Lore: A Tale of a Sword and Those Who Wielded It

When I first figuratively picked up this game I had high hopes, as at the beginning the writer said the game took almost a year to make. Plus, the game was obviously pretty interactive as you had three different possible endings to get to. Naturally I though that these endings would be (as they mostly are in these types of games):

-A good ending, caused by your kindness and good deeds throughout the game
-An alright ending that was slightly disappointing caused by you not making all the right decisions but not all the wrong ones
-An awful ending in which you usually end up slaughtered, imprisoned or worse due to your entire lack for human life

However, only shortly into my quest for option 1 I suddenly became slightly bored. I realised what the author was then trying to do- flash me through time to different events in which the sword took part in. But this technique leaves many questions unanswered at first: why did this character leave his wife to kill these guys? What ritual was this character trying to perform? Who am I?

Sadly, this technique that could have been used to the writer's advantage initially makes you lose interest in this game.

While I did finish this, it took me three tries to get to an end, mainly because some of the initial segments are not very interesting or written very well (mainly too much telling, not enough showing). The first segment, in particular, could use a heavy rewrite -- it's not nearly as effective as some of the later pieces and that's a shame, because a lot of readers are going to quit after the first couple of pages and miss out on some of the more polished and fun segments later on.

Your choices affect the end of each vignette as well as the ultimate ending in a solid and clever design that works very well with the central conceit. However, there are too many segments per playthrough, and it detracts from the overall impact of the piece. No matter how cute or well-done a segment is, if it doesn't advance the overarching story (or give us a sense of the world), it's just filler. A couple of these might work for pacing, but as it is, I'm not sure I'm up to getting through all of that text again for a second playthrough. If I were editing this, I'd suggest picking one or two at random from the non-crucial segments to intersperse instead of showing all of them.

Another problem is that the overarching story isn't touched on often enough in the early game to make it feel relevant when it arrives; I know my choices affect the end segment and the ending, and how they do, but I have very little context for the end segment or how things came to suddenly be in a far worse position than they were in the previous segment. I mean, I can make some guesses, since it's not completely out of left field, but it felt very unconnected. Even a bit more foreshadowing in some of the less plot-centric segments would have helped.

Ultimately, if you can get through the first few segments, there are some interesting characters here and some interesting situations. Unfortunately, they're buried pretty late in the game.