I liked this! It’s a very interesting concept and I’m curious to see what happens next. You’ve already heard comments on the choices aspect, so I won’t belabor that, but when I played through Marie’s side, it immediately started over with Adel’s side; was that intentional or a bug?
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I’m sorry that my comments are hard to read(botched a few words, other I forgot to use)
Update was nice. Hope there will be an option to fix up the house.
What you are suggesting seems a bit absurd, to be honest. You’re asking an author to completely rewrite a character to your own exact, specific requirements.
If you want to create that kind of a character and natrative, I would suggest writing your own story.
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I’m really enjoying the story but as you’ve heard from others it just doesn’t have the player agency I want from a COG game. It plays like a VN so far. I know you say there will be more choice later on but I feel like there could be a lot more choice within these few beginning pages without compromising who these characters are meant to be. Even just aesthetic choices could be a great improvement, can you imagine how cool it would be to choose Marie’s type of deformity or her type of spikes? Although, that could possibly change physical interactions. Honestly I would settle for hair and eye color choices.
I feel like the COG WIP that does choice with a set character best at the moment is Mass mother murder. You play a psychopath. You cannot change this, you cannot change your motivation but there are choices within that space.
For example Adel has to be the weakest knight but you can still let your players have their style of combat that they’re terrible at. Maybe they overthink things, maybe they try to get too showy with their attacks, maybe they’re scared, maybe they’re just lazy but letting you choose and still fail makes it so much more personal.
Marie might be a little more difficult as she seems like a rather passive character at the moment but you can still let the player choose to some extent what they do during their imprisonment.
Your writing really is excellent so I hope you don’t take what I’m saying too harshly. This is my honest opinion and I genuinely want your stories to be better.
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I feel like that’s a lot work for a lot of, well, little. I feel like your chages may perhaps impede the authors original intended vision considering how specific those proposed alterations are.
(Personally, knives in the back imagery seems rather unnecessary and well “edgy” for the sake of drawing an already overly obvious parallel)
Furthermore, in my perspective it just doesn’t seem to align naturally to who Adel is currently and fundamentally.
You seem to have a plethora of ideas of your own, I would urge you to let your creativity run wild in a work that is your own. Rather than have it trample over others fields.
Edit 2: I’m sorry but I actually ended up finding your post offensive upon further inspection.
The anti-sex sentiment, violence towards women and female sex workers, and actual fucking incest comes across as masturbatory and gratuitous. If this isnt your intention I apologize somewhat.
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@HopefufCritic I think that your statement that
the characters are “not appropriate” speaks to what everyone is saying about you appropriating another author’s story. It seems a bit arrogant (or inappropriate) to make a statement like that when you don’t know what the author’s vision is and what could possibly be “appropriate” or “inappropriate” within that scope.
I also think that, in the future, you should consider more what the foundation of the story is before criticizing. To take a story that is called “The Cursed Lady and The Weakest Knight,” which is fundamentally from the outset about a knight who is shamed by his family for being weak, and to suggest changing the character to a person who (trigger warning) strangles whores and rapes his siblings is so beyond the pale that it leaves the realm of “suggestion” and becomes an entirely different story on its own. It requires a completely different story–and not one that the author is clearly writing now.
Finally, this seems counter-intuitive:
In your suggestion, Adel is not given the choice to love or hate Marie; he is set as a character who is revolted by her because he regards her as a monster, so it’s no better than having a preset character who is enamored of her; both ways “lock” the character in the way that you’re trying to change.
I say all of this because I sense your desire to help, but as an author (I hope I’m not speaking for @OdicHastings overmuch) I know it can be unhelpful to receive feedback like this, where it is downright impossible to implement or is completely different from the heart of the story. If the themes of the story were so easy to change, it would not have been written this way, or been titled “The Cursed Lady and the Weakest Knight.” There is intentionality and purpose behind every story written here, and I think that should be recognized and respected more, even when we offer up criticism. Small tweaks and logistical execution are fair game, but rewriting stories entirely should not be kosher.
This is all of my opinion, of course, so take it as you will. @OdicHastings, I agree with @grimbutnotalways that there is room for choices here, and that @Samuel_H_Young provides a good example in Mass Mother Murderer of having a character who is solidly preset and unchangeable, but who has choices that allow readers to “inhabit” them more vividly. (That thread, too, had someone come in and say they hadn’t read it yet but that the main character shouldn’t be a murderer, which, again, I don’t believe is helpful feedback.)
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Yeah, I’ve had several people coming to Mass Mother Murderer with bizarre requests or demands like…
- Can we not kill the mother?
- Can we not watch our sister drown?
- Can we not be a psychopath?
Well…no, because then it wouldn’t be the same story. Small suggestions that can improve the game are great, but when someone just doesn’t like your plot and wants something else entirely, I don’t even consider that real feedback.
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Right, it’s the difference between having approached JK Rowling when she was writing the first draft of Harry Potter and saying,
Harry’s parents were killed and he grew up in an abusive/negligent household, so it seems like he would be more antisocial
which is okay/can be helpful feedback, because it respects the material that’s already there, and
Does this story have to be about wizards and witches? Why can’t Harry’s parents live and he grows up to find out that he’s prince of the vampires, and Voldemort goes after him to steal his blood-drinking powers?
