[You can get all of Dennis Jerz's PrologueComp reviews through here and here.]
"Asimov" is a loaded name in science fiction, if you ask me. a bit on the cute side. As for the second quote -- will "yada yada yada" still be in common parlance 350 years for now? (Of course, who knew that "hey nonny nonny" would have a similar staying power?) So, that's two cute things right off. Then, woah! The third quote is decidedly un-cute. I think that's exactly the point - it offers an immediate sense of what the tone of this game is going to be. Now for some quibbles. Use two hyphens for a dash. How do I run a diagnostic on a knife? How about simplifying to, "Once again you check your equipment."? But if it's that simple, do we even need that sentence at all? The action that follows is clear enough. Instead of "ain't gonna have it for that much longer" how about, "ain't gonna have it for long"? This is just one example of how this submission (like many others) could be trimmed a bit. (The fewer words you use, the closer together the high points come, and the more powerful, overall, your writing is.) Now for one of my pet peeves. In the room description, there's a word ['Coffin'] in single quotes, but the other quoted material is in double quotes. There's no need to change the rules for a one-word quotation. Another small detail: starting a sentence with a numeral is generally frowned upon. Further, I would put a comma before "you are betting" and after the final "Red" (instead of the period). While no individual quibble was serious enough to trip me up, the stylistic issues did cross the line into something that I consciously noticed. Overall, the roughness around the edges of the prose makes me worry a bit about the cohesiveness of the whole thing; the narrator's point of view (somewhere between the player and the PC) is by nature unstable. For instance, I worry that the cocky omniscient narrator will start telling me (the player) things that the PC couldn't possibly know, or that the PC will be expected to act in ignorance of things that I (the player) already know. On a different note, the equipment list suggests that this is going to be a gadget game. If that's what the game will be like, I hope the narrator's voice will make the game amusing enough to keep me interested. One final quibble -- perhaps completely irrational: the term "coffin" is described as "fitting", yet I'm told that it "can hardly fit your sorry ass". The two uses of the idea "fit" grate against each other. Perhaps I'm overreacting, but these are my thoughts, for what they are worth. I certainly am interested in finding out what "compulsion" is. Further, the subtitle (A Tale of Choices) seems promising. I'd certainly be willing to give this game a shot.
Email me at: katsaris@gmail.com
Last updated: 01 Apr 2002
