Procrastination Technique #452: Reviews
I’ve written about reviews before, and I’m always fascinated, whether the review is positive or. . . not so much.
The Tin Man Games app “Choices: And The Sun Went Out” (including the second story, my steampunk fantasy, “Choices: And Their Souls Were Eaten”) has just under a hundred reviews (mostly just stars) on itunes and has just passed 600 reviews on Android.
Android apps have a cool feature where they say how many people have installed an app, and this app, our app, has been installed over 50,000 times! It boggles my mind that so many people are reading words that I write, and it makes me evil laugh when I read the desperate pleas of addicted readers hanging out for their weekly story fix:
Mario Zalout wrote:
Love it It’s hard for me to find games like this. I constantly crave the story, wanting more. However, I’ve caught up with And Their Souls Were Eaten about 3 times, and I always hate the break I have to take in between. And The Sun Went Out helps with that though, and since I know it’s considerably longer I work at it whenever Souls needs an update.
Theresa Budd wrote:
Great game but… This is a really great game but I wish they would update the bear version. I was having so much fun playing it and now I’ve got as far as can but they need to update it so I can finish the story please.
Zachery Fitzpatrick wrote:
You’ll love the story …..untill you get a nice distance in…. then the book shuts itself on your fingers and then throws itself into a fire and tells you wait for a update.
Trevor Veltema wrote:
So good Honestly the best game I’ve played, I was on it from 12am to 7 am, it’s very addicting
Johannes Haler wrote:
UPDATE MORE PLEASE The story And The Sun Went Out is easily one of THE best stories I’ve ever read. The plot about how the sun disappesring and stuff is just amazing! Please, I’ve reached the part where update is needed and I NEED MORE! Thank you Tin Man Games, for making reading fun, and making one of the best books I’ve read!
There’s a whole sub-group who are angry that you have to pay (or watch ads) to read the whole story. Since I know exactly how much I earn (hint: not an enormous amount), I’m not entirely sympathetic to these:
Alper Can Buyuk wrote:
Ad-fest So you need “choice-tickets” to make decisions and progress the story. The only way to get these is either purchasing them, or buying a pass which allows you to progress through the app. The other option is watching a 30 second ad for a measly 3 tickets, completely breaking the immersion. Shouldn’t be a free app in the first place if this is the way the devs are gonna go about it.
Franz Airyl Sapit wrote:
TOO PRICEY. NOT WORTH IT. In my local currency, two Story Pass (needed to play this,”pay to play”) of this game is worth as much as Dragon Age Origins, a PC game. Imagine that.
Kaneki Ken wrote:
Money-grubbing morons. Whoever is the developer(s) of this game is seriously an annoying one. Not only do you deem it, unfavourable to have a narrator. To continue the story, you force us to give you money? How cheap is that of a practice! You don’t deserve money of you’re too lazy to have a voice actor!
In their defence, ebooks are sold in a much simpler system. There’s a big yellow button that says “free sample” and it’s easy to understand that the free sample is specifically designed to suck you into buying the book. These story apps are exactly the same thing, but app stores list them as “free, with in-app purchases” which isn’t deliberately misleading but it feels like it is.
Sadly, there are sometimes bugs and those reviews are always awful. The only up side is that bug-fixing horrors are someone else’s job to fix. Yay?
I love it when reviewers give useful information (and even more when they rebut the “I don’t want to pay/watch ads” reviewers).
DERPING Dubstep wrote:
Worth the read Don’t expect this to be an adventure game with managing inventory and fight enemies. If your looking for that you better off getting something else but don’t let that deter you from this experience. Like it is described by the developers the story is really choice based. I noticed how different the story was when i looked at the screen shots and compared it to mine, i was surprised. (And their souls were eaten seems really interesting hope we get an update soon)
Kat Hargis:
Amazing Currently reading The Sun Went Out- and the story is compelling and leaves me craving more. It is definitely worth to purchase the Story Tickets pass or whatever it’s called. Not only does it support the creative geniuses behind the story, but it also keeps me satisfied with long reads rather than short ones. Compared to other choice-based novels, this one is probably my top pick, beating even TellTale games. Once again, definitely worth that I initially spent. Looking forward to the updates on the story!
krazykidfox wrote:
Fantastic I’ve read both stories up to date. They’re both fantastic, and I’m eagerly waiting for more content. Pick this game up, hands down. While yes, you do have to either watch ads or buy tickets to progress through the stories, it’s honestly a very fair and generous system that stands out from all of the Free-To-Pay mobile games out there. Props to you, devs. Get this, you won’t be let down.
