The Summoning at River's Edge

zungryware 2024-04-16 05:00

I seem to have a real knack for getting the worst ending on the first try when I play one of these choices matter sort of games. Does that say something about me? Although I’m not sure it was entirely my fault this time. When I got the bad ending, I couldn’t think of a single way my choices could have had an impact on the outcome in the context of the story. I didn’t really do anything that affected the outcome and neither did the girl I brought along with me. I later found it was because of my lack of doing things that doomed all of society. Whoops. In the trolley problem, am I a bad person for not pulling the switch if I didn’t even know the switch was there?

I liked the alternate telling of events between the good ending and the bad ending. The unreliable narrator is one of my favorite narrative tools and this was a cool use of it.

I don’t need to be told how to feel about the ending I just experienced. You shouldn’t need to say, “You should feel good about this ending because it was the good ending!” It should speak for itself. This was the only eggregious example I found though. Overall, I think you did a good job with show don’t tell and let the reader learn about the events through dialogue and description of events.

benjamin-jaeger 2024-04-16 10:53

Its clean and I enjoyed it, just nothing out of the ordinary in terms of text adventure games. But still pretty awesome

spudsef 2024-04-16 14:29

While it felt linear, it is a well written story and good colour balance made it easy on the eyes to read. I have to agree with @zungryware regarding being told how should I feel about the ending, while witty - I don't think it was needed.

imwonderr 2024-04-16 15:36

Great narrative, it was really well written. Got the best ending on my first try! :)

flaterectomy 2024-04-16 16:07

@zungryware You always knock it out of the park with your critiques, thanks! :heart: The choice moments are indeed hard to gauge, with little to no *real* information to guide your decision. And I honestly didn't consider the impact of the "victory" message at all, by that point with a few hours remaining I was on auto pilot trying to finish writing things.

I overscoped as I always do, and I've never felt more anxious throughout a jam. I had a hard time grasping the boundaries of the story, which apparently releases panic chemicals in my brain. I'm happy with the story in all its variants, but as a *game* it doesn't work as well as I would've liked.

Next time I really need to have a content-complete simple game at the end of day 1, and then use the rest of the time to polish and add features. At some point I should learn my lesson, right? :laughing:

lone-wolf 2024-04-16 18:32

This was a fun experience. I managed to get the happiest ending first try, but I'd probably attribute that to you making the story consistent/clearly communicate it's tropes/rules.

--- **SPOILERS AHEAD**

Disclaimer: I don't do much writing (yet, hopefully), I just like reading books and listening to story critics. My suggestions are also only my immediate thoughts.

When the story first starts, after "I certainly am now!", there's some dialogue that feels contrived only to explain the story (specifically the excuse explaining your duty, for what is apparently not the first time), which is something you might see in lazy movies that don't have the option of having the character explain directly to the reader. To keep things mixed up though you could maybe have started things the night before, and made staying up late reading a minor choice with explanation around it that lets the player project onto the character, explains the same things the dialogue did, and only affects the state Miiri finds you in. Which in turn, depending on the state, they might bring up as a jab when they want to get you to take them with you.

"Elder Aestel has called for you. That sounds like a more important duty to me!" ..this feels illogical, since you had no way of knowing they would call for you in the morning(?) when you decided to stay up late reading. It might be "unwise/foolish of you to stay up late" though, if it's possible for the elder to call you in the morning during day to day life

I got the feeling that you play as a bit of an outsider/newcomer to the village, partly from explaining your duty to Miiri earlier, and partly from not knowing which of the Elder's steeds were fastest. Maybe I misunderstood the stable boy's explanation though, and he was impressed by you being given the finest steed, which doesn't happen often(?). While reading I (maybe personal preference) reinterpreted things as being something along the lines of a rather tight-knit village, with everyone being friends and knowing each other, but following the formalities and keeping the order of their ways.

Kharzo 'betraying you' feels weird because you accept your penance, which shows commitment to the greater good of your people, which I would assume includes doing whatever you can even while serving your penance, expecting nothing other than the continued thriving of your people in return. I could have missed something though, as I only skim-read for alternate endings.

