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A short story of above average adventure in the Endless Desert. Build the journal of a sailor lost in the Sandsea as he searched for both water and a path to publication.
Entrant, Main Festival - Spring Thing 2016
| Average Rating: based on 6 ratings Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 1 |
This is a game that I was not impressed with at first. I found the writing to be a bit over the top and disjointed. My initial impression was not completely unfavorable, because the story was interesting and the game worked very well on mobile.
But as I pushed on to the end, the game took an unexpected turn which made me reevaluate my initial feelings. It made me chuckle. I played again for fun, trying to see how much branching there is (a medium amount, it turned out), and I thought I didnt like it as much the second time, but again, the ending made me chuckle.
If you try this one, make sure to finish it. Especially if you find it frustrating at first.
Christopher Huang
Gameplay is standard CYOA, with two or three options per section to lead you on to the next. A slight amount of stat-tracking is involved: the game remembers if our hero has picked up a pistol or a set of books at the beginning of the story, and I believe there are a few choices late in the story which depend on whether certain triggers have been hit earlier. The story ends, whatever our hero’s fate, with the attempted publication of the novel, at which point all the sections met are played back with the editor’s commentary.
Wistful, romantic, faux-poetic, with an amusingly acerbic aftertaste. The structure is very small and simple, but suitable: a larger game would not be as pleasant when it comes time for the editorial.
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Narrativium
The imaginary author includes margin notes about his own writing regularly: he wonders if there is too much alliteration in a sentence, or has not gone into enough detail about some societal traditions he has referred to. The choices you make during the game create the story, which, brilliantly, is printed in full at the end of the game, and comes with further critical commentary from an editor deciding whether to go ahead with publishing the tale or not. So you're not simply making choices to help Ephraim survive in the desert, you're making choices to create the most exciting story possible, in the hope that the editor will be engaged enough to not reject your document out of hand.
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