Runt of the Litter

Runt of the Litter
N/A
Metacritic
83
Steam
55.5
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$2.99
Release date
23 February 2017
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
83 (48 votes)

Steal and raise a baby war gryphon! Will you fight dragons together to save the empire, or defy the empire and lead your people to freedom?

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Runt of the Litter system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: Windows 7

Recommended:

Recommended requirements are not yet specified.
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Steam APP ID
594660
Platforms
Windows PC
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Linux
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Notion
Notion

A brief choice-of game that gives you a peek into the life of a thrall who rescues a tiny griffin.
I was a little disappointed that I reached the end so soon. It was a very enjoyable read but there were several details, choices, and scenes that it would have been nice to see fleshed out more.

I'd still recommend giving it a try, but maybe wait until it's on sale!

Jay in Shades
Jay in Shades

A few minor problems, such as a bit of failure to keep the continuity of pronouns. I had a female griffon, and, while for the most part it followed without problem, more than a few times I'd find a line such as "You scratch his beak the way she likes."

But, barring that, there's very little to complain about.

The choices are interesting, the story is wonderful, and the writing is lovely.
There was a bug that prevented progression, but has since been patched out, and I've encountered no other such problems.

I've had a great deal of fun with this.

Recommended.

Chevivre
Chevivre

I rarely leave reviews, but I feel its important to acknowledge the quality of "Runt of the Litter". The, last few choice of games publications have felt rushed and/or uninspired/poorly written. I'm glad to see a return to form with this work.

In regards to crashes/bugs I encountered none in my playthrough. Further, my only complaint as previously mentioned is the continuity of pronouns. With a female griffin being referred to as male occasionally.

Royal Degenerate
Royal Degenerate

Was a nice and sweet little read of a storm, with some nice splits in the story depending on your skills both as a person and with the griphon. Would recommend to people who enjoy these Choose your own sorta series, but might be a little difficult to grasp the inner workings for new commers to the series.

Starfish
Starfish

Haven't finished the game, so keep this in mind.

pros:
relatively ok story
the logic of the story is easy to follow, so you know what's going on without any confusion on any given page
choices matters

cos:
it's not clear what might increase a stats, and what each stats actually do.
personally it's less polished, by that I mean there's not enough words on one page to fully paint a picture of the world.
it's very possible to die as story progress, so it might be a little difficult for some people, which breaks the immersion.

for conclusion, I can't say I can recommending it to anyone, perhaps pick this up if you are a choiceofgame veteran, but personally I'm very frustrated with this game and decide not to finish after dying, for reference, I'm played my fair share of choice of games, but this is the second game ever where I feel actually frustration,

Dualist Pirate
Dualist Pirate

Decent choices game. There's good world building and the lore is nicely woven into the text without feeling forced. I liked the plot, though there could have been more meat on it, it also feel like it could've been longer, like the Epilogue could've been another full game.

aimie
aimie

a nice story, but I found after 2 playthroughs that my decisions don't really seem to matter too much. if you're looking for a story where your decisions effect the plot at all, this isn't for you

I dunno if I'd go out of my way to recommend it? I personally enjoyed it because I love this kind of topic- raising animals and such. it was easy to grow attached to your gryphon

it could be better but it gave me a few solid hours of entertainment and was worth the few bucks I paid I'd say!

Barx
Barx

One of the better Choice Of games to come out in a while. Very imaginative and well written, if a little sparse in sections. The gryphons are wonderful though, and raising one was a pleasure. Just an enjoyable read all around.

RobinEgberts
RobinEgberts

Before you read on, I want to warn you that this revieuw is quite rambly.

When I got an email from chioce of games notifying me that there was a new game, I immidiatly bought it.
I always love these games and this one was definitely not an exeption.
I even thing this one was one of the better ones I've played.

First of, I think the society you find yourself in in this game is very interesing. From the start you have a clear picture of what is going on. The society is comepletely centered around the gryphons. This gives every action surrounding them feel important.

Your own gryphon is very adorable and greatly written. It felt like it was a real creature.

I also loved all the characters in the game. The realtionships you form with them feel natural and not forced at all. They all have their own opnions that they stand by and will defend.
They all have very unique names, but they all have a certain feel to them making the society even more believable.

