Choice of the Rock Star

You start out at home, playing a wonderfully traditional musical instrument which absolutely does not invoke images of a rock star. Nevertheless, you are bound for greater things. Working with your sibling, you pick up some cooler instruments and try a show. After an unfortunate incident with law enforcement, you decide to form a band and set out to make a name for yourself. Get a manager, sign a deal and rock your way to stardom. As this is a choicegame, you get to pick a name for your band and your songs, as well as yourself.

The story's pacing felt pretty rushed, and individual scenes sometimes felt pretty compressed. The amount of playtime is about what you'd expect with the wordcount, but I think this game could have benefitted from having more words with more time to explore different scenes. There is some flirting and romance, but none of the characters really caught my attention in this department.

At some points, important people will approach you with a contract for your band. Read it quickly, then sign. Still, these folks are in a hurry and do not take kindly to negotiation, so as far as I can tell, your best bet is to sign.

In one case, refusing to sign the contract led to an abrupt game over. No epilogue, no bad end scene, just the rating page. I feel like this could have been handled more elegantly, and I also feel that there could have been some option to hold out for better deals, or perhaps to compare multiple contracts and decide who you should go with. As far as I can tell, it's best to sign on the dotted line and not complicate things for yourself.

The game (minus that abrupt end) has a few endings, including choosing to go it alone or start over. The story and writing was enjoyable, but I can't shake off the feeling that the entire experience felt really compressed. Giving this a star rating was very tricky. I did enjoy the read, but I still feel this could have been better in some areas. Still, you might enjoy it if you take a look.

This one was hard to review: didn't like it at first, liked it a lot more near the end, but not sure about it overall. So I'm going over my 5 point scale in hope it helps me.

+Polished: I didn't find any bugs or typos, which is normal for Choice of Games.
+Descriptive: The game was certainly descriptive and vibrant.
+Interactivity: There were a lot of options to fiddle around with: your sound, your relationship with your frequently-annoying brother, whether to sign with a record label or not, going solo. The ending was somewhat abrupt but fit in with the rest of the story.

Some people have pointed out that a few key points are forced on you. In one very late game move (involving relationships) (Spoiler - click to show)you find yourself in a relationship with a famous artsy person. This wasn't a problem for me, as I was pretending to be Paul MCcartney the whole game, playing bass etc., so I was fine dating 'Yoko' and splitting up the band by going solo. I suspect that a lot of the choices I made worked out for me because it was the 'ordained path'. A lot of the reports I had heard from other people seem to confirm that (for instance, the game seems to favor your brother).

+Emotional impact: I had fun. I disliked it at first but grew to like it.

-Would I play again? I feel content with my choices, and it doesn't seem like there's a lot of wiggle room, so I'm not sure I'll revisit this one.