An Unexpectedly Green Journey

Become da greenest and da meanest

BECAME A WEIRD BOI. SAVED A DARK SKINNED KNIFE-EAR FROM RACIST PALE SKINNED KNIFE-EARS. KRUMPED A DRAGON. RESCUED A PRINCESS. BECAME A PROPHET OF DA WAAAAAAAAAGH. BUILT A CITY. KRUMPED A LOT OF GITS. NO BIG TIDDY ELF GIRLFRIEND BUT THATS OK.

Great, 100% worth the money. Best release in a long while for Choice of Games and even Hosted Games. I've only done one path so far, but I can see the inklings of the depth of other paths, and honestly I don't know if I've seen a game with as much replayability & diverse paths from CoG before. I do think the game's store page could have better screenshots, because a great many pages have way more words than the short paragraphs shown, the writing has actually a fair amount more depth than the screenshots may belie.

Fantastic CYOA game. Tons of choices with meaningful consequences, various stats and attributes to manage, quality writing, seemingly no bugs. Many small and large differences in flavor and outcomes depending on your choices and the order you do things in.

I'm not into orcs, but, this is fun! Playing a belching, farting, uncouth, bad-tempered, murderous green monster is great fun, particularly when you can save your learning progress at important stages so you can go back without starting all over again. You start out as a baby and grow into your orc-hood via age-related training that teaches you the skills you need to master your orc-hood. You can fight, pillage and loot, lop off heads with your double-headed axe, survive poisoning by using your intelligence! Yes, Orcs can be intelligent, after a fashion. They don't all clean dunnies all day! You can even get locked up in the Imperial dungeons and live to fight another day. or get shamanistic, It all depends on what you choose. This tale of unspeakable gluttony, frantic fighting and belligerent battles may well have a point, I haven't got that far yet, but does my orc care? He's having too much fun being disgusting and crude. And looting, mustn't forget that, as its just as important as all the other vices orcs pride themselves on. Aided and abetted by the story-telling skills of the author who allows us free reign on what anti-social behaviour we want to exhibit next, its easy to get lost in this world where brute force sometimes loses and where orc cunning might help you get out of trouble. Maybe one day I might get motivated enough to try and find out what else there is to this tale of debauchery, but while I can murder, loot, fill my belly, and do the same the next day, i'm happy. Orcs have never had it this good! And its all thank to the story-telling skills of the author who has obviously modelled his characters on those of the orcs he knows. This opens up a whole new world!

So amazing, so extensive. Haven't seen any spelling or grammar mistakes or serious bugs in my playtime (from this publisher's particular line of games (Hosted Games), that's huge praise for the author). Only saw one (1!) veeeeery minor bug where author modifies the same variable twice in the same choice (when they clearly meant to modify something else), which I could only identify by looking at the game code as I played. Not something you'll actually notice on a playthrough or make you feel cheated out of a run. Prose isn't anything special, but is a FANTASTIC FIT for the gamebook style of this game; there aren't any super long walls of texts keeping you out of the action, or a focus on over-describing characters with a sea of adjectives. Its written in a way that puts the focus on your characters actions, and allows you to tailor the story by influencing those acts. This does mean it's not a character focused story, but as a storyGAME, it's a great fit. (and there are even some moments that a genuinely touching) If the main thing you're looking for in interactive fiction is more choices and more extensive branching paths, I think this is a great pickup. As a heads up, the game starts off more linearly (as a young orc and young adult) and gets more and more branching the further in you go. I've played two routes, and not only did they have a drastically different narrative focus, but they also had DIFFERENT MANAGEMENT MECHANICS introduced to better suit their focuses and direction. Each of the ending routes also had at LEAST two big possible branches, and even the big branches I took in my playthroughs had more room to play around within themselves. You have so much room to tailor the third act and final of your playthrough to suit your tastes and plot preferences, its fantastic. One thing I'm not a fan of is how failing stat checks is treated. VERY RARELY does it result in anything other than "you lose stats" or "you died". I wish we had some choices where failure can allow an encounter to progress but with a different flavour/tone, or simply result in more interesting consequences. Oh, and the game also has a great save/load system that makes it easy to replay and correct mistakes on your playthroughs if you care to do so? Amazing, no third party app needed. Yeah, it's a great Hosted Game! Makes me want to write one. Try it if you don't mind having fun!

The premier choose-your-own-adventure game of October 2024! The writing is detailed, yet takes care to avoid being too wordy or pedantic. The worldbuilding is detailed and consistent, yet you don't need to be a lore goblin to understand what's going on. The grass is greener on the other side... and ours as well!

One of the best Hosted Games to come out of COG that I have played.

The best IF to come out this year (so far) there's so many different paths to take I've done two playthroughs and feel like I've only scratched the surface.

An excellent adventure with plenty of replay. Truly a hidden (green) gem. Plenty of different life paths to explore, although the combat is straightforward to cheese. Still, I prefer an interesting and accessible game to a challenging one, so this is still a wholehearted endorsement.