The Cursed Lady and The Weakest Knight (Updated: 3/24/2019)

Demo: https://dashingdon.com/go/3146

In this game you play as either Marie Roklan, or Adel Brandt. The former is a young lady born of a noble family who carries a curse that gives a monstrous form. the latter is the weakest member of a warrior family. They’ve been set to be betrothed, and you have to guide the decisions of whomever you play as.


So It’s been a while since I’ve been on here. I was feeling pretty burnt out after my last choicescript project. I made… basically all the bad decisions during that game’s development. I hated it, and I hated the choices I made. So I just disappeared off the site. I did some other stuff. (Sorry to the TONS of messages on the Haze Under Windbrooke page I never looked at.)

I recently wrote a visual novel, and sent feelers out to some twitter friends as to whether they’d like to do a kickstarter with me on it. But I’m on a holding pattern with that now. I wrote some normal fiction, but… I couldn’t help coming back to choice script. I had an idea I’ve been wanting to do for a while now. And now I’m finally writing it.

I have clearer plans this time around, and hopefully I’ve learned from my mistakes with the last project. I’m hopeful that this will turn out better.

Thanks for your time, and for reading my rambling spiel. Glad to be back <3

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Really cool concept. Can’t wait to read more!

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For me, your Vampire House is still one of the Best HG i had ever read… i still have confidence you will do better in your new story as compare to Haze Under Windbroke :slight_smile:

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Indeed this is a great concept. I enjoy what I have seen so far from Marie and cant wait for Adel path to be ready to play I love to see his thoughts about the betrothed and some of his backstory. Overall A great start :+1:

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I like the concept where we can play through the eyes of 2 protagonists ( Male and Female ) and interact with the other protagonist … it is unique in the sense that we are not playing ourselves but a created protagonist in the story …

However, i do feel that your new project “may” suffer the same complains as Haze Under Windbroke … that is too much of story reading with less choices to be made :slight_smile:

It would be nice if you could include some choices along your story telling to help shape the personality of the protagonist , like how he/she felt under certain circumstances … perhaps choices on how she felt when she knew about the marriage news , and what she initially thought about Adel ? Even though these choices may have or don’t have effect on the future outcomes , it does help the readers to feel the shaping of their personality based on choice of reaction :slight_smile:

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Hey man we all fuck up sometimes. Learn from everything people didn’t about haze and try again. And if your lucky Haze Under Widlebrook will be your own Citizen Kane and itll some how be a classic :wink:

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I really love this concept, this new idea, but… it doesn’t seem to suit ChoiceScript. The biggest asset to CS games is that they allow the player to shape the story or to immerse themselves.

However, even just from this demo I feel like I’m reading just a plain old normal book, not a game (much less a Hosted Game). There are only two choices in the demo thus far, whereas I can count more than ten opportunities to allow the player some choices. Because of this, it turns a really exciting new HG into just another Haze Under Windbrooke. It immediately loses my interest and is kind of disappointing.

I feel like I’m being too harsh, but the fact is that (as it stands) I would never see myself buying or continuing to read this. Again, it’s a really nice concept and I really did want to love what you’ve written so far, but I’m so tired of normal books. I love COG’s stories because I become a part of the story. I would love to see that here, but that’s just my own opinion. Some people may love it as it is right now.

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I appreciate your ambition in allowing us to play two completely separate protagonists who have intertwining stories! The premise is definitely unique and interesting, and your character-building of Marie is quite good (you do a good job of capturing her thought-process and feelings).

I do think that, so far, the characters are unusually preset for a CS game, and there isn’t much room for choices or even player input. It does read more like a e-book than a game; it’s an interesting and enjoyable narrative, but doesn’t need to be a game other than the ability to play as two different perspectives. I think that having Marie set even to the point where she has long black hair will be off-putting to a lot of players; this isn’t a detail that needs to be determined by the author for plot integrity, but which could go a long way in making the players feel invested in their “own” Marie. Likewise, allowing the players to choose how they feel about Marie’s father and etc. would be good opportunities to keep us engaged and attached to the character that we’re playing.

