Spire, Surge, and Sea

A bad ending because your best stats aren't the ones needed to get anything but a bad ending, is simply bad writing. Every story line, sub-plot tossed out in the immersion breaking rush to the climax that starts abruptly [spoiler] with the antagonist literally proclaiming, 'I don't want to play this game anymore". That should have been taken as the sign it was. [/spoiler]. Not typically what is meant by foreshadowing but on par with the rest of the 'novel'. True foreshadowing is calling this a 'novel' rather than a CYOA. It seems that someone misunderstood what 'interactive' means and that it requires valid 'choice' throughout the story and game mechanics (read: choices) that support results. I cannot think of more than two times when the stats and results did sync. It's quite clear that the writer has only one story to tell and it isn't one that allows for variation. Good premise, bad execution. Suggest the author write a novel, not a CYOA that disrespects the players by failing to grant them any agency - or respect for the time and money spent.

[i]DISCLAIMER: this is an edited review based on the expansion and fixes that were made to the game. If you read this before 25/07/2026, it means you read the old review, and I highly recommend you check this one. While I will try to make it useful to everyone, some things will be clearer to people who have read my previous review or played the game before the update.[/i] With that out of the way... My review remains "cautiously recommended", but with improvements! Overall, I don't think the update does much as an "expansion" despite what is advertised - I didn't experience much more "reactivity" to choices when compared to before, and the newly added exploration segment would need to be done instead of fully clearing the Shallows, which is the path I've been favoring when playing the game and not something I want to change. Basically, it adds a new option for what you do in chapter 6 instead of being something that you can do in addition of your previous choices. It's not necessarily bad and it makes sense, but it's worth keeping in mind! Now, I wil go over the three flaws the game had previously, and then go over if they were fixed or not. - [b]A fair share of bugs and coding …

+ Liked the worldbuilding and story so far; + Alchemy; + the Shallows; But - Time skips were a little bit weird, and some scenes were illogical to me; - Very little time interacting with the ROs to bond with them; - Have some questions about magic and its impact on the world (the king's power, for example). 7 mixed feelings out of 10

I'd recommend this just because I think it has excellent worldbuilding and is well-written, so it's good as a story. As a game, however, it's one of the weaker Choice of Games games. I think the author was an excellent writer who didn't quite know how to use the Choice of Games format, especially due to the number of times the plot goes "on rails" and disregards your choices to create the more linear story the author clearly wanted. So I'd say play this one only if you're willing to accept that it's more of a good Wattpad story than it is a fully fleshed game with interesting choices.

So-so

The start was decent, but in the last couple of chapters it kind of just felt like a bunch of random ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ was happening. Zo, the embodiment of said random ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, really took me out of it in a bad way, and I'm not sure what other people see in the writing. Perhaps it was just the one route I played. I think the premise is genuinely gripping, and the world was interesting, but the execution was extremely questionable. Maybe the problem is that I had higher expectations due to the game being advertised as a nebula award finalist for its writing.