My story: https://chyoa.com/story/Apex-Seed.10351 Hello! Neo_Kenka here, ready to learn and eager to find out how I might improve the above-linked story/game, Apex Seed. I've gotten some sparse feedback and ideas via PMs and comments, and I appreciate them all. However, I just found this sub-forum and realized, much too late, that I should probably open a channel for criticism here, too. So please, reply with whatever criticisms you have; if you have ideas for girls you want to see in the future or new evolutions/perks, please message those to me on CHYOA proper, instead. Thank you, and good day to you all!
You asked for criticism, well, get ready, because I have a boat load. 1: First, and most importantly, the story is way too Rape-y. I don't like coercive sex at the best of times, and this time it's done from a 2nd person POV. This made me feel like I was the one doing it, and ruined my enjoyment of it. 2: You make it far too easy to trick various women into having sex with the protagonist. Women are smart and canny: and the main thrill of the thing is the chase, the seduction, the anticipation of convincing them to bed you over hours, days, or weeks. Yes, the objective is sex, but that's not the point, it's the journey that matters, not the destination. 3: Nicotine is, so far as I am aware, the single most addictive substance known to the mind of mortal man. You make it out like the protagonists cum is hundreds of times more addictive than that. As far as I'm concerned that is pure laziness. Portray the struggle! Show how they fight against the addictive qualities, and how they can sometimes WIN, even if only temporarily this time, but eventually for good! 4: Stupidity is a turn off. You portray the protagonist as an incompetent idiot. Again we run into the problem with 2nd person. I'm not stupid. I don't like stupid people. It's not fun to pretend to be stupid. Write a version of the story where the protagonist is scary smart like his high school crush. 5: Nametag Fifth, if I remember correctly you don't use selectable tags for the protagonist's name: this breaks immersion. Please fix that. (If you already have or I am miss-remembering, congrats on a good move on your part!) That's all out of me for now, I think I've left you quite enough to chew on.
I haven´t read toooo much of it, but I feel like it takes a bit too long to get to the actual "Game"-Part of your story. Like, I read up to the point where you end up raping Devi, finished, and then found that a whole bunch of variables opened up. But when I click on "Start Game", I have to click through everything I´ve already read, which can be a bit of a hassle. I´d add some kind of "Skip Prologue to one of the starting points" option, especially if the "Devi, then others"-route is the only one you´re going to really focus on (which is a pity, because I liked the "At Work" and "Visit a Hooker" threads...), so people know when to start. It´s a cool stroy and a great concept, but I find myself "out of Mana" as it were, from just the prologue with Devi, so I haven´t been able to be arsed to even try out the later Game-ier parts, which is a shame, because it sounds like a good time!
Since no one has said it yet I will say it; Apex Seed is one of, if not the best written stories on the site. In terms of descriptiveness, viscerality ( is that a word?) and evocative language. I feel like criticizing it any in terms of composition would be extremely difficult because it already does what it sets out to do as well or better than anything on CHYOA. Aside from that, I think it deserves credit for doing in attempting so much that is simply absent from any other story I've read here. All of the characters feel like something we haven't seen before. All of it is raw and gripping the way that this particular sub-genre of erotica should be. There are a few parts that are too hardcore even for me but that's the beauty of branching paths, and I think your story is also an excellent example of the potential that scores and conditional variables have. Some of the recent characters have touched on an interesting theme that doesn't crop up too much which is sexually assertive and/or experienced women having the tables turned on them and getting tricked. So seeing more of that would be dun.
This. I pretty much disagree with all of it. 1: First, it's personal taste. Second, the story is based on moral choices. Some choices are Rape-y, yes, but you should usually have another possible path unless neo_kenka didn't write it yet. So, if you rape somebody in the story, it's either because you choose to or because the other path will come when the author will have time. 2: There's a reason to that, but I only know it because neo_kenka mentioned it in private messages when we talked about the chapters I was writing for this story. I don't think those reasons have been stated elsewhere so I won't be the one to make it leak. Anyway, I don't think all women in this story are protrayed as stupid, and many pathes focus more on the way to seduce them/trick them into sex/force them in some cases than the actual sex, which is more than often skipped and let to the imagination. 3: I'm pretty sure heroin and cocaine are more addictive, and maybe other illicit drugs, and I don't find it unrealistic to see a substance made to be addictive through almost self aware evolution having such a powerful effect. Seeing a woman able to beat the addiction might be interesting, but it would most likely mean a game over (she would probably report the MC to the police) or she would have to die. An entire path set to be a dead end would probably not be the best of ideas, especially in a story with game mechanics on a site not allowing backup saves. 4: As far as I'm concerned, I like seeing the MC's stupidity adressed, it often amuses me more than it would if the story was writen in third person. I like playing a character that isn't perfect, and I'm well served with this story's MC whose I feel no sympathy for but still manage to be interesting. And I read your final advice as "Your story is shit, you should start it over or write another one entirely because it doesn't match my personal tastes, and I don't care about all those who appreciate it to the point it reached first rank in top sex story in a few months." By the way, turning the MC into a mastermind from the beginning would at the same time ruin the premise (he's supposed to start as lower than the average human and evolve his way to the top), make the story more challenging to write (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) and turn it into easy mode for those who read it in game style. 5: There's been nametags from the beginning. As far as I'm concerned, I don't really like seeing nametag in all stories, I often don't change the name anyway and most of them end up staring John Doe because the author didn't change the default name. I don't need a character to have the same name as me to feel immersed, it can even be a turn off if he's doing stuff I would disapprove or not be able to achieve. I still use it sometimes in my own story when I feel like it fits the narrative, but it bores me when people act like it should be mandatory.
