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It could use an easy badge for collecting all the endings, but even in beta this had a lot of great thought put into it (I skimmed most of it now since I already read it in beta :P)! 5/5
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Found all 25 endings. Could definitely be continued, but still fairly amazing as is. I would've appreciated a good ending where Faith and the character didn't fall of the cliff, and defeated God. I wanted a truly happy ending, in other words. I know, cliche.
Thanks, I really appreciate it! I don't know about adding more endings, but I am working on a novel that'll include Faith as one of the central characters.
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neat game . . . would have liked expanded endings a little but meh not like i was planning to spend a few days playing this game to get all endings like starwish. be nice to see where the dev goes from here though and for future works i recommend having the option to co-rule with the other girl (faith in this game) as apposed to *SPOILER ALERT* tumble over a cliff into nothingness
I am not familiar with this story, but I'll have to check it out! I was also told that my last story was a lot like The 13th Floor, which I hadn't seen. It's like we're all sharing the same collective consciousness or something. HMMM...
Yep, and I'm working on a non-interactive novel titled Reality Tunnels that'll be a sequel to both. It'll be free to read if I ever actually finish it!
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it takes a lot of patience to read through all of it, but it was well worth it. really liked the explanation for the multiverse theory.
also.."Do you ever rate flash games a 1 or a 5?"..yup..5
Thanks for the support -- it means a lot! I don't have any plans to make a third interactive story (soooo much work...), but I am working on a non-interactive, full-length novel titled "Reality Tunnels" that will serve as a sequel to both Thousand Dollar Soul and God's Assassin. Clint, Angela, Todd and Faith will be the 4 central characters, and it'll be told in first-person through their perspectives. No idea when I'll actually finish writing it (hopefully less than 4 years from now, haha), but it's all planned out in my head. I'm not going to try to monetize it, so it'll be free to read on Kindle or my website or something.
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Whilst it probably doesn't bode well for my already weak gamer-cred, I'll happily state that I love choose-your-owns. With a bit more courage, I'd go so far as to say that I am OVERLY ENTHUSIASTIC about them.
The story will seem very random at first, and you probably won't have any idea what's going on even after getting a few endings. But I assure you that everything that happens is tied together. The events are all related, and there is a coherent backstory behind everything if you gather enough clues. It is very convoluted, yes, but every paragraph, in some way, relates to the core story being told. I guess you could argue that that core story is pretty random, in which case, yeah, maybe it is...
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Sorry, just can't get all that jazzed about choose your owns - my problem not the games. Looks good for something that is by genre not gonna engage me though, and I'm already pretty prejudiced with this type of thing, you know in case you hadn't noticed that ;p That being said, good to see you put your hand in, regardless of the nature of the thing.
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Am slightly disappointed that none of the "Endings" are obtained by 'foiling' the "Evil Quiz" and avoiding entering the game proper at all.
The evil quiz shows that the player is beholden to an unrealistic moral standard -- after all, who is not evil through the judgment of another? I actually did once, in an earlier draft, have an ending right after the evil quiz with an option that said, "Wait, is this whole game seriously nothing but text? Never mind!" Then it just ends right there. But my wife said it was terrible and would just piss people off, so I took it out. The closest to an ending you're imagining is ending #21, where you refuse to accept the terms of the Dreamcatcher or go along with Stan's plan. I figure as long as you don't get ending #21, then you're at least complicit on some level!
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TLDR; colors were too harsh on my eyes and need more contrast to make more readable preferably a larger font, much of it seemed to be filler and not help with the CYOA feel. 3/5 to be nice.
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I like to play IF like a time-loop story; being able to go back to critical decisions is pretty convenient when hunting for all the branches. While there was no real effect in knowing different bits from other paths (was hoping for some interaction a la 'Save the Date') the references still made it feel a little that way (Melvin's explanation of space travel, which you can repeat when asked by Stan on a different path, etc. Would have further increased 'replay'-value if you had to unlock some of the more silly/sequence-breaky answers by seeing them in other paths). Anyway, an enjoyable read overall.
Thanks for the feedback! I actually did consider doing something very similar to what you suggest, but I was lazy and it was beyond the scope of the project. But yeah, that would be pretty cool.
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I am only insulted by the fact of usage of foul language and badmouthing Buddhists and vegetarians so far. I hope this is ONLY FOR SUCH LOW ENJOYMENT, yet I believe this game is great as a text adventure set in psychologically unstable environment.