What I found very interesting is that some characters were neither male nor female and had ze/zir pronouns.
I had never seen them used before and had to warm up to them a little. They felt aliën and not very appropriate to the fantasy setting. After palying for a while this went away though. It actually says a lot about this society, that these kinds of things are accepted by all. It made me want to learn even more about it.

The choises in the game all seem to make a difference. I found this game a lot more difficult than other choice of games games I've played. I watched the stat changes closesly, and many times the chages that happened were unforseen by me. They weren't bad though! When I thought about them afterwards I could see why that stat changed.

I loved basically everything about this game. I would definitely reccomend to anyone who like these kinds of choice based games.

Milkweed
Milkweed

Cheaper than a movie, and I'm reading so my mom can't complain.

wolfbane
wolfbane

If your expecting to personaly lead a thrall revolution or live the life of an empire gryphon keeper like I thought, dont. The game ends when you choose either of those and all you get is a few pages describing what happens to everyone afterwards. The game wasnt bad persay it was just dissapointing that it ends before what I thought would be the best part.

Casey G.
Casey G.

Overall a good game, a bit short and simple as far as gameplay goes but a good experence. I would recommend this to anyone who likes text based adventure games.

zAoEx
zAoEx

"As the world fills with flame, you see her scramble onto Coldtalon's back. Then the heat washes over you, a searing, consuming pain. You fall to your knees, screaming. Through the pain and the smoke, you see Coldtalon flying, with Lostsong following behind. You've saved Neeris. Maybe saved Aerie.

A second wave of flame overtakes you. The world goes red, then black. "

10/10 would sacrifice self again

Snow
Snow

An intriguing but sadly short adventure. I've no familiarity with this developer, or even with text adventures as a whole, but the demo provided was integral towards me giving Runt of the Litter a chance. Reading for pleasure isn't something I get to do enough these days. The game took me about an hour and a half through a successful runthrough, but I'm curious how other paths would feel so I'll at least get my $3's worth, which is a plenty fair price for the amount of work put in.

Otherwise, well written! Especially happy with getting a small level of customization between one's name and eventual gryphon. I can't point out any qualms yet aside from length, I'd have to see how other paths differ from each other. I'll update this once I adventure a bit more with my gryphon. :D

Nymlok
Nymlok

I feel the need to preface this review with the fact that I own most of the COG/HOG games, and have played them multiple times in most cases. So I am well versed in Runt's peers.

I must say, that despite this game having an intriguing world and interesting characters, I wasn't able to really feel immersed. Your "Friends" are mostly expounded upon by the short introductions your character gives them and maybe 1-2 conversations you have with them 1 on 1 and only when you choose to sacrifice the conversations with the others. The options for romance are sparse but not wholly unsatisfactory. However I can't say I actually knew any of my friends/love interests/rivals. Where most games would cultivate a sense of character Runt of the Litter goes for a broader story. More like being actually read a fairy tale then actually playing and living one. My friends seemed to be either one note or just there. Same with the Council, you have the Bitch, the Reasonable one who everyone calls weak, and the unfeeling swing vote. Your rival is that asshole everyone knew in highschool. Just mean for no real reason, even when you help him he's an ass.

Now with all I've said I know you'd think me to give this game a poor recommendation. However, I will say that this is a solid C+. The world is interesting, I did love my Griffon and did all I could in order to protect them. I was very close to actually caring about my friends. But... none of it felt like it had weight. I never found myself anxious in a fight, never doubted what choice I made, and never really got to breath in this story. I feel there's a great game here, just itching to be written.

All in all, I can recomend this game to people who are cool playing it once or twice, and being satisfied that you've seen it all. I hope maybe one day there can be something more to this. I've never seen a COG/HOG game with a DLC story but I think this game could use one.

ahnkra
ahnkra

lovely little story! my only complaint would be that it was a bit too short.

Lost Trekkie
Lost Trekkie

As with so many other games on Steam, i wish there was a neutral 'maybe' option between 'do' and 'do not' recommend.

nevertheless, i will recommend it, but only at its current sale price of $2.99.

