A Very Dangerous Criminal

Despite some lack of polish, this is actually a pretty good horror story. I’m mostly impressed by its narrative arc, which is well grounded in classic storytelling while also offering a few well placed extensions in just the right places. On the other hand, there is no interesting interactivity here; you get to choose a few traits for the protagonist, which I don’t think has any bearing on the story, and a few details that appears to be completely arbitrary. I think A Very Dangerous Criminal easily could be a great novella, but a lot of work would be needed to turn it into a good piece of IF.

This is a Choicescript game made for the Grand Guignol division of Ectocomp. It's a bloody and violent game about a confrontation in a forest.

I think that every game has different elements that contribute to the overall strength of it. Here's my take on five elements I usually look at in games:

-Polish. This is where the game struggles the most. There are numerous typos and misstatements scattered throughout the text. As an author, and especially as a Choicescript author, I am no stranger to making a ton of typos (I think I had to fix 'its' vs 'it's' 1000 times in my Choicescript game). But websites like grammarly can really help out here, which is what I use, or asking people to look over the text.

+Descriptiveness. This is the game's strongest point. The writing is detailed and vivid. For me, I found it violent and gory in an unpleasant way, but it was only unpleasant because it was so detailed.

-Interactivity: I personally like Choicescript best when it lets you customize who are you in detail or lets you plan out strategies. In this game, choices can be completely arbitrary (like 'go left, go right, go straight') or represent a forced choice where all options are essentially the same (that's not always bad, but in this case you get the same forced choice over and over again).

+Emotional impact: I felt disturbed by the game, which is not an emotion I like or seek out but which succeeds in its goal.

-Would I play again? Due to the content and the polish, I wouldn't do so right now.

Contains strong profanity and gore.

I normally associate ChoiceScript with ultra-long epics so it's refreshing to find one that takes only ~30 minutes to complete. A Very Dangerous Criminal starts with the well-trodden urban legend premise of picking up a hitch-hiker while a killer is on the loose. But things soon take a surprising, dark turn. Like, really dark. It goes to some pretty disturbing places. Not for the squeamish.

This was a good, compelling read, with a few annoying grammatical errors that could have been picked up by getting it proof-read first. I could have done without the final coda, where everything is clearly spelled out for the reader, it's likely that most players will have already figured out most of it for themselves by that point. Better to keep things slightly ambiguous for max creepiness. Good effort though: nice to see subversive stuff like this from the overly formulaic ChoiceScript factory.