The story revolves around a character who wakes up one night in the middle of the street and follows his (I am writing from a 1st person, present tense, male character point of view) journey of self discovery. This journey includes befriending a priest who helps the character discover his identity, a love interest of a girl he meets in a bar, some exciting adventures based around item hunting and character building through working at an office.
Only the very early stages are implemented to test out the game mechanics but the overarching story is fully story-boarded and just needs fleshing out; so feedback, comments, suggestions etc at this early stage will help me build the foundations correctly going forwards. Thanks in advance and…
Welcome to Curio City…
NOTE: I’ll be editing this post as I add new stuff to the story…
12 Oct - Fixed a bunch of typos.
Coming very soon…
A rewrite of major content to make the story clearer and better. Hopefully. edited by @The_Bard on 10/13/2012
Well, this is certainly interesting. It is hard to say anything more than that as I don’t know how much is actually playable. I went in all four directions and completed everything at The Church, which raised my awake to 7 before I ran out of actions. I will go back later and see if more unlocks but overall, this is also seems like a pretty surreal story, which is a good thing.
Thanks for the feedback. I had actually forgotten that I had let the Awake quality rise so quickly. I’ve fixed that as that parameter controls where you are in the overall story.
I’ve added some content and some challenges linked to the abilities. Also, for play-testing I have unlocked The End card that is always available. This will allow players to end the story at any time and also refresh actions. Hopefully this make testing easier and allow people to try out multiple paths and game mechanics.
If you hit a ‘loading…’ screen that doesn’t resolve, it’s often a problem with malformed html in the content. The Bard might want to have a look to make sure all the tags are closed.
Hm. I don’t seem to see any commas. Like, at all. Is this an intentional writing choice?
The “Decide to Move” card seems to be missing an “I” somewhere. It reads as, “Decide to move…but don’t know the direction to head in.” The sentence lacks a subject.
“The Church” card: The priest…beckons me forwards. I believe that should be “forward”, no S.
“You look lost” he says
Oh dear. deep breath
The “Believer” quality sounds a bit strange when I get it. It’s just the word “skeptical”, without any context, which sounds a bit strange. Most StoryNexus games give a description for custom quality messages, like “you are skeptical about belief in God”, or something.
Luck is a stat, huh? That will probably be…interesting.
Uh…hm. Do you mind if I quote myself here?
“The Market” card: The result text for the top branch has extra ellipses at the beginning.
-Also: Your lucky Your is the possessive. You want “you’re”, short for “you are”.
“The Office” card: …is designed in an open plan I believe that should be “plain”?
So, it seems like there’s nothing else I can do? I guess that’s that then, for now.
There’s not a whole lot of content, so there’s not much to comment on. I felt that the scenes in the church could have been fleshed out more – there’s no dialogue at all, and the whole narration felt very passive to me. edited by Little The on 10/12/2012
[color=FFFF00]There are a few dotted around, [color=FFFF00]however[/color] I now see the error of my ways. I’ve reworded some storylets, adding a few more commas. Hopefully it all reads a lot better now.[/color]
[quote=Little The]The “Decide to Move” card seems to be missing an “I” somewhere. It reads as, “Decide to move…but don’t know the direction to head in.” The sentence lacks a subject.
“The Church” card: The priest…beckons me forwards. I believe that should be “forward”, no S.[/quote]
[color=FFFF00]You believe correctly and the typos have been corrected.[/color]
[quote=Little The]“You look lost” he says
Oh dear. deep breath[/quote]
[color=FFFF00]You can exhale now[color=FFFF00],[/color] I stand corrected once again[/color].
[color=FFFF00]I use the [color=FFFF00]‘Believer’ quality to track the players progress in the Church[color=FFFF00] [/color]s[color=FFFF00]tory. I use ‘[color=FFFF00]Customer’ and[/color][/color][/color][/color] [color=FFFF00]‘Awake’ on a similar manner for the [color=FFFF00]bar and overall story [color=FFFF00]respectively[/color]. Suggestions for a more appropriate method are most welcome. Ideally, I w[color=FFFF00]ould like a hidden quality that isn’t visible to the player but don’t think it’s possible. Also, t[/color]he ‘skeptical[color=FFFF00]’ [[color=FFFF00]sic] [/color]identifier was me playing around with quality descriptions[/color] [color=FFFF00]and I have now removed them.[/color][/color][/color]
[color=FFFF00]I originally envisioned ‘Luck’ to be a multiplier to make challenges easier but I don’t think that’s possible so I’m going to be removing it soon. I haven’t played around with the default ‘Luck’ quality yet.[/color]
[quote=Little The]Uh…hm. Do you mind if I quote myself here?
