Lazarus Cage

OVERALL
An interesting approach to a storygame. It feels like the idea is right, but you needed a little more time to refine it and really make it work.

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT
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CHARACTERS
There aren’t a whole lot of those here. We have the narrator, who doesn’t have a whole lot of personality, and a couple of male guards/workers who never have more than one sentence of description and zero characterization. They could all be the same guy in different outfits for all I know.

2/8

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BRANCHING
I don’t know how I feel about the looping here. I like that it’s a creative approach, but it feels like it’s missing something to drive the point home.

Not a huge fan of the fact that it just completely starts over after very little action, with only some paths being more than a few pages. I think if you built it up and made players feel like they’re really getting somewhere just to throw them back down again, the intent might land better. At least then I’d get a little more story.

Also, I don’t really learn new things about the narrator (like how they got here, who they are) on the branches. That would’ve been nice.

2/8

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PLOT
Oh, there was a plot? This feels like an episode in the middle of a story, not the story itself. If I started somewhere else and ending up in this hellhole was one of the final destinations, I could appreciate it more.

2/8

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WRITING STYLE
The opening paragraph reads as very fast-paced, mostly due to the lack of commas (there are two). I think this works really well for the vibe of the story you’re going for. It’s a little disorienting in a subtle way, and it sets the mood.

“The strange room is alien to you” seems a tad redundant but you do drive the point home I guess. I can forgive it because of the repetition of “strange” in the next sentence, though I would’ve even put a comma after “Strange” the second time to distance it from the rest of the sentence and further draw attention to it. That’s such a small thing, though, and ofc completely unnecessary.

> “The slightly damp concrete floor coldly spreads out into a square maybe 10 feet across, surrounded by similarly glossy walls that appear to be padded with square panels covered in what looks like leather almost all the way up to the extremely high ceiling.”
Quite a long sentence you’ve got there, full of adverbs and oddly specific “maybe”s. I’d suggest chucking out some adverbs and finding a more natural way to phrase the whole thing.

In the first paragraph of “pound on the door” (and the title) it refers to the action as “pounding”, but then says I “barely manage a faint, hollow thud”. You’d worded it as though I’d successfully pounded on the door, then backtracked.

I know you don’t care to hear this, but you could do with a little more showing and less telling. Tell me how these things feel to the character I’m playing. Tell me how the door felt on my fist and what the room smells like. Tell me about the surge of adrenaline as my strength returns, or the slow burn in my muscles as they slowly become aware that I’m trying to use them. Draw me in. Immerse me in the story and tell me things as though I’m really there and experiencing it. As is, I’m mostly getting a series of events.

Also, small note, try to engage all the senses. You focus a lot on sight and sound, but like I mentioned, there’s smell and touch, too. Does my character taste something in the air? Do they taste blood when they fall? This is second person, so supposedly happening to me, but it reads more like a camera observing a scene. I feel like I’m watching the story, not actively living in it.

These sentences are also pretty straightforward and have similar lengths. Varying sentence structure to create dynamic pacing helps make the writing more interesting and fun to read. Short sentences (like your “ZAP!” but sprinkled in more) up the tension and longer, more descriptive sentences allow your reader to absorb more details.

There’s also a lack of emotional response or character voice at the start. I’m just not in their head at all.

I’d also suggest stronger, more varied verbs and specific nouns.

There’s just a lot of “you feel” and “it appears”, and it’s not pleasant.

I think the “inspect the walls” page could do with some longer sentences, especially in the second half, to stretch the suspense a little. As is, it falls slightly flat.

3/8

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SPAG
When writing, numbers should be spelled out. It preserves the tone and flow, and it looks better.

1st page, final paragraph, first sentence. The way it’s phrased makes it seem as though the muscles are what stumble back down. When you say "your muscles twitching," the participle "twitching" modifies "muscles." Then, when you add "and end up stumbling back down," the parallelism suggests that "stumbling" also refers to the muscles, rather than to you. But really you’re doing the stumbling, yeah? To make that clear, just change “stumbling” to “stumble” so it’s parallel to “struggle” instead.

You have a real addiction to adverbs, sir.

> “Eat.” he says.
The period after “Eat” should be a comma

Speaking of commas… I know I’m not usually an advocate for more comma usage, but some of your sentences get chunky and clunky, and commas could really help with separating the clauses and improving overall readability.

“Eat”, final paragraph, first sentence. If you separate the clause “closing the door behind him” with a comma before “closing”, you also need one after “him”. What you have here is a participial phrase, and it acts as a non-essential descriptive element in the middle of your sentence. It needs to be set apart with commas on both sides.

“Inspect the walls” first paragraph second sentence is a run-on.

