itch.io

I am glad I could help

Alright, these were my thoughts while reading:

I'd say the beginning could use a small rewrite. Since both the kid and Othmara are female it wasn't entirely clear to me who was meant when the sentence just used "she" to refer to them. So it seemed like the kid was coming out of a drain, then suddenly standing under the tree, then half-way stuck in the wall while also visibly dragging a sack behind her. And it only became clear when Othmara specifically had the knife in hand, and that only happened 2/3rds down the page. 

When Othmara tries the apple, after the kid gets pushy, she has an internal reaction but the kid seems to react to it- it felt like there was a visible reaction missing that the child could notice.

I get that, happens to me all the time as well ^^ - definitely a fun read though still

Some technical issues, needs another read through with a mind to fixing the grammar and getting rid of some logic issues.

That said the bones of the story are good and I could see this being the opening to a book about a rebel group fighting for the freedom of their planet.

Deadly space rocks, soldiers ready to fight to the last - this story hits the spot for me. 

A very enjoyable read, with a clear point and no wasted words.

9/10 reading experience, could have used one last read through to make it perfect
- example error: "Constant blinked, it was never concept she had considered." 

I enjoyed this story. Now, there are some technical issues with it - some grammar and punctuation mistakes - but overall the writing is straight forward and to the point. There is no time wasted and I feel like, with another read through and some minor corrections "Blessed Heretic" could really shine.

A homage to Romeo & Juliet using a number of adapted quotes from the original.

This was not for me, but if that is what someone is looking for, I could see them getting a kick out of it.

A good story, I enjoyed reading it. Are you looking for any feedback?

A great story. Personally I am sucker for political undertones in dogmatic organizations, so having a literal saint bring up that he might get manipulated and used once he can't defend himself anymore, was a great way to build up some tension.

Are you looking for any kind of feedback for your story?

I am very glad you've enjoyed it. It was very fun to write.

I am especially glad that Thomas comes across like I wanted him to. For a while I was a bit worried he'd lean more towards being arrogant and judgemental.

Thank you very much. Glad you've enjoyed it. I too am quite happy with how this story turned out and how it has been received so far.

Funnily enough, originally the whole duel was meant to be only a side story, where a more heroic version of the MC shows mercy and then gets help during a major conflict. Then it kind of twisted itself so to speak and turned into this much more cynical view of the Titan Lords.

You definitely don't have to justify yourself to me ^^ I know my first drafts are horrible, and I swear eternal vengeance on all punctuation marks :D - if you are going to do a rewrite I gladly give you some more feedback, only if you want it of course

Alright, here goes, and of course its all just my opinion:

Just to be clear "the impossible" does not refer to the ship's name, right?

In general you have some very awkward phrasing and places where you could be more economical with your words.

3rd paragraph: you call both Ott and his scientist an officer, which while it might be accurate, doesn't sound great and makes me ask if it is Ott or his subordinate who is standing with his hands behind their back. 

Also his size doesn't seem to add anything to the scene, he's not 7-foot-tall in comparison to anything, and isn't pointed out that this is otherwise remarkable. Is it just there to point out how large BBs are in general?

4th: You have "looking" in the first and then immediately "gazing" in the second sentence, that is just repetition that doesn't add anything - you could scratch "What you are gazing at is what" completely and just change the tense of the remaining sentence: "Miners here refer to this area as the Hollow Stars."

"We're going in." - this sounds very immediate to me, but then its hours later and Ott is just reviewing some data. The report of space being warped is also very dispassionate. This seems to be an unknown phenomenon that the ship is directly flying into, maybe Tarek could express some worries? The whole scene seems to be there to show the reader that there are some weird things happening, so Ott not commenting on them, just informing his sergeant that they are indeed still going to land and then just sitting there, doesn't add anything and wastes your limited space.

Once you've established the characters names you also don't have to use their full titles every time, the reader has been introduced to them and there is nothing in the rest of the story that makes their rank important enough to warrant that.

So there's easily enough proverbial fat you could trim to improve how easy it is to follow your story, add more tension and gain some space to add more emotions to your character so that they feel more alive. I'd call it an okay first draft, a solid foundation with lots of room for improvement.

