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The Last Immortal's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- This was a really fun take on the theme. I enjoyed the approach of interviewing candidates instead of dominating via combat. Nice touch including the "forward" and "backward" options, it made it possible to experience all the different endings during the playthrough. I noticed a couple of minor spelling issues, and a couple of incorrect pronouns, but the story was well written and easy to follow. You did a good job creating different, but believable, characters and including enough information about them that they didn't feel like generic placeholders. As you noted, I think having some background audio would really enhance the experience, but even without it, I'd happily read more about the characters and the world of the player's immortal. Great start on a really fun story!
- GDD Pretty simple, it allows me to take a peek into the creative process. It does the job well for the scope of the game. Gameplay A simple text-based adventure—it's been a long time since I played one of those. While the gameplay is in this format, the game excels in storytelling. Short and sweet, it was enough to make my imagination wander. I would like to see some variety on the ends; 4 of the 5 have the same consequence for the player, and since we don't take a peek in the future, we don't know how things develop in the short term. It's a big decision for the protagonist, but we, as players, don't have much connection to what happens next. Maybe if instead of an abrupt end, the time started to flow where it stopped for him, it would give you some room to see what your choice did. Immortality being a gift or a curse is an old and interesting concept; you can develop your story however you desire. I suggest a lot of playtests to gauge the player interests. As feedback from other judges, some people are more sensitive to the theme of suicide than others; adding an advisory or warning about it at the start would be appreciated. Also, if you decide to develop this story further, the idea of using free art and music is good; you can also consider making a team to take on that task, and you can focus on developing the story. You are clearly a good writer. Good work.
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/103m-f9Rfa_ryh5FrEdC2jx7g48EVyNTkPv7HiBxuxig/edit?usp=sharing
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarize your game!
You are the last immortal person on Earth. Pass your power onto someone else, keep it yourself or end it to remove it from the world forever. What will you do?
Please explain how your game fits the theme.
You are the last immortal. There can be Only One immortal in the world.
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
It's a short text-based narrative game. I had a lot more ideas like deeper conversations with more branches, text effects and audio, but unfortunately didn't have the time to make the game more than this. I mostly "finished" and submitted it so I could say I submitted something.
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Comments
This was a really interesting interactive novel! I enjoyed the conversations with each candidate, and found making the final choice difficult.
Spoiler discussions from here, other players please avoid!!
The character were curious, I enjoyed puzzling through our conversation, and was lead to the following assessments:
Francis certainly seems well-intentioned, his charity speaks to that, but not already having some form of plan for how that charity will or would enact change in the world, nor having thought about how immortality would impact him personally, betrays a lack of practicality.
Julie struck me as the best suited to immortality, with a genuine drive for personal knowledge and an interest in sharing it with the world, but she also has the least life experience, and I was lead to wonder how many hardships her idealism has endured so far.
Bradley appears practical, has clearly thought through this decision, but his purpose seemed narrow. Immortality is often considered dehumanising, and I wonder how a mind so focused on what it means to be human would keep its attachment to its own.
In the end, I chose Bradley, which I was surprised by. I initially thought it would be Julie, but the more I dwelt on it the more I realised what was important to me in the choice was leaving the power with someone I felt I could trust to wield it responsibly, and while I think Julie would enjoy immortality the most, I was the least sure of what her immortal life would entail (despite her clear intentions!).
I was briefly disappointed to not have a summary of how Bradley decided to live his immortal life, but on reflection I think that was a good choice - ultimately we can't know some things, and it's often more important why we chose something than how it turned out.
I love exploring hypotheticals like this, and the writing was great, it provided plenty of character to sink my mind's teeth into. Often we don't see every side of every character in a single conversation, so I felt it worked quite well to have lots of unknown aspects to the characters when making the final decision!
I read the note to the judges on what you would like to add, I agree that audio and text effects would be nice touches, but the extra branches was definitely the part I wanted most, if you were thinking of continuing to explore this project. The ideas here are really interesting, and getting more hints of the strengths and weaknesses of character in each of the candidates to influence the final decision would be awesome.
A good entry, I hope you keep on writing! 💚