5/8

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TOTAL
I’ll round up the average a little and give you a three. It seems a little harsh, but there’s just nothing in particular I liked about this.
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I like how at the end of a route, you are sent back to the start, so you can try the routes you didn’t go to the previous time. Having it be a “RIIIING” implies you’re waking up from a dream, which is a quite cool substitute for “you died”. It gives you the feeling of an unreliable narrator, and it's very convenient for 100%-ing the game. Having the “End Game and Leave Comments” option appear as one of the options on the first page after a certain amount of RIIIINGs, instead of after dying, is pretty smart, as you leave with the realization that there is no escape. You’ve given up, forever confined to this room.

The horror aspect is more shock value from the detailed death scenes than anything else. The only source of tension comes from when your amount of options dwindle, and it becomes clearer there is no path for escape.

I wish you could have learned more about you, why you’re here, and who’s holding you here. It would have been so exciting if, on every route you took, some bit of information was revealed, and a picture is put together that answers the questions you started out with. For example, when you’re locked in the room that poisons you, you could have had the POV character rummaging around for information while he slowly dies. And after he dies, you could have him come back for any information he missed.

The title is a reference to “Lazarus”, who, in the Last Testament, was resurrected from the dead by Jesus. Having the title be “Lazarus Cage” adequately describes the whole story.

Overall, the story works fine, but you won’t be finishing the story with any invested emotion beyond a feeling of being trapped in a horrifying situation.

This story reminded me of my own story The Fire, with the main character waking up in a mysterious unknown place and a looping time mechanic.


Good:

1. The branching was good, with a large number of differentiated paths, short as they were

2. The death scenes were well-done on the whole. My favorites were the fan blades and metal chute machine.


Bad:

1. There were quite a few SPAG errors.


Ugly:

1. There was a lot of telling that could have been showing


Overall, I enjoyed this story more than most people seemed to have and gave it a 5. I liked the premise, and the writing was decent on the whole. I’m OK with the lack of backstory and an ending that reveals what was really going on- sometimes the unknown is the most horrifying thing of all.

I have to say, I was intrigued by the start of this story. It might not have been the most unique start to an interactive story I've come across, but I was immediately intrigued by the thought of finding out what was going on. Why was the player character in the room? Who were they? And, more importantly, who were the people in the facility...or whatever it was?

Sadly, none of those questions were answered - and I kept exploring more of the world, starting over every time the player character was killed, in the hopes that I would get some of those answers.

The best part of this interactive story was definitely the various different deaths the player character could experience, but by the time I got to the inevitable 'end game and leave comments', there was nothing about how the multiple deaths had affected things. I don't mind violence and death, but I do like to have some kind of explanation...or at least an idea based on what the character learns.

I would have liked a few more choices, such as the ability to refuse to eat. The eating page is also a bit confusing, as it starts with, 'Pushing that thought away', but...what thought is being pushed away? Frankly, the player character doesn't seem to be thinking about anything. A blank slate can be pretty good, especially in an interactive story, but in that case, I think you need to include more options for what the player can do.

There was so much potential in this story, and the initial scene was definitely intriguing. I just really would have liked to see more of the world expanded upon, and I would have really liked to be able to do more than just...well, more than just die. I do hope you eventually do more with this plot, though, as I'd be interested in seeing more of the wider world.

Hmm I suppose this is an interesting game. It’s the classic story where you wake up trapped in a room, but there isn’t much about it that’s unique. You can get some food and do nothing… or you can try to escape. This is where the spoilers start if you are concerned, but there isn’t too much to spoil here, unfortunately. I gave it a 2/8. The writing wasn’t bad but I found the game boring personally. Ironically I have a game that is just like this called “Inheritance House” that has a lot of the same issues, so I can relate to the struggles with this type of story. I’m trying to help not be mean, and you can go read and make fun of my story to get even if you want! It is very similar.

First of all, it’s a looping story. A lot of people hate stories just for that, but I think there is merit to the concept! However, this was poorly executed in my option. Each loop doesn’t really change much… it just forces the reader to pick a new option. It would be more interesting if you could take something you learned on a previous walkthrough and unlock a new choice with the new knowledge. For example, if you know the fan is in the vent can you prepare for it or avoid it the second time? This can be done with a lot of coding, but it would be worth a shot. You obviously know how to do the coding because you made a conditional end game link on the first page, so having new options unlock each play through would be possible!

The writing was okay… there were a lot of fun-on sentences that needed a period—or better yet—a colon! There are some great articles in the help and info tab that Gower made about grammar. I suggest you brush up because the grammar was bad enough to affect the reading a bit for me. Run on sentences are tough to get through: there is nothing wrong with making more sentences or paragraph breaks to help the readers eyes keep track of where they are in the story. Missing commas and other punctuation turns your story—which had some good descriptions—into a wall of text.

