VERSUS: The Lost Ones

The game likes to waffle...a lot. Almost every page has a monologue about something irrelevant that just takes you out of what is happening before dumping you right back in for no reason. Then there's the weird abilities and the Mastery effects which feel like it forces you to act a certain way otherwise you don't get the 'Special points'. It's strange but back when I first got this game I liked it, but now that others have come out and I have played so many more great ones it really puts this game into perspective for me. I can't even play past the first couple of chapters now :/

Combined with how...lacklustre the later games in this series, and other works done by the same author, end up I'm gonna have to recommend people give this series a pass unless you want an unsatisfying ending to it all. 3/10

Every single person that likes sci-fi fantasy stories needs to play this game. I'm not joking. This game sent me back in time to when I was in middle school and high school, taking every opportunity I could to read the book I was obsessing over in that moment. The writing of this story is absolutely superb, grasping you in the beginning and keeping you locked in until you make it to the end. I bought this game on the 16th of September, and I finished it at 2 in the morning. I literally couldn't look away from my screen. The characters are all wonderful in their own ways, portraying personality as well as if they were real, living beings. The story itself is what I would like to call a masterpiece; expertly written in a way that piques your curiosity in the first few sentences, and leaves you spiraling with emotion when you read that last word. And so far I've only played through this game once. There are so many different possibilities to choose from, causing the story to be vastly different thanks to the decision you decide to make, both in combat situations, and in dialogue situations.

But it doesn't just stop there. Oh, no, my friends. This marvel of a creation adds so much more. I originally found this game by searching for something to play that included other gender identities, as I am a non-binary individual who is sick and tired of the same old "are you a boy or a girl" layout. But it doesn't just get into whether or not you want to use gender-neutral pronouns; this game goes above and beyond to be as inclusive as possible. Neo pronouns are included, not just for your character, but many other characters that are deeply involved with your story. There's the option of detailing your specific identity, such as identifying as transgender or intersex, as well as cisgender and non-gendered. You get to delve into such complex emotions and relationships, such as your connection to your family, friends, romantic interests, and surrogate parents. Details involving platonic, sexual, and romantic interests. You'll even get to decide if you would like to utilize manipulating the politics of this world or not.

This is more than just a game. This is an experience that has left me craving more. I've never experienced such mesmerizing story-telling in a game before. Other rpgs can only dream of reaching this level of brilliance. I'm honestly leaving this experience feeling blessed to have stumbled across it after a curious google search. And the best part? This game is beyond affordable. To be honest, I was scared of the quality of this game when seeing how low the price tag was. After playing it, I'm shocked that it doesn't cost more. Or maybe I'm simply grateful; I'm an unemployed, mentally-ill gamer who can only survive because of an unfortunate situation with my family that has left me with just enough funds to buy groceries. It's only because this game costs so little that I got to experience one of the greatest stories I have ever read.

Choice of Games, you truly performed a miracle with this one. Particularly the writer, Zachary Sergi. I'm in disbelief that you wrote this all on your own. The fact that your work hasn't been shouted from the rooftops for every human being to hear baffles me. Please, never stop writing. Keep making more of these games. One day I'll be able to afford them all, and I will hold each and every one of them near and dear to my heart. And to the people who read through this entire review, I thank you. And now I beg of you to stop reading the words of an adoring fan and go play this game yourself. Trust me. You won't regret a second.

The first part is a chore. Lengthy set up, made up words. You don't know what's what and you have to pick choices... Didn't feel involved at any time. I clicked options absentmindedly, repeatingly falling asleep in the process (hence that grand total of 13 hrs of playtime).

Want more non sense? How about the character you haven't defined yet, being sent in another new world filled with things you don't care about ? Then when the character falls asleep, you'd visit yet ANOTHER world...(that's madness really)

Then a buying option appears. Don't know whether it's some side quest, additional content or additional stats and don't care: I stopped reading right away.

