The Ballad of Devil's Creek (WiP) (CH6 Up, Major Update: 09/03/2021)

In any case the MC is not much a posh, pretentious upper-class person.
(Also adjusting the speechpattern and letting people pick would triple the code-length without doing anything for the playthrough length)

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Thanks!
Oh yes BLAYNEā€¦stupid typo, ha!
Considering Finley and Blayne as non-romancable NPCā€™s, thereā€™s 2 more ROā€™s yet to be introduced, right ?
And Finleys an American kid? Or does he have an Irish heritage as well?

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Yep, theyā€™ll appear in ch2. one of them can be part of a polyamorous relationship

Finleyā€™s Irish-American as well.

Also I just saw you asked about the other two ROā€™s gender: both male.

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Thereā€™s potential in it keep up the good work

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So I played the Demo, since itā€™s from you. I was not disapointed. Your writing is good as ever and you really have the Special skill of making characters interesting and feeling alive. I like the hint at Horror, and a good Western story is always Welcome.

I will Look forward to read more. Good Work, as always

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Hereā€™s a change I might make concerning Charlie (as people have pointed out they canā€™t picture him well)

Changing this bit:

ā€œTo not leave guests defenseless if some stranger spells trouble forā€™em,ā€ you say and incline your head towards Charlie. ā€œThe tall guy with the fancy eyepatch is Charlie Mulligan.ā€

Charlie steps next to you and gives your visitor a small nod. ā€œIndeed. Now, whoā€™s asking?ā€

To THIS:

ā€œTo not leave guests defenseless if some stranger spells trouble forā€™em,ā€ you say. ā€œNow, again, what do you want?ā€

ā€œWhat I said. I am looking for Mr. Mulligan.ā€ Your visitor pauses. ā€œThis is the right room, isnā€™t it? If not, have you by chance seen Mr. Mulligan? Tall, thin man, chin-long auburn hair, good cheekbones, nice muttonchops, missing his right eye? Sporting an eye-patch with an Ace of Spades on it?ā€

You grin and Charlie steps into view.

ā€œYeah, I think I saw someone like that,ā€ you quip. You visitors grumbles a little having been played like this, but Charlie gives him a small reassuring nod.

ā€œI take yer description as a compliment. Much appreciated. So, who are ya?ā€

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Oh thats good, I Love him already :kissing_heart::heart_eyes:

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Alright, so first: congrats on another WIP! Iā€™m afraid I wonā€™t be able to follow this WIP too closely since I myself have a cult-involved, Western-style, horror-related WIP Iā€™m writing, but I wanted to do a quick look over of your first chapter and express my excitement for your work :blue_heart:

To try and not give too much critique (since, as I said, Iā€™m writing my own story and I donā€™t want to risk overlap or something), Iā€™m just focusing on a couple things I noticed on a partial read throygh.

I think it would be a good idea to re-word the NB and genderfluid options. I forwarded an excerpt to several friends, who were all equally confused. One person went so far as to assume it was a weird, ā€œsomehow offensiveā€ way of saying whether youā€™re AFAB or AMAB. Iā€™m not sure a better way of saying it, that may be something to talk to other NB people about. Personally Iā€™d just say ā€œbastardā€ and leave it there.
I was also disappointed to see I could not select a gender-neutral form of address, like ā€œMx.ā€ Iā€™d like to see that included in the future, if possible.

Anyway, good luck with the story! I look forward to reading it one day!

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Thank you for the feedback.

One possible change that comes to mind is rewording it to
ā€˜Thatā€™s Charlieā€™s way of saying neither lad nor lass apply to meā€™ and ā€˜thatā€™s charlieā€™s way of saying lad and lass donā€™t always apply to meā€™ respectively.

Adding picking addresses is on the to-do list, although itā€™ll be (as of now) limited to Mx. and Ind. and own input

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Very cool! I know some authors prefer to leave it to headcanon, but will we be able to customize MCs appearance?

Also, when choosing the cocky/ruthless option just before heading to the gallery, it increased the ā€˜Altruistic Henā€™ stat instead.

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Thereā€™ll be options to pick clothing at some points, but nothing (yet) beyond that.

And thanks, Iā€™ll look into what went wrong there:

Edit: Which option did you pick? Because stats wise itā€™s as planned. So itā€™s likely a matter of wording. @syzygy

EDIT 2:
Updated the game with typo and bugfixes, added description for Charlie, and a comment on the ā€˜art galleryā€™.

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The characters are really cool and the plot is interesting. Am looking forward to how the plot will develop.

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Have a teaser for the start of chapter 2:

And You Dream

You do know itā€™s a dream. Maybe because you expected to have your night go like this. Not that it would make things any better.

As you toss and turn, your mind fills with unsettling and otherworldly images.

You find yourself standing in a run-down town in the middle of the desert, vultures ā€” something vulture-shaped at least ā€” circling overhead and the wind ā€” much to cold you feel ā€” whistling in your ears.

A solar eclipse is bathing the scenery in a bizarre light, casting shadows in all the wrong direction, and as you squint up at the sky, you get the impression itā€™s not a solar eclipse, but that something has swallowed the sun whole.

And for some reason that makes perfect sense.

You turn to look around you.

In the corner of your eyes you see the buildings fold in on themselves only to stand there perfectly fine when you look. The air is filled with sounds with no discernible source, a cacophony of groans and gasps, creaking of wood far too loud to come from the buildings, and underneath it all a sound that frightens you the most:

A whisper, inhuman, sweet, comforting and like the clack of a trapdoor and the tightening of a noose.

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The characters have strong voice and are well developed. I think thatā€™s the biggest strength of this game. I quite like my MC as well.

But thereā€™s not a lot of autonomy. Usually in choice games, we get to choose our MCā€™s ā€œvoiceā€ in the beginning. But this game starts right off the bat with an MC with a strong voice. I automatically created my MC with that given voice. It can be a good thing, but it might turn off a lot of potential readers. Also about lack of autonomy, there are parts where you go on for pages upon pages without encountering a single choice. It can be hard to focus for someone expecting a choice game instead of a non-interactive novel, and I found myself skimming these parts. Games often prevent this long choiceless narrative by adding arbitrary ā€œquestionā€ choices to prompt the player into asking for the information they need. Also, the choices that we have are mostly reactive instead of active. In novels, the main character is adviced to be an ā€œactiveā€ driving force of their own story, and thatā€™s even more important in cyoas (barring certain genres where the inability to be active is deliberate).

Also, I was quite confused about the world building. There was mention of the Irish, and for a while the MCā€™s accent had me thinking I was in Britain. I had to check the summary again to realise it was an Old West game. I guess the word Saloon shouldā€™ve been a hint, but it would help to add a front page in-game with the summary.

But yeah, the best thing about the game is strong character personality, and the worst (to me at least) is lack of autonomy/interactivity.

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I must admit I donā€™t really understand what you mean with ā€˜lack of autonomyā€™.

The first chapter is to set the basic skills and reputation of your character, and personally I hate shoehorning in choices where they donā€™t fit. So, no, by all means I wonā€™t have any ā€˜how do you feel about thisā€™ choices when they are out of place, just for the sake of having a choice.

say @MeltingPenguins what year is does game take place and is it close to the wild west era ?

itā€™s towards the end of the wild west era. so 187x or 188x

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if itā€™s near the end wild west usually the pinkertons have near absolute rights when dealing with outlaws allegedly or not, that be bad for the mc i guess

very.
But itā€™s also close to the time when they lost those rights, iirc. and who knowsā€¦

will they screw over the mc and their posse once they stop being useful or is this going into spoiler territory ?