Play book
Cursed Ruins's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Flow & Clarity | #26 | 3.254 | 3.529 |
Overall | #31 | 3.272 | 3.549 |
Adherence to Theme | #33 | 3.145 | 3.412 |
Concepts & Originality | #33 | 3.417 | 3.706 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Because you provided such comprehensive feedback to me, I'm going to attempt to give mine!
I'm genuinely sad I didn't get the chance to rate this in the allotted time, you deserve a much higher position. But I really enjoyed it overall. I'm always down for some havoc/chaos shenanigans.
I have a few points where I think your work needed a bit of improvement:
1) My main gripe isn't so much the technical side of it - as it's really good - it's more the broader story you're telling. In short, you're telling us too much. It's only up to 1000 words, it's important to tell a story that can fit within this limit (I struggle with this too). As you mentioned in a comment here, you struggled with the word count, and it does show. You're telling too big a story for the word limit (I'd love to see an expanded story of this, I love Blythe). In a lot of ways to my mind, you've spent a little too much time explaining the situation.
You'd probably still be able to tell the same story, with room to spare if you let the readers gleam from context with what's happening. You did alleviate this with the usage of breaks as they did help with the flow.
2) Speaking of the breaks, and while I liked them the second one was a bit wonky. To my mind we didn't need to know it was fifteen minutes later exactly, you already established the breaks are time jumps and I know they had half an hour until LZ pickup, but I still think the fifteen minutes was a redundant statement.
3) Onto redundancies, and odd phrases, which is my last point. Throughout the story, you have a few spots where you needed to just go through it again and tidy it up a bit.
You have really wonderful imagery in some points, like; "Grass and undergrowth burned away in small fires here and there. The air stank of oil and burnt flesh," really poetic and beautifully descriptive in a gross kind of way.
But then you have some odd choices, for instance; "Five of them, apparently elves, had teleported in," why say apparently? Seems a bit redundant. You could probably describe the elves that are coming in a bit more naturally. "Five of them stepped through a crackling portal that had materialised ahead of their lander. Elves. Surprisingly heavy..." Not saying what I wrote here is that great, but by removing the apparently, the reader is a bit more sure of what's happening.
Another one I can find right now is: "A line of purple fire slowly sliced down through the air in front of him, between the lander and his men." I actually like this bit, but it could just use a bit of work to really sell the awesome sight of the warp opening infront of him. Personally I'd say remove "in front of him" as the reader can already see that happening when you say between the lander and his men.
4) One final point, and that's still about odd phrasing, is the "Creepy stuff" line. I know it's his internal thoughts, but saying something in creepy, looses the creepiness. It could work if you were writing a satire, with more humour, but here it doesn't fit. You could say something like "I need to get out" whilst formulaic, it doesn't sound as cheesy.
All in all though, I actually really enjoyed this story. My critiques were very specific, and more related to stylistic choices than anything and that's heavily subjective. I loved the ending with the Havoc marines, talk about something not going according to plan, what a sight.
There's a larger story in here, that I hope you don't abandon, give it another 4000 words or so, and you'd have a brilliant short story. The opening segment I absolutely loved. It was like I ripped a page out of Aaron Dembski-Bowden's books, it read so bloody well.
A really great read, I look forward to seeing you in the next writing Jam, and I'll make sure to get to your story before the deadline this time!
Well rounded story! It flowed really well, was easy to follow, and kept me tuned in throughout. Really exciting multi faction battle as well
My experience is quite alike to what SupNerds said. Very well done ending and flow of the story.
Thanks~
I was very impressed with the final stretch of this story - the truncated thoughts, your use of fragments rather than full sentences, it all served to underscore a sense of urgency. I enjoyed it a lot, and the only suggestion I have to really elevate it would be to use those same tools in the rest of the story as well. Nice job!
I guess I dawdled a little with the writing in the first part. Thanks for the feedback!
Was a fun read
Thank you!
It was complicated, I like that you went for a grand scale but that limited word count was tough.
Yeah, I don't think I'll try this sort of scope again in the future for the jam. It can get very confusing quickly, and trying to make it less confusing eats up words again. Let's see if I remember next time.
Thanks for the comment~
This is a solid mcguffin tale gone wrong concept mixed with the Battle of Five Armies level of involvement which is super hard to pull off in the limited word count, but if you had more space I think this could be really developed further (maybe in a sequel/prequel for next jam if the themes line up?)
There are ideas for longer stories floating around, mostly from the point of view of some Havoc Change guys snatching knowledge wherever they can, but that's not really for 1k jams I think. I like participating in these jams, but the word limit does get to me, as was probably apparent in this attempt again. Which just means my premise wasn't entirely optimal for the word count, I guess.
Thanks for reading~
I am not trying to be harsh, just critical as this is a competition and I hope this helps make your next story that much better. I feel like this went more according to plan than it didn't, just not the MCs plan. I didn't really feel the MC had a plan just a general mission. Also the time jumps felt unnecessary and a little confusing. I would have focused more on the ending and trying to make the reader connect to that as with the short time you have, why they were they doesn't really matter since the MC doesn't even know what he is retrieving.
Thanks for the feedback~