Loved the writing, it is a big part of the fantasy setting and promptly delivers every single bit. While I'm very far away from any kind of bestiality, I am eagerly hoping to see the human path and getting nicely written scenes describing the not nice things happening to our sweet dear Paladin.

The premise of this game was enticing.

I was completely on-board for a situation where you can't win but the journey to failure might be an interesting one.

Alas, there's a disconnect between this and the author's description of the game.

I'm going to spend the rest of the review explaining why I was disappointed by this, so if that's all you need to know, you can stop reading here.

At the end, in an attempt to be constructive, I'll suggest how it could be improved.

I appreciate the author's effort and hope one day they will deliver on their potential.

What you actually get is page after page of not much happening, with over-verbose text that lacks pacing, structure, and coherent mood. While you could argue that technically something happens on each page, even when something important is going on, the author makes it hard to follow. It's as if every page simultaneously reads like the end of the story and pure filler, because everything has the same melodramatic tone regardless of importance.

Yet, this isn't a mess of weird grammar, unpunctuated, or poorly spelled... Those are not failings of this author. Their writing is not clumsy in that way, but would still fail an introductory writing class.

On the way, you will be provided with fascinatingly irrelevant information about operating water pumps or jiggling barrel taps.

Page after page... No character arc. No dialog. No interactions. Nobody but the protagonist and their grindingly negative internal monolog. When another character finally shows up, you will - like the protagonist - be totally prepared to just do anything to get to the sex as soon as possible.

If you were expecting anything sexy, or something to genuinely build up the personality of the main character, or any attempt at "show" instead of "tell" ... you are out of luck.

While there is a great deal of "content" here for a new release, only a part of it is erotic content.

I'll provide an example:

Soon the bitterness of night creeps into you, where the cold bite of the wind strip your armour of its warmth, your lack of vision jeopardises the mission as any trip or stumble could tip the bucket, and your navigation skills become pathetic...

Seriously? "The bitterness of night?" Or... "Your lack of vision"... yeah, it's getting dark? And, "jeopardises the mission" ??? You've simply gone to get a bucket of water. The fate of the world does not depend on it. While I wasn't expecting Hemmingway, this is a little cringe-inducing. I didn't cherry pick this. It's pretty much all at this level.

A different writer might have said...

"With each step you spill a little water from the bucket. In the darkness, you can't seen any landmarks, and after a while, you begin to suspect that you are going in circles, but unless the biting cold wind is shifting direction that would be impossible."

A simple approach wouldn't get in the reader's way, allowing them to focus on the story, not the adjectives.

 As a reward for clicking, you also get paragraphs like this:

You strike back into view, stepping around him out of arms reach but close enough that the clatter of your boots makes him wince with every gentle step. When you return to his view his body opens up once more as the absence of steel upon his neck relieves his worry.

The author doesn't have a clear idea of viewpoint, and jerks mid-sentence between the sort of descriptions an omnipotent narrator would give, the main character's internal viewpoint, and that of others in the scene.

I won't quote any of the erotica, as that is a payoff the author clearly feels you need to work to achieve, and I won't spoiler it.

When the chance to fail comes up, you are given the chance to act extremely naively, if you wish, but you have to keep on picking reckless choices if you want to get to anything resembling erotic content before you give up in frustration.

The verbosity doesn't create a vibrant picture of events, nor does it construct a main character with a rational grounding we can relate to. We've given somebody who sinks into debauchery without any reference point to sink from. Exposition does not convey what should have been properly shown to the reader, and so events are robbed of impact. The situation goes from nothing to "totally defeated" more or less instantly. Not much of an interesting struggle ... only to find that amounts to very little. The description lacks context or grounding and leaves the reader unable to calibrate the uneven and often overblown pronouncements. Where the real struggle should begin, we have only a quick railroad ending.

Also, like the author's description of the game, scenes promise much, but deliver less, and much of what is delivered purposely undercuts itself.

I couldn't find more than one meaningful ending, with the game warning me that other paths wouldn't result in anything interesting. I only got as far as I did so I could be sure I was being fair in the negativity of my review. It's pretty easy to explore all the paths at the moment as there aren't a lot of choices.

That you can't start a new game and are left with it stuck at the final paragraph doesn't help there.

This is the kind of work that people write when they're first starting out. They make a lot of mistakes, and they may feel something is wrong but can't pinpoint it. The author has a lot to work on. I don't think that's because they lack the ability to do good work in future, but they have not developed either the knowledge or experience to do good work yet.

I think they have interesting ideas, and that's something not everybody has. I hope they don't give up.

My suggestion to the author is to go away and read some books on story-telling, script and novel writing. Look at plot guides like "Save the Cat" and get an understanding of how you need to clearly communicate and show character.

Read some books that focus on how to "show not tell". Also, get a clear understanding of the different viewpoints that can be used to tell a story and how to remain consistent with them. Read some books on plotting and how to make a scene work - how to make every scene serve a purpose.

There is a lot more to telling a good story than writing verbose descriptions.

While this story isn't a great success (IMHO) the author could improve and go on to write something interesting and engaging in the future. I will certainly consider checking out their future works, or perhaps even this if it's radically reworked. However, the author needs to do more work on developing as a writer before they can fix this.

I spent more time than I planned writing this review. I want to be fair, and I've tried to be clear that I'm not striving for balance here. On the other hand I don't want to be needlessly insulting.

Theres not many meaninful choices in the game yet, but the writing is top notch.  i look forward to seeing what this author comes up with next.  

I haven't played the game yet, but thought it for the best to pop a warning in. The play online button is for hosted versions of the game that you can play without downloading; you should add a download link instead. I'll pop a review in once I've gone through the game.

It's text based game with no media. As far as I can tell, the writing is pretty good, but there's way too much of it.

If you don't mind reading, give it a try, but I got filtered hard.