[WIP] After the Fall (Demo Available)

[WinterAva20]

After the Fall

Heroes are supposed to save the world.

Nobody talks about what happens after.

Once celebrated as one of the greatest heroes of a generation, you are now a fugitive living under a false identity. Six months after escaping the people who betrayed you, you’ve finally begun to build a normal life away from hero politics, conspiracies, and old wounds.

Then life plays a cruel joke.

Your new life brings you back to the city where everything ended.

The city where Songbird died.

At least… that’s what everyone believes.

Former teammates reenter your life. Old enemies begin circling once again. Long-buried secrets claw their way to the surface, forcing you to confront a past that refuses to stay buried.

As the truth behind your downfall slowly unravels, you’ll have to decide who deserves your trust, who deserves your forgiveness, and whether to keep running from the past… or finally face it.

Because some stories don’t begin with saving the world.

They begin after everything falls apart.

About the Game

You play as Songbird, a former member of the legendary hero team Nova Guard.

Framed for a crime you didn’t commit, your reputation was destroyed overnight. To the world, Songbird is dead.

Only you know the truth.

To the public, Songbird possesses two known abilities:

• Sonic Scream: Unleash devastating soundwaves capable of shattering steel, leveling structures, and overwhelming even powerful superhumans.
• Regenerative Healing: Recover from injuries that would kill almost anyone else.

But the truth behind Songbird, Nova Guard, and the events that shattered your life may be far more complicated than anyone realizes.

---

Features

• Play as a fallen hero trying to rebuild their life after becoming the world’s most wanted superhuman.
• Customize Songbird’s personality, appearance, gender, and relationships.
• Reconnect with former Nova Guard teammates as friends, rivals, or something more.
• Build a new civilian life while keeping your identity hidden.
• Investigate the conspiracy that destroyed your career and turned the world against you.
• Shape Songbird’s future through your choices and determine what kind of person they become.
• Experience romance, friendship, betrayal, forgiveness, and second chances.

---

The world believes Songbird is gone.

The question is whether you’ll let it stay that way.

---

Demo

Play the Demo: (Link)

Version: 0.1.0

Word Count: 26,225 words

Additional content, branching, and reactive choices will be added in future updates.

Feedback on bugs, pacing, dialogue, typos, and general impressions is greatly appreciated.

[Valixon]

I’ve enjoyed what I have seen so far one suggestion I have is when selecting gear and the like we get the option to back track if we want to check something out before committing to a selection.

[Zest]

Starting off, I like the story concept. I did notice a few things I would like to point out to you.

In the intro, MC is referred to as “she” even though gender hasn’t been chosen yet.

I notice you use contrastive negation often, especially in the beginning.

I think you should probably go back and edit some of them as AI also tends to use this in writing.

I don’t know if it has a name but I noticed you sometimes do three short sentences for effect. For example:

In the above example I think it works because it emphasizes the bad situation the trainees are now in but other times, it’s not necessary.

Instead of doing three short sentences here, you could combine them; “You know what’s inside, you don’t know how it’s inside, but you know it’s there.” If you use this three short sentence structure often, it gets repetitive.

In the scene with Akira, there is one sentence where the perspective is first person instead of second.

And that’s all I have as I am still reading the story. I like what you have so far, these are just things I observed while reading.

Edit:

Repeated words.

[WinterAva20]

Yes, there will be a way to backtrack and pick another option. I am adding some more things right now, and that is one of them.

[WinterAva20]

Thank you for pointing those out. I’ve been staring at this project on and off for the past week, and I’ve read through the demo three times, so it’s easy to miss things after looking at it for so long. I’m already working on fixing the short, choppy sentences as well. I really appreciate you taking the time to point them out.

[Zest]

No problem! Happy to help.

[Bulk_Biceps]

This is really good. keep it up.

[Tlud]

Is there a story reason the protagonist has limited race options? Kinda threw me that the options were “Pale White → Tan White”

[WinterAva20]

@Tlud

Is there a story reason the protagonist has limited race options? Kinda threw me that the options were “Pale White → Tan White”

Yep! Songbird is canonically of Chinese and Korean heritage, and that becomes relevant to the story later on.

The protagonist isn’t meant to be fully customizable in every aspect, so their heritage is fixed. However, I’m expanding the skin tone options to give players more flexibility in how they envision Songbird while keeping the character’s established background intact.

While reviewing my story notes, I realized that a broader range of skin tones fits the lore, so I’m happy to expand those options. There are a few reasons why this works that I can’t really explain without spoiling later parts of the story, since questions of identity are a major theme throughout the game.

[LiliArch]

You might want to clarify that in the story (before the skin color choice), if you want to avoid the player confusion, but it’s obviously up to you.

I’d also appreciate having name options, not just the input field.

[WinterAva20]

That’s a good suggestion. I definitely want to keep the custom name option, but I’ll look into adding some suggested names as well for players who’d rather pick from a list.