I'm so embarrassed by my absentmindedness... I created this thread, and I guess some pretty, colorful thing with lights must have strolled by because I completely forgot about it. (Perhaps I was expecting a notification through CHYOA? Foolish of me if so.) I'll bookmark this to avoid this later. Whoo! Well now, though I'm incredibly late (my apologies for this), I'll chime in! Nemo of Utopia: 1. Indeed, "Non-Consent" was my second tag for the story (after "Mind Control"), and even the moral grandstanding by the MC is supposed to be incredibly flawed: effectively raping not only the bodies, but very free wills and lives of the women he ensnares, there can be no moral high ground for his actions. It's compound rape, and the "Morality" stat only serves to gauge his tendency to revel in cruelties or abuse of his victims. That being said, that is my intention, and I respect anyone's decision to stop reading on account of their tastes or morals. There will be more awful things that happen to women, presuming I can keep my wits about me enough to write the alternative to his usual, half-bumbling impregnations. 2. Khan (who issued a response of his own) touched upon a topic that I suspect is one I'll freely share: the game is meant to be more difficult, and require more evolutions, at future levels (HUBs). That being said, there's only so much difficulty to pump into branching paths before I'm overwhelmed, and the evolutions act as my "shortcut" to that: women who prove more intelligent, shrewd, and able to avoid his overt chemical influence will have a number of dead/bad ends in pursuing them, or so I've vaguely planned (we'll see if I'm able to deliver). Success for these more difficult encounters will require a very narrow, thorny path of normal choices, and a few shortcuts with powers. Your criticism is still entirely valid, of course: these first girls are, in fact, "easy". I can only offer that they're meant to be. 3. It's a curious issue of perspective: you are looking at how addiction works in real life and going up from there, and that's not only valid but also the more realistic an approach. From there, this seems like a reckless power fantasy (it more or less is). Myself, I was coming "down" from how many chemical mind control stories go, with instant gratification on first dose or some such (not that there's anything wrong with that). Really, mines is barely "down" from that so far, and again only time will tell if I can deliver what I envision to be the more difficult, drawn-out encounters, but that was the OOC reason for this wildly addictive stuff: the first tag on the story is "Mind Control", which is home to little beyond said power fantasies, and I feel that such is the category by which his absurd pheromones and sperm should be judged. Like #1, I respect anyone's distaste for it, but can only offer that respect. 3a. As to showing examples of them resisting, well... stay tuned. (Presuming I'm not a COMPLETE hack, and merely a disappointing one.) 4. I don't know how to quantify or phrase, properly, a defense for the MC's "regular Joe" persona. I feel like there's some literary term to encompass it, but instead here is this ramble: in planning the first chapters, I just saw myself drawn to the idea of someone entirely unprepared for the power to dominate the world or, at least, every woman in New York, someone who was left feeling like the world owed them something, and with the women outpacing him in every way save his bizarre new power. I guess that means it serves as the power fantasy but, instead of engaging it from a position of immediate superiority by one's genius, by rising up from a bitter, mediocre origin. Also, I occasionally get an urge to write comedy in my wanton rapefest so... bonus? As for rewriting... never never never! But I'll consider that kind of protagonist when/if I ever start another story. I'd recommend the fairly sharp gentleman (rapist) I wrote on a branch in the AGS story, but I fear he's having too convenient a time so far to overcome the other issues you have with Apex Seed. 5. I use first_name and last_name, and hopefully fuck up using them less in the future! Sthaana: If I can ever get off my lazy arse to do it (and I may force myself to do so, as I wanted to finish all prologue routes before finishing the first chapter/HUB), I do intend to connect the different prologues to loop into the HUB. In those scenarios, Devi will be a guest, and will wear a Hazmat suit while she goes about researching you and your victims (along with her own post-HUB scene...), but that also entails writing alternative paths whenever I had Devi show up as a slave elsewhere... ah, but that's on me, and I'll do my best to get to it (and hopefully not strike the other prologues in frustration. Poor planning on my part, sorry about that). Per your request/suggestion, I've made a "Skip Prologue" entry on the Introduction page which zooms you to the rules pages right before the HUB. I can't promise you'll enjoy the game anyways, but I hope you do! fyreant: *looks behind him* *points to himself with a confused expression while silently mouthing "Me?"* *looks behind himself again* Seriously, I don't deserve a lick of that praise, particularly from one whose work I jealously read. >///> But thank you. Khan: I appreciate your responses, and by extension your praise. I'm not particularly appreciative of the tone you used in some responses, but I know you meant well. Also, ignore the rankings on CHYOA: they're all jacked up anyways. Apart from that, I do appreciate the views, favorites and bookmarks (unhealthily so perhaps), and will strive to justify them. Also, re: nametags: I did change the default to "Derek Peck" just to avoid John Doe. I also can't stand that default name! Maybe that helps encourage players to type something in, but for now Derek remains.
