The Hunters Destiny (my first gamebook)

Dreamwalker
Hey guys,

So this is the first chapter in the short game and respectively my first attempt:
The Hunters Destiny [Chapter 1]
http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/1kajkevknu_ifwyyvm4wka/the-hunters-destiny
please let me know what you think.


P.S

My gf is going to edit the spelling/grammar etc later so I will update it tonight.

Also, it is coming up as uncategorized, as I can't do it, can someone move it to the fantasy section please?



-Dreamwalker

Dreamwalker
Feedback would be appreciated.

Entropic Pen
When you first post a game, it'll be in the uncategorized section for a day or two for the moderators to check so don't sweat it (a personal experience of a fellow game dev).

Dreamwalker
Entropic Pen wrote:When you first post a game, it'll be in the uncategorized section for a day or two for the moderators to check so don't sweat it (a personal experience of a fellow game dev).


Fair enough, have you tried it?

jaynabonne
Dreamwalker wrote:Feedback would be appreciated.


I had played this back when you first posted, and I had tried to formulate a response but failed miserably, as I wasn't sure how to convey what I wanted to convey, in a way that didn't seem critical or discouraging. But since nobody else has responded and you're still asking for feedback, I decided to give it a go. Keep in mind that what follows is just my impressions attempted to put into words. Also keep in mind that it's just one person's thoughts.

First the good.

I like the scope of the game. It has a very ambitious feel to it, grand in scale, which is quite inviting for the player. The visuals are nice (title page, chapter heading). I also like the way you have the hyperlinks set up to go off on tangents (e.g the backstory for the main character, Englark, etc.), leading back to the original page. That's a nice differentiating feature from other game books I've seen.

Herein lies one of the first problems, though, and I don't know if it's calculated or accidental - one of tone. The backstory pages are all quite serious in tone, very straightforward, expositional, and sometimes almost getting into irrelevant detail (unless it becomes relevant later). Since I read them first, my initial impression was that this was a serious game. Then I got back to the main page and saw the name "King Crouton", and it was jarring. The name definitely didn't seem serious, so I had to wonder: was this a serious game or not? Then I read further and discovered it wasn't.

Perhaps that's what you want, that abrupt shift from serious to ridiculous. If so, then I'll leave that to your discretion. I just wanted to report what I experienced. I think the backstory pages could be great fodder for some humor.

One more note on the backstory pages - you slip from second person to third person in one spot: "This is all from stories that Light Foot's father has told him and as he does not really venture into the city, he has all of this to learn." Given that you are Light Foot, it's odd reading about yourself in the third person. :)

Now to my chief problem. I'll preface this again: perhaps I'm just an old curmudgeon, so take this with grain of salt. Also keep in mind that I'm trying to rationalize humor, which is probably beyond my abilities. In other words, this could be a miserable failure. Here we go, nonetheless...

Cheeky and absurd, when done well, can be brilliant and engaging. When not, it can just be annoying.

I enjoyed the Crouton letter. Despite needing some punctuation to smooth it out, I liked the creativity of the speech "tic". I could hear it, and it made me smile. That's the sort of unassuming subtle humor that can work nicely.

On the other side, we have the really awful "Sir Wan-ksollot". (Remember this is my opinion.) The whole "let's make a play on words of Lancelot" has been done before... many times. So it's not novel. But you've taken that and really made it heavy handed by having both a hyphen and word part ("ksollot") that is awkward and difficult to read. It reeks of "look how clever I'm trying to be by trying to hide the joke that everyone sees anyway." If you wish to keep the name, please at least drop the hyphen. Don't make it so unnatural that it sticks out so painfully.

Beyond that, the tone in general just got a bit annoying to me. At the first decision point you have, the very first option is, "Say thanks, but shoot him in the leg just for the fun of it". There is nothing that leads up to that. I'd at least put some more natural choices up front, then drop in the bizarre one at the end. And at that first decision point, no matter what you do, you get a snarky response.

And things like "He wasn't even insured, what will his family do now?" when the bandit is killed or your mother saying, ""Don't forget your toothbrush because the last thing you need is death breath" elicited groans more than laughs. Things that are ridiculous can be funny, but they can also just be ridiculous. It's a fine line, and I can't profess to be an expert. I'm just reporting my own reaction.

Now, humor is relative, so don't just take my word for it. We might have different tastes in it, and there might be a great number of other people out there as well who will be leaning more on your side. I assume that both your editor and girlfriend have read this. If they enjoyed it, then consider me an outlier.

I'd say keep going, write more chapters, flesh out the story. And then come back, read it after it's sat for a while, and see how you still feel about it. Maybe you'll leave it; maybe you'll change it. Also, make sure your gf does the editing. :) There's some stuff that needs fixing in there (take the word of a programmer cum part-time editor on a nearly dead story website).

Overall, I applaud the attempt, and I look forward to more. Just don't get too caught up in trying too hard to be clever. Make it ridiculous-funny, not just ridiculous. ;)

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