Let's begin:

I enjoyed the concept of a Gryphon Riders' beast keeper having the option to either prove their loyalty to his or her (don't worry about the gender-neutral nonsense: i'll tear into that silliness momentarily) masters, or rebel, and lead the other thralls to found an independent society. The choices, for the most part, actually have significant impact on the story, and for that, i applaude the author. Too many CYOA games from the COG site rely too heavily on the illusion of choice, either for the convenience of the author, or due to the author giving him or herself more room to focus on the setting, characters, etc. This approach is not a bad thing in of itself, but the problem i personally have with it is the fact that that it is so prevelant among the new wave of CYOA novels. The format is called CHOOSE your own adventure for a reason.

Story length was a bit too short for my liking. I couldn't help but feel that the author compacted some parts of the story to make it shorter for some reason. None of the characters feel very fleshed out, for example, but rather you are given a quick 'this person holds this position, or is someone you have known for a long time', and not much more. Maybe she (the author) simply didn't have enough time to put more detail into her story, but it ends somewhat abruptly (not a bad ending at all, but it just sort of shows up like that creepy Uncle your mom and dad want you to stay away from)

Character development, as i indicated above, is not very prevelant in this CYOA. It's not absent, but it's just not there 'enough'. Your character, and your Gryphon, at least, feel like they have matured when you return to the Aerie (not going to spoil the story), but the side characters, for the most part, remain static. Even your love interest fails to undergo any sort of character evolution, and to an amateur writer such as myself, that is something of a sin.

And now to the pièce de résistance: Gender -neutral pronouns...............in a medieval fantasy setting...................

.......................................

Okay: I'm not going to bother with the cliched 'not a bigot' speech, as it has been sleep-inducingly repeated a million times by a million others. Instead, i will (attempt to) stick to the meat of the matter, and that is that such modern terms do NOT belong in a medieval fantasy setting anymore than words such as 'airplane' and 'car' do. It is no less immersion-breaking for a sentence in such a story-setting to read ''With a wave of dismissal, the Grand-Inquisitor boarded his Jet, followed closely by his Inquisitorial retinue'', than it is for a similar sentence to read ''With a wave of dismissal, the Grand-Inquisitor entered 'hir' carriage, followed closely by 'zir' Inquisitorial retinue''. If you are going to engage in this ridiculous bastardization of the English language, at least have the decency to use it in a modern setting, where it actually fits.

Overall, i would give this story a 7.5/10. It is not a bad story at all, and, for the most part, i found it enjoyable. But the minimal character development, somewhat rushed overarching storyline, and unnecessary use of modern, gender-neutral pronouns in a setting where hermaphroditic people would be considered unnatural and worthy of the stake were somewhat off-putting for me.

Buy it on sale, if you will (or if you won't).

P.S

If there are any typos or whatnot, please don't hesitate to point them out.

InvaderGrim
InvaderGrim

It's definitely one of the beeter choice of games in a while. One of the things it does well is giving you a good sense of the world your in from the very beginning without being lazy and just using a few pages for exposition at the start. The other thing it does well in the gryphon its self doing a fairly good job making it fell like an actual animal which you would hope going into this. Finally for positives is that the supporting character are well written giving you a good sense of who they are though it is easy to skip over them without meaning to if you focus on your gryphon which i did

As for cons there aren't too many and they tend to not to be two bad. The first is probably the most jaring is the end without going into spoilers its rather abrupt it ends right when it feels like it should be getting into the meat of it but the journey up to that pont is still worth it. Finally this one isnt to bad and that is the stats as can be kind of unclear what choices increase what stats particular with the griffon but its not to bad and once you figure it out its fine but it can kind of screw you on your first playthrough this might have just been a me problem

(Sorry if its not the best review it is my first)

elrak02
elrak02

Right of the bat,this is the first CYOA game i've ever played, and I LOVED IT! The concept was great, the story made me feel as if my gryphon was my pet, and what not. The one thing I had a little trouble grassping was the "ranking" system. Were keepers valued highly in this society? Were thralls the lowest of the low? What sparked the war? I have plenty of unanswered questions, and this story felt WAY to short. I also didn't feel that much of a bond between any of the side characters. If I were to give a tip(even tho it may not prove to be of use), it'd be to make the story longer, and give the characters more personality. Also, I think a visual to go along with this story, would make it 10x better. Wether that be pictures, or an animation, is up to the author. I'd give this game a 8/10 for my first CYOA game ever, and will follow for upcoming games.