I do see that kind of feedback a lot here on the forums, and I wish it wasn’t as frequent. To me, anyone who puts effort into writing feedback is appreciated, but I think that posting work on an open site can make it seem as if stories are much more malleable/open to being molded by external influence than they really are. Just something for all of us to keep in mind!
Anyway, I don’t want to derail the thread. We are here for you @OdicHastings if you ever have specific questions regarding the story!
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It only make sense to you but not to other’s…
Adel for me is just fine, i love his persona and personality as the weakest knight trying to redeem himself. There is nothing wrong for a modern day knight, DC has shining knight and a cowbow in modern day too
Your version is a completely different persona i dislike, so that’s my counter opinion 
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Is this a cog proyect or is a normal non interactive story? Because this us even less interactive than Haze and Haze is less interactive that pick a real paper book.
Writting is not bad, flow is slow and strruggling in dialogue. And absolutely everything is fixed decided and planned to the point player doesn’t have any agency whatsoever. This could make a good story without any code. Because use code to don’t add any interactive is like pointless. At least here there is not so many page_breaks like in Haze.
Definitely a bug! I didn’t have a proper *ending tag so I guess it just rolled over at the end of the file. Should be fixed with the latest update (there’s not really anything new to see though. Just editing and prep work for the next several scenes which have a lot more moving parts than this linear opening does). Thanks for the feedback.
I’m not gonna lie, this is pretty much why I didn’t even finish reading the above spiel. I find the way sex workers are treated and regarded in real life fucking disgusting, and I don’t even wanna know what the part with the rape was about. That shit’s not fodder for edge-lord drama.
I googled that game and the choice of games forum and found a link for it. I only read some opening paragraphs to get a look. The way it handled its choices was interesting. And it is actually something I could implement in the info dump opening without too much trouble.
That being said, I’m going to wait. The next scene I’m working on will take a bit, because there’s a lot of moving parts and such, but it does give the player their first real sense of interactivity with the game world.
Depending on how people react to that segment and how its interaction is handled, I may or may not alter the opening, and how I alter it will depend on what people say. What Mass Mother Murderer did, I could do. It wouldn’t be too difficult to implement, and if people really preferred, I could offer that style. I just want to see how people react to the planned interactivity versus something like that.
Some of the complaints right now might be stemming less from a lack of choice (or really just interaction) and more the fact that the entire opening is a VERY lengthy info dump, but people are latching onto the lack of immediate interactivity as the source of the issue, when in reality it may be because the writing is dumping a bunch of raw plot on you relentlessly for the first 2000-ish words or so.
And then the demo just ends right after that. So you just digested all that info with no payoff even written yet. Meaning you gave the game a chance for nothing but vague promises of an eventual update.
I am actually glad I saw this, because it is something I’m concerned about. I like settings that kind of meld their fantasy and sci-fi tropes together. In this setting, my intention is to show the society as heavily reliant on magitech.
Your house has lights! (but their magic source is broken).
You have a cold storage! (Also borked)
And non open-fire based heating! (Kinda working. Sorta. Still needs to be replaced by the player)
However, I do feel the way magitech is portrayed is important. Right now its leaning close to old timey but still real comparisons. I’m curious for more feedback on this so I can swing the depiction of magitech more to the ‘magic’ side of that combo if I need to.
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Perhaps you can look at some idea regarding a world set in both Magic and Technology from this game… It has some unique idea about such world
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Yay! A story about me!
Also will this be a romance story or a romance focused story? People say you are the author of a Vampire house(may you live forever, bringing education to the poor) and I really liked how you intertwined the romance with the plot, making the plot reliant on romance, the romance railroading the plot. Thumbs up!
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Hopefully keeping the last shred of dignity that I own, I wish to issue an official apology. My ideas, if you can call them that, insult the creative writing of many author, being extreme for the sake of extreminess(?). I have taken it too far. I will refrain from posting anymore on the forum, and I will delete my posts. I am sorry for taking my frustration on this community, with ideas that would more likely shock than impress, the last week being extremely stressful for me, it made me somewhat insane and irrational. I apologize again, and thank you for showing me my mistakes and gently and logically driving me back on tracks. I’m sorry
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I think that your willingness to apologize and recognize what went askew is a sign that you do belong here. You are full of energy and ideas… Please do consider sticking around and posting. We would love to have you.
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I loved Arcanum! I first played it when I was definitely too young to be playing a game like that. It’s not quite what I’m looking for though. In that game magic and technology were heavily segregated.
In this story’s case, the ‘technology’ is all running on magic.
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Ahhh … i see , magic act like a fuel to run the machine like petrol or gas…? 
Something like we cast a " gust of wind" to run a turbine ?
Or create a lightning to conduct electricity current ?
And Arcanum , i think that Elven princess Raven is sweet
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I played the demo yesterday (Marie’s path) and I love the plot/idea/concept/setup! I was immersed in the story despite there being few choices, which only occurred to me after reading the thread. I look forward to reading more and seeing how this develops! 
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