Also, this story didn’t have a huge horror element. It was pretty… mindless. There was no plot, no unnerving information, no point to what was happening. It would have been better if you found out creepy information… like maybe you drop into an operating room rather than a kitchen and see them experimenting on people so the reader can think, “Oh no! That could be me later!” Or you could have had them cooking people in the kitchen so the same fear was present. Ultimately, it wasn’t compelling enough to build horror and suspense and got boring to me. Looping stories are fought like that. They have to be interesting enough to read 12 times (with maybe slight changes) and still be good. Your writing was good the first time, but I skimmed everything after the first time.

Also, the end game link only showing up after several loops is dangerous… I use the back button a lot to test different paths, so I almost didn’t find the end game link. I started, found where it looped, and then used the back button to try every choice looking for an end game link. When I didn’t find one I just randomly pressed links until I looped enough to find the link. I’m not sure how to fix this, but I figured I would warn you it happened. Because nothing new happened after looping once I just took the most efficient path to try every choice without having to go back through everything.

Let’s talk about choices. You literally have a “left or right” choice in the game! However, all of your choices were like this: there wasn’t much information guiding the choice. They all seemed random. You picked a door, with no descriptions of a door, and then died or got caught behind each door in a random way. At least tell me more about my choices! What does the door look like? Is there a sign on the door that tells me what it might be? Use some foreshadowing and give me a reason to go left or right!

I will say, the concept of trying to escape but there not being any escape is interesting. Looping games also are an interesting concept if they can be made to work. I would suggest that maybe if you try a game like this again, make it loop once or twice and then have things change in a dramatic way. Either your character leans something and gets new options, or your captors notice you are trying to escape and start testing you/trying new things! That would add some intrigue and give you more to build on. Maybe have all the death options be end game links and all of the “surrender” options be looping so people can “escape” by dying or choose to try again by giving up… something to make this more compelling to go through multiple times!

If you are like me, this story is a good way to test the editor and learn how to use it. I hope this feedback helps you learn and write a better story like what happened to me when I posted a game like this!

Fresh already left the perfect comment (aside from insisting that you include more POV from the MC. That's entirely a subjective thing, as its very easy to make a plot that allows you to project whatever you want), so I won't waste time harboring on the specifics.

What I will ask is this...

What was the intent of this story?

It's complete, I'll give it that. The vocab choices (the dog scene sticks out the most to me, saying things like "the other dog joined the ritual" simultaneously sounds cool and clunky at the same time so it cancels out, but I totally get what you were going for here so I can overlook it easily) were...uh...choices. But aside from that...it kinda feels like you just threw this out all willy nilly!

I don't think the biggest sin of this story is that its short or even basic, but rather the fact that most of it is boring!

There's another game on here (or at least used to be) called something like "Escape Detention or DIE!" and the premise is just as stupid as it sounds, but that comedic angle alone gives much needed flavor to the baseline premise of trying to escape from somewhere without being caught.

I bring all this up because I adore this premise! I can read something like this while sleep deprived and still get something out of it. So while I did enjoy this story for what it was, it was also kind of a blueballs story.

No sense of existential dread of being stuck here. No real, long term sense of tension found anywhere. No meaningful insight found out about the world or the character's POV or personality (like Fresh said). No comedic angle to frame any of this...just...nothing!

I would like to return to my original question though. That is...what was your intention while writing this?

Because I genuinely can't tell, was there more plans for this idea or not? That's what really is getting to me more than anything I feel. (There probably is, I'm just overthinking this as usual. At least this is better planned out than a literal garbage story with no thought put into it so you have that much at least! lol :P)

TL;DR This feels like a shitty point and click adventure game. Cool that it exists but besides that its not worth very much.

I might read your other story later if I feel like it...but...we'll see if that happens or not! ;)

THERE IS NO ESCAPE!

Hmm. Thought there would be some way to escape after dying every time, but I guess not. The descriptive imagery was good, and I find myself wanting to know more about this prison. Other than that, it was very short, lacking characters with personality, and had no plot to uncover through death.

It's really just a gruesome death simulator...

I tried a bunch of different paths that all led to creative ways to die. The deaths are described in reasonable detail so that's good I guess. But with every death, I felt less and less inclined to continue. I don't even know if there is supposed to be a true ending if you wait and eat enough times or something, but I didn't feel particularly motivated to find out because I didn't really care about the protagonist.

Some good description, especially getting chopped up by the fan. A bit of a mystery.

No real insight into some meaningful problem the character is trying to solve, no motives other than escaping a room for which we begin with no idea why the POV character is trapped in. No real motives other than trying to figure out the answer to that question.

What would have made this better was slipping in a sense of foreboding, fear, and uncertainty for the POV character, as well as some sort of personality to them.