Brass Buckles
Brass Buckles

OK, honest review time.

I do recommend this story--it's currently three dollars on sale, and will only be four dollars later on. If you replay it, you'll probably get your money's worth--just be aware that it is 100% text and is basically a choose-your-own-adventure novel more than it is a game. There are some stats based things involved that wouldn't really work in a straight-up printed book, but it does remind me of those types of books. I read a few when I was a kid.

And I love griffins, more so than dragons, so it's great to see a story with griffins--and they're even the heroes. Kind of.

First off, this story has been told before. What??? you ask. Well... it's just that it's told with dragons, who are either fighting other dragons, or, you guessed it, griffins. I'm recalling several novels about slave characters who stole their own dragon egg and strove to earn their freedom, or created their own society, etc. I believe one such series was written by Mercedes Lackey. So it's not really a new story.

Having said that, I think it is mostly well written. As another reviewer said, the characters could have more depth, but your griffin is well written and frankly adorable. And it does feel like your character (and your griffin) grow throughout it.

My biggest complaint is that it feels like there should be more of this story--more meat in the middle and something to carry it forward past the end. Though it was entertaining, I'm not sure this is wanting more in a good way. The story is pretty short, 150,000 words or not--those words involve all your possible outcomes, I think. I'd like to see a sequel, but I'd also like for there to have been more events and opportunities along the way in this particular story. Sadly I doubt it will be expanded upon--and I acknowledge that writing is often difficult and creating something longer while offering choices and different outcomes would be triply or quadruply difficult.

I noticed a few misused words. There's a "there" where it should be "their," and a "too" where it should be "to." This could be poor editing, or it could be the issue of many modern people lacking the knowledge of which word to use in which place.

And now for a lengthy nitpick/rant on world-building involving the griffins that may not bother anyone other than me:

The variety and bird types used for the griffins ruins any sense of immersion for me, and it's not just that many of them are silly to visualize (Google some of the felines and birds described in the story--maybe you'll agree or maybe not). They actually pose a major world-building issue.

I'm willing to shrug off my personal preference for raptor-big cat griffins if the oddball griffins in a given story/game work for the setting. These mostly don't.

I get what the writer was trying to do--be original, and fill a world with what they thought of as beautiful non-standard griffins (to me, I envision them and most of them look silly--really wish there had been more standard griffin options, but to each their own), but I think they'd have been better off thinking about how they were going to work in a fight against wyrms. Diplomacy and charm aside, all griffins in the story are supposed to be fighters. Some thought should also have been put into the climates they are adapted to versus the climate they supposedly originate from. Perhaps the story should have involved magic to explain their existence/potential capacity to interbreed at all, or else had griffins originate from other lands as well.

You can argue that the riders use lances and therefore the griffins' natural defenses are a moot point, but then remember, griffins apparently fight wyrms in the wild, too. Wyrms are described as being about five times the size of griffins, with armored scales. A good real-world analogy would be a swan, duck, or painted bunting fighting an alligator. Even if the birds were much larger, and even if you had several other birds helping, they'd still have difficulty winning that fight due to how they are built. Frankly it would be difficult even for an eagle or an owl. Vultures and condors would also lack the beak and claw strength for that fight. In fact, the only oddball I saw that might have worked pretty well was the parrot, but it didn't specify the species there so that's also iffy. I know there's also the cat half, but hind limbs can only make up for so much. The front end would be doing most of the fighting.

The bird-cat pairings are also referred to as breeds (and may even actually be species since it's never made clear whether crossbreeding is possible between breeds)--which suggests there's a large number of each type. And they are large predators. If they are common enough for there to be many breeds, then my mind goes "NOPE!" at the logistics of keeping them all fed, thralls or no.

Overall, though, yeah, I recommend the game. It's not perfect, but few novels are, and this one had the extra effort put in to try to make you feel like your choices mattered. There are some things I still haven't been able to achieve--and perhaps the "game" is too easy since I have only rarely encountered any genuine negative consequences. There are some choices that you can make that seem to lead nowhere but may originally have been meant to do so, and some of your reasons for hatching a griffin are hard or impossible to follow through with later on in dialogue choices/whatever you choose for your ending. But that's the nature of many choice-based books or games--you can only be given so many options, and to reach the ending ultimately your choice is an illusion created by the writer. But in this case it was pretty satisfying, my complaints aside.

