https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/emackie/NachtStory.html
In Nacht, you assume the role of the personified night and journey through the lives of multiple people. You carry with you the capacity to do what the night does: to give rest, to cause anxiety, to give inspiration, or to drive one into deeper loneliness. How you affect each person, whether for better or worse, is up to you.
First thing is first: The ambiguity of whether of not you are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ as the stereotypical night time character is great. I played multiple times, as the 3 initial scenarios allow for continued playability. I do not mind, at all, that there are no photos or images. I think that the way you kept it, I got to visualize more of what I wanted as I personified my character ‘the night’.
I wonder if there is room for improvement over the current experience of the game? I already like the absence of images, but maybe some more story based elements with less choices in the middle? These are just suggestions because of the large amount of choices made me a little overwhelmed and I felt that maybe the idea and execution of the game were a little different than from what I expected.
Overall this is a very good game. It compliments itself by having as many choices as it does, but on the other edge of the sword, it makes me wonder what more story telling elements could do for the player.
I like how you can make things better or worse for the different characters, depending on your whim.
Only minor quibble is that endings seem to work exactly like any other transition between characters; it seems like it wants to keep going when it reaches them, so the cutoff seems a bit abrupt.
Very well written! I like the amount of influence you have on the situation, nothing too direct but enough to shape the story. I like how its not just all actions; its a nice mix of physical and mental story telling. Thumbs up!
I really enjoyed the ambiguity of some of the actions. As the night, even if I tried to control whether or not I was good or evil, I kept finding myself thwarted by the vagueness of the choices (read as: I tried to be a jerk but kept accidentally solving people’s problems…) I also liked that though you started with one of three people, you didn’t necessarily have to stay with them. I was expecting three individual, isolated paths that would be followed to completion and was pleasantly surprised went that wasn’t the case.
A nice, casual hypertext read. I really like the replayability of the 3 initial scenarios, I played the student 3 times and discovered something different each time. That said, I feel like the story is a tree-like in structure, meaning that the longer you stay in the story the more possible endings you have. While over time I might go and explore all possible endings, I think some paths could be merged to give some cohesiveness to the experience.
I really enjoyed your writing. You executed the idea of being a ‘personified Night’ very well. I liked the choices that you had/the ways you could influence the different people in the game, and you almost give the Night a moral compass to follow in the different scenarios, which is an interesting thought. I think you did a good job with the endings as well.
At first I was expecting to be the night but then it was just like one of my Sunday nights. Sneaking around messing with people was fun.
Good writing. I’ll comment in class.
One thing I found interesting was how in both our games we use this abstract actor to influence other characters. I was curious, though, what the nature of your narrator was, as within the game itself the player can only infer.
It was a good choice to make the endings concise, though I wish you had added a way to backtrack.