Terrors in Baskerville Academy (WIP)

Wait isn’t Constantine supposed to be the opposite gender of the MC? but at my playthrough we’re both males.

Oh, that’s because I kind of forgot to change some of Constantine’s pronouns when your gender is decided. I’m currently working on the code to fix that.

Edit: Fixed the errors that stops you from continuing with the game, as well as the Chambers, Declan, and Constantine pronouns error, and the other ones. I’m really sorry for the barrage of errors that this game has come with! Hopefully, I can make this game fully functional by tomorrow.



Just fixed these errors, thank you!

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I found another error.

Overal I’d say this is imaginative but I did have a full moments where my immersion was broken by some of the writing choices in the game.

The setting of a cult is an interesting one but some of the word choices confused me. Amica is explained in text but soldaris is not, for example. This could be remedied by a glossary so unusual/unique terms can be checked when needed. I don’t mind being a little confused by the cult setting - it adds to the mystery.

The other immersion breaking element was that sometimes i felt the choices had no impact on the following scene or the choice i made was reacted to differently to how i’d interpreted the response. These are both very common areas of trouble for interactive novel writing so please take the following examples with a pinch of salt. For brevity i’ll focus on the following 3.

  1. Class room scene intro. Sharpe.

I choose to quite the class on behalf of teacher. For the life of me I can’t understand how this is defending the new student yet it is clearly taken as such. If anything I’d take it as a student sucking up to the teacher. I noticed a lot of your choices are funneling/forcing the story into two directions, which understandable as thats already two different versions of the same scene you have to write. However my reaction was 'Wait, what? That makes no sense." There where five options that seemed very different in outcome yet have been shunted into two. While You should definately only write as much as you are comfortable with, keep in mind the more options the more variations on the scene you need otherwise immersion suffers.

  1. Outside the classroom with Sharpe.

You’ve given us a chance to react to Sharpe here. I choose the mischevious option but the following scene was anything but. I’d expected playful banter and got awkwardness instead despite the fact that sharpe already strikes me as a character who can give as good as they get. Now dialogue can be hard, particuarly banter, but it adds life the story if you get right. Don’t be afraid to play with it.

  1. Defending Marshall?

This wasn’t actually a deal breaker for me but I though it was good example of how to expand on mc dialogue options. I choose the option to just get tour started. The following choice boxes about whether the Mc feels guilty or not. However a side character (an ro at that) has just made a comment about defending marshal. I think its more fiting here to add dialogue options here as this is a way to interact with others and cement the mc’s personality. Personly I would have liked to point out that marshal is quite capable of defending themselves but there other ways of reacting too. Have fun with your characters; they are tool that fashions the plot.

Sorry if this has been an info dump, but I felt what have written was promising - too promising to not make comments that I truely hope are constructive to your writing efforts.

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Thank you! I’ll be taking consideration of your points the next time I update the first chapter.

Edit: I considered your 2nd and 3rd point and changed some scenes accordingly. For the first point, however, I just really couldn’t see some other way of changing the scenes to make the outcome more different because, for me, while there were only seemingly two outcomes (defending Sharp or not), there are actually four outcomes (defending sharp and increased relationship, defending sharp and decreased relationship, not defending sharp and increased relationship, and not defending sharp and decreased relationship). I’ve gone into a some sort of tangent here so I’ll stop haha.

I just saw your post on this forum and I must say that I am in love and amazed by the story so far. The scenes are so vivid and your writing is beautiful. The characters are well written as well. I’m excited for the launch!

However as I was playing through the demo I stumble upon a bug ( that state, " 1_catalyst line 1467: bad label physicality % +15 ). I couldn’t post the picture for some reason, but I’ll try again on a separate post! I wish you luck with the project!! °( ^ 7 ^)°

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There’s no need for a picture, I already pinpointed that bug and fixed it. Thank you for informing me about this!

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So far Im enjoying this, it’s definitely a more unique premise on here. :slightly_smiling_face:
A small bug I found was the gender display in the stat window though idk about the other gender but when playing as a woman it displays woman_woman.

interesting can’t wait for more :exploding_head: :exploding_head: :exploding_head:

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I really like the premise and setting so far, interesting in learning more about the school which I assume is a cult? One criticism I have is the choices can sometimes be misleading. For example, when I chose “Sharp is irritating,” my character goes on a diatribe about how maybe outsiders are scum after all. Personally I only chose it because Sharp clearly says things to try to anger people and my MC doesn’t like that trait, not because of prejudice against outsiders. Some games have optional choice tone indicators, maybe that would be helpful? It seems like there might be some rivalmance from the Barrett crush options so I was going for that with Sharp, excited about the prospect.

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This is nice, it’s reminding me COG lack this genre of stories

got an error while playing a guy who hated barrett but whose heart beat faster around him. Line 546: Invalid string, open quote with no close quote: “woman_woman)”

When I was first writing Chapter 1, I wasn’t considering making a rivalmance with Sharp, but now that you mention it, it would be actually interesting! I’ll surely add it in the next update.

EDIT: Just added a rivalmance with Sharp and Constantine! Also fixed the bugs you guys spotted. Chapter 1 is at 24k+ words now, but I can’t edit the topic right now (my trust level is probably too low for that) so I’ll just mention it in here.

I see what you mean with regards to point 1. To clarify, I, as the reader, could not see how the option I selected lent itself to any of the outcomes you outlined. I actually felt it was a ‘neutral’ option. Part of interactive fiction is that one sentence can be interpreted differently by each reader so, that does add a challenge. I’ve seen Authors write around this a few different ways - tone indicators, in text clarifictions (more detailed writing), or mc thoughts included within choice box; often a mixture can be used. On one hand these allow you to be creative in how you present options, on the other it can be more work as you not only need a plan for the scene but a good grasp of how your presented choices could be interpreted differently.

Does that make more sense?

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Yup, I understand it more now! I think I’ll write more of the MC’s thoughts in the choices so that the reader can understand which outcome the choices lead to. Thank you!

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got an error on the same line again, line549: invalid string, open quote with no close quote: "))

Oh, sorry, I thought I already fixed that. Changed the code and it should be fixed now, thank you!