I like the weird distortions happening on the station and the Battle Brothers' acknowledgment that there is really nothing they can do against them. Includes some neat ideas.

Are you looking for any feedback to your story, regarding grammar or prose?

A cool story. Really gave me some Event Horizon vibes.

Question - are you looking for any type of specific feedback? Regarding grammar or prose or something?

Thank you so much for you feedback. I really appreciate it. This is my first foray into Grimdark Future, so I am glad I got the tone right.

Looks like you managed it, well done ^^

I am not seeing it in the submissions. Have you set the project to published (the option should be at the very bottom when you edit it)?

*edit*

Actually I can see that your story is publicly accessible - you should just be able to go to the Jam's main page, click submit your project and chose your story as your entry.

Sounds plausible enough. Mostly I just wanted to give an example.

But from what I read, they didn't seem like they were mutated by Chaos stuff like the Havoc Demons, more like a specific parasite infected them.

Sounds great, do you have any plans to do more with the "blogs" / discoveries?

What a wonderful project. I greatly enjoyed it as it is.
I would love to see this expanded, mostly I think it could use some more automation (for probe creation and deployment, maybe a standard setting for new probes), and something to do with the massive abundance of resources you can quickly produce - to take more inspiration from the bobiverse, maybe some research, or mega projects to build.

For other people that might be interested in this - the world book does primarily contain more info for the setting. which includes information that will be helpful for most of the factions. It doesn't mention all the factions, for example the Infected Colonies don't show up in it at all as far as I can tell, but I might have missed something related to them.

Hi,

I am completely new to Grimdark Future, is there more lore for the factions inside the World Book, or is there just not more than the faction pages on the website?

An odd but compelling experience.

Hi,

I originally wanted to add this as a sort of foreword to the game I am working on, but unfortunately I might not find enough time to finish it before the end of the jam (new job, new schedule, what can you do).

Well, but what I wanted to add was a big thank you to Fari RPGs.
It's a pretty cheesy story, but about 3-4 years ago I took my first steps as a writer using the Charge/Dash ruleset in the Dash Jam. Releasing a cute but maybe a bit unpolished game about being minions to a mad scientist.

Since then I've released 15 indie projects and some semi-indie ones (third party licenses are a godsend for fans) and I'd like to think I've had some moderate success. Probably twice the total number have migrated to development hell. Either way, people paid me money, left comments both helpful and hurtful. Most importantly they engaged with the things I created. Hell, I was so surprised to have people pay for and read a novella I wrote, something I never thought possible. I figured everything without rules I touched would stay ignored and eventually forgotten.

I learned so much since then, went through tech changes, figured out what I wanted to do with my life and career, had to ask myself some moral questions and I'd like to think I've become a better and more competent person through it all.

I figured it is only fair to acknowledge the role that first step played all that time ago.

So, ehm, hey yeah, thanks!

Almost missed the jam, my little addition isn't exactly a game, but I hope it is still welcome :)

I am glad I could help motivate you :)

Exalted might not be the best to leave DnD behind if you are looking for suggestion, it's basically what if the dudes behind the World of Darkness made DnD, but it did have a similar idea to yours, sadly it is still very mechanics forward.

My bad on the "holding my thumbs" xD, it's a German expression that I failed to translate, its basically like "crossing my fingers"
 and just means I hope you succeed or I wish you well in something you are doing.

I gave this a quick read (Dec 04,2024 version), it definitely needs some formatting to be easier to understand.

From the description I thought the point was that this would help players describe battles instead it's basically a simple combat system and you get extra dice for describing your attacks or taking a risk.

This mimics things like Exalted's combat system where you can do a "stunt" to get bonuses, which is effectively just a description of your action which
the storyteller gets to judge on a 1-3 (the value of the bonus the description is worth) scale.

Sadly there is no help or direction on what makes a good description in the 
author's opinion.

This system also talks about the GM being able to add weaknesses to dice
types, but what these do or how players are supposed to engage with them
is not explained. Again from the description I had the impression that
looking for these weaknesses was a bigger part of 'Pure Massacre'.

What I thought this project would be is of course purely subjective to 
myself but I do think in any case this needs more work to be usable and stand out from similar attempts to reward better narration of 
combat scenarios.

Holding my thumbs for the author, would totally be willing to give it 
another read if it got an update.