ChaoticEnergy
ChaoticEnergy

I loved every minute of it, the story is amazing, the choices are great, it's very emotional at times to! great game if you like choose-your-own-adventure novels, and gryphons.

ps: wyrms are 2spooky4me.

The Safe and Sterile Bread-Tan
The Safe and S…

Not bad. Very short compared to other Choice of Games' stories.
Feels like it ends half way through rather than a proper ending.
Good enough for the current sale price of 3 USDs but 4 might be pushing it.
Honestly I expect more exspansive stories from the people that make the actual engine and used to give much better stories.
There's simply other Choice of Games to start with than this one.

-Invisible_Child-
-Invisible_Child-

this game is very cute and fun. i love the idea of raising something and caring for it, depending on the choices you make regarding your gryphon it will change its personality and the ending which cool. the characters are all amazing except for that one keeper >.>. its a little short for me but is definitely worth it as are all their other games. i hope they make a sequal to this or something ^.^

Herr-aldy Axelevi
Herr-aldy Axelevi

Alright, let's get reviewing:

Runt of the Litter is a pretty entertaining piece of work. It's a bit too short for my liking, however it's a pretty enjoyable experience. This game main point is in the fact that you raise a "Runt" in the game and you can customize the breed. Depending on your personal view and choices you might come to care for the "Runt" (Or not), though personally I become maybe a bit too attach when I got too absorbed in the game, imagining me as the main character taking care of the "Runt", though not as deep as the relationship between you and the robot in 'Choice of Robot'. The plotline is not bad and its actually branches off quite well.

Character interaction is pretty good and they have personality (Thank god) that actually affected how they see your actions. Though their role is pretty limited the game, you can make one romantic/friend interest to be involved more. Nothing really special there but it's something.

The bad thing about this game is that it's a bit too short for my liking. And depending on yourself and choices you may not even care about the "Runt" you are taking care of. Aside from the romantic/friend interest the rest of your friends have so little role it's almost a little sad.

Out of 1 to 10 scale of 1 being so horrible it doesn't work and 10 being so perfect you really REALLY needs to get it, I'll give it a 7/10 as "Enjoyable to play" or "Not bad".

Jess
Jess

There's no better way to chop this up other than "ka-ka-kawaii!".

This brings out the animal lover in me. The only downside is I wasn't very interested in any of the companions.

Ryder
Ryder

It's a perfectly average Choice of Games game, falls right in the middle of being fine. The story was enjoyable and the characters were interesting enough but it doesn't go farther than that. Read it in about 2 hours which is a respectable time.

It just felt like it could have used more description of the world around your character if that makes sense. I wanted to know more about the world as I read, about the war between the gryphon riders and wrym riders, why they were fighting and such but it just doesn't seem to come (It may be in a different route than the one I had to be fair). It's no sin that it doesn't describe every single detail in every scene as COG games tend to be less descriptive and not novel-length but a few more details to the world could have really spiced up the world a bit.

To talk about a positive, all the characters have a good amount of personality. They acted as friends and foes when applicable and had their own personalities which was really nice since I've seen some COG games have characters as nothing but boards to bounce exposition off or things for your character to bang but this was certainty not one of those. The dialogue was all well written too.

Something that's a unique problem I'd like to talk about just because it's unique, this was the first COG game I've read (to my memory) that uses the gender neutral terms ze, zer, and such. I have no initial problem with that, diversity is fine and all but the problem lies in that I know what a he looks like, a her too so when my character meets a characters and they're mentioned as one of those, I can't conjure a picture of them in my head. Unfortunately, I don't know what a ze/zer looks like and in a game that's really light on the details as mentioned before, I can't picture this ze/zer character in my head. Not describing every detail of a character is usually fine because I feel you're meant to imagine them as you want but there's usually some details to at least give you some feel for them, like hair length or something but there's no details like that in this game for any character, boy, girl, or other. It was just odd to me, I didn't have any idea what these few characters should look like in my head so I pictured them as featureless, bald people. Maybe these is just a problem exclusive to me, I'm not sure but I felt like it was an interesting thing to mention.