[skjohnsonapop]

Hi there, I just wanted to let you know that I can’t seem to get past the ‘family name’ selection screen. I tried female, male, pre-selected names, custom… nothing seems to let me advance past that screen.

That aside, I’m really excited for this game, so thanks for posting it. I’m a big superhero fan and I like the story you’ve outlined and your writing style.

Good luck on your journey!

[Takashi_Shin]

Yeah, i’m noticing that problem with the last name tooYeah, I’m noticing that problem with the last name too. Every time we enter the last name, we get back to it

[WinterAva20]

Thanks so much for letting me know. That was a bug on my end with the family name selection, and I’ve fixed it.

And thank you for your excitement about the story! I really appreciate it, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the demo.

[skjohnsonapop]

Hey again, thanks for fixing things!

Out of curiosity, are you going to end up implementing blocked names, so you can’t name yourself after a character? I happened to pick the same name as the ‘Ash Queen’, believe it or not. As a result, the scene does read a bit funny. Personaly I don’t care, as I really wanted that name… Others might be thrown off if they pick the same name as another character.

I’ve also tried to advance to the next chapter, but I just get the loading bar cycling forever, so something may be busted? I’ve tried twice now.

[WinterAva20]

I’ll look into adding blocked names as an option. Im still fairly new to all the code.

And I’ll look into the bar scene. It wasn’t messed up earlier, but it could be a bug, as you said.

I’ve written a lot of the story before implementing it in choice script.

[WinterAva20]

Ok somehow, I accidently had that conversation as finish with the code. And it wasn’t supposed to.

That’s my bad.

But now it should all be fixed so you can see the whole demo.

And thank you for telling me.

[Bethany_J]

Okay, this was so intriguing! I like Songbird and the little bits and pieces are nice but I can’t help but feel like everything happened so quickly?

It felt often like I was having to make decisions about something without the context of it’s implications. Now, I understand that you don’t want to tell everything about backstory immediately and I think that mystery like that, when done well work good! But I think you’re withholding too much information, introducing too many characters to quickly and moving the plot too fast which ultimately left me feeling like I was making important decisions in a void that I didn’t know the context for.

You introduce a lot of terms and characters and frequently reference events of Songbirds past and I think that it feels very full on very quickly. I also think that it felt a bit sudden, that Songbird goes from running away from their past and building a new life to digging up their old one extremely quickly and that it would be nice to have some more scenes with the best friend before going back to Songbird stuff imo.

Also a few minor things. Songbird is referred to as both a man and a she before I chose my gender. At the start, when choosing what the guards see it would be nice to have a bit more of an explanation before locking my choice in as to what that choice means for my Songbird and how they’re seen. Also when choosing gear, I felt very confused that only some of them had explanations and I’m not sure what the purpose of them was. And, on that point, it felt weird to me that Songbird was saying they were picking up a few things in case of emergencies only to then immediately go full vigilante immediately.

Anyway, this showed a lot of promise and I hope all my feedback doesn’t deter you because I’m eager to see where this goes!

[WinterAva20]

Your feedback definitely didn’t deter me. I actually wanted feedback like this because I wanted to know how everyone experienced the demo and what was or wasn’t working.

I honestly took a break from writing for a while and have only recently gotten back into it, so I’m still getting comfortable again. That’s probably why some of my writing feels a little choppy in places.

I’m going back through the demo to see where I can provide better context without spoiling the story. I also agree that I threw a little too much information at players too quickly, so I’m trimming some of that and saving it for later when it becomes more relevant.

I also caught the pronoun issue at the beginning. That wasn’t intentional, and I’ve already fixed it.

I’m currently reworking the gear selection so each option has proper descriptions and players have a better idea of what they’re choosing and why.

I’m also adding a few more scenes with Xinya before the investigation begins. I realized players needed more time to get to know her and see Songbird’s normal life before everything starts pulling them back into their past.

These changes won’t be available until I release the next update, but I’m already working on them now.

Thanks again for taking the time to play and write such detailed feedback. It really helped me see where new players were getting lost, and I appreciate it.

[Trista_JW]

I did start playing and while I did want to like it, I could not convince myself to continue much further than just the complexion choice scene. The premise isn’t bad whatsoever- it seems to have promise; however, the writing style bothers me immensely. The exceptionally short sentences, coupled with the rule-of-three lists in some passages are the same kind of stylistic choices that AI-generated text churns out. And some of the word choices are what AI seems to be trained on as well. Because of that, I could not convince myself to continue reading, as I despise the style (even if you did not use AI) that AI text generators use. Again, though, your premise does sound interesting and I do not doubt that the story/game itself is good; the style just isn’t for me at all! I hope that many people end up liking it, though, as it does deserve attention! (For the record, no, I am not accusing you of using AI; I’m simply stating that the style you are using is extremely close to what AI text generators use.)