Hi there, yeah sure I added a couple more and lowered the total price.

If you find the time I'd love to get a review ;) 

To me this feels like a first version of the main rules, made with an eye for expansion, rather than a simplified version of said rules.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, while reading it I just feel like there should be more.

I love the core mechanic table, visually it is very reminiscent of the FACERIP main table from the Marvel Superheroes TTRPG, which for a superhero game is a great comparison to strife for.

The GM Advice feels a bit strange: how does one practice setting the resolve costs for a player action outside of actually playing the game? I think more examples to help guide a new GM into what power rank an example description would be, or a play example showing the resolve cost of an action would be more helpful.

A personal note: I particularly miss something to help players equalize their power level and vibe.
In a point-buy based game a GM would use something like the number of available points to guide his players but in a heavily narrative focused game maybe something like a reminder for GMs to name an example superhero from pop culture to aid in this, would have been nice.
So a GM would be urged to say something like: "ok for this game, make characters that are equal in power to - Superman" and get it across to all players what kind of game they should expect, instead of saying nothing and ending up with a team that consists of the equivalent of the Punisher, Vision, Thor and Tom from accounting that just happens to have super-hearing.

Was this done by hand?

Either way it looks great but if not then I am even more impressed, nailing that aesthetic in digital form is tough.

I am not usually a fan of replacing dice with cards, but this takes full advantage of the card deck and plays straight into the atmosphere of the game - very cool, very well done.

I can see that every line on these pages is set with intent and care and that leads to a very cool look but the pages are still very busy and hard to read. I found myself wanting something like a text-only version to reference so I could have the best of both worlds - a beautiful art piece to look at and an easy to read version to enjoy the gameplay.

Nevertheless I found it enjoyable to engage with and tbh. I kinda want to do a hack of this game.

I'll admit, my eyesight is not the best but under that caveat, I found this hard to read.

The page is a bit busy which I find not great when there was an entire second page open to spread things out a bit. In fact the PDF comes with a second page that is just empty. Under Character Tracker, spacing between letters is reduced which gives it a weird mushed look. There is also suddenly no spacing between the section header Gameplay and the text underneath it.

Here's some other stuff I noticed:

Header Game Play - Gameplay is one word

repeated word under Gameplay - the the matching colors

Really the entire paragraph needs a re-read/re-write to get rid of grammar mistakes and make it clear how you are supposed to play.

I get it, layout-ing sucks and mistakes happen to the best but there's a lot of room for improvement. It is currently unplayable so I can't really rate it on anything but the creativity shown so far, which is good, just wish I could play it.

I like it. My own little journey through Divine Mirrors ended in a story of just about a thousand words. 

There were some things I thought were a bit confusing:

• Under the Egg header it talks about adding points but where and when to add them exactly is only explained after you've rolled more dice for the creatures looks and only then does it explain it. That was a bit confusing.
• Under Yearling there is a small mistake - How has the yearling has grown
• Under the Divine Beast header it talks about how the beast has reached full maturity and then it says the same under Culmination

Overall its also basically impossible to get the opposite result after you got 2 points in either of the traits and since you chose which one starts with a point already it feels a bit superfluous. For a solo game I'd personally want the option for the story to change direction from the first to the last roll so I wonder if using d8 or d10 might not be better to lessen the impact of the points.

Thank you very much, I am glad you like it ^^.

The food available for any given round is determined by the valued of the rolled dice at the beginning of the round. So: Round starts -> players chose their action -> players roll dice -> add dice values together, the result is the available food that round

I can see how it would be easy to gloss over that, it's right above the list of actions which grab a readers attention. I'll make the sentence bold to add more emphasis.

Thank you for the feedback :)

It wasn't intentionally inspired by it but I love that part of Spore xD

well, I got it done ^^ hope I understood everything right and people have some fun with it :D

Making it look nice is definitely the greater challenge for me ^^ trying to find a balance between cute and tacky atm.

Oh wow, thank you so much for the detailed review.

You bring up some great points and I will have to think on how to improve the game to ensure a smooth experience for GMs and Players.

If I could give this review 10 thumbs up, I would :)

Hey, thank you for trying out Everything is going to Crab! Glad you enjoyed it :)