Hey, I'm working on a story and I'd like some critique. no title yet. Backstory -a nuclear war begins on Earth, around 3173. A massive Earth Evacuation System had been built in 3151 at the beginning of nuclear tension between the two Superpowers of Earth. It was designed to evacuate 5,500 people in 5 ships to a nearby hospitable planet. The player is really somewhat pshycotic (Spelling?) but is a great aero-space engineer so he is sent along on the ships Story -Player and his friend get in a fight. The player's dream has always been to be a pilot and his friend is pilot of Ship 3. -A few hours before launch, the player's character goes into ship three, and emerges a little while later. (Not Shown) Main Story Arc -First 3 months after launch go smoothly After the 3 months, Ship 3 starts having a few difficulties and losing engine power, but tells the other ships to go ahead -Suddenly, Ship 3's engines explode outward, as they were designed to do to prevent damage to the rest of the ship, but still do cripling damage -Communications continue, as ships 1, 2, 4, and 5 back track to ship 3 -A large mob, shooting, and screams are heard as ship 3's communication goes offline and static ensues -player is sent as head of a search and rescue team -Upon entrance, player orders the rest of the team to go into a room and search -player goes along, gunning down what appear to be "savage people" (really are just wanting help) -Comes to the control tower and finds his friend -The friend is surprised and scared and shoots out a blow because of his fright -The player and "friend" get in a large fight -Friend is thrown through glass, sucking the player and the friend, in their space-suits, out into space.(Control tower is facing away from the other ships so no-one sees it) -Float for a few hours, first fighting, and then the friend dies when his oxygen runs out -Player floats out into spae -Flashback showing that he planted a bomb when he went on the ship before launch, and him taking down a "Danger-High Voltage" Sign on the door that he sent the other men through -player dies, in tears?

Well, I have to admit, you have covered the main points. I can already visualize the steps that the player will go through, when playing your game. It's a great outline, not a lot of detail explanations yet, but regardless, what you've got so far is a nice start and very readable/understandable.

Seems like a neat story. Neater than most. But the all encompassing answer to "why?" is much needed.

What genre is this game of? There's not enough travel for an RPG, not enough action for an action game, not enough adventure for an adventure game, not complicated enough for a puzzle game (like it's a puzzler). You might want to incorporate more back story into the main story.

As a rough outline, sounds great. As the core basis, it's a little lacking.

I would put the flashback thing before floating out to the space (just at the moment when they both get sucked out through the window), and actually didnt make it a playable moment just an outro (something like in fallout the character walking into the desert)
Why i would do it like that is that I like when games finish with "a big bang" and that kind of a thing would be appropriate for the flashback scene, player would think "holy shit i played through the whole game trying to save my only mate and i was the one who killed him and all those people in the begining!"

yeah, my whole intent was to make a big shocker at the end, make the player go "holy schnikes! I just played as a mass-murderer, gunned down innocent people, killed my squad, destroyed a ship, and killed my buddy! I thought I was the good guy!"

I'm planning to maybe make it a top-down shooter. Any thoughts on this?

I would consider dooing it System Shock style, yet the best space sci-fi i played

I have an idea, the player could send a letter to the family of his dead friend, and apologize, but it doesn't show what the letter said until the end... (so it doesn't spoil the story).

Just an idea that popped in my head.

It was all pretty good and interesting, except that I never got a feeling for the player's motivation. So, he wanted to be a pilot. Okay. And this drove him to kill, why?

Maybe hes got a mental illness. Maybe hes overcome with jealousy....
I like the fact that the person playing might have to decide the "why?" for himself.

Overall, I like the story.
P.S, give the letter idea some thought. >;P

Because he has multiple personality syndrome and his alter-ego is a psychotic messanger of the apocalypse trying to wipe the remains of human race on the last 5 ships.

You could use this idea in the plot that player learns about this maniac raging on the ship calling himself something like The Messanger breaking and sabotaging the ship, killing people etc. where in reality that would be his own alter ego that he would chase, and all those events would be done by the player himself by occasional blackouts that he suffers from.
His alter ego could even leave hints for the player to turn him against him friend and blame it on him so the player is convinced that his best mate is the bad guy and tries to stop him. And