Play book
Cold Blooded's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Adherence to the Theme | #20 | 3.562 | 3.650 |
Flow & Clarity | #27 | 3.172 | 3.250 |
Overall | #29 | 3.334 | 3.417 |
Concept & Originality | #31 | 3.269 | 3.350 |
Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
I liked the choice of factions here. The ratmen usually don't get a lot of sympathy, and I enjoyed your giving a different spin and slant on them. I thought it worked well as a contrast to the "legacy" enmity between the rat and saurian factions.
Might I suggest that you could add some power and immediacy to this piece if you were to rework it to be entirely in Tal'Rok's 1st person perspective? The monologue that opens the piece is quite compelling and I think having the whole thing in that voice would be even better. The other thought I had was that Tal'Rok's revelation as to the nobility of the ratmen is both very sudden and very complete. It would flow better if either Tal'Rok begins the story already harbouring doubts about the wisdom of the frog mages and the justice of the saurians' war, or if his change is less comprehensive - i.e., he only starts to have some doubt in the aftermath of the battle.
The overall imagery and description of the battle scene was very well done. You struck a nice balance between giving the reader enough information to follow the big picture of the fight, and keeping the tension high and the action focused on Tal'Rok. Battles are tricky to write, or at least I've yet to get the knack of them, and I'm taking notes here!
Nice flow and battle scenes. As pointed out before, the realization of some wrong doing felt sudden, though naturally if we had been given more space that could have been fleshed out easily in another outro section
Loved the centerpiece scene of the duel, it's a great piece of drama that's just held back a bit by uneven pacing of character beats, dialogue and ideas.
Very well written, I liked the initial battle the most and I was in awe of the main character's ruthlessness. I did get lost in some of the dialogue though, there was one paragraph where I couldn't keep track of who was speaking. Personally I found the ending a tad jarring given the main character's almost blind hatred throughout most of the story, but that's only my opinion.
Thank you! Yeah, I'm definitely better at writing fighting scenes than dialogue. Something to work at for sure.