I'd like some feedback on this tiny 1000-word work (well, a bit less than that). This is pretty much my first interactive fiction work, though I'm no stranger to writing in general.
Thimble and Thorn
It's about an murder mystery in a village exiled from Faerie.
I felt a little cramped by the Harlowe format, since this version doesn't have save functionality that would let me know how many endings people have reached, and thus open up a final ending. >_<
I'm thinking about expanding this little world by using this as a prologue to a longer story, written in Twine 1 and SugarCube.
Comments
Maybe down the road you can help me as well (I've got a rather large IF project going.).
As for the story itself, I have read it. Do you want PM convos since other people may not have read it? Or alternatively not to big down the thread? (Although on second thought, I don't think you CAN bog it down, since, that's what it's about!)
Let me know.
—Sage.
I think discussion using spoiler tags around sensitive bits here would be good, but feel free to PM if you prefer.
Spoiler would be great except: broken.
Although, realistically... it's not government secrets or anything!
I'll give it a go
So... from an editing/writing standpoint, I suppose there are really only a few things you could change. At this moment, they are not critical. There isn't too much else to go on though, so I would like to at least give you something with which to start.
I get that we are in a thousand-word challenge, and because of that I take no real issue with it. Just wanted to mention it for later. There is a simple fix for this. I'm sure you already know it. If you need a suggestion or two, I can offer them.
I absolutely LOVE the mechanism you chose for the ticking clock. Masterful stroke.
Plot-wise, I think it might have been a bit hasty to say that in the end there was no justice. If indeed he felt bad because they had no justice back in the day (with the iron-monger), and then he (for all intents and purposes) literally slew a noble, he has in fact brought about justice... albeit in a different, self-meted form. No? Food for thought, I suppose.
I think also you may have a logic problem in your code. If you investigate the king, then confirm, then kill... an innocent has died. If you just straight kill him, a noble has died. This seems like it came from writing the code twice. It's a waste of space where a variable substitution would have changed the phrase, but since the sentence has more to it than just that one word, I can also see that you meant for it to be intentional. If that is the case, this would be a good spot to say that since a noble has died justice has been done... but of a different sort.
That's really it for something so short.
HOWEVER
It's mad awesome and I love the concept.
—Sage.
PS, not my first time doing this sort of work. Here is a link to some of my reviews:
http://www.superheropress.com/feedback/
But like everything else in life, you're only as good as your last gig, right? So the reviews don't matter too much if my work for you has sucked!
I hope it hasn't.
For the record:
The narrator is also incidentally agender, so "he" is probably not the right way to refer to them, unless I've indicated in some way that they are a he, which would definitely have been a mistake.