As I already pointed out, you are being offered your boss's job,
absolutely no one is offering you the position of Champion.
And the PC can be of midnight court blood and work for the day court,
or vice versa, either from the beginning or switching as an ending achievement.
The ritual was disrupted, unless you somehow failed to do so, but I don't
think it’s actually possible to fail to disrupt the ritual in the game.
absolutely no one is offering you the position of Champion.
My bad, must have read it wrong.
And the PC can be of midnight court blood and work for the day court,
I’ve only played it through once as a “day” blood person in the day court, the job I was offered in the night court was less enticing and Blackwell wasn’t offered offered a job at all based on her background in the day court. Kind of seemed like there were bias there and that was for the half bloods.
In mythology full blooded fae usually keep to one court or the other largely based on their race and background if my memory serves me right. Obviously the writer has free rein on the story since this isn’t a text book. It just kind of jarred me a bit to see a night creature running errands in the day camp that was all. (Just my suggestion and impressions, I wasn’t attacking the author at all as I said in the first sentence. It’s merely feedback and they’re welcome to take or leave anything I have to say).
A few moments later, you watch the catapult begin to burn. The Midnight soldiers scramble over it, trying to put the fire out, and succeeding only in setting themselves on aflame.
The word on before aflame is out of place.
That does seem strange. You know werewolves have some odd abilities, sure, and it’s not like you’ve researched exactly what those abilities might be. But you’re fairly sure they don’t extend to sending messages between worlds, even leaving aside the question of how $[charlie_he} knew where to send it.
Normal walkthrough, all good and then charlie_he (it was a ‘she’ in my game by the way, along with Glass and Blackwell)
I liked it it had a certain familiar feel to the game but was really good.
Without (hopefully) echoing the comments of others, I’ll just leave behind a short-ish word after the first play through.
The game was very well written. The narrative was pretty straightforward, with touches of sarcasm, which I think is the best route to take when writing CoG’s. The plot was entertaining, well-paced, and the entire premise was obviously thoroughly thought out. I can appreciate the effort you put into the game, really. I did see a few errors, but I’ve scrolled through the topic and most of them have already been reported. Oh, and in regards to the romances, I didn’t think they were poorly crafted; they just took a back seat to the bigger plot as a whole.
A note on the ending: Even if you get stellar reviews from all three members, you’re still not offered the position of commander. Is this a glitch? What are the specific requirements? Also, I think this may have been mentioned, but during the fight with Miles, the option to call out to your friends and your court is blanked out. I checked the code, and at the time, I had sufficient stats. I’ll do another play through just to be sure.
I did think it was strange that the parents were only mentioned once in the entire game, but I can understand since they weren’t exactly important to the plot. But another thing I was wondering; does the MC physically age the same way humans do? I know that they age slower, but does that mean they live longer, or also look relatively young for a longer period of time?
Another thing that was mentioned: the mirror symbolism. It was well written, but it is fairly similar to CoD. I don’t know if you’d be willing to tweak it since it’s such an integral part of the game, (it even plays into the title).
But, all in all, it’s an exceedingly enjoyable game.
Spent the better part of two hours reading, when my phone decided to close the wip without warning. Needless to say I was callimg my phone some not so very nice names.
What I did read was exceptional. The story is deep and invites you in only to keep you there. I only spotted one problem.
That does seem strange. You know werewolves have some odd abilities, sure, and it’s not like you’ve researched exactly what those abilities might be. But you’re fairly sure they don’t extend to sending messages between worlds, even leaving aside the question of how $[charlie_he} knew where to send it.
Other than that I have this as a must buy when you finish.
Alright, so, some thoughts.
