The Bog-Nymphs of Neptune

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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 1 Write a review

This is your pretty typical sci-fi CYOA; early 1900s adventure and exploration, complete with a savior hero. The game is linear--there is really one way to progress, although you do have a choice of endings.

Narratively, we have a pastiche of early sci-fi adventure stories and some very familiar tropes. There weren't any surprises in the story; my initial assumptions were confirmed in every event. I re-played sections to see if the game changed plot details (or presentation) based on your choices, but it doesn't.

Now, the meat of this is the writing, and your experience really hangs on that. In general, this game suffers from the poor typography of most twine games. I really think everyone writing a twine game needs to stop what they are doing immediately and play Bee by Emily Short, My Father's Long, Long Legs by Michael Lutz, and Howling Dogs or other works by Porpentine.

The writing in Bog-Nymphs is not bad, but it is hard to read. It is large chunks of text with little formatting, and it suffers greatly for this. Call-outs & flourishes would be well-appreciated here. Because the story matter is so familiar as to almost write itself, and the copy hard to follow, I found myself skimming it and reading it in chunks.

I'd recommend a larger type size, some call-outs, and just visually approaching the text & breaking it up into better chunks, along with some source editing; some particularly well-worn phrases could be retired.

In summation, this was a short, enjoyable game, faithful to the subject matter, which could benefit from a skim edit & some serious time on the formatting.

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