Overall, the game is fine and if you're a fan of other COG games I'd say give it a try if the setting seems interesting but if this is your first COG game I wouldn't say it's a good jumping in point, probably would want to try some more well regarded ones first. If Kelly Sandoval ends up putting more games out, they'll definitely on my list to buy.

sisyphus
sisyphus

Quick breakdown is: Super interesting world and gryphons, but not really any choices that seem to matter. The stats that build up don't seem to do anything, not like Choice of Robots or others like that. It was short and anticlimactic, and could have done with more expansion.

On to my main problem.

I was enjoying this game (because gryphons), but I got really thrown off when they started using "ze" and "zir" instead of actual pronouns. Why is there tumblrisms in this game? I would have really preferred to stick to real genders unless there was a game/alternate reality reason as to why there is a third gender instead of it just being thrown in. It was a bit immersion breaking, and I found myself quickly skimming each of those sections because it was just so strange to see in a real game. I really question why that was decided on.

Suzie Quatro
Suzie Quatro

These are never worth the price but they always entertain, except sometimes.

darklordbambi
darklordbambi

I wish I could write a "Neutral" review of this game, but Steam sees this in a binary, so this is what I have to say;

If you're looking to get into choose your own adventure games, this is not the entry point.
If you are into choose your own adventure games, and don't mind some difficulty and odd writing, this might be for you. It's fairly decent in terms of a choose your own adventure for the most part, on par with the rest, but it suffers from a couple big flaws;

1. Some choices might instant kill you anti-climatically, and if you're not a fan of that, this game might piss you off. I died on my first playthrough, and I felt all my hard work had been wasted.
2. The author refers to any character that doesn't have an pre-mentioned gender as zhe/zheir. While I applaud being progressive about non-binary gender identity, it feels forced and irritating at some points, especially considering they/them/their works just fine, and it seems the author goes out of the way to not assign gender to characters, ranging from important characters that you see a lot of, to guards that you might see once or twice. Instead of feeling like a smooth and refreshing vacation from gender norms, it feels like it's trying to push the message down your throat far harder than it needs to and just becomes jarring and awkward.

If the two above things don't bother you, then go ahead and try this out. However, if either of those sound like they'd ruin the experience for you, I wouldn't waste my money.

AesAthena
AesAthena

I guess I'm going to write a review about this game.

First off, the marketing arrowed me in the heart like a professional Robin Hood. They posted a link and blurb on IFDB.tads.org: "Steal and raise a baby war gryphon!"

That was all I needed to read. I couldn't hit "BUY" fast enough. I was that Fry meme, incarnate. SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY.

But unlike CoG's "SLAMMED!", which sucked me into the story to the point where I *lived through it, mannnn!* (and you should really buy SLAMMED! immediately), I just couldn't get my head into this game (and I really wanted to, see para. 2). I had a really hard time keeping track of who was who and what everybody's different griffin looked like (which is, I think, kind of important when visualizing the story). tl;dr The writing just didn't generate strong enough mental pictures for me and I couldn't stay engaged.

Then I died before (I think) any real adventure started. So I hung it up, meaning to try another day and...I just haven't.
So it is with heavy heart I say that I can't recommend this game even though you get to raise a baby griffin. But ifever I give it another try and it turns out better for me, I will update this review.

The Midnight Sun
The Midnight Sun

*Before starting the game.(To myself) This looks like a fun game, i get to raise my own little gryphon.
(10Minutes into the game) I want to kill all these Fledglings.
(After getting an egg) This is mine, there is many like it but this is mine!
(After hatching) Omg Omg Omg Omg. SO ADDORABLE, You shall be called Stormspark, my Precious.
(Rougly 15 minutes later) I don't need to highborn bastards, just me and Stormspark together forever.
(Last 2 minutes) I died sacrificing myself to protect Stormspark and my Lover from a Drake.

(End note) I now have more emotional trauma never knowing if Stormspark or my lover got away........... I am sad now :(

9.5/10 Highly recomended

Voltigeur
Voltigeur

Well written and engaging, but very short. I would have liked more chances to interact with the other characters and learn about the world, and couldn't help wishing that I could have played out the events covered in the epilogue.