I don’t have a name wrote:
Awesome (Currently reading “And The Sun Went Out”)Intriguing, mysterious, smart and a bit dangerous. I love the fact that, although the choices you have are both natural and logical and not extremely different from each other, any choice you make has a huge impact on the story, changing it in major but still subtle ways. The only downside, in my opinion is the fact that you can’t redo a choice. You have the option to start the whole story from the beginning but I don’t want to repeat everything just for one mistake
I really love that people are passionate about the stories!
The first story has been running over 14 months and is well over 500,000 words altogether (although each read-through would be about 100,000 words – the length of a regular book).
The person known as “I don’t have a name” is going to love the stuff that happens towards the end of the first story, when literally hundreds of seemingly insignificant choices have the power to save the world. . . or doom it forever.
The final final final piece of the story will be released roughly on Christmas Day. If you want to read the whole story from beginning to end—possibly several times, so you get different experiences—then this is your moment to jump on board!!
Getting into the reader’s mind
NB There are structural spoilers ahead for “Choices: And Their Souls Were Eaten”, and more mid-level spoilers in the comments.
Regular readers will know that I live and breathe “Choices: And The Sun Went Out”, a serial interactive story produced by Tin Man Games. (It’s a massive story app available on Android or itunes, with new sections every week and the ability to choose where the protagonist goes and what they do.)
Although the app is called “Choices: And The Sun Went Out”, it contains two stories (so far!)
I was hired as a co-writer on the original story, and I have literally one section left to write. After FIFTEEN MONTHS and SIXTY updates, the story is ending. It’s an amazing feeling for everyone involved. Do buy the app as a Christmas gift from you to you. It’s a lot of fun.
But that’s utterly not what I’m writing about. The second story in the app, “Choices: And Their Souls Were Eaten” is my own project, set in the magical steampunk world of my novel and various other stories.
Here’s one of the unique things about the entire “Choices: And The Sun Went Out” app: every four weeks there is a super-significant choice, usually a choice of which location to go to next. The reader gets to pick where they go… and then a dial appears to tell them what percentage of readers chose to go to the same place.
The writers can also see what all our readers are choosing.
So. Confession time.
Each super-choice is meant to be equally appealing, but at the end of Arc 1 it became clear to me that almost all of my readers had chosen one particular path. (I’m going to go back and edit the Arc 1 text to make the other choices more appealing.)
Arc 3 has just ended, and I was dying to find out what choices people made there. In Arc 3, the player chooses their animal form. They can shift into their animal form at various times during the rest of the story, and it’s often useful (or just fun and awesome). Certain animals have certain skills (did you know rats have an absolutely amazing sense of smell? Research, baby!)
There are five possible animal forms, but the reader was given a choice of only two animals, based on two of their previous choices. For example, if they had chosen to avoid physical conflict as much as possible, and to stay in the forest rather than seeking out people, they might be a deer. If you email me privately to ask for more detail, I’ll tell you more.
The five animal choices were: Sparrow, Otter, Deer, Greyhound, or Rat.
The statistics were always going to be skewed due to the Arc 1 choice, but here are the results:
Greyhound: 53%
Sparrow: 19%
Rat: 18%
Deer: 9%
Otter: 1%
All I really wanted to say was that if you’re an otter, you have read quite a different story to everyone else. Congratulations.
Reality
Lately, when I see someone walking, I get panicky.
Each step is so small, and it seems like they probably have a long way to walk. Maybe they’re shopping, maybe they’re walking along the side of the road. Either way, what they’re doing seems to me like an impossible task. The weight of that impossible task feels like an ocean on my back. I have so much to do, and so little strength to do any of it.
