear they might the MC and every enchanter born and trained since Jack was sealed in 1888 have been trained for a situation that might occur.
Another way of thinking about it is imagine your in a world where sickness and injury has been cured completely and no one gets ill or hurt anymore. Yet you’re being trained to be a doctor just in case something happens at some point in the future…it makes me a bit depressed that I’ve put the MC through this the more I think about it was lol
I’ve taken a day off today so nothing new written instead been doing a little bit more world building.
It is mentioned in the game that daemons come through the aether and look for living creatures with cracks in their soul. I thought I would go into a bit more detail about the concept behind it.
The soul is the purest form a living creature has. It is fragile yet also tenuous. It can survive being fractured, this occurs when the owner of the soul experiences a traumatic moment emotionally. The stress of the incident causes a crack to appear, the bigger the trauma the more cracks.
A soul can survive being cracked many times over but they do have a threshold and when a soul shatters the owner loses their identity. Then when one of these soulless beings pass away the fragments of the soul that remain are absorbed through the aether where they reform into a daemon.
Cracks in the soul can heal in time but that requires something to fill the hole left by a person’s loss. When possessed by a daemon they take over and the host is lost. The more cracks in a soul the quicker the daemon can take over.
Let’s make up some numbers to illustrate the idea a bit. Let’s say the pure unharmed soul is a number percentage . (we’ll use 100% for this example). A soul that is at 99% (say a slight crack) could take a daemon a whole year to take over. Where as a soul that was at 1% (a trauma away from shattering) the takeover would be almost instantaneous.
excerpt from the daemon fight I’ve just been working on.
The daemon lunges just as you trigger the runes your mother showed you in the hospital. Instantly the alleyway is overcome by a maelstrom of natural energy. The daemon is dangled helplessly in the air, tossed and twisted, a mere puppet to the whims of nature energy dominating him. You almost feel sorry for the daemon as you watch the almost majestic scene.
Overcome by the trap, the daemon’s howls don’t stop until he is crumpled in a heap on the floor.
So annoyingly I’ve hit a bit of a stumble with a third day of not reaching half of the daily target. Partly because of having other things to do taking up my time and partly because I’m second-guessing myself in regards to combat and the use of runes (specifically how they work in-universe).
Originally when I came up with the initial concept the runes were the catalyst that draws the pure nature energy to the user who then manuipulates it with an element but as I wrote it it changed to be it just gathers nature/natural energy alone, there was no element to it.
So here is a question; how are you finding the combat in the first two chapters? Especially in regards to the runes.
Ok, so I just finished playing this, and it definitely has an interesting story to it. However, there were quite a few grammatical errors I found as I played through. There were too many for me to point out in the short amount of time I have to be on here before going to work. I will point out, however, that in chapter one, after meeting up with Emeri and Haven (after being saved from Jack), you start to refer to Emeri as female, while he’s supposed to be male.
Honestly, I like it so far. I kind of wish there were a bit more choices to mix and match the different runes during battle, like how you had it when we were training with Haven. That way we could catch some of the Daemons off guard while battling them.
I am a bit confused over here. The issue I seem to have is the definition you are using to mean pure. I think there are two ways we can use pure: the first being that the soul has no impurity or other substance mixed within it or that purity means that the soul is unharmed in anyway. I do think you are using the second definition here, that pure = unharmed. I think that this makes sense because something that is impure does not mean it is weak, like mixing carbon and iron to form a strong material such as steel.
That being said you do mention here:
This makes me think that either the soul can be “filled” by another soul so to remove the crack, thus we must conclude that souls (or at least some) are identical to another. If souls need not to be identical then one could fill their soull with just about anything, perhaps even aether (or some other natural energy) and it will still be considered pure if it results in one’s soul being fully healed.
Since trauma can affect the soul, the soul has got to be a material substance. More so, we are our souls in this game. So can we move into another body perhaps? There has got to be an Enchanter who had tried that.
What does the daemon do when taking over the host? Does it replace the host’s soul or seep into the host’s soul and transform it?
By pure I mean free of impurities and unharmed. The soul is no means weak its more like the more cracks in the soul the more of a daemon that can get into it.
the cracks can be healed by experiencing positive emotions, by being in love, becoming a parents etc. Souls cannot pass between bodies.What a daemon does is seep into the host’s soul forcefully filling the cracks with themselves. Then once they have invaded the host the daemon proceeds to make those cracks bigger and try to cause the host to experience more trauma.
Well damn, @Nocturnal_Stillness. Not only is it fantastic to see you back up and writing a lot again, but it’s even more fantastic to see you sort of take a break from Unnatural and attempt to craft another interesting universe. Which this one certainly is. There’s a sense of evolution in your writing here. I don’t know what it is. I read this new demo and can definitely tell it’s your work, but something about it gives me a feel of progression. For you. Maybe it’s the fact that you’ve mostly established a new and original world and characters just as if not even more interesting than those of Unnatural. There is quite a bit going on here and it appears to have loads of epic potential, just like Unnatural. The references made me laugh aloud and weren’t just shameless self-promotion; they felt like authentic nods to what brought you here on your writing journey so far. I mean, only readers of Unnatural would get that song title; you know what I’m talking about.
It does seem like there could be tons more lore we’re missing out on, though, and the pacing feels a bit too fast for me. Other than that, though, I’m intrigued by what you have here. Keep it up, because there’s definitely something epic in here.