First of all, I’m very impressed by the quality of the writing in general. Your prose is evocative and immersive. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the parts where you parallel Choice of the Deathless are the weakest sections of the game. (Part of this is because I played that game very recently, so seeing parts that mirror it very closely in your story is rather jarring) In my opinion, the further you stray from the framework CoD provides, the better your writing is. Some of it isn’t a big deal; the Academy in general is fine, and upon replays, even the stat selection works. But at certain points, your trying to work in CoD’s style is deeply awkward. The final interview/promotion at the end of the story is one example, the scene where you face off against your final opponent and have an extremely similar choice/framing of that choice on how to deal with him is another. In fact, the whole frame story of the shattered-mirror-self/rebuilding is like that.
On another topic, I really felt your characters, particular the MC’s childhood friends and Glass (I wasn’t really a Charlie fan), were extremely well-developed. Interactions with them seemed meaningful and unique, though I wish we had more than a few lines with them when they came with us or in romance scenes. On the other hand, some were less so. The two knights and queens seemed basically interchangeable, and I felt the story would have benefited from having greater interaction with at least the knights. Of course, I realize that may have been intentional, but it was kind of strange.
Some choices also felt less meaningful than they could have been. For example, in the beginning, when you get offers from one or both Courts, you’re told about how excellent (or not) each offer is, and yet this has exactly zero further gameplay impact. You don’t get paid more. You don’t actually command or take commands from different people. Speaking of paying for things, the way the debt works in this game also confuses me, because we seem to have separate wealth and whatever is used to track paying-off-debt-money values–in fact, wealth doesn’t seem to have any purpose at all.
That reminds me: The stat screen is awfully bare. I understand why we can’t see some hidden values, but why can’t we see wealth, or patience, or loyalty, or so on? Why can we see some relationships, but not those of the knights, courts, or clans?
Speaking of clans…they could have used more fleshing-out. I’m still not sure what they do, and not in a good way. And given that we have so many (potential) interactions with Miles, it’s weird that we never actually learn anything about him. His final “face”-heel turn really comes out of left field (or it would, if he wasn’t an obvious Smith parallel. Smith worked because we really didn’t know him, but we find Miles’ notes, we see his experiments, we talk (too-briefly, really) about motivation. He just feels not quite mysterious enough to be sinister and not quite developed enough to be, well, anything. While we’re on this topic, the fact that nothing really came of keeping his notes is kind of annoying; I would have liked a high-cleverness option to work through them or try something ourselves, or hand them over to someone else.
As for other choices I found unsatisfying: Though I really did like the scene where our opposite-court friend was captured, particularly the part where we could tail them to save them and the mission, the one thing that struck me was that the option to torture them…was just that. No reasoning, no afterwards “so why did you do that” that would allow the MC to define their motives, and because of that lack, the choice felt abrupt and hollow.
The choice of a Court, too, wasn’t particularly impactful, because other than a few bits of flavor text and inverted morality-court bonuses, nothing changed. There was no unique mission or character that really got more than a few lines depending on where you go.
I will be watching this with interest, and will probably have more comments later.
Edit: Actually, one more thing: One thing that stood out to me was how much in the dark the MC was, the entire time. Even as you rise in importance, you still basically don’t really know what’s going on or why. There’s no opportunity for a particularly clever or well-connected character to put some pieces together and unravel part of the deeper scheme, or even minor parts of it. That was frustrating, and made me feel like the MC lacked agency. That might have been intentional to an extent, but I still felt jerked in various directions with literally no way to change things.
Did anyone else find that the names we take seem more midnight oriented than anything else?
Names such as obsidian, frostbite, or dagger don't really scream "nurturing
instead of predatory," although from what I’ve seen the differences between the courts really seem
like mere propaganda.
And while I may be wrong, but it seemed to me that our other court friend
when captured has the exact same dialogue, I’d suggest giving them different dialogue to help
give them separate identities.
I don't know about anyone else, but it seems weird to me to get fired
despite all the advisers’ having nice things to say about my MC.
Heck, I'm so used to getting fired that there's a playthrough in which the
Queen personally saves my bacon, and I’m not sure I didn’t get the boot at the end of that playthrough too.
Maybe I didn't, I did manage to get a promotion a grand total of one time
so far.
