Text Game : < untitled >

'Love may come in various forms, with various reasons'

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Today we shall bring you to the world we never explored before - the world where ones and zeros meets letters and symbols:

Text-based game.

Forged specially for Genshiken Writing Challenge XII (in which we forgot to post previously, pardon us!), <untitled> allows everyone to experience playing an interactive web text-based game. This genre, although probably being visual novel's simplest form, actually holds a load of potential - The LCPANES Terminal, for example, currently possesses a perfect five-star rating on rpgmaker.net. With all these promising facts, how was this very game went, then?

First of all, let us warn the younger audiences first that this scriptborn from Ezra H. // illuminaseeker contains some pseudo-suggestive scenes, so readers' discretion is advised. Some of them are mind-bending, to be honest. The story itself opens with the interactive 'input your name' dialog box, followed by - I have no idea why the page is named login.php - the welcome (introductory) screen. What lies after that, though, is...

Well, this story tells about an ordinary college student whose life is about to change. Any move taken by you redefines the main character's fate, either positively or negatively. The main character realized that the tree of luck has been on his side recently, and he is on his quest to discover who planted the roots itself - a lecturer, a family member, or a fellow band member.

Several storylines haven't been implemented though (the game should allow you to pick whether you're taking a degree in accountancy/informatics/musical art but only accountancy is available prior to this version, for an example) but even with its current condition there are still 10+ outcomes possible. This adds a huge replayability value, which is a big plus.

The plot twists on this one are a major factor as well, though. It's massive - it adds a huge amount curiosity to the readers about what will happen next. The unusual pairing should also elicit a smile to its readers, as well as the message given on the every ending sequence.

To be honest, I feel quite weird while reading the suggestive parts. There's and ending I liked the most due to it being inspirational somehow (SPOILER : the 'laziness + lie combination' one) but the more suggestive ending ones are just... Well, perhaps that's because I'm not used to stories like this?

Furthermore, it feels quite sad that the design seems overwhelmingly simple - I can understand this though, considering the fact that it is being created for a (dead-lined) writing challenge. The casual writing style itself could also be improved more though in my eyes - further proofread should do good!

Overall, I see this project (if it can be called so) had undergone a promising start. Had the page had more than just a simple 'font size="5"' tag and a more solid writing, this shall attract a lot of pleasant readers. Frankly speaking, I envision that this project will be stellar if being worked as a team rather than solo - illuminaseeker himself is actually majoring Teknik Informatika (informatics), so the coding-related issues should do no big harm.

This interactive story-game hybrid may be played here, for your pleasure. Oh, and as further trivia, this game isn't named 'untitled' by purpose - it does meant to be untitled from the start.

PS : In fact, there are two text-based games submitted for this challenge - stuffs the second story coming soon! (not sure when though, I already have something more important to be posted next)

- Nivalyx