I didn't intend to badmouth vegetarians or Buddhists at all! The joke is just that, within the game world, even eating plants is considered evil because they're alive, and all other sentient life in the rest of the universe beyond Earth gets all their sustenance from non-living energy sources (sunlight, radiation waves, etc.). So basically, within the game world, every single sentient living creature on Earth is labeled as "evil" because we all eat other life to survive. And for what it's worth, my real-life beliefs most closely align with Buddhism, as explained at we-are-1.net. All is one! :)
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Holy crap, it's finally live! I've been working on this stupid story for more than half my life. I hope you enjoy it -- please leave comments!
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I just got the last ending (for me anyways) and i loved the text when you refuse to use the dream catcher and defy "Stan"
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New version is up! I think this is basically final. I still need to trim the text from 2 ending descriptions that are overlapping, but otherwise it should be finished. Please let me know if you find any bugs or typos!
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Aw, dang it. My Grammar Nazi instincts tingle from the very beginning :( Most of my friends know me for being one of the most absurdly Grammar-Nazi of them all, and it says to help fix typos in the description, so I can't help myself. I usually do this via private message to the devs to avoid giant comments, but oh well. 1st paragraph: after "sight", end the sentence or put a semi-colon. You can't combine two full sentences with a comma unless there is a conjunction or a semi-colon (only if the 2nd sentence is related to the first, which it is in this case). 3rd paragraph: after "the body split", you forgot a comma to separate the two sentences before "and". For the curious, the 4th paragraph starts with an incomplete sentence, but it is excusable as it is an expression, and the term "behold" is implied before "one", and "behold" implies the subject "you". So it's all good. The rest is fine.
On a game-related note, I'm quite excited about this game! :D
I appreciate your attention to detail, and you are indeed correct about all of your points! I would definitely appreciate any errors you could find in the text past the loading screen. However, the loading screen text is a quote from Terry Pratchett, so I'd rather not alter his writing. He is also writing informally, so it won't adhere to strict punctuation standards. I do sympathize with your preference for semicolons over comma splices, though. I like semicolons a lot; you'll find a bunch in the text!
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I got really confused for a while because I made my name Stan. Guess this would have been one of the times where it would have been good to keep Player huh?
Hahaha, that's awesome. To avoid similar confusion, I would also recommend against naming yourself "God," even if you strongly identify yourself in this manner.
Your support is appreciated! I don't want to give myself special treatment and I don't think this is really game-y enough for full badge treatment, but maybe if the rating is >3.8 after launch I'll give it an easy badge for 5 endings or something.
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Update: Endings are now ordered by how good they are (roughly), and a few typos are fixed (misspelling of "dimensions," wrong version of "vain," extra "and" in one of the sentences). For reference in all comments before this one, here's how the endings were changed (old number first, new number second): 25 -> 1, 11 -> 2, 10 -> 3, 1 -> 4, 12 -> 5, 8 -> 6, 19 -> 7, 23 -> 8, 21 -> 9, 20 -> 10, 15 -> 11, 24 -> 12, 13 -> 13 (no change), 14 -> 14, 16 -> 15, 22 -> 16, 9 -> 17, 18 -> 18, 6 -> 19, 3 -> 20, 2 -> 21, 5 -> 22, 4 -> 23, 7 -> 24, 17 -> 25
The way it is now is technically correct: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x4058803
But it's one of those things that seems wrong anyway...
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The ideas you touched on are absolutely amazing god/stan being an entity created as a keeper of lesser consciousness is brilliant.Did you actually come up with these yourself or were there different inspirations for your work. Or are you secretly Stan subtly waking people up to fight.... hmm curious?
Thanks! I can't think of any specific inspiration for that element of the story, but I've always thought that dreaming is super weird, and I really related to this xkcd comic: xkcd.com/203/ So I used to joke that something really bizarre had to be happening while we were dreaming, like connecting to some bigger consciousness that we can't remember when we wake up. That's where the idea for those characters came from. Oddly enough, after writing God's Assassin, I actually started to take the general idea that we're all connected to a single metaconsciousness more seriously. we-are-1.net explains my whole thought process on this particular topic. If my beliefs now are true, then maybe it was just kicking around in my subconscious the whole time... or maybe it's kicking around in ALL of our subconsciouses! Dun dun DUUUUNNNN!!!
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The number of endings found counter at the top never updated when I was playing, and honestly, I got bored after the 17th ending. It was a great game, but I just sorta lost interest.
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Also, I think I explored all of the endings but I couldn't tell if ending #1 was supposed to be the "Best" ending. Is there a "Best" Ending?
Good question! Right now all the ending numbers are completely random, but I would like to reorder them all to make #1 the "best" and #25 the most throwaway sometime before launch. It's on the list!