For years you’ve been just barely scraping by as a low grade mercenary, living from job to job with just enough to keep your ship maintained and some food in your belly. You’re tired of it. Tired of mopping up low life scum barely worth the creds to bother with. Something has to change. You have to make something change. Out here on the rim chaos is king, and opportunity is ripe for the taking. If you’ve got the guts, that is. Will you bust ass working your way up the ranks of the UMG? Bed down with the Coreward corps? Or maybe, just maybe, you can help bring some lasting change to this backwater…
Zero-Point Vacuum is my first choicescript game, one that I’ve been working on now the the last several months! Currently it consists solely of the prologue, clocking in at about 8.7k words in total or roughly an average of 3.4k per playthrough. Mostly it’s a sequence to get your stats set up. This initial post is scarce on wordbuilding info, but I’ll continue to update it as the game is developed and posted.
I’m looking for input on spelling, grammar, plot, and structure. Really any feedback is welcome!
This was fun! There was a good amount of detail that made me feel involved but not overwhelmed, so I enjoyed that. I did see lots of cases of quotes being written up incorrectly. Like the typical format should look like
“I’m saying something,” you say.
“I’m saying something and now I’m going to do something.” You do something.
I just say that because I noticed missing commas or period/comma mix ups kind of regularly. That said, I always prioritize content personally, and I really liked it! I’m excited to read more, and to use my cool space-ninja knife (which is not an option I get often enough in space games).
I like the premise, it makes me want to re-watch firefly/serenity again. I also agree with the space knife!
The things I noticed and sorry this post is probably going to be long as heck.
You can ignore me on this one but I think
“Deactivating your boots, you let the tether slacken (slightly/a bit), leaving some space before you set off the chem-det.” flows better.
Commas should be surrounding the “almost completely black” or rework the sentence since it runs on a little.
Also on the second part about the slack this could flow better as well
“Activating your tether again, you continue to leave some slack as you pass by your mount,” and keep the rest of the sentence the same
Continues use of starting the sentences with it seems a little redundant and awkward.
Cutting the second sentences it and change stands to standing could make it flow better
EX: ‘Standing there, holding a laser carbine, as you both dumbly stare at the other in surprise.’ The take a second part felt slightly redundant since the next sentence starts with ‘It doesn’t last long though’
*The last sentence can stay the same or cut down to
‘It doesn’t take long though, instincts taking over as you’
Something my old creative writing teacher drilled into all of his students was never ever start a sentence with but.
You could cut it out completely and start the sentence with the or replace it with still/although/nonetheless
EX: ‘Still, the crouched one’s expression was not of concern, but of (delight/amusement/content), as they look up at you and hit the final button on their tablet.’
You can also ignore my example if you don’t want to change the sentence too much
Ending a sentence with you and then starting the next sentence with you felt unneccesary.
The second sentence could go
'The both of you go down. Hard. The chaos causing you to lose the grip you had on your weapon.
The third sentence could be cut down to
‘Taking advantage of your disorientation, the pilot starts raining down blows to your suit.’
cut out but in the next sentence and add a comma after hits and swap you and still so its still you not you still
Did you mean them instead of then?
Since the sentence before it started with you, you can cut out the ‘you start’ and just start the sentence with ‘looking around’
You could add a comma after the you at the very bottom or separate the the sentence putting a period after you and changing the last four words to ‘That’s when you spot it.’
Continuing from the last one, you can cut out ‘you see’ from the start of the sentence since the previous paragraphs sentence ends with the fact that you spot it. Starting the sentence with ‘Your blade’ instead.
Insert a comma after now and cut out and
The sentence could be
'The pilot must have noticed your ploy. The blows coming down harder even harder now, blood from their busted knuckles smearing across your visor as (they land/the hits land/the blows connect/a combo of any of those could work).
TLDR: mostly capitalization errors I found and places where the sentences could be restructured. I hope what I wrote makes some sense. With that in mind I did enjoy what is here so far
Thank you all so much for the feedback! Unfortunately I don’t have time for it today, but I’ll keep all this in mind and do some editing during the week. I’ll either update the OP or do a master response post when I get to it!
@CopperCaravan@StarFoxed
I’m glad y’all liked the space knife I wasn’t sure how that was going to go over tbh, so I’m glad it worked out!
@Umbreonpanda
There will be indeed! I’ll be updating the OP with some worldbuilding info at some point (hopefully soon), including some stuff about the various factions and ROs. I haven’t decided if I’m going to do a strictly one-for-one system there, but I do hope to end up with a decent number of options.
4-23-19 Hotfix
Mostly fixes to punctuation and capitalization. There were also some instances of missing paragraph breaks, causing overly large blocks of text while on mobile. Hopefully I caught most if not all of those.
It is actually supposed to say credit! As in you have a standing amount of credit banked with the UMG. If this isn’t clear, or I need to make changes to the currency system for other reasons, I may change this in the future. Also I missed that comment about my pfp before, thank you
I think I understood you correctly and caught most of the misused periods, but let me know if you notice things are still wrong!
I actually capitalized those on purpose in order to try and convey a certain kind of tone, but again I may change that if it’s not working out. Also thank you so much just for the large amount of specific feedback, it really allowed me to hunt down everything!
I wasn’t sure how that was going to go over tbh, so I’m glad it worked out!
