I didn't think there was enough choice in the storyline, and I don't know if you can actually affect the ending in a more positive way, but the ending I got seemed incongruent with the ruler I was.
My biggest gripe though was not being able to move through the text fast enough, seemed to be a pretty big delay after you clicked that you were done.
There are around 8000 words and 170 choices in the game. There are two endings and about 8 major paths and a further 10 minor paths through the game. As with most interactive fiction most players will only see a very small percentage of the game on each playthrough. For someone who hasn’t written any fiction for over 30 years I thought that was pretty good for a game jam :-P
I’d love to know (on discord) which ending you got, which major choices got you there and why you figured it to be incongruent. I don’t claim to be a writer so your feedback on the writing would be helpful.
What I aimed for was to have one path which gives the expected outcome if you play as the ruler of the utopian land you start in. That is if you maybe the decisions I believe a benevolent dictator would take. The other ending occurs if you take a different path. Perhaps you took the different path? This is interactive fiction, so you decide the outcome. With more time there would be more outcomes, but time is the key resource in a game jam.
Thanks for playing. I’m not a fan of interactive fiction in this format, but like all game jams I enter I wanted to learn how to do it and I am proud of what I managed in <40 hours. With a better writer I now know how to build genuine branching stories into my games. With or without text.
Thank you for following up with me on Discord so as not to share any spoilers here. Here’s what I learned from BunnyVikings experience (with spoilers redacted):
That’s super helpful. Thank you.
So it seems a few people want an ending in which [redacted]. I was planning one, but never got the time to implement it (you do get to ask about [redacted], but you don’t get to follow that path as it’s not written). The only two endings right now are [redacted] or [redacted]. Had you tried to hide the dragons existence from the populace you would have [had the other ending because….]
I read somewhere that in an IF game a typical player only sees about 20% of the content. That seems to be true of the few playthroughs I’m aware of. That I was prepared for, but what I had not realized is that this meant that if you only have a 8 major paths they are only going to hit a couple of the real story changing decisions. Which is what you describe.
That’s cool though. I now know how much content one needs to create a true interactive fiction game. I now understand why games like Fallout have so much “action filler” content. Make a decision to take a quest then spend ages in a traditional FPS until the quest is complete then have some story while you find the next quest.
Thank you for taking the time to give me more feedback. This is super helpful.
