To be honest, he’s probably the best choose-your-adventure author I’ve ever had the pleasure to play his games. If you don’t know of him, go to Chooseyourstory.com and try, at first, Necromancer. And I’ve recently tried his new Eternal one. He’s just really good at what he does. I’ve spent the past 3-4 hours playing his newest Eternal, and I have always walked away satisfied to the games that I have played of his.
Not promoting or anything, I just find it a shame to those who haven’t played his games.
He’s an absolutely awesome writer. His stories are fantastic. But they are extremely linear. You make one choice and then that affects events for years to come.
For those who’ve only played Necromancer and found it too linear, try playing Ground Zero. That one has four “true endings”, but several others that aren’t bad.
For those who’ve played Necromancer and didn’t find it too linear, try playing Death Song. Unless you’re suffering from depression. Then don’t play it. Seriously. It’s probably the most depressing story I’ve ever read that wasn’t based on real life.
Well, the thing is, Endmaster usually does one true ending [although, by my last count, Eternal has four or five.], but I don’t play for freedom to do what I want, I play for the story.
Yeah, weird to be hearing that on this site, right? And just because you end up choosing a ‘bad’ choice and it doesn’t end up being a true choice, he doesn’t just go ‘Ah, you’re dead.’ It might be an extended paragraph or two, or maybe the game usually goes down years and years, and then you find out you can’t go forward anymore. I just really enjoy his writing, humor, and stories.
I enjoyed Death Song more than Necromancer, by far. Necromancer is really good, but Death Song is just so much better, and so great, and the ending was just a mind-blower. I wouldn’t say it’s depressing, me personally, but it does have a ‘you’re all going to die anyways’ tone. And the whole point of the story is a bit sad.
Not depressing? You play a guy struggling desperately to survive in a world that is literally dying do to the power of one megalomaniacal loser who found the one thing he was good at and it turned out to be… death. In Necromancer you are never really all that affected by the atrocities you commit. Endmaster does a great job of glossing over things in a way that reflects the character’s own sociopathic nature. In Death Song though, there are constant reminders that the people who are dying are in fact people. Piece by piece you lose everything that ever mattered to you to this murderous psychopath and all you can do is watch and flee until all you have left is your music. And then he comes to take that from you too. That’s pretty depressing to me. The fact that if you’ve played Necromancer then you know that he constantly had chances and choices where he could have avoided this path only makes it more depressing. He just kept on going for no reason other than to bring death to all living things.
I said personally sir, personally. Maybe it’s something wrong with my mentality, but I said personally. Didn’t mean to get you all riled up. Also, a spoiler alert would be nice for people who haven’t played the game.
Anywhoo. I did not think about those. Maybe it’s been too long since I’ve played it, might play it again. And technically, [Spoiler~] he’s the God of Death, and he didn’t know it. In a game called Necromancer, I think death to all living things is reason enough. Without breaking the fourth wall though, he hated the way his life was, so maybe it was his way of reacting. Then he found he enjoyed death, and eventually it was even out of his power for him to stop it.
Why do people always think I’m “riled up” when I disagree with them? I guess it just makes people more comfortable.
He becomes the “god of death” because he killed every living thing in the world. And he’s not much of a god either all things considered when he was having his strings pulled by some higher power in the form of his dead beloved whom we know nothing about. He didn’t really do that for her or anyone though. He basically just did what he did because he could, yet constantly he felt the need to justify it as self defense. He justified killing everything in the world as self defense. He’s not so much a god of death as a god of mindless destruction.
@Shoelip Walls of text do that. I have the same problem with people thinking I’m talking down to them because I try to find the flaws in their ideas. (I’m not, I try to find the flaws in everything because that’s how you make things better.) >.<
have anyone of you read love sick by endnmaster that have plenty of choice and all of the just as disturbing but entertaining at the same time. so if you do feel like doing some mindless killing and violence that is well writing check it out in chooseyourstory/endmaster.com
Actually the only two stories of mine that have “true endings” are Necromancer and Death Song, and even those have an alternate branch ending.
All the rest of the stories including Ground Zero AND Eternal don’t have a “true ending”. GZ and Eternal have some special ones which are more of a bonus for the reader, but if you prefer one of the other endings, then you can go ahead and consider that your “true ending” instead. Not all endings lead to death and I don’t put a scoring system saying how badly you lost or won after all, you can decide that for yourself.
Anyway this is a cool site, I’ve visited before to play the dragon and vampire game, but I didn’t even know there were forums to join up on until recently. Figured I’d pop in since I saw my name (surprisingly) mentioned in a thread.
I did really like Ground Zero (although I’ve only played it a couple of times, following a similar path, it’s on my list to play again). I don’t mind if there is an ‘ultimate goal’ or something of the like, but I like feeling like I can go ahead and do things how I want to do them. Like CoD. The path is ultimately the same no matter what you do, but you can choose to either be honorable about it, or you can be a dick and just roast everything, well, everything that’s roastable.
Also @EndMaster awesome to see an author which actually responds to people talking about their work. As for what you said about a ‘score’ on the ending. That’s in part what lead me to stop going to Chooseyourstory.com. It felt like most of the games were ‘do things in this order, or else you lose’ with the possibility of one choice with any real meaning at the end. It felt as though it was more because of Chooseyourstory.com not handling variables well (I don’t know, I’ve never looked at how you actually write games for Chooseyourstory.com) rather than a lacking of any of the authors though. Personally, I’d love to see what you do with ChoiceScript. :3
I’m originally from Infinite Story, but I go back and forth from there to ChooseYourStory a lot.
Infinite Story mainly focuses on pure story writing aspects of CYOAs (no scripting or anything) so hence why my stuff tends to be story oriented. Some people like it, some don’t, though most of the funniest comments are some of the negative ones. (One dude ranted at me on two seperate stories, swearing and calling me a psychopath after reading them claiming he felt like committing suicide. One of those stories was Death Song. Lol.)
I did do a very long story with more “game” to it, called Legend, but again it wasn’t with scripting, it was more like one of those old gamebooks where it told you to keep track of your stats with pencil & paper, roll the dice, etc.
Don’t know if I’d ever get around to doing a story with scripting and all the fancy stuff, but who knows maybe one day I’ll have the time.
@djma46 You know I got the feeling that that game was an attempt by the author to see how horribly fucked up and disgusting a story he could possibly write?
@EndMaster When I said “True Ending” I was generally referring to any possible ending with an epilogue, but I guess Death Song doesn’t have that, so in that case it’s just the longest one. I can sort of see where that guy who was insulting you was coming from with Death Song. The game is extremely powerful, and it literally made me feel noticeably depressed for the next few days after reading it. I then went back and played Necromancer again and sent him to hell. That made me feel a little better.
Try not to take this the wrong way, but I feel like Death Song is the Gloomy Sunday of interactive fiction.
Okay… I just played Necromancer… Annd surprisingly I loved it! Lol. Like I said before I’m not really into more story than game based games… Buut this one is one of the few I actually love. It was kinda long but I like how you got the WHOLE story instead of just a summary… That always kind of irritates me when I don’t feel I get enough of a backstory. Keep up the goodwork…
After I played DeathSong, I walked away amazed, satisfied, and interested in this world he created, what Necromancer didn’t see in the world [Fairies,etc.], and how the two stories go together in the end.
@EndMaster Thanks for joining and, personally, I don’t think you need all the fancy stuff to do a great game, but people like it [I am one of them~]. Although, I have to say that your games are just really good with backstory.
