Hey there, this is the alpha demo of The Passenger. In it you play as an eldritch abomination that’s about to be devoured by another unthinkable creature. Good news is you are pretty crafty and know how to jump dimensions to escape your ghastly fate; bad news is, you’re now stuck on Earth, trapped inside a dumb human larva.
As years go by, you realize the amount of energy you need to leave this horrible dimension behind is a lot more than you had expected. Not to mention the creature that almost ate you all those years ago never really stopped looking for you. But there’s no way it’ll pin point your actual location… right?
What you can expect from this story:
Heavily character driven.
ROs. As of now I have 4 (1 female, 1 male, 2 gender flippable).
I wouldn’t say my story is a romance, but if you like talking to NPCs, well, there’s lot of that.
Weird reality bending powers (eventually).
Creepy stuff. I love horror, mostly the subtle sort that gives you goosebumps. Hopefully some parts will read like that.
I’m still throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks, just so you know.
What you won’t get:
Micromanaging. I suck at those.
Random outcomes. You have the prologue to build your MC’s attributes.
A story that relies too much on its stats. Sometimes. Ok, I’m still working on that.
Lovecraftian prose. I steal a lot from Howard Phillips, his prose he can keep.
What I’m looking for:
People to read it, first and foremost.
Grammar mistakes, coding errors (“it says he instead of she”), etc.
Are there odd sentences? (answer: yes)
Things you’ll probably find and I haven’t thought about.
1/1/19: Demo’s date of release. Prologue and Chapter 1 (26.589 Word count/12.110 on a single playtrough) 1/3/19: Corrected punctuation (I think I got them all), misspellings, and that odd sentence that was pointed out. Polished Teen!Livvy’s dialogue (hopefully it’s a little less awkward now but I’m an awkward person so). Took out the stat-based nonsense on that first conversation with Fiama; if you’re nice to her, she’ll be nice to you. Changed the color of the titles. Added the option to write down your own pronouns if you’re playing as a non-binary MC. 2/14/19: Chapter 2 is up. The WIP is now 59.130 words long, with an average of 21.900 per playthrough. 4/10/19: Chapter 3 is up. The WIP is now 91.772 words long, with an average of 32.632 per playthrough. 4/17/19: Corrected grammar, added some of @sharknap’s suggestions—some others to be added later on—tweaked some variables; hopefully all continuity errors have been squashed. 5/27/19: Update! CH4 is here. The WIP is now 129.636 words long, with an average of 40.726 per playthrough. 7/24/19: Chapter 5 is up. The WIP is now 151.900 words long, with an average of 48.925 per playthrough.
TW: mentions of drug use; mild cursing; sex themes; it gets gory; descriptions of corpses rotting away (CH2); claustrophobia (CH3); references to self-harm (CH4); descriptions of corpses rotting away (again) violent imagery (CH5).
Shout out to @malinryden who was cool with me using Fallen Hero’s code for gendering ROs, and thanks to all those authors I blatantly steal from for showing me the kind of story I want to read. You people rock~
you may want to make sure you add in a placeholder “This is the end of the demo!” scene, so that it doesn’t keep trying to load chapter 2 ad infinitum.
Also, in the beginning, MC notices a “pale shape,” which implies that your character is related to light-skinned people. This can be a little exclusionary. Maybe just make it “a blurry shape”.
Is English your second language? I noticed a few terms here and there that didn’t quite fit, so you may want to have a second set of eyes go through and make sure everything sounds natural.
In addition, Livvy’s manner of speaking as a teenager felt slightly stilted and overly formal, like she was a 45 year old noblewoman, trying to be a casual 15 year old. Maybe throw in some contractions and slang terms.
It would also be good to have some kind of indicator of how certain choices make you come across. I selected a choice with Faima that ended up making her dislike me, because the tone was completely different than I thought it would be (IE: I thought my character was being friendly, but in the following scene, she was downright rude and hurtful).
I look forward to reading more of this, though! I like it. Can’t help but feel kind of bad for the original Baby Newman, though.
Good luck with this demo - I can’t wait to see where you take it.
Good work so far! It’s an interesting concept, and I really like how MC’s relationship with Livvy is written.
