The Sword of the Elements

I played through to the end of the fifth chapter (and therefore the demo)… There were a lot of elements that intrigued me, such as the use of colours, some of the aspects of world building, and the more physical way you seem to handle stats compared to a lot of the published CS games. The characters seemed interesting, as well, and I would love to see more interaction with them.

I do very much agree with @snappingcookies comments, though; I had read through this before when you initially posted and I noticed the story still repeats the choice you make on the next page. I felt like that distracted me, especially when the choice is multiple sentences, or even a paragraph.

I would also suggest editing for little typos like : You’re surprsing* because you don’t know who we are" (*surprised). I also noticed several times where dialogue was punctuated like this:
Return back and wait for your own death!".
The ends of dialogue sentences don’t need an extra full stop, it can just be: own death!"
Same thing with a query mark. Suppose, for instance, someone said, ‘Why must it always rain on Saturday?’ That’s fine the way it is; you don’t need another full stop after the inverted comma. :smiley:

One other thought - there are some choices that seem a little vague (left! right! no, left again! actually wait I like green better than purple!) Would there be a way to give them more visible meaning for the reader? It felt a little like I was playing one of those children’s games where you are blindfolded and then you stumble around the room trying to tag someone… that said, those same choices are interesting! I just want to know WHAT they are for and WHAT happens because I picked left instead of back or forward.

I look forward to seeing where the story goes from here. (:

I strongly suggest going over this a few times for editing purposes before doing anything with it. Your grammar is… questionable at best. The first paragraph of the game switches tenses at least eight times and that trend seems to continue throughout. Dialogue is broken up with hyphens for some reason. You completely overuse colons and semicolons. And the dialogue… I can tell what you’re going for most of the time but have you read it out loud at all? English may not be your first language and if it isn’t you really need to get a native speaker to read through this because people just don’t say things like “I had good sleeps”.

Also the repetition of the choices is both annoying and unnecessary.

@Fiogan
Firstly, I’m writer of books and this game is my very first experience in the games’ writing. Perhaps there are errors but as I said that’s my first experience and therefore I’m still learning how to write games in that way.
@BAPACop
Yes, English is not my native language, my native language is Russian and I learned English myself without any help. At any rate as I said that’s my first experience in the games’ writing and you didn’t read it entirely. So, wait for the entire game because that’s only the beginning.

Did somebody else play the first 5 chapters?

I’m gonna wait for it to be published, but I’ll give it a try then. In the mean time, you can always try to address some of the grammar issues.

@Dmitry I didn’t play much beyond chapter 1 so I still can’t offer any feedback. (I played to that part when a star burns the sky). I do have a suggestion.

All the choices of colors for various things. If they are not important, you should remove them.

@DSeg
Understand. To tell the truth they are not important, just I thought it gives some freedom to player to imagine this event how it wants.

Well in that case I might suggest giving a clue how they’re important.

Some players try out every option just to see what, if any, difference it makes, other are not so completist.

I would advise that you either improve on those choices or get rid of them, for they are extremely irritating and pointless. Try to minimize them into smaller choices to give off base states or anything else other that is shown right now.

I know your trying to give freedom in your story but you have give us meaningful choices, not these “which way to walk to the king’s chamber, Right or Left” so that you can keep readers invested in your story.

I think the story is very interesting and I don’t mind the strange choices all that much. :slight_smile:

But I think you should have someone edit the spelling and the grammar for you. There are many points in the game in which, for example, instead of “your son” people tell the King “Your my son”. Oh-and I chose to play as the King’s daughter and the game still calls me a son later on. :slight_smile:

It’s impressive that you’ve managed to learn all that English by yourself, though. ^^ I tried that once with Hungarian but did not have the resolve to see it through xD.

@Specter
Yes, I understand this now. As I said that’s my first experience in the games’ writing but now I already have enough experience, I saw many mistakes, grasped many things and I promise you beginning from the second game you will find no pointless or strange choices at all. But now, of course I’ll do all what I can do with these mistakes.

@Rebelmaiden
Thanks for this. I’ll fix this mistake.

Btw, Dmitry, the feedback is to help you improve your story. We know it’s your first gamebook. But that’s exactly why beta testing is so important. You may want to think about keeping it in the beta phase until many of these issues are addressed.

And I might add that even though, as you’ve emphasized a lot, this is just a demo, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t reflect what the rest of the story will be like, issues included. Unless, of course, only the first 5 chapters have typos and repeated choices, in which case I’m mistaken.

It’s commendable that you’ve learned English all by yourself, but that doesn’t mean that the grammar errors don’t detract from the experience. You may consider investing in an editor, or otherwise having this up longer in order to have people help you weed out the typos.

@Dmitry
Sorry if I came out a jerk in criticism, didn’t mean to sound to harsh just thought that in order for your game to be great it does need its fair share of criticism and a lot of these people to me tend to be too soft. So sorry if you got the wrong message, I’m new here so I don’t know how things work here.
But don’t expect me not to be harsh tho! Hope we are ok.

I just thought about my story’s continuation. As I said I want to write big story that lasts during 5 games with more than 2.000.000 words. But I’m not sure I need to continue expand it because I don’t know about CoG’s decision. I mean they’re always accepting games they receive or they can refuse. What would you say?

A Hosted Game has never been refused (except maybe one, but that’s a vague rumor)

Hello to all! There were no words from me here during last time… So, I would be glad to continue discuss. Is somebody interested in the story I suggest to play? Of course there were complains regarding grammar mistakes in the 5 chapters I’ve suggested to play and I understand that but I did all what I could do to fix them. You know it was quite difficult to write in a foreign language but I tried and wrote. I think the most necessary part of any story is a plot, and if it’s good all is good. You know I have already enough experience regarding writing because I’ve written 7 books and have ideas for 12 more but all of them are written in my native language of course. English is my second language and because of this I’ve made errors in the game, that was my first experience in a writing story in a foreign language. So, is somebody interested in the game I suggest?

@Rebelmaiden Agree on what rebel already stated.

Quite an interesting new idea. Didn’t see the idea coming. My only issue is facing walls of text every so often and the repetition on left and right choices.

Other then that @Dmitry the wording and dialogue and so on is quite good.

@Dmitry
Yeah, I’m gonna buy it when it comes out. Considering English isn’t your native language, you’re pretty good at it.

@Arcania
Understand that. They’ll be just deleted to not distract a player’s attention.
@Samuel_H_Young
Thanks you understand that.

Hi there! I just finished reading your demo and I like the concept a lot! Although, I do agree with everyone that repeating every choice on the next page seems kind of redundant and also distracts readers from the game. I tend to skim things that repeat. Can’t really complain about the grammar though. Considering that you taught yourself English, I’d say it’s pretty decent. But I do agree with Samuel on the fact that you should at least consider an editor. It is really distracting when there is a lot of mistakes in the writing, especially for someone like me who has OCD. Sorry if I come off a little bit rude. Anyways, keep up the good work!