You might want to try "Tin Star" (old west), "Choice of Robots" (near future sci-fi) or "Pendragon rising" (Arthurian fantasy) if you haven't read those already, but this one I'd say you can pass. That's my advice.

I really wanted to like this. Having played through many of the other CYOA games on offer, I've come to learn that the quality can vary quite drastically between them. Now I don't think this is inherently a bad game - the writer has managed to create a rather vast setting with some interesting ideas.

However, I believe this is also his downfall. In an attempt to flesh out this world he's built, Zachary Sergi crams an abudance of made-up words and names for his made-up concepts into each chapter, without giving the reader much time to absorb (ha, like the main character can absorb things) them. Thus, it tends to feel as if the writer is trying to prove he is capable of world-building purely based on the number of artificial terms and zany names he's come up with, rather than the actual context and content behind them.

I think the characters themselves were fairly interesting, and their interactions were presented quite well. What I didn't particularly appreciate was the introduction of the main character's ability to relive another character's memories through his/her dreams. I don't think it was executed well enough to properly work, and felt like an excuse to dump a load of exposition about the chosen character and past events whilst giving the player an illusion of choice: you can affect what happens in the memory to a certain extent, but any actions you take are not carried over into the real world. It makes one wonder what the point of it was, really, other than to impart a load of context that the reader once again has to try and get their head around.
Moreover, I like and can appreciate the inclusion of wider gender identities, but in some instances here your character just assumes and uses the appropriate pronouns without any prior knowledge or explanation from the character in question. This can feel somewhat forced, and perhaps come across to the reader differently than the author intended.

Oh, and did I mention the "BUY THIS DLC TO MAKE THINGS EASIER" option that appears early on in the game? No? Well, yes, it's there, and it's ridiculous. Way to ruin the immersion, Zachary.

I loved the Heroes Rise trilogy by the same author. But this one? Not so much.

This game contains pay-to-win in-app purchases. There's no indication of this in the store description, and you don't get hit with it until you've already wasted more than a hour playing. Unless you think this is acceptable behaviour, steer clear. Personally I think it should be a banning offence.

Up until that point, I'd have rated it as meh. Not terrible, but certainly not great; the writing is patchy, the constant intrusion of explicit game mechanics into description and dialogue is a bit clunky, and actual interesting decisions (as opposed to just hitting "Next") are few and far between.

9/10

I love this series, just as I adored the Hero's Rise trilogy. It has to be one of the best adventure novel pieces I have ever picked. The story draws you in, giving you a look into a totally new and original galaxy with interesting beings and politics. The characters are well thought out and widely different, it is hard to choose who your favorite is and why. Similarly, such things can be said for the romances, which I found myself conflicted upon picking between any one character. Every choice has a consequence and it is very easy, yet also challenging, to paint yourself as any singular sort of being. Are you a manipulative and evil jerk bent on achieving his own desires? Are your decisions based on love, or a singular political focus? I won't divulge anything about the story itself, spoilers would be heart breaking when considering such a interesting piece of work. The only reason I hesitate on giving it a full ten stars is simply due to my desire to see the romances flushed out just a little more. But, hey, that is my own pickiness showing, I due tend to favor handsome characters and sweet words. Try it out, you will probably like it.~

Exemplar of how NOT to be an author And game designer

I swear this author has gone out of their way to tick every box on the list for story telling faux pas. It starts with a cold opening filled with nonsense terms and jargon, then proceeds into a flashback having told you nothing about the story, world or characters.

The game is littered with invented words and terminology that are closer to a child’s attempts to pronounce words they misheard, than they are to phrases a living culture would develop. Cluttered with pseudo-English as if changing a vowel would adequately express how alien and new these things and concepts are meant to be. This problem is then exacerbated by the authors insistence on using the relatively unknown gender neutral pronouns Ze / Hir, incorrectly I might add seeing as their used in reference to a characters physical sex as well their completely unknown (as in our characters merely assume this) gender.