6/10

01110111 01100001 01110010
01110111 01100…

I loved this story! By the end I felt truly connected to the story and honestly I was sad to see it end. If not for the shortness or the heavy use of non-binary nouns, it would've been perfect. I give this an 8/10.

qeddar
qeddar

I love Choice of Games, but this one really fell flat for me in comparison to several others that I've played and loved. This, I feel, is due to three major reasons: failure to invest the player in the setting and characters, failure to pay off the plot, and slapdash gendering.

I'll start with the good stuff. The main group of friends your character meets are distinct in personality and memorable. Their group dynamics are believable, and it's nice to know your character was the one who brought them all together. Your gryphon is going to be adorable, and you're going to want to play with it all the time even if you're supposed to be training it, which is what happened with me. :P

Now for the rest.

The ending to the plot was deeply unsatisfying, as if the author cut off the draft in the middle. There was little to no sense of closure, and some of that seems to be due to overall weak writing and a failure to establish strong motivations for the protagonist. It's hard to declare that a goal has been accomplished or forever lost if the goal was hazy in the first place. The game starts out promising in terms of world building, but quickly loses steam past establishing the class struggles between thralls and fledglings/riders, and that the theme was wyrms vs gryphons. The whole game could have benefitted from much more showing and less telling, and higher stakes. I was left feeling quitte uninvested and uninformed in the trials an tribulations of th kingdom, despite supposedly being a patriotic character.

Lastly, the gendering. This will be the longest portion, as it is the biggest, but most necessary, thing to fix in order to improve the experience. The following is going to sound quite harsh, but I feel it will be valuable feedback to the author should he/she/ze/they etc wish to advocate for non-binary genders through writing. While I applaud the attempt at inclusivity by using non-binary gender pronouns, it was overall poorly handled in terms of both story and code logic.

Firstly, the author makes the mistake of slapping in the ze/zir pronouns without establishing anything about the role of gender in this setting, nor describing the characters to which they are referring. This is a failure on three different levels. Level one, alienating a large portion of the audience. A vast majority of readers will not understand this social justice jargon (yes, JARGON), which means the author has chosen wording that will imediately catapault many readers right out of immersion. The modern world, at the time of this review, doesn't even understand where non-binary people fit into society in a non-fictional setting. What made the author think the story could get away with not spending time exploring this? Writing using terms that your target audience can reasonably be expected not to be familiar with isn't a death sentence, however, but when doing so, a writer has the responsibility to establish the terms within the context of the world.

This leads us to level two: the author misses the chance to both worldbuild and character build. Is the non-binary gender commonplace or rare? Is it widely acknowledged and accepted? Or persecuted? Or an exotic oddity? The author spends zero time inviting the reader to understand these terms. The first character with non-binary pronouns that I ran into was a random minor character. There was little description of said character's appearance, mannerisms, or how they were treated that played into this gender identity. My player character then never ran into this person again, though ze was suddenly referred to as he later on. Why the change? A coding error? Did the other character misgender? Was it an accident or on purpose? None of this is explained or explored.

And this ties to level three: because of the previous levels, it misses its mark with regard to representation and inclusivity. All of the previous levels culminates in a bevy of missed opportunities to build empathy for non-binary people, to build full-bodied and human characters. It fails to represent the people behind the pronoun, and to invite the reader to understand why these pronouns exist.

So, overall, I don't recommend buying this game. Other games puublished by Choice do much better with regard to strong protagonist motivations, sense of closure and choice impact, and non-binary representation. The Heroes trilogy, in particular, does well in establishing a major genderqueer character and grounding queerness in the fictional setting. This game could have been much improved if the author could have sat down, and followed the many gaps in the setting and followed them to their logical conclusion, then circled back to explore the impact on the characters in the setting, and showed these effects happening around the main character.

MADo
MADo

In terms of personality everyone's Griffin is exactly the same from the game's beginning to its abrupt climatic ending which comes at a time that feels like the stories halfway point.

