Our Mutual Ruins
by CoffeeQuills
- Gore
- Profanity
- Sexual Content
- Traumatising content
File under: many mutations, crunchy LitRPG, and settlement building
participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge
Testing games is Jinn's job. She's gone through everything at this point, from Seafoam (a slow-paced underwater simulation) to Admiral Kickass (friends-to-enemies pirate raiding) to Scrying in Space (spaceships with magic). Her newest assignment is to spend about two weeks in Our Mutual Ruins, a post-apocalyptic setting which is rumored to be based more on rebuilding civilization than survival in a harsh world.
Scavenging and checking nitty-gritty details for thirteen days sounds like fun after Pew Pew Purgatory (how someone can make a bullet hell boring is beyond her). And it is. Until she wakes up on the fourteenth day with a dead body lying beside her and the rules (as she knew them) altered.
The game was rigged from the start; good thing she has an Ace up her sleeves.
- Overall Score
- Style Score
- Story Score
- Grammar Score
- Character Score
- Total Views :
- 9,880
- Average Views :
- 470
- Followers :
- 62
- Favorites :
- 15
- Ratings :
- 21
- Pages :
- 191
Leave a review
Classic LITRPG with a refreshing style
Reviewed at: 5 - System Interference
LITRPG is infamous for having such a unique world with such little imagery. Sure, LITRPG is supposed to dive the reader headfirst into the character and their intentions, but RPG is known for its diverse worlds with varying creatures. This author knows this and takes LITRPG as a genre to the next level.
Where most authors would avoid imagery, and would instead rely on the brackets that tell the reader what they have acquired and what they have earned on their journey, CoffeeQuills implores those elements as well as things that are normal in other genres. They use their worldbuilding skills to their advantage and really throw the reader into this world flawlessly.
A well-suggested read if you enjoy LITRPG!! :)
This is Great
Reviewed at: 4 - Short End of the Mutation Stick
This is a fricking great read, *but it's only one chapter. Now it's four chapters.
Solid characterization, interesting system and good word play, already showing a character that leans toward munchkinism and that finds ways to do it with the basics of one chapter.
Good development. Read this thing.
Author don't let me down, hit 55,000 words please. You deserve to be ranked.
An interesting start to a post-apoc litrpg
Reviewed at: 9 - Progress and Increases
So this is an odd story, and it might be a little early for a review, actually.
The chapters that are in place as of my review are interesting. Our hero is a video game tester, and she plays the post-apoc video game in a ruthless, efficient manner. I actually found this a little disconcerting, as the AI is all of the "indistinguishable from humanity" type, but our MC treats it like she's playing an old-school game, mentioning killing an NPC she particularly dislikes every day.
That said, it's well written and the main character is solid enough. I'm interested to see where it goes.
Very Refreshing
Reviewed at: 8 - Reallocation
The MC isn't a knight in shining armor, nor is she a villain with no redeemable character traits. She's somewhere in the morally grey area, though you could argue that it's a game so nothing really matters (Looks like it won't be staying like that for long though!). Bonus points for the fact that this story isn't marketed as a "not your average hero" type story, because honestly that's almost become as big of a trope as the "hero."
One thing I will say, you won't always agree with the MC. She does some pretty harsh things to get what she wants, and sometimes that has left me feeling really bad for some of the NPCs she interacts with. Yes, they're just NPCs, but I think it's a testament to the author's writing that they're able to make me pity them like any other character. (EDIT: If I could give a 6/5 stars for characters, I would. Instead, I'm going to add another half star for style, because I feel like their writing style has a lot to do with how genuine they feel. Because of this, the overall score also rounds up to 5 :))
The story isn't super original, but it combines two tropes in a way that I haven't seen done before. Also, I'm only reviewing on the eighth chapter, so I'm not entirely sure where it's going yet.
All in all, fantastic read, would definitely recommend.