Solid Milk Crisis - Headlining the apocalypse (Feedback please!)

JackIndeed
Hello,

I'd love to get some feedback on my first piece of interactive fiction, Solid Milk Crisis. It's the story about a band of furry monsters whose biggest hit may well just be the key to preventing the end of the world. This is just the intro to what will hopefully be a longer story. Any and all thoughts welcome!

Here's the link:

http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/ ... ilk-crisis

I'm predominantly a theatre writer, and a graduate of the Royal Court Young Writers Programme, so this is rather a new medium for me!

Thanks in advance,

Jack

XanMag
I played it through a couple times.

The positive:
The writing here is definitely better than most on this site. Very will worded. Good detail, which gives sufficient length, but not so much I get bored reading it. After a couple plays, I got a much better feeling of the characters involved, which I assume is the goal here rather than the other option (discussed in the negatives). All-in-all, much more positives than negatives. It is certainly a game I look forward to playing once the full thing is released.

The negative (I am NOT a fan of CYOAs so keep that in mind. I much prefer text adventures):
All of the quality CYOA's I've played, have different outcomes for the choices that are made. The not-so-great ones tend to be linear and I get no feeling like my choices are making any difference whatsoever, so why don't I just read a book?!?. This CYOA seems to be leaning toward the latter. Now, you may have the idea in your head that as the story progresses the number of variations and outcomes grow. It may only seem linear NOW because it was the introduction to a much larger story. I hope I am correct because I think this could be a really good read. Also, I struggle with what category to place my games under. You have yours under 'comedy', but I've seen little of it so far. BUT, I can imagine it being funny as the story progresses. I only say that because your fancy words SOUND more adventuresome or thrilling than funny. Although, one of my favorite CYOAs is written in 'Shakespearean dialect' but is a comedy about zombies and a haircut. So, maybe you can pull something like this off too. =) I'd like to know a bit more about the main character early. I wasn't exactly sure who/what it is or what it looked like.

Your game seems like it might be a combination between different genres. Does anyone out there know if you can put your game under multiple labels. Also, I've never attempted writing a gamebook, but does anyone know if you can add sounds and pictures like you do in a TA because that would be AWESOME for this game!

So, in short, please keep writing this. I am interested in it for sure and I look forward to see where you can take it!

Also, please let me know if you would like me to post these comments on your comments section of your game. It helps get a little recognition for your game (I don't know how many people frequent this forum), but sometimes people don't want comments on the game when the game is still in beta.

Happy Gaming!
XanMag

JackIndeed
Hi XanMag

Thanks so much for playing it, and for your detailed and constructive feedback. This is literally my first attempt at making any sort of CYOA, so it's great to have another perspective on it.

I definitely take your point about ensuring there are different outcomes for the choices that are made. At the moment, the main branching points are based on the different chords chosen, as well as a variation if you head to the wings of the stage right at the beginning. But I certainly could include more, and I definitely had the idea that the variations and outcomes would grow as the story progresses, like you said. I'll need to do some tinkering.

And I also appreciate that there could be more information about the main character. I quite like the idea in 80 Days by Inkle where the character you are playing initially seems a bit of a blank slate, but changes and grows depending on your approach to the game, but I'm obviously nowhere near that level yet. There are a few logic constructions in my game at the moment where if you choose certain 'cheeky' responses you get presented with more 'cheeky' line choices later on, but they are a little sporadic as it stands, as I'm still getting to grips with how that all works. And it's in those sort of lines, and some more bizarre encounters where hopefully some of the humour will come across, or hopefully will do so as the story progresses. But it certainly would be useful to be able to use multiple genre tags for the game if that were possible.

Oh, and I think adding sounds and pictures would be great too! In fact I initially wanted to present this story as a point and click adventure, but unfortunately I have neither the coding or art skills necessary, so decided to experiment with the InkleWriter software to see what I could make with that instead. It's been fun!

I'd also be more than happy for you to post your comments on the comments section of the game, especially if you think that would be a good way to get more eyes on it. But perhaps I should make it more clear that it's in a beta stage.

Anyway, thanks again for your time, efforts and comments,

Jack

This topic is now closed. Topics are closed after 60 days of inactivity.

Support

Forums