Rough Draft -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author(s): Erica Kleinman Language: en First Publication Date: 2016-04-06 Rating: 3.0 (based on 6 ratings) ABOUT THE STORY Denise is an author struggling to finish a story by a deadline. Help her complete her story by making choices and avoiding writer's block. Part of a thesis project on interactive storytelling. EXTERNAL LINKS Story Files Ren'Py executables and data. EDITORIAL REVIEWS Christopher Huang > This is RenPy, and the story is presented as a CYOA with branches into > various plotlines. However, it differs from a standard CYOA flowchart in > that one is expected to explore non-winning branches in order to obtain > objects and information for the winning thread; in this respect, the CYOA > format that RenPy is made for is subverted into a more traditional adventure > game map. Instead of exploring rooms, we are exploring plot nodes … in a > sense, we are exploring time rather than space. I thought it was a very > ingenious use of the medium, and an interesting look at the creative process > of writing a story. > > That said, Reina’s story is a little simplistic. It’s supposed to be for > children, of course, and it does come off that way. There’s a part of me > that wants to dismiss it as a little juvenile, but that really is the point > of the story, after all, so … should I say that it did succeed in what it > was trying to do? I don’t know. I suppose I would have preferred a more > mature approach to motivation and characterisation, but there’s not a lot of > room to delve into that sort of thing within the constraints of the chosen > genre. Perhaps the prose could have done with a little bit more character–a > little more attitude from Denise within the context of Reina’s story, as > opposed to merely in the form of commentary.