It then proceeds to brush off the magnitude of an alien landscape with our characters (who early on express their desire to see the world beyond their narrow horizons, having never before travelled the stars) strolling into alien buildings, habitats and situations as if they were down at the market buying vegetables. Should we not be amazed at this, and there by proxy, we the reader/player feel some sense of imaginative thrill?

But the crowning achievement on this monolith of unpleasantness is the unfolding character interactions. For you see, I had the Gall, the Nerve to try to play as a morally honest character who was also rebellious! The scandal, every time I picked an option that was deemed "honest" (by the author flagging that as the "honest" choice) I was immediately informed by the game that I was doing it wrong. For you see I the player am a mere spectator, how dare I try to impose my narrative on the writers scenario.

The reason for this was that as a morally honest character, I was opposed to the blatantly evil feudal lords set up as the early adversary. I selected a character goal of disbanding this corrupt organisation, picturing my character as a being who held all lives as equal and worthy. But this goal (the game later informed me) required me to support certain characters, and believe in subterfuge and dishonesty.

Which was why my character was chastised by the game (not a character, a meta-narrative construct) for daring to challenge another character who was attempting to trick someone who trusted them, into dying for them. A character literally described as a God, was trying to trick their loyal subjects into fighting a pointless battle they couldn't win, by lying to them. What was a morally upstanding character like mine to do?

To then rub salt in the wound, as the game continued to tell me how I was playing it wrong (Hah!), all my characters subsequent dialogue with those involved in my goal of bringing down the ridiculously villainous bad-guys, was phrased with my undying obeisance as I decried my foolishness for deciding that I wished to be a Morally upstanding "Rebel".

Having started my journey to the CYOA genre from the Hero Rise series I found myself personally buying this without recommendation (My brother told me that the hero rise trilogy was good so I helped him with the purchase). Is it good? I like it. The way the story progressed felt great and not at all rushed. The choices you make are nail bitingly intense well at least for me and that is what I like about these type of games somehow just reading and imagining the situation I find myself always in do or die situation (or perhaps it's written that way, that's why I'm seeing it it that particular way.).

At the end of the day, I really like this but I felt as if some of the choices were vague as to which stats it would increases. I think rating this type of genre is redundant as its the reader/player experience that is their own and I can't rate that they will have a 5 star or a 2 star experience. Try it out for yourself, I had fun maybe you can have more fun than me.

A stronger choice of game with very marked divergence, as your goals shift so too do desirable stats and relationships. I really hope it does well enough to be continued.

Even more inclusive than the typical Choice of game because it allows the protagonist to be non gendered and includes a non gendered romantic interest.

This novel was a fantastic read for anyone who enjoys alot of backstory ,which will keep you hooked for hours. I would like to see the rest of the books to come out as there are so many questions i am dieing to find an answer to.

I found this game to be interesting up to the point where they bagan to charge additaonal cash for opening more powers or content in the game play. SO the base price you pay for this interactive story is NOT all you have to pay for for the entire experiance. SOME warning would be nice, before purchasing what I thought was a compleate game. Thought I should post this so some people could know.

TLDR; add-ons=bad, good story with fluid genders, part 1 of a series wasn't made clear

Let me start by saying I was incredibly angry to find out that you can make an in-game purchase to basically show what your actions will result in (I assume, I refused to buy it). Stuff like that should either be included, not included or left upto the mod community, not a £1 add-on for a £2 game.

Other than that I really enjoyed the game/story. Your character is fairly 'customizeable' (sexuality, gender, name, I think skin colour too) which includes variable genders. I ran with the normal man that loves women, but spoiler alert; my character didn't care when his love interest was 'intersex' which I loved.

My only other titbit was that there was no clear indication this game was part of a new series. I've played 'Choice of Robots' and 'Choice of the Deathless' before and neither were part of a series so I didn't expect this one to be.