Best of luck with this project, it seems interesting!

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I really think Vampire House is a underrated one.I like this idea too,better than Haze Under Windbroke imo

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I am curious of the term “weakest” here, so is the weakest knight means in term of physical ability like strength and agility , or in term of intelligent / wisdom ? Perhaps the weakest in term of social status ??

This story has the potential of becoming a another kindle story or cult classic , depending on future development… for example Marie should has a choice on determine how she feel about her fiance “weakest” 's demeanor , for an evil route Marie could despise Adel and curses her family for marrying her to an unworthy husband , she “could” has a choice of wanting to harm her future husband ?
Or in a good soul story , Marie could choose to love her husband and rush to transform into a monster just to save him ? :slight_smile:

For Adel, it is intriguing to see how the knight could save his wife when people wants to hang her for her “monstrosity” … how much Adel willing to sacrifice in his weakened state in order to do that ? Or what could he say to convince Marie to sustain her humanity ?

I think the final product definitely has a good potential to make this story into a tragic love story or a darker beauty and the beast ? :slight_smile:

@OdicHastings , i still remember your “magical” touch in writing the “sorrowful” Malka romance route in Vampire House… I definitely have faith in you to reproduce those kind of magic once again, hope to read more from this story :slight_smile:

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My guess would be “weakest” physically and in bravery. But that’s just my guess, I’m also curious of the authors answer.

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Well… perhaps it can be a more choice story with regard to weakest in physically , like Adel start in a low physical and intelligent stats , where he can chose which trait to raise to solve problem in the story…

For bravery, i think our choice in the story should determine that … else readers might complain they didn’t have a choice to determine an action such as whether they want to defend his wife :slight_smile:

Link: https://dashingdon.com/go/3146

Adel’s side is written. There have been thoughts on this project as we can all see.

I understand that people are concerned by the seeming lack of choices and the preset characters. I understand people like that aspect of character creation that you would see in something like say… Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and the like.

I just find that that style has certain severe limitations when it comes to character interactions. I find preset characters give certain advantages, because there’s just a lot more specific interactions you can create. You can have character moments that aren’t really possible when you have a customizeable character. And I feel there’s room for that type of story telling with Choice Script.

That being said, this game isn’t going to be this devoid of choice the whole time. I know what I have written is a long stretch of text, but it is basically an info dump. All that stuff is exposition to just set the situation, so that I can start writing the story where I want (right after they get married and are dropped off by their families at a shitty broken down house). Stuff will be happening that you can control during the next update (As a consequence, the next update probably isn’t going to be coming nearly this quickly.)

The Haze Under Windbrooke had problems, but they were due to the game being massively, almost hilariously, unfocused and without vision. And I changed my mind about what I wanted it to be about multiple times during development. there were a lot of bad choices. But I have a clear vision this time. I know what I want the player’s choices to be, and what I want them to effect. And I have a clear idea for what sort of final act I need to be building up to, to have a better set of endings.

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Not a lot to get a true feel for the game but the story arc seems very intriguing. I’ll definitely be following

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I think the Demo end there… the scene is similar the Marie’s route :slight_smile:

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Can we have there name changed will you put that in or no

This is really interesting. I didn’t realize that it had lacked choices since I was immersed in the story. Usually pre-written characters or characters that already exist are hard to relate to, and creating a character is one of the essence of a choice game, anyway I look forward to how you’ll approach this.

I’m genuinely curious how we’ll shape the characters as to how we want. I particularly liked Marie’s story bcs I’m curious about her past. I’d love to see how this goes! :smiley:

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Sorry Delphi! I actually saw that error, but I was running late to a Starfinder session. There was literally nothing else after that choice statement, so I just left that in there. I fixed it in the latest update (though there’s still nothing to see.)

Thanks. Marie definitely feels like the more interesting character right now. There’s definitely a lot more happening on her side of the story, which helps with that quite a bit.

There will be more choices in the next update, so we’ll see how that changes things too.

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But i also think Adel’s inner feeling about being a nobody seems cool… getting marry to an arranged wife probably the best thing ever happen his life :slight_smile: