*Feedback Required!! Would like to know which story written is the best? Thread

Hi there,

I'm now trying to create an indie game. Nothing too fancy, just trying to create a simple text based decision making game on iOS and google playstore. I have 4 stories to choose from, would be great if the indieDB community can give some feedback on which you think is the most interesting and I should create?

Genre of the game: Thriller

1. Lost Jungle

Player receives a signal from someone who is lost in an island after a cruise that went all wrong. As the story pans out, it turns out the Captain of the cruise was blackmailed into delivering the passengers to the "deserted" island. The mastermind, a wicked man who wishes to have live samples for his twisted experiments. The player's job is to make sure that the protagonist, whom you are in contact with, and escape the island safely. Guide him to his safe passage or his doom.

Here's a sample of how the game will be like:

Hello? Is anyone picking up my signal?

I don’t know if there are any other ships stupid enough to have charted a course through this area, but if there are, I need you to answer me.

CHOOSE: Who is this? -or- What seems to be the problem?

Oh, um, hi. My name’s Kevin. Sorry, that probably isn’t very helpful, but the important part isn’t who I am, it’s what’s happened.

I don’t know where we are, but we’ve run aground on what looks like some kind of jungle island.

I was supposed to be cruising in to Japan for work, but weird things started happening out in the middle of the Atlantic.

I suppose it’s too late to call in sick, huh?

CHOOSE: Is there anyone there with you? -or- What happened in the Atlantic?

Uh, well for starters, the captain started to get really jittery and sounded really nervous every time he came on to give us some announcement.

At first I thought maybe it was food poisoning, because they served some very questionable meat one night, but then he started talking a lot of gibberish about “having good reasons for doing what he was doing” and how “we would understand if we’d been given the same choice he had.”

It was all getting a little creepy and then, to make matters worse, the alarms began to go off and we were all instructed to take shelter in our rooms. But once we’d gone inside, the doors slid shut and locked behind us. I couldn’t get out. No one could.

Then came the gas. It was thick and pungent and it came pouring out of every vent in the room.

Next thing I know, I’m waking up on the floor of my cabin and the door’s wide open.

I mean, it’s not the first time I’ve woken up on the floor, if I’m honest, but none of those scenarios were nearly as odd as this one.

CHOOSE: Where are the other passengers? -or- Where is the captain?

Ah yes, him. Well, when I finally grew a pair and came creeping out of my cabin, I found that all the other cabin doors were still closed. I knocked on a couple and got no answer, so I’m assuming everyone’s either dead or still knocked out.

In trying to figure out how to get the doors open, I figured the bridge where the captain had been calling the shots from might have a control panel or something that could do the trick.

So I made my way up to the bridge, only to find our sorry excuse for a captain dead in his chair with a bullet hole in his head.

Full disclosure: I did throw up, but I’m fine now.

All I could do after that was try to figure out what all the buttons and switches and flashing light meant, and somehow I managed to get in contact with you.

I just don’t know what to do now…

2. Rescue

Samantha Paige is a 28-year old female who works as a curator in the New York Metropolitan Museum. One day, the museum was invaded by a group of terrorists and is planning to kill the hostages if their demands are not met. The gamer, is playing as an FBI agent who has managed to establish comms with Samantha. Your job is to guide Samantha to safety while having her to act as the eyes and ears for the FBI and stop this threat.

Samantha Paige is a 28-year-old female that works as a curator in the New York Metropolitan Museum. She has been employed there for the last 4 years. She was initially born in Tampa, Florida but moved to New York after college in the University of Miami where she studied Art History.

Two hours ago, the New York Metropolitan Museum was invaded by 8 members of the August Alliance, a Terrorist Organization based out of the Middle East that seeks the downfall of the United States.

Since the invasion of the Museum, the terrorists are holding 58 guests and 16 workers of the museum hostage. All phones and communication devices were seized from the hostages. Weapons were also seized from the security guards at the Museum.

Samantha was in the storage room when the invasion occurred and as such she has not been discovered yet by the terrorists. She still has her smartphone with her and she was able to put a call through to 911 where she was connected with the FBI negotiating team.

The gamer is Christian Law, Head of the FBI Negotiating Team and an FBI veteran of over 25 years.

The August Alliance is led by Abu Rufai. He is an erratic psychopath who was originally born in the United States as Jeremy Biddle, before moving to Syria to train with ISIS where he changed his name to Abu Rufai. The CIA dossier on Abu Rufai describes him as extremely irrational, rash, psychopathic and delusional. He has been suspected of several terrorist bombings around the world and had also been known to shoot hostages without provocation. He is prone to different moods and as such cannot be predicted.

Abu Rufai is assisted by Samir Khaled, a Turkish born freedom fighter who trained in Algiers. He was convinced by Rufai to join the August Alliance and is described as a more stable person who offers balance to Rufai’ s extremes.

The August Alliance has threatened to execute one hostage every hour as well as detonate a 450 pound C4 bomb if their demands are not met. Their demands include 1 billion dollars transferred to their Swiss account, the release of Abu Rufai’ s mentor, El Shaheed from Guantanamo and provision of 6 helicopters to stage their exit.

The gamer will act as Christian Law where he will try and guide Samantha to safety from members of the August Alliance who are searching for a cell signal they have detected in the building while using her as his eyes and ears within the museum to spy on the terrorists.

Christian Law is also interfacing with the Leaders of the August Alliance as he negotiates their demands while stalling off incursions from the FBI SWAT team led by Commander Francis Riviera, who want to storm the museum and end the situation with maximum force.

Christian Law is to ensure that he makes the right decisions to prevent any negative consequences.

· The game ends when 2 out of this three conditions are met.

· Abu Rufai kills all the hostages and detonates the explosives.

· The FBI SWAT Team storms into the building and fails at their rescue attempt, leading to a loss of lives.

3. Lone Snow Survivor: Live or Die

Jolie’s Dad was a crooked and corrupt high court Judge who has made several harsh judgments against criminal and innocents alike in court cases, leading to death or life imprisonment. He is powerful and at all time is heavily guarded by armed body guards. It’s quite difficult for anyone to get to him, the community hates him but he’s well connected to high profile rich criminals and corrupt government officials that back him up with money, power and professional body guards. Jolie’s mum is quite the opposite, but her goodness makes no difference in the community because her husband’s condemnation of largely innocent persons found guilty by the law just to cover up for the malfeasances of the big wigs of the society is widely known. Many a times, Jolie’s mum is scared of walking in the street and people has started to reject her act of kindness and generosity, telling her to be kind to the society by changing her husband first. Jolie’s dad finally changed for good.

Jolie is in higher institution (Oxford) studying Law. She started dating a guy named Carlos a Brazilian, a student of philosophy. They meet each other not long ago, and they fell in love so deep that they read and go everywhere together.

Jolie was kidnapped with Carlos, when the latter was seeing her off to her hostel during the midnight hours, both coming from an outside campus night party. Jolie was half drunk when they were kidnapped.

The next moment Jolie woke, she found herself naked with pant and bra, on a pile of straw in a snowy landscape, beside her lies a knife which was used to pin down a brown paper on which a letter was scribbled. Underneath the knife, holding the paper in place is the dead body of her “handsome Carlos”. The note on the dead body states that “Your dad should have danced to our tunes, he has dined with us for ages and now he’s a boy saint, he sentenced many to wilderness of life imprisonment, many received death on our behalf, now he has turned against us. We consider it worthy for you to experience a wilderness as his only child. We are generous to provide you a phone because people who are about to be executed are allowed to meet their loved ones. The phone inside your boot can only be used to contact one person, there is a listening device and tracker on it. Call your father and you both are dead; call any family member and you are dead. This is your own prison; if you survive for seven days, we will rescue you or you can get out of there alive. Break any of the rules and we will release the poison in the implant inside your buttock. We will know if you try to outsmart us, any physical rescue attempt from anyone will lead to your death. We are kind to remind you that there are snow wolves, rabbit, bears and caves all around. We have cameras all over, all we want from you is to struggle hard and survive as the condemned to death struggle on the wheel chair. You are welcome to save yourself in the cold. The only Tip we have for you is it get colder at night, enjoy your new life while it lasts.”

