Unnatural

[i][u][b]Unnatural[/b][/u][/i] is a CYOA (Choose your own adventure) novel, written by [i][u][b]Sam Kabell[/b][/u][/i] and published by [i][u][b]Hosted Games. [/b][/u][/i] Just a warning, this is a bit more of a rant than a review, but I do cover important points on the structure of the game and address what exactly I feel is wrong with it and why. I would like to provide my feedback/review. Let me start with the basics here: this CYOA novel is 285,000 words according to the store page. It's a decent length BUT the game starts with a scene that sees the MCs family all killed off. This turns out to be a nightmare from past events. Now, there is nothing wrong with that, however, this nightmare is repeated in detail (and obviously always the same) several times throughout the book. That alone will cut the overall word count down by a fair percentage, unless, for some reason, the repeat isn't included in that statistic. But it doesn't end there... Throughout the novel there are sentences such as "You ignore him, reaching out and turning on the lights. and go and turn on the lights.". Now, I doubt I need to point out there is a full stop, followed by a lowercase letter and the senten…

It's unfortunate I cannot recommend this game, as it does have an interesting concept and a decent replayability factor. The framing of the story as a TV series is an original thought, and the game does offer a lot of choices and variation in aspects such as handling missions, the MC's development, and which characters are present or not. Sadly, all these nice things are overshadowed by the game's poor writing. It reads as if written by someone not used to writing - it's understandable, but not engaging or enjoyable. Some passages end up sounding weird or downright silly. There are also punctuation mistakes, namely missing commas, throughout the entire game. This being a text-based game, all of this becomes impossible to ignore and ruins the experience.

Good

Found the story incredibly interesting and the ending was not what I was expecting. The characters you meet are great, but I didn't feel that it made a difference who you took with you. And there were some characters I was like 'wait who is this? Do I know them?' and they weren't in the stats menu so have no idea (though I may have missed them from earlier on). That said, I'm interested to see what happens in book two!

We’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty

Writing within the realm of the mainstream reduces your problems by a small degree; You don't have to think too hard on how things work because the facts of the realms are already so well-established across many other works. The set-up in UnNatural was so interesting, I was sure this was to be a truly different, exciting experience. Alas. Here's a rundown of how scenes are written after your MC gets to university. Someone: "MC, we're gonna go in this together! Isn't that fun?" MC: "Yeah! Anyway." *MC gets into something super horrible* MC: "Oh no! Anyway." Someone: "MC, I love you since the very beginning, I never wanted to hurt you, [someone pouring their heart to you]" MC: "Cool, samesies. Anyways." Someone: "You're gonna do this thing or else!" MC: "Oh my! Noooooooo. Anyway." Everyone reacts at the whims of the author. Though this is technically true, it doesn't lend any credence to the idea that the characters are living, breathing people. That the author decided to establish this work to be read like a "TV show" cannot be used as an excuse for how bluntly this is written. The few actually descriptive paragraphs sprinkled here and there tells me the author does not lack t…