Talk:Island Challenge: An Alliance Forms/@comment-6028353-20180125020437

Ok so… Hopefully I’m not going to be overly critical with this. Here we go.

Creativity (5 points) Not sure how much I can gauge one’s creativity, seeing as how we all had to follow the same scenario list, but I’ll give it a whirl. For the most part, the obstacles where implemented well. I noticed in reading the other reviews that we all put our own spin on some of the challenges, and you guys kind of did the same. There where little things I didn’t like, but keeping in mind the whole “Eye of the beholder” thing, nothing too outlandish, but not too much to make it stand out either. I really liked the bit at the end though, having you and another team work together to push through the goal. My one big stumbling point is the vines. Ebisu charges ahead, saying he knows what he’s doing. A vine coils around his ankle, and he just shakes his foot like he’s stepped in dog poo. Couldn’t notice the bit of a disjoint there. 3/5

Character involvement (5 points) The characters, for the most part, felt fun and enjoyable. Dialog was… Strange, to say the least, but I’ll get to that in a later part. Each character got their fifteen seconds of fame, if you will, and seemed to do a good job adapting to the situations they found themselves in. Not much was explored towards their relationship with each other though, Morgian especially. It just felt like she’d been dropped onto an island with three well mannered strangers, and told to make it to the goal before the day was out. Mind, I’m not sure if that’s because you guys had to combined two teams, so some of them very well may not know one another. With that in mind, I won’t hold it against you. My biggest peeve I have was your use of spells, or rather, their lack of description. There where a few good times where you simply stated, “Character A uses spell B” Without explaining what “Spell B” was, what it looked like, or what it entailed. Sword pressure, I remember stopping to look up, but other than that I just powered through it, not really knowing how some of the issues got resolved. So with that in mind, I’ll ding ya for it. 3/5

Use of scenarios This was your strongest point. The obstacles, for the most part, felt challenging. There was no obvious “Ah-ha!” moment for any one of them, your characters just sat down and worked through each problem one at a time. I have my small complaints with a few things here or their, the biggest one being the drastically dark tone shift the bird obstacle took, but I’m a more lighthearted guy, so I won’t hold it against you. Again, I’ll ding ya for the vine challenge though. The moment they where free, the paralyses became a bit of a non-issue, which I thought was a bit of a rip-off. I’d have much rather read about them dealing with the aftereffects, rather than just waiting a few minutes for the effect to wear off. 4/5

Overall story (5 points) So… You’ll suffer here. Following the formula of obstacles and objectives, you stuck pretty close to the rules, nothing majorly unfair (Godmoding and such) going on, and one of both of you had a real knack for setting a scene. Your biggest obstacle though, seemed to be both run on sentences, and wonky dialog. There where several moment’s I stopped to reread a paragraph, simply because I thought I’d missed a sentence end. Single thoughts just carried on and on, leaving no time for any of what was written to really sink in. Character infractions felt… Unnatural. Machine like, even. Every time one of them opened their mouths, they seemed to vocalize their every thought, feeling, and intention. It made it really hard to picture a scenario, especially when they where under pressure, like during the vine obstacle, or even the water challenge. It was either too much, unnecessary, or out of place. And unfortunately, it made it real hard to follow along. 2/5

Overall. Good characters, nice use of the scenario’s not off-putting dialog and odd pacing choices bogged you down quite a bit. Would’ve been nice to see a bit more character interaction, bit I know the time frames you where dealing with. You suffered in quite a few places, but the stuff you got right, you nailed. Looking forward to what comes next.

12/20