Feedback? Thimble and Thorn

AvaJarvis

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.

Sage

I'm down. I'll sign up as a beta-tester or what-have-you. Professionally I've done a BUNCH of books. New to Twine, though.

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.

AvaJarvis

I'd be glad to help you out, @Sage.

I think discussion using spoiler tags around sensitive bits here would be good, but feel free to PM if you prefer.

Sage

@AvaJarvis
Spoiler would be great except: broken.

Although, realistically... it's not government secrets or anything!

I'll give it a go

Sharpe

Ava, I'll be happy to give you more feedback once the challenge deadline is over on Monday. I look forward to playing any expansion of this game.

Sage

@AvaJarvis
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.

You have an unreliable narrator, although by accident. He jumps the time frames around a bit, because he starts at the end (much like Fight Club) but then in your choices he says, I suppose I could try this or that,, instead of what he has already tried.

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.

AvaJarvis

Thanks, @Sage! The critique is good.

For the record:

The unreliable narrator is entirely intentional. If you reach a certain ending you'll see that the narrator's arms are covered in cyan [once more]. This entire thing was the narrator's search for a scapegoat that they can live with, essentially; plus the narrator lies to themself. Difficult to communicate well, and I probably didn't do a very good job of it.

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.