So … I think I’ve just discovered my next favorite game.
This is just so, so good. Well-written, consistently entertaining, comfortably full of familiar tropes without coming across as overly derivative. And it’s packed with things I love: magical boarding school, the four elements, lots of intricate worldbuilding … and stories about survivors of mental abuse are forever close to my heart. So far I’ve read only as far as the first-day study-group icebreaker exercises, but I have every confidence I’m going to love wherever it takes me. Seriously, the only way I won’t end up loving this game is if there’s a chapter dedicated to gleeful puppy-kicking or something.
A few corrections and suggestions:
The fire was an accident. I can’t tell in context whether I admitted the truth about how the fire started (in which case “arson” is the wrong word) or confessed to a crime I didn’t commit because I thought it was what Birton wanted to hear.
None of these options quite conveys what I really wanted to ask, which is “Chosen by whom, for what?”
For a second, I wondered why he thought I might be tempted to lie down on this piece of paper, and why it would matter all that much if I did. It might be worth rewording slightly.
This came right after asking if we could talk about something else, which doesn’t really make much sense.
This makes it sound as if I’d been looking for a television earlier and not seen one, but I don’t remember anything like that. Maybe it was there and I forgot, but that feels unlikely.
I think “haven’t” would better suit the present-tense narration.
Should this be “the Bevans’ household” or “the Bevan household”?
The space should be before the quotation marks instead of after.
The subject is “students,” so this should be “were.” Also, maybe this comes up later in the story, but I have some questions about the students who weren’t Invited until the first-day orientation. Presumably they were born into non-magical families. How does the school convince parents to let their children attend if they don’t know about magic? Where did these students think they were going before they were Invited? Is anyone bothered by the deception afterwards?
sung
“but” should not be capitalized.
It’s a little confusing here, because when the second of the circled paragraphs began, I assumed someone different was speaking, but it turned out to be Ædmund again.
What if I want to stick to the plan, not with seeming reluctance and a sense of duty, but because I really would rather solve puzzles than have a party?
Was it intentional that Xiulan gets Helena’s name wrong here?
This followed immediately after Ædmund telling me to go talk to other people, which was a little jarring.
Missing full stop
Missing quotation marks
I would have liked an option to make a sincere effort but not be able to get past the self-protective instinct to catch my balance at the last second. (This is what has happened every time I have tried to do a trust fall in real life.)
In my mind, my character enjoyed the brainteasers, wasn’t terribly fond of the awkward one-on-one chats or the trust fall exercise, but still preferred the organized activities to having a party. Of course, my response doesn’t need to reach that level of specificity, but I would have liked a chance to say that I’m really not a party person.
Missing quotation marks, and I would have liked a chance to say that I don’t know if I trust him or not because we’ve known each other for about five minutes at this point.