---

That aside, great work!

flaterectomy 2024-04-16 19:56

@lone-wolf Sweet, thanks so much for the feedback! I promise, everything you thought was strange was due to me not thinking very deeply about it. I wanted to knock out the story first, going on vibes alone, then edit later. Sadly this first draft took me the entire jam to write. I do think I want to tidy things up post-Jam, so your thoughts are very helpful. Thanks again!

zablas 2024-04-16 21:37

Great story, loved reading every page. Might do other endings later! ^^

kirass 2024-04-16 21:41

Interesting game! I like it!

melissa-stodolnik 2024-04-16 21:46

Really like the narration and the music!

poutine-studio 2024-04-16 22:07

It's very well written, especially for someone like me who's first language isnt english, I learned a lot of new vocabulary! Overall, even though the gameplay is pretty simple and already seen, the story was super captivating and I really enjoyed it. If I had something to add to the game, it would be images or picture, or simply more descriptions of the places we visit. Very good game, would recommend! :))

lehmy 2024-04-16 22:12

Nice work on the game, i got the worst ending first and the best in the second game, both were fun to read. As i'm not that adept in writing stories as other commentators, i can only give you on thing that bothered me a bit and that is the music loop, especially in the second play through. The music itself is nice, but gets a bit repetitive. Maybe some music variation for the different locations would have been nice. But that is just a little thing cause you could easily play the game without sound. Overall good Job :)

smoky01 2024-04-17 11:05

The gameplay mechanics in this game are so intuitive! It's like the controls become an extension of your own instincts. Plus, the art style adds a unique flair that keeps you engaged throughout. Definitely a gem worth exploring!

thomas-bringer 2024-04-17 11:16

Nice game, I liked the writing. I think the music was really awesome. Maybe, I like it when text adventures do have some visuals still, or some more interactions, but it's still a solid entry.

kristinamay 2024-04-17 11:18

This is a REALLY good game. I love games like this (my first couple of jam games were text-based!) and your writing is lovely. The storyline was good - for some reason I got some Name of the Wind vibes / even The Inheritance Trilogy vibes but I think that's mainly from the traveling plot. I was genuinely really compelled by the characters and found the background music to be a good accompaniment. I even played it through a couple of times - I got the sad ending first and the happy one next, but I couldn't figure out how to get the third ending. Anyway, great work!!

anvilesque 2024-04-17 11:38

Nice game! As someone who frankly isn't usually interested in the writing aspect of games, I still found the adventure you've created to be quite immersive and enjoyable. When it comes to the endings, I think it's fine to inform the player whether they got a good or bad ending, but it's also important to keep in mind that they are the ones playing the game. Accordingly, I would personally avoid predicting—or, in a sense, dictating—how the player should feel (e.g., "mixed feelings" or "unfortunately"). After all, bad endings are not always "bad" in and of themselves; good and bad endings are simply categories to identify and differentiate experiences.

The music was indeed repetitive, but for a game jam I think this is acceptable. I think the music still contributed to the overall atmosphere, and it was generic enough that it fit into all parts of the story, which can also be seen as a clever feat of reusing assets.

Some things to think about (that I thought of while playing the game):

It may be worth experimenting with the dialogue format of "Name: {dialogue}." Since this isn't any formal writing, it's not entirely necessary to use complete sentences all the time. It also gives the text a simpler structure, as one can more easily identify portions where characters are actually speaking.

On a similar vein, you could try out shorter paragraph/page sizes. I don't think it was detrimental to have long pages of text, and it's sometimes helpful to be able to go back and read what just happened again. At the same time, there were times when I felt like I was pretty much just reading a short story, and in an alternate game setting with sprites and actions such as an RPG, developers would lean more towards shorter bursts of text so that the player doesn't feel overwhelmed with the potentially intimidating action of *reading* (of course, that is what the point of this game is, but amount of text per page is still worth the consideration).

Also, I personally would've liked if the "restart game" and "are you sure" indicated that (1) it would just refresh the page, and similarly, (2) why I wouldn't be sure to restart the game (i.e., what I would be losing if I did restart). It made me feel a bit uneasy having to second-guess my choice to restart after seeing the "are you sure," and subsequently a bit confused after seeing it was just refreshing the page.

Overall though, a pleasant experience. All of the choices felt significant, and the endings were clearly different from one another. Not sure if there was supposed to be a moral to the story, but I think there were still some takeaways regardless. Great work!

epb9000 2024-04-18 02:19

You weren't kidding when you said the game was just a single image on a webpage. Certainly something this nearly 12-year-old laptop can handle.

*Potentially spoilery*

I'm glad my tendency to run late actually helped for once. I got the happiest possible ending on the first run.

yanato 2024-04-18 22:28

Best ending on the first try. Dozens of hours in visual novels were not in vain!)

baluj 2024-04-19 00:15

I don't like this type of game but I found it entertaining, good job!

k-toll 2024-04-21 20:28

I'm not a fan of this type of game, but I think it's well written. Unintentionally, I seem to have got the best ending.

Great story, good job!

lereveur 2024-04-23 03:22

I got the better ending at first try, so I didn't mean to retry to find out the others endings :grin: I like this story, I was totally absorb in it, and the slight music helped much to the mood - in other words, I've gone through a good moment playing this game, so: thank you, and well done!