So, the beginning of this was a pretty rough read -- in fact, I would go as far as to say my impressions leading up to the second half were just plain bad. As others have pointed out, the worldbuilding seemed hamfisted and awkward, the delivery of the made-up words like "blerg" and "furking" was anything but seamless (sadly, this problem never improved) and there were tons and tons of exposition drops about stuff that, to be quite frank, I simply didn't care about.

With those complaints being noted, however, I did find myself enjoying this a lot more during the second half. The characters began to grow on me, the writer doing a pretty good job fleshing them out in the end, and I actually enjoyed the political intrigue (despite the narrative hammering in exactly what sort of effects your decisions will have). The writing also seemed to improve as the story went on, though I may have just gotten used to it. I only wish the worldbuilding could have been more interesting; to improve as the characters did over time -- though, there were some cool aspects of it that caught my interest near the end. I'm hopeful the writer will follow up on those and build upon them in future installments.

Overall, I did enjoy myself with this, but take my "recommendation" with a grain of salt. This certainly isn't without problems, and if you don't think you have the patience to get through the subpar first half, then I'd say this isn't really worth your time.

Overall, I'd put it at a 6/10, which is above average.

Wouldn't recommend at all. The first hour or so is spent on nothing but throwing made up names at you and very abstract poorly explained sci-fi things. The story can't move forward because they constantly try and fail to explain things like some kind of a Communist society where everyone is forced to think and feel the same and everything being made of mirrors as a metaphor...because. It doesn't explain what species the main character is supposed to be, what kind of a planet they are on or anything of that sorts.
It's simply weird and not very coherent. Almost as if this all was randomly generated.
They use made up pronouns like ''ze'' and it comes off incredibly forced. As if they have some sort of a mandatory tumblr propaganda quota to fulfill. Weird pronouns - check. All soldiers are female - check. Men are medics - check. Socialist themes - check. It's another one of these.

A lot of text dumps with made up words followed by a choice that usually doesn't lead anywhere. Pretty disappointing.

Also I should mention that in the middle of the game it pulls a Dragon Age: Inquisition and asks you to purchase DLC to gain an upper hand.

Absolutely the weakest interactive novel from this studio that I've played.

It is more focused on gender issues than plot, and it shows. The Mysterious Alien Being is shown as transgender for no reason at all, with all the pronouns (Hir, Ze etc.) when NOTHING indicates its gender or lack thereof (based off a single short encounter)! We get to know that the main protagonist had "freedom to experience their sexuality without restricting gender roles", that's very profound I think, but boring to mention. I'm to play a game, not entertain in gender studies, thank you. The number of remarks about gender is staggering and off-putting. That's too heavy handed.

Plot... revolves around biggest cliches in SciFi ever. Defend your world from aliens, ok. Standard, but sensible. Go to a planet that holds a mysterious mortal combat tournament between Good and Evil where contestants are from all the galaxy. Now, this is cliche, contrived and childish. There was an old He-Man episode with a similar plot, and it was done better. This is the laziest SF cliche of them all, that allows you to show many alien species and interactions between them without all that pesky world building. Including a map of the planet Versus at one point was a mistake, since the locations made me cringe - single castle, single forest, single range of mountains, single love lake in a shape of a heart... I've read Polish communist children books with better maps than that when I was 8. Either make a good map or no map at all.

We have flashbacks within flashbacks, game mechanics many times rammed in our face, and later, a wonderful option of buying a cheating DLC, forced on us during the actual game in a dialog. Hint: things like that ruin the immersion a bit. Had I wanted to by the DLC I would, now please gently let me play the game I've already bought.

I've enjoyed Choice of the Deathless, Hero of Kendrickstone, Choice of Robots and other games from the same studio. They had good plot or interesting scenery or great character development and often all of those. This one has gender studies instead, and a silly map suited for a children fairy tale, not a SciFi story. And I enjoy GOOD children fairy tales, mind you, but don't you think profound mentions of "sexual experiences not restricted by gender roles" doesn't fit that? Must I tell the author such basics of storytelling, keeping a consistent tone?