The first thought that came to her mind is she needs a very knowledgeable person to help her navigate the snow land. She spotted two human skeletons around, one close by and the other a bit far away. She scared, hungry and feeling extremely cold. She then remembers that Carlos phone was with you “Name of Player” when he was seeing her off to her hostel last night. Mates nicknamed you “Plato genius” because you have studied and mastered humans mind, logic, animals, situations, history and problems as a philosophy student and great at it. She believes that you will understand the situation and you will be the only person she will call to tell her what to do to get out of the snow land alive. She needs to survive the extreme cold and the deadly animas around. She then called you, explained everything to you and ask for your help. The Player can help navigate her way through the dangerous snow. The faith of Jolie lies in your hands. The first decision the player will have to make is how to reduce the cold.

Should she run? stay in one position? Call her dad? or take off the cloth on Carlos and wear it? Remove the knife and look for a rabbit for food? Locate a cave? Keep moving to avoid wild animals? Scream Loud for help? Swim in the cold stream ahead? Or kill a fish in the stream?

4. One Step Ahead

Your wife is missing and now you're searching for clues to find her back.

The surveillance videos from the hotel lobby have been denied to me, but this is only a step back; it does not mean I have lost the war already; Emilia had disappeared for a month now, and the only reaction I could get from the police is laughter and a baseless suspicion directed at me.

Option 1: What do you think it happened to her?

Emilia started acting strangely lately; she was facing a lot of stress from work, and she felt like she could not handle both the family life and her job at the same time.

Our little boy, Timmy is a sweet kid, and I love him more than anything in the world. I am sure Emilia loved him too, but she started rejecting him for some time and I was sure there was some external influence pushing on her shoulders.

She would not talk to me about it, and she kept saying she was fine even if I could tell it wasn’t.

On the last day, we saw each other, Friday morning on August 27th, she gave me a cold look as she was leaving the house to get to the car; she did not even give me our usual goodbye kiss. She just looked at me with guilt in her eyes and kept her silence.

I tried going after, but she ran to the car and drove away in a rush, leaving a trail of thick smoke behind her. She never came back home that evening and I could feel something wrong happened to her; something deep down was telling me that she had been kidnapped or taken somewhere against her will.

Option 2: What were you doing at that time?

I have to start by saying that I love my wife more than I love myself. At that time I was involved with an important project, and as the marketing director I was spending quite a lot of time at work; sometimes more than 14 hours and I would only come home late at night.

Probably, I did not give her the attention that she needed and deserved and I overlooked the family ‘business’ if I may call it that way. I was stressed too and failed to see all those quiet signals she was sending me.

More than often, our interaction would end up in a fight where both of us would accuse each other of not being involved enough. I consider myself guilty for being too focused on my work instead of taking care of my wife and family;

I insisted for us to go to therapy hoping this would solve the issues with our marriage, but my wife refused this proposal promptly; she did not want to hear it and would rather choke herself with Xanax and other antidepressants, that would alleviate her pain for a little while.

This did not last for long and then she was gone! With all the problems, I knew Emilia and I knew she would not abandon her family despite all the problems we had; I knew something bad had happened to her.

So, let me know which story #1, 2, 3, or 4 is more interesting. Thanks in advance everyone!

Hmmm.... #2 sounds formal, it sounds like background story for tactics game IMO. It does have serious matter which could make it interesting though I'm afraid the next story will be given formally til end of game

#4 sounds more like digging the past than being stepping forward. I got impression that the game will dig deeper about the past more than digging for clues

#3 sounds like prelude to survival game. I'm totally missing information about Jolie's personality to make the story interesting

#1 looks more interactive although the story is kinda cliche. I like that I'm given the feeling of talking to someone to guide him

Since each story is different, I'll ignore the theme but focus on presentation. I choose #1 cause I like to read the person telling me what happens around him and how he is feeling in his perspective

Hey DarkBloodbane,

Thanks for the comments and choice Especially like what you commented about #4. I didn't really gave much thought about the fact that it does sound like the game will be digging more into the past rather than moving forward. As such, might not be that engaging.