I went through your game once, I must say it is an intriguing, exciting and well made story overall.
Some things which I want to point out.
-Feels like you are a bit rushed through the beginning, could go well with some extra text towards the childhood, life at the academy, maybe a little more backgrounds on the chosen family
-Could go well with a small dictionary regarding mythical and magic creatures encountered, as well as extra detail regarding the setting of the magic world and the two main factions
-In general the end relationships as well as the romance moments could use a bit more colour and feeling into it to feel authentic, I don’t know why many writers are so shy when coming to these subjects
But overall a very entertaining and captivating read I must say.
[spoiler]Dead center in the circle is a large, ugly biped. With two long, clawed arms and massive sharp teeth. It looks almost like a troll, but it’s hairless, and the eyes are almost colorless.
“That’s funny,” Glass says, watching the thing carefully without focusing all her attention on it. "I haven’t seen Midnight use anything like that before. [/spoiler]
I actually thought it would be great if there was a follow-up to that weird summoning. I felt myself left hanging as to why Midnight would come up with such summoning. What’s the purpose behind it?
Also, it would be great if the MC was given the option to release his/her friend after getting information about the fortress. Who knows, the MC is already tired of being a pawn and just wants to live by his/her principals? That he/she no longer gives a damn about being fired or what not.
I quite like the premise, so here are my issues in a list
Sorry if I sound super negative, but generally speaking everything I haven’t commented on is pretty good (I have more comments, but I figured don’t want to overload you)
I gave this a look today and generally think it’s excellent. I’m totally unspoiled, haven’t played Deathless, so I was coming at it with fresh eyes. And yet I find myself echoing a lot of the other comments (from people who do this more than I).
This beta is superbly well written.
I also liked the structure – the way the game opened with the scene of you being shattered, only to return to it again near the end with all the context now filled in, was great. I was Matthew Obsidian of the Daylight Court.
A couple of constructive criticisms:
As @War_Doctor noted, the whole pay off the debt option seemed a red herring. I chose to pay it every time, and yet the question kept coming up, making it all seem pointless.
While I really enjoyed the world and the premise, the Daylight/Midnight conflict made less and less sense to me as the game went on. I kept waiting for some kind of reveal that explained it all as just a metaphor, like the Moon and the Sun or something. There were these two huge Courts that fought an endless and astonishingly destructive war – why? How? With what resources? And every time I encountered Midnight soldiers I just butchered them, eroding their menace entirely.
2a) On that note, the occasional truce, and conference (!!), seemed jarring and out of plot. Why in the world would these mortal enemies hold a conference and attend lectures about tactics?
My confusion might be in part because the obvious quote inserts didn’t quite work:
And then, finally, it comes to Aoife. “” Her voice is perfectly even and terribly remote.
Presumably the game kept track of my scores and calculated that I wasn’t going to advance, but something was lost in the translation.
Thanks and congrats on creating some terrific material.
After consideration and discussion with the CoG staff I’ve decided that attempting to salvage this game into a publishable form is not plausible enough to be worth pursuing. Thank you to everyone who provided feedback, and my apologies for wasting your time like this.
That’s a real shame. I thought it had lots of potential and liked the read through I did. Is there no way to salvage it? I thought it was mostly a problem with the opening and closing sequences, the mirror analogy and the tuition repayments with the majority of the book being ok? It sounds like you’ve discussed it with cog already though so may be more to it that makes it much harder to fix so can understand not wanting to do that. I hope you stick around and write something else 
By the way did you have other published books? (It sounded that way in the first post).
Agree with @Jacic. I could imagine there are issues with a substantial similarity to already-published games, but from my perspective this beta was certainly good enough to be put into publishable form. My criticisms were simply to point out the areas that needed to be improved, rather than any serious problems with the game itself.
Put another way, the last beta test feedback I gave before yours was a lot more, shall we say, constructive in its criticism, and that game just got published. I hope you keep at it.
And in any event you haven’t wasted anyone’s time.