Tl;dr; Weak and uninspired, avoid. There are much better games from this studio.

Honestly, this game was confusing at first but I enjoyed it as story progresses.

The game has interesting premise and original world setting. Although most of the time the words does not make any sense, the writing has been interesting enough to keep hooked. The game mechanic is complex at first but can be get used to with the help of Rosae and occasional peek at the stats. The political aspects of the game is very intriguing and exciting. Kind of disappointed the game is just the beginning of series as the game is hard to be grasped on at first and as we getting used to it, the game ends. It has long hours of gameplay so very worth of the price.

I would like to suggest adding character potraits either fan made or by the author as most of the time the character description is hard to imagine how they look.Although most choose-your-own-adventurers need to tend to their own imagination, I still cannot imagine how disgusting Empress of Blots looks maybe too much description of the characters is a turn down. Either that or my imagination is not good enough.

So this is the best Choice of Games release till date beating Heroes Rise Trilogy Choice of Robots,Slammed and many more. Hats off to author Zachary Sergi. Looking forward for more. 10/10 Recommended for Choose-Your-Own-Adventures and Choice of Games fans. It is worth a shot.

This new series... i dont know what to make of it really. It feels far to abstract and pulp sci-fi for my liking. The terms he uses, the world building he has done... it just dosnt work for me. I loved the hero rise series 'a lot', but this new project by Zach is just... well its disappointing.

Story wise its no inspiring at all, and the romance's are simply handed to you, you dont earn them. Far to many muti page narrative dumps, with few choices in between. The whole thing feels padded... with little progress being made. It dosnt feel like anything special happens because my character is one thing or another... at least nothing substantial.

The mechanics for this project are more complex then hero rise, but I don't feel thats a good thing in this case. The stats are presented more as a puzzle for achievement's then as a representation of character development.

The fact this project was designed specificity to run in series has greatly detracted from the quality as it doesn't feel like a complete story has been told... just the beginning. There is no clear beginning, middle, or end... just a beginning, middle, and to be continued. There was no clean or clear cut achievement the main character accomplished to make a conclusion to this first 'chapter'. It just seemed like "Well that seem a good place to stop, time to work one book two.".

Maybe I'm judging this project to harshly based on Zach's past work, but this one has left me disappointed and uninspired. In fact I ended up only lightly skimming and speeding through the final chapter since I had lost so much interest in the choices I was presented. It just didn't feel satisfying.

Take my opinion with a gain of salt though... this story just wasn't my 'thing'. That doesn't mean it won't be yours. Give it a shot if it appeals.

This was a fantastic game. So many different choices across the way, with an interesting political goal calculation mechanic I've never seen elsewhere. Everytime I made a choice, I immediately wanted to see what it would be like if I had done it the other way around. I especially enjoyed all the power options in the game, and way they would work together.

The only think I'm upset about is that it ended-come on! I need more closure than that! Actually I want more content. Yes it gave me a lot of great content, but the story is so addictive I desperately need more.

Can't wait for the next book/episode/game whatever you want to call it. Definitely buy this game!

Side note, I never got the Worning bird DLC, even though they offered it here, and in game, because I felt it unnecessary. It's more fun in my opinion to figure it out on your own, without the game telling you in advance which choice is best for your stats. Still I might get it for a later playthrough, I'm not sure.

This is written by the same person who brought you the Hero Rise Trilogy.

As soon as you start you can tell that a lot of effort has gone into the story. You start off on your home planet who is at war with an evil swarm of Blots. You are a soldier on the front line until you are suddenly taken to a stange new world.

There are plenty of romance options once you appear on the Versus world.

On this world you you are soon given a choice to help one of two sides on this world, you have to manage the political situation between the two groups in your choices as well. Your time on Versus changes when you realise that your planets saviour could be on this planet.

Cannot wait for the next one 5/5.