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)
Thanks!
Oh yes BLAYNEā¦stupid typo, ha!
Considering Finley and Blayne as non-romancable NPCās, thereās 2 more ROās yet to be introduced, right ?
And Finleys an American kid? Or does he have an Irish heritage as well?
Yep, theyāll appear in ch2. one of them can be part of a polyamorous relationship
Finleyās Irish-American as well.
Also I just saw you asked about the other two ROās gender: both male.
Thereās potential in it keep up the good work
So I played the Demo, since itās 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
Hereās a change I might make concerning Charlie (as people have pointed out they canāt picture him well)
Changing this bit:
āTo not leave guests defenseless if some stranger spells trouble forāem,ā you say and incline your head towards Charlie. āThe tall guy with the fancy eyepatch is Charlie Mulligan.ā
Charlie steps next to you and gives your visitor a small nod. āIndeed. Now, whoās asking?ā
To THIS:
āTo not leave guests defenseless if some stranger spells trouble forāem,ā you say. āNow, again, what do you want?ā
āWhat I said. I am looking for Mr. Mulligan.ā Your visitor pauses. āThis is the right room, isnāt 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.
āYeah, 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.
āI take yer description as a compliment. Much appreciated. So, who are ya?ā
Oh thats good, I Love him already
Alright, so first: congrats on another WIP! Iām afraid I wonāt be able to follow this WIP too closely since I myself have a cult-involved, Western-style, horror-related WIP Iām writing, but I wanted to do a quick look over of your first chapter and express my excitement for your work
To try and not give too much critique (since, as I said, Iām writing my own story and I donāt want to risk overlap or something), Iām 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, āsomehow offensiveā way of saying whether youāre AFAB or AMAB. Iām not sure a better way of saying it, that may be something to talk to other NB people about. Personally Iād just say ābastardā and leave it there.
I was also disappointed to see I could not select a gender-neutral form of address, like āMx.ā Iād like to see that included in the future, if possible.
Anyway, good luck with the story! I look forward to reading it one day!
Thank you for the feedback.
One possible change that comes to mind is rewording it to
āThatās Charlieās way of saying neither lad nor lass apply to meā and āthatās charlieās way of saying lad and lass donāt always apply to meā respectively.
Adding picking addresses is on the to-do list, although itāll be (as of now) limited to Mx. and Ind. and own input
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 āAltruistic Henā stat instead.
Thereāll be options to pick clothing at some points, but nothing (yet) beyond that.
And thanks, Iāll look into what went wrong there:
Edit: Which option did you pick? Because stats wise itās as planned. So itās likely a matter of wording. @syzygy
EDIT 2:
Updated the game with typo and bugfixes, added description for Charlie, and a comment on the āart galleryā.
The characters are really cool and the plot is interesting. Am looking forward to how the plot will develop.
Have a teaser for the start of chapter 2:
And You Dream
You do know itās 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 itās 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.
The characters have strong voice and are well developed. I think thatās the biggest strength of this game. I quite like my MC as well.
But thereās not a lot of autonomy. Usually in choice games, we get to choose our MCās āvoiceā 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 āquestionā 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 āactiveā driving force of their own story, and thatās 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 MCās 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 shouldāve 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.
I must admit I donāt really understand what you mean with ālack 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 donāt fit. So, no, by all means I wonāt have any āhow do you feel about thisā choices when they are out of place, just for the sake of having a choice.
itās towards the end of the wild west era. so 187x or 188x
if itās 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 itās 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 ?