– this game is currently going through a rewrite. Old demo will no longer be updated –
Genre: fantasy, a bit of mystery, a bit of psychological.
(the story itself is my take on the traditional Chosen one plot, though it’s not everything there is to it)
Features:
a story with multiple levels to it
“character development” in the form of the MC eventually “branching out” into one of five different personalities
characters to get to know and build relationships with
skills to train
“As a Chosen one who is… pretty bad at this job, will I be able to fulfill my duty and save the world? Especially when it starts looking like my memories are not as reliable as I’d like them to be, and some people are not what they seem…”
It looks interesting, although admittedly it’s still very short. I’m generally far more a fan of the “stories we tell together” style games over the “you must do these things to win” style games, so a story-based game is good. It does feel as though there are too few choices, but I’m sure that with time, either you’ll add more, or I’ll get used to how it feels.
The Chosen One and prophesy plot tools can be done well, but they can also be done poorly. Hopefully, as long as this is true:[quote=“lliiraanna, post:1, topic:20672”]
The story itself starts as a typical Chosen one vs Evil story, but it’s just the first layer of it.
[/quote]
…your story will be in the former group.
As for typos, it looks like you’re using the hyphen (-) a lot, both for delimiting speech (which should be inverted commas, either single ’ or double "), and (and I realise this is probably quite pedantic) for pauses in the narrative (which should be dashes, either — or –, which unfortunately aren’t on the standard keyboard ).
Finally (and I realise I may be sounding like a broken record on this particular issue), you say:
Does that include sexuality as well? (Assuming that you’re going to be including at least some form of romance.)
Interesting so far! Too short just yet to really judge anything much, I think. Everything right now feels sort of up in the air but that’s usually how it feels at the start of a story. Let’s see more soon!
Noticed this, too. As a result, it seems a little difficult separating speeches from pauses. Might want to use something standard, here.
Also, regarding some typos, those can be averted by running the story through a programs like microsoft word, or libre. Anything with a spellcheck, really.
Noticed what @UmbraLamia is referring to as well. You have sort of a Cormac McCarthy-esque writing style going on. I wouldn’t say it detracts from the work — but perhaps I’m not the best judge of that since I tend to use em dashes galore in my writing.
Re:plot: while the Chosen one part does indeed play a role, later on it should take a backseat to certain other… concerns. This said, this project is an experiment and my goal is to learn, so I’m willing to go back and revise things for as long as needed, possibly even if it’d mean a story reboot.
Re:hyphen: …yes, that’s a bad habit of mine. Thank you for pointing this out, I’ll keep it in mind.
Re:choices: noted. I’ll try to pay it more attention.
Re:sexuality: the original idea was not to include any explicitly romantic relationships. I wanted to make them sort of ambitious - maybe romantic, maybe just deep friendship. Those would be availible to any PC. I’ll see if I’ll manage to make it work, but if I end up including “true” romances after all, I will definitely leave the PC’s sexuality up to the player.
Just to say: one of the reasons I really enjoy CoG/HG games is the ability to play out romances that are generally ignored by fiction (specifically gay ones). Obviously, it’s up to you, but if you could include “true” romances, then it would be greatly appreciated.
I understand that. The thing is, however, that proper romances would require me to take the NPC’s sexuality into account too. Right now, I have a set cast of five “main” characters (sans the PC). I actually thought about it because I figured someone might ask.
number one (male) would be MC-sexual.
number two (male) would be straight.
number three (male) would be pan.
number four (female) would be straight.
number five (female) would be bi.
To explain things further: number one is for plot- and backstory-related reasons. Number two and number four were raised with “traditional” values. Number three goes through a lot of emotional turmoil, but if you manage to actually break through to him, he won’t care who you are. Number five is a member of the court, hence different “standarts”.
A lot of it comes from the fact that I modeled it after Heian society. On one hand, it was the time of strict gender roles. When it came to the court, though, a lot of things were deemed acceptable… behind the scenes (like, you were considered a strange one if you didn’t sleep around). As long as you keeped appearances up and didn’t forget about etiquette or such. Or about writing a poem the morning after.
So if the above breakdown is ok, I might work something out. Maybe even with separate friendship/romance tracks. But this is not taking any possible side-characters or changes I might have to do into account. Still, speculating is fun too!
More seriously, while I’m very much in favour of having explicitly gay NPCs, I understand that there probably aren’t enough here, and so being able to romance two of the five would be fine.
First, I have to ask… how did you make your game look like a piece of paper? It looks really cool!
Now for the comments:
The MC tends to ramble a bit. You may want to cut out words or phrases that lead nowhere or contribute little. You may also want to lessen the use of long dash or hyphen “-” comments. One or two is fine. Three is acceptable, but more than that tends to break the flow.
I suggest using active tense more. You tend to use a lot of passive ones.
Reduce your elimination of articles. For example, “Couldn’t stand to blah blah.” to “I couldn’t stand blah blah.” or “Feeling my presence, the spirits started to…” to “When they felt my presence…”
If you host your game at dashingdon, you can choose between various game styles. This one’s called “typewritten” and I agree that it looks cool.
And thank you for your feedback! I’m revising the text right now so it’ll definitely help. And yes, I didn’t even realize how many hyphens I used until I looked at it right now. It’s actually quite a disaster.
…I also had to google what active/passive tense is. Well, at least now I know a bit more about grammar…
i’ll stick around 
).
It looks really cool!
is he only attracted to the MC, or only the MCs Gender?