[color=FFFF00]Noted. I’ll be making the early challenges a lot easier if not removing them all together once the relevant storylets and branches have more content.[/color]
[color=FFFF00]I don’t understand, can you please elaborate?[/color]
[quote=Little The]-Also: Your lucky Your is the possessive. You want “you’re”, short for “you are”.
“The Office” card: …is designed in an open plan I believe that should be “plain”?[/quote]
[color=FFFF00]Fixed.[/color]
[quote=Little The]So, it seems like there’s nothing else I can do? I guess that’s that then, for now.
There’s not a whole lot of content, so there’s not much to comment on. I felt that the scenes in the church could have been fleshed out more – there’s no dialogue at all, and the whole narration felt very passive to me. edited by Little The on 10/12/2012[/quote]
[color=FFFF00] Thanks for the comments, they’re very helpful. I will be fleshing out the church story arc in more detail very soon, hence the abrupt end. I just want to make sure I have the mechanics worked out before I start dumping a lot of content in.[/color] edited by @The_Bard on 10/13/2012
Some stylistic feedback (I think @Little The wrapped up the mechanical stuff just fine – except that I think you should double-space your paragraphs to improve readability):
[quote=]…after what felt like an eternity. I am lying horizontal with a piece of cloth on my body. No shoes though.
I proceed to climb to a vertical position but rise too quickly causing the blood to rush to my head. I’m now seeing stars as well as the street I’m standing in.[/quote]
The more I play Story Nexus games, the more I think that every single game needs to do three things right up front:
Establish who your character is. (A specific person? A general avatar? A single-celled organism?)[/li][li]Orient the reader’s narrative camera – that is, establish what the reader is looking when they start playing.[/li][li]Let the reader know how much they’re supposed to understand about the world. This can range from “you’re a normal person on earth in Baltimore” to “you’re on Mars and the year is 2029” or “this is a prose poem, you don’t have a character at all.”
The games I think are successful so far – the ones I’ve enjoyed playing – do all three of those things ASAP. (I think Zero Summer does all three. So do Samsara and Fallen London.)
Why are those three things important? Because they tell the player what to expect. Priming – getting the audience in the right head-space – is a huge part of narrative design! You don’t have to give away every secret in the game, but players need to know who they are, what they’re looking at, and why it matters. Otherwise their job is Figure Out What I’m Playing instead of Enjoy The Game.
The text I quoted above is from the first storylet in Curio City. I don’t think it does a very good job with any of the three things I think SN games need to do. Specifically:
It doesn’t establish the player’s character. It does tell the player that Curio City is going to be told in the first person – but it gives no details about who that person is. Nor do any of the subsequent storylets.[/li][li]It does orient the reader’s camera, but it doesn’t have enough description to really explain what that camera is pointed at.[/li][li]It doesn’t tell the reader anything about the world. Is the narrator in Seattle, 2012? Is he on Jupiter? This gets clearer as the game goes on, but not much clearer and not fast enough.
I would strongly suggest that you go back through the first part of Curio City and work in a lot more descriptive text. It doesn’t have to be long-winded or purple or pointilistic. It does need to give your players a better idea what’s going on, and where, and why they care.
As far as how to do that: there was this really excellent piece in the Atlantic recently about how good writing is about objects, not ideas. What I tell myself and my staff is that every single piece of writing in Zero Summer needs to do two things: it needs to contain at least one physical description of what’s around the player, and it needs to evoke the setting somehow. I think you might benefit from trying to do the same.
What you had planned to do with the luck quality is impossible, but if you decide to use it still, be careful. While you can create another luck stat without any problems, the platform automatically detects the word “luck” and changes the challenge description text to fit the FBG luck stat. All challenges on YOUR luck stat will have the “A sure thing…or is it?” to “The odds are against you here” description.