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Wanna help me playtest my first story?

edited March 2016 in Workshop
It sort of spun a little complex for my first story with lots of webs. Wondering if it's A) playable and B) if there's anything I'm missing.

Also, general feedback and tips for a first-timer would be great.

http://nerdlouisville.org/stories/thetomb_chapter1.html

Comments

  • Doesn't seem playable... I tried three times and each time, there came a point where I tried to go down the long hall way or return to the long hallway and I was taken to a blank page.

    Also a small writing thing, no matter if the pronouns used to describe a person in a stasis chamber are he/him/his she/her, the second to last paragraph always reads 'you figure you could release her from somewhere remotely'.

    For a first time this looks pretty good tho, but I'm not a good judge of that since I'm working on my first project.
  • Hey, I had a quick play as I was having lunch at work but seems playable enough to me! I got the the key card bit then had to x out and get back to work!
  • Story: I enjoyed the story. I particularly liked the way you offered many elements and places to explore that offered various ways of putting together a means of escape. In two playthroughs I didn't manage to do so--died instead--but, hey that's part of the fun. The plot had a lot of your standard sci-fi elements but it didn't come across as overly cliché. From my point of view, it felt comfortably familiar, but interesting.

    Writing: I thought the writing was very well done. I don't recall seeing any typos, and only a couple of instances where the grammar might have been a little off. It's nice to read a story where the writer has taken the time to proof it and clean it up.

    Mechanics: Everything flowed well and clicked through to where it should, and choices appeared and disappeared as they should. I didn't have any problems with the mechanics of it. There were a couple of places where large blocks of white space showed up between the paragraphs, like after the "Your knees ache in pain from the scrapes…" paragraph.

    Overall: Thought it was excellent. The story started off at a fast clip and moved me right along. You got me to feel a little stressed out about my situation, especially when I discovered the time element. Seems like you put a good amount of effort into it, which shows. I'll probably try to play it again to get a good ending. If you ever add ambient sounds, I think that would be cool.
  • This was really fun! I am pretty new to IF so take these comments with a grain of salt ;-)
    In terms of the writing style, I thought the game worked very well. Good pacing, sufficient detail to vividly picture the scenes without getting tedious. Lots of tension, exciting plot with plenty of hooks.
    I would have appreciated more updates on the time -- going from "you have 40 minutes" to "you have 3 minutes" seemed a bit abrupt. Maybe it would add to the tension to actually have a clock that changes with every move?
    Personally, I don't like it when the only way to progress is to explore all options even when there's no obvious reason to do it. First time I played I didn't look at my sarcophagus and thus got stuck later; the only way I realised the problem was by exhaustively searching until I found the one option I hadn't tried. That was not so much fun.
    Also, why expect the player to memorise arbitrary stuff like which sarcophagus has which individual when you could just remind us in-game?
    Anyway, I am just nit-picking. And I'm evidently a lot lazier than most IF fans. Lots of very popular games do this sort of thing and nobody seems to mind.
    All in all, I really enjoyed the game.
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