@Bluewolf like @sviyagin was saying I’ve only made one chapter up until now, but I’ll fix that and add the *ending so there’s no confusion
I had done that on purpose, but in all honesty I’m still tweaking around with the variables, to see if the percents don’t pass the limits or something. But the variables I’ve placed up until now are not definitive.
I also added some variables in some choices to increase the percent in someone’s relationship. Was that a good idea? According to the choices you made, your relationship status would increase with some characters.
I’ve had so much trouble trying to figure out how to place that save option so i wasn’t sure if i had done it write I didn’t know you could change ‘mygame’. Could i change it to ‘noircurse’ and would it still work?
@DontJudge I’ve only made one chapter up until now, but I’ll have to add *ending so there won’t be any confusion.
Yeah, that’s completely fine imo. I think most games here handle relationship changes that way. Makes sense to increase the relationship with a character when you choose something they like and decrease it when you do something they dislike.
If they they have knowledge of the choice or are present when it’s made, anyway. Personally, I don’t really like relationship changes on a choice the character has no way of knowing about. Not that I saw it in your game so far, I think.
But that’s just my preference. Some people are completely fine with it. Do what you’Re more comfortable with/think fits better.
Also sorry for the monologue haha
It should work? I’ve never coded in ChoiceScript (or used the save plugin) myself lmao
Is the startup the only place where “mygame” is defined? If so, then it should just work if you change it to “noircurse”. I think.
I updated the first chapter and added a small prologue, hoping that it would help to give some more background context of the land and its history, and I also added another scene where you can choose the background of the main character.
Tell me guys what you think! Is that better?
The first chapter currently has 34,302 characters including coding and 6,250 words. Is that a good ammount? Is it too long or too short?
I think the prologue was a good addition. I have a much better idea of what’s going on now. Now that that larger story issue is out of the way, I’m going to include a few more specific comments about the work.
When choosing our gender, I think it would be better to offer terms like man, woman (or something else) rather than male, female. Male and female are very clinical.
On the topic of gender, if you’re considering adding an NB choice, I think you should do it sooner rather than later. Adding later means a lot of work going through and editing a much larger piece of work. If you’re on the fence about it, I say go ahead and code for it now so that you have the framework for it.
I think you should take the “skill %+ 5” out of the game, or replace it with “your skill increases slightly/moderately/significantly/etc.”
The dangling participle makes the sentence a little awkward.
Over all I think it’s an interesting start, and I’m willing to see where it goes.
Chapter length can vary quite a lot. If you want the story to be fast paced (action, thriller) write short chapters. If you want it to feel slower (epic, drama) write longer chapters. You don’t need every chapter to be the same length. Differing paces help the story feel dynamic in my opinion. Don’t aim for a word count. Aim for using as many words as you need to tell the story you want to tell, no more, no less.
The bartender listens to your answer and nods while rubbing his beard with interest. The hour went by quite fast and soon enough you said your farewells.
Yup xD I fixed that now.
I hadn’t thought about it that way, I had simply typed what the tutorial said xD but now that you point it out it does seem like a better choice of words
I was about to get into adding that right now! i’m almost done with the second chapter, so after i finish it in a bit I’ll add the NB option
Okay! I finished chapter two and its now up and running. Let me know if there’s any bugs, grammar errors or simply let me know if you liked it and how I could make it better.
In this chapter you meet some of the other love interests in the story.
I added more stat charts, one with the names of the love choices in this game.
I still haven’t added yet the NB option for gender even though i thought I would be doing that today. Debugging chapter two just took longer than i expected
Hopefully I’ll get down to it tomorrow!
What do you guys think about the love interests and who are you favoring. (Ps there’s still three love interests that haven’t been presented yet)
Also, also, I’m trying to check put how to add like a menu variable so people can skip between chapters, especially since I keep updating the demo. If anyone can link me to a post with easy to understand instructions I would be very grateful
I’ll post some personal opinions. Note: I’ve only read the first part of the story and haven’t read the previous feedback.
I don’t think the story should start with an infodump. I would make it optional with a *choice or something. I would try hooking the reader with the concept of "Ten young men and women have been chosen. The fate of their kingdom on their hands. Their goal? Win the twins’ heart. " instead of the previous information which I have read some version of in dozens of other fantasy stories.
You’re mixing present and past tense. Stick to one of those.
Add options for main character names
I think it’s a bit weird that the character suddenly is in a conversation with a random lord who asks about their name and gender. If you want the conversation to feel somewhat natural, you should set up a scene.
You have a lot of long sentences with participle adjectives. Try varying length and syntax to make it flow better.
Echoing what @moskus4 said, you should decide whether you want to do past or present. Using present will help immerse the player if that’s what you’re looking for. A lot of IF does this.
The way this is written makes me think the MC has never been around a large group of people, but I think you wanted to comment on the diversity? Maybe “you had never seen such a diverse group of people” instead?
Re: the info dump, as moskus4 calls it above. I’m a little biased since I asked for it, but if you want it to feel less like you talking at us, you could make it into a conversation between the MC and another. Perhaps it’s a flashback and the elder of the village is telling all the children the history of the curse. There are different ways to do it of course, but it would allow the MC to make some choices about personality and whatnot.