I don’t walk much. For various health reasons, a ten-minute walk can leave me crippled for a fortnight. It’s been like this for years now, and I can’t remember what it was like to be healthy.
No, I do.
I remember a family holiday, when I was a teenager. We stayed somewhere with a pool, and I jumped into the delicious clear water almost the second we arrived. I might have still been fully dressed, except for kicking off my shoes. I remember thinking how I was young, and healthy, and how easy it was to move through the water.
I also remember a window of maybe two months, when I was an adult and healthy. Louisette was about six months old, and my back had just stopped hurting from that first pregnancy. I was in love with her, high on hormones, and my body felt strong. For the first time in over ten years, I wasn’t mentally ill. I remember feeling so powerful when I picked her up out of her car seat, and how good that felt. I remember not being afraid of what the day would bring.
That window of good health ended when my hip fell out of joint one day, and it hurt hurt hurt for months. (After that I had bronchitis, and then I hurt my back, and then I realised I wasn’t getting better and I talked Chris into letting me jump into a second pregnancy so I could get the whole pregnancy thing over with.)
I remember changing a pooey nappy in the back of the car as I took myself to a free post-natal physio and rain and hail fell on my back while Louisette screamed at me. I remember applying for a babysitting job and trying desperately to mask the agony as the mother proudly invited me up the stairs to see the rest of their million-dollar house. (I succeeded, too: I got the job and I enjoyed it. Of course my ability to babysit is over now. Just this year I tried to look after my beloved nieces for a few hours while my sister was at my grandfather’s funeral, and I ended the day screaming at strangers and throwing things.)
Today’s a bad day brain-wise. I’m wading through mud and I hate everyone I see.
The up side is that when a day is so moustachio-twirlingly bad, it’s obvious that my brain is messing with me. I can’t delegate everything, but I can delegate some stuff, and I already have. It’s so operatically bad that, for the moment, the fact that I brushed both my hair and teeth today counts as a win.
The down side is that the ocean is still there pressing down on me. It’ll be there tomorrow, and the next day, and if I don’t manage to trick my brain into letting me be semi-functional ASAP there is plenty more for me to lose than just one miserable day.
Merry f*cking Christmas, everyone.
Honesty
I’ve been thinking about the kind of racism that personally benefits me.
I live in Canberra, Australia. Despite my various health issues (that’s a whole ‘nother story… or is it?) I live in a 4-bedroom house that is “mine” in the sense that the mortgage is mine. I have a car, and two kids, and I never go hungry for lack of money.
Compared to a lot of the world, I’m unimaginably rich. There are two reasons for that:
- My ancestors stole Australia from those who lived here. They are still paying for that, and we (white Australia) are still benefiting.
- I have chosen to accept my wealth and ignore the fact that other people are going without basic medical care, shelter, transport, and even food.
It’s high time to think carefully about whether I’m responsible for all the people I could help, if I chose to give up some or all that I have.
The thinking process is slow. It has to be, because I’m trying to be honest with myself. That’s not an easy thing to do, especially for a white person. As the most powerful group (by skin colour) in our society, it is both difficult and painful for me to acknowledge that although I think I’m a pretty good person and I think I work super hard, there are plenty of others who work harder than me and gain less from it.
There are a few ameliorating thoughts, which I’m holding on to fiercely: Although it’s been amply proven that trickle-down wealth isn’t a thing, neither is wealth a “zero sum” game. That is, if I lived on the street instead of in a house, that doesn’t mean someone else has gained a house (unless I gave it to them). Eating less here in Canberra is highly unlikely to benefit someone starving in Syria.
Also, I need to work and my partner needs to work. Us not working doesn’t benefit anyone. So we need to be able to shower, wear clean and non-faded clothes, and to get to and from work. There are plenty of other things that are a minimum requirement for living in Canberra, like having electricity and a fridge.
So I’m not sure where I’m heading (if anywhere), but it’s time to listen to my white guilt and see how much of it contains truth or should inspire action.
Felicity Banks 