Minor spoiler. During the course of the game I became the hero of the universe which I really shouldn't be considered much of a spoiler. But the mission I went on to achieve my champion of the universe title is so insanely simple that I don't know why some other random NPC hadn't already done it. It kind of felt like getting a parade for brushing my teeth. But as I already said in the first sentence. It's a very anti climatic game.

sleepingcrows
sleepingcrows

I really enjoyed this game a lot! As someone who has always had very close and caring relationships with my own pets, it was so nice that I was able to have this in the game (:

Surt Mada
Surt Mada

Cute story to read with average lenght. Short, but not too short.

It is well written and thought and it fullfill its thematics really well all the while giving a large amount of choices possible with a lot of narrative changes and interactions.

The stats systems seems a bit clumsy to me and sometimes it doesn't seems clear as to why a choice impact that stats but in my opinion it's not completely illogical and random, just a little awkward. The interactions between those stats and the story are awkard as well.

Even then the story adapts really well to what you do and it makes up for that bit of blurriness once you start to grasp how things go, it can take numerous trys though.

The characters are interesting but never really developped, they do have personnalities of their own though.

Overall it's a well rounded choice novel and you can feel the author cared about the thematic just by seeing how many species of gryphins you can choose from and that each one impacts the narration.

Cabotage
Cabotage

I really enjoyed this game, very worth it if you enjoy visual novels that allow you to fully choose your own destiny! Plus, beautiful, beautiful gryphons.

metalmustang5
metalmustang5

3/5 stars

My review of this game is pretty mixed, but overall I enjoyed the story so I'm not going to downvote it.

The variety of gryphon breeds and personalities is a nice aspect to the game and offers some replay value. Rather than the classic eagle/lion combination, each breed consists of a different combination of a wild feline and a bird (usually large bird of prey). The breed has a small impact on your gryphon's starting stats. For example, rook/panther gryphons are intelligent and playful, where osprey/white tiger gryphons are more aggressive.

The downside is that the majority of the game follows a fairly linear path. Most of the choices you make early determine the personality and reputation of your human character and your friendship with the main fledgling and thrall characters, rather than changing anything in the storyline. You are given MULTIPLE options and paths during the middle of the story when you escape with your gryphon, but it always results in you getting found out and put on trial. (Also, the council ALWAYS chooses to exile you, not matter what you say or do. This makes the choices in that chapter rather pointless.)

The game has a few sentence errors and inconsistencies. (Ex: "Dustfeather crouches with his wings folded against his body and his lashing." Is his tail lashing?) These grammar errors are pretty minor and don't affect the story too much. Also, as darklordbambi pointed out, the frequent usage of the gender neutral ze/zir pronoun on random minor characters comes across as very jarring and forced on the part of the author. One character, Neeris, has a parent of unknown gender on the High Council who is often mentioned, which leads to some awkwardly phrased dialogue when they/them would work better.

Overall, if you love gryphons and the idea of bonding with one I would recommend the game, just be aware that your choices are more centered around your characters than impacting the storyline.

Miraklu
Miraklu

This is not a good game, an ok one maybe.
You have no real background, you are just a Thrall that just all.
If you have a love intrest all other character that are your "friends" you will only see them three times.
And in the end, if you satisfy the council, than you are allowed to make the "big" choice, which leads immidietly to the epilogue, no war, no rebellion against the council, that was it and the narrator tells you how it looks now and then it's over.
There is simply no weight behind the choices, there is one really short surprise, which confused me more than intrigued me, because it was poorly explained and then it was over. You don't shape your destiny, you are just simply allowed to do it, or you fail. That's how I felt when I played the game

FumingQuill67
FumingQuill67

A fun little distraction. There's nothing great about this game but for $3 I sqooze several hours out of this game, and over the coming weeks I'll squeeze several more. In terms of value per dollar it doesn't get much better.

Gummruchk
Gummruchk

I stopped being able to take this game seriously when it started uses none sense pronouns like zhe/zheir other than that it's an okay little story for the price.

HalloweenQueen18
HalloweenQueen18

I love the idea of playing around with an interactive story. It's a good tale, but I'm an avid reader and the story was too simple for me. Then again, it felt more like the game was tailored to a young audience, and considering the amount of work it takes to do this, Runt of the Litter is well done.

kayla_m33
kayla_m33

It's an interesting choose your own adventure type of game.

Certified Mimo
Certified Mimo

I played it a long time ago and I loved it. Would recommend!