I would also recommend giving the MC a larger variety of choices in terms of personality play style. For example, I decided to speak with the elf, and the three options available to me were friendly, flirty, or go talk to someone else. It would be nice if we could play shy or stoic as well. I don’t want to forsake all character interaction, but I don’t want to be a ball of sunshine either. This is just my play preference though!
Since I’ve only done one playthrough, I don’t know much about all the ROs. It could be helpful to include in the original post a list of ROs with a short description so players know who they want to pursue. I thought the elf was interesting though. He has exactly the personality I want to play (so far)!
You’ve really piqued my curiosity about the gods, so I’m looking forward to meeting them
I’ll see what I can do about that! I can try and make it a more interactive start.
Oof I know I do that a lot, I’ll proof read the whole thing again and settle to one.
@sviyagin could you maybe point me towards some examples? english isn’t my native language so i mix up terms and words sometimes. If I see what you mean then I can fix it up xD
I’ll fix that right up!
I’ll keep in mind to add more personality choices!
This section for example has a lot of ing’s in a row. Mustering, closing, trapping, giving. And the sentences are pretty long. Breaking it up and using different structures can help the writing flow better. Also very impressed to learn English isn’t your native language!
If I ever go back to teaching ESL maybe I’ll make my students make games to improve their skills haha
Ohhhhh I understand what you mean! I’ll keep that in mind when writing.
And thank you. Writing and making stories does help improve your writings skills, especially when people give you feedback! Some people get offended when others point out mistakes but I think constructive criticism really helps. (Also I roleplay a lot and that has also helped me write better ) Anyways, i still make dumb mistakes but I aim to better my writing skills even more.
I really like what I’ve read so far. I’ve only gone through it once, but here are my thoughts and what I noticed:
First, I agree that the story shouldn’t start with an infodump. Since the player character is supposed to be reading from a book, I was taken out of the story entirely when I began wondering who wrote it. I think it has too much information that somewhat conflicts and that I’m not sure a single source within the story could have.
What I mean is, it describes the Sun God as benevolent and that under his rule everyone lived in harmony, but also notes that the reason for the Night Gods’ actions were because the Sun God belittled them, and that death was too good for the Sun God (which makes the Sun God seem not so good after all). Why and how would whoever wrote the book know the Night Gods’ thoughts and motives? Or how would they know that the Sun God was ready to die? It feels like the story within the book jumps from the perspective of humans to the Night Gods to the Sun God and then back again.
Secondly, when chosen for the quest, I answered: “Why do I have to join?”, and the next paragraph made it seem like the main character is forced to agree just to get the lord off their back or for whatever their reasons, which you note. Not because they feel destined to or out of the goodness of their hearts. But then when Ivory asks me why, the only closest answer to that is “I didn’t really want to come, but it felt like the right thing to do.” I think maybe you should take out “but it felt like the right thing to do” or add another answer like “my reasons are my own” or something along those lines so it calls back to the choice made earlier.
Third, when I talked to Razyel and chose “I can see us becoming good friends!”, the second line in the paragraph, “But that’s it!” stood out to me. I’m not sure if he’s a RO or not, but if feels like the player character’s protesting too much and they really do want to become more. And if he is a RO, does choosing that line mean I can’t romance him in the future? Also, I feel like having two sentences in a row with exclamation points seems a bit excessive, but that could just be me.
That’s it so far. Can’t wait to meet the Night Gods.
@expectedoperator First of thank you for checking out my story! I also appreaciate you taking some of your time to give me some feedback
I see what you mean! That’s maybe because I had really written that prologue before I actually started this interactive novel T-T but like I told the others, I’ll edit it for the better and try to make that info dump more interactive or simply place the choice for the player to choose if they want to read this info or skip it. I’ll make a post about it later on with some of the final ideas and see which one seems like the best.
ooo i see what you mean, I’ll try and make the answers more parallel.
As for the ROs, in that part I had mainly placed those choices so the player would state what their intentions would be with the character. According to your choice your stats would change, if you chose the friendly approach, the friendliness stat would go up, if you chose the more affectionate stat, your percent with whichever RO you were interacting with would go up. Whereas the other option wouldnt change either stat.
I wasn’t sure if to add an option where the player could, after they talked with the character they chose first, talk to the rest of the others.
However, you can romanticize all the ros up to a certain point in the novel. I dont know yet in which chapter the route will be final and you wont be able to change your ro but yeah, idk, im still thinking about it xD
I hope what i wrote in this post makes sense. I suck at explaining stuff so much
Hi, I just finished going through your WIP and it really piqued my interest. I like the air of elegance around your story. I tend to enjoy romance and character-driven games so this is right up my alley. I also enjoyed your writing. English isn’t my first language either so hey! High five to you, fellow non-native.
I can’t wait to see where this goes, especially since the premise opens up to so many possibilities. You can create a really interesting world from there. Also ugh it really ended in a cliffhanger there… Can’t wait to meet the gods haha.
I didn’t know you could change ‘mygame’. Could i change it to ‘noircurse’ and would it still work?