Some grammar notes
Prologue it uses all its mouths —all sixteen of them—, —human children are just too impressionable; say some phrases in reverse and you'll have them eating out of the palm of your hand—,
Pretty sure the commas are unnecessary after the em dashes. Also, em dashes normally aren’t offset with spaces. It's — *she's* —
Spaces on either side of em dashes unnecessary. Why knowing that bothers you?
Seems awkwardly worded. "Where's Mom?" You say.
You shouldn’t be capitalized. She informs you you will
Rewording to “She informs you that you will” would make it sound less awkward. "Are you training for the race?" She asks you "Feeling better?" She asks trying
She doesn’t need to be capitalized. in a companionable silence once more. Although, you
Might work better to combine these sentences. "What are you thinking about?" You ask,
You doesn’t need to be capitalized.
Chapter 1 go somewhere else!" Someone shouted,
Someone doesn’t need to be capitalized. you're glad to find no one's gapping
Think you mean gaping? "Where is it?" The voice mutters.
The doesn’t need to be capitalized. "You hanged a sign
Should be hung. "When are you going to grow up?" She says "Really?" She says with a "Our order?" She says and
She doesn’t need to be capitalized. happy —overjoyed, even. he doesn't seem to mind —if anything into step with Roach —an keeping a cautious
No space before em dash necessary. Also, I think an should be and. "And that makes me better?" You ask. "Why did you invite me here?" You say "What's different about me?" You ask.
You doesn’t need to be capitalized. "Oh, me first!" He says.
He doesn’t need to be capitalized.
Yes, I’m hoping people can point out the odd sentences, since I don’t currently have a native proofreader.
How do you do fellow kids? Thanks for the ideas to improve that, I’ll see what I can do about it.
That’s because I was going for something similar to how Empyrean handled the stat success/fail according to what your attributes were… but I realized I was making a mess of it, so I dropped it. What’s there is some alpha stuff I will cut out in the future.
The first part of this story felt quite…depressing. NOT in a bad way, though. I mean, the quite tragic death of the father, the mother’s fear of letting us out alone during rain and storms (which implies David’s death was a trauma she never quite recovered from), these were quite sad to read. Us inadvertently being the cause of all these, plus Livvy being such a loving and caring older sister made me feel so guilty. It’s like I am deceiving all these people constantly, which I am, I guess. I really can’t quite express my thoughts clearly in this regard. Kudos for making me feel this torn.
The second part, however, was pretty strange. Roach, Jonny and Tamara are a peculiar bunch, and I have absolutely no clue what’s going to happen next. The last two pages of the demo left me very intrigued. Is Roach a reality warper too? Or is she talking about somebody else? Do they know what we are?
I also love the ‘outsider’ perspective of our world that is given. How a Godlike, eternal being might see the quirks of the human species is not something we see here everyday.
Looking forward to seeing where this goes. Especially what the Hunter is up to. He better not end up inhabiting or killing Livvy or Mom in the future. Please, no.
Really into this so far and eager to see where it goes. The conversations between characters is great and pretty much one of the first things I notice because once you can believe in a character (because they talk like a person instead of, well, a fictional character) it’s so much easier to get invested in the story.
I never knew I needed a game where I could be an omnipotent horror in my life until now.
You have an incredible demo going and everything flowed really coherently. I really like the hook in the beginning and can’t wait to see where this goes!
Really, really good job! I’ll be following this for sure.
YESSSS, YESSS, YESSS, I’ve always wanted to be a elderich abomination, thank you for making my dreams come true.
No micromanaging and not stats heavy? 2019 has truly started well!
The demo is very enjoyable, i really like how the elderich mc refers to us as lavae, i like how the way you choose your stats flows naturally and i also loved what you did with the name of the first chapter, i kind of agree with what someone told above about the references towards the mc being white due to "pale form, and her rosy hands* so it would be nice to be a little neutral about it, but other than that you’ve got a very solid start, i have some questions, but for some reason i can’t blurry them so i wilk ask them when i get home, really looking foward to this wip
I enjoyed the premise and the plot so far! Even with the short demo, I think you did a good job with making the reader feel invested in the characters (especially Livvy). Also, the MC feels 3-dimensional, unlike flat MCs in other games. I hope you’ll keep it up, and I will probably play through it again for any grammatical mistakes (but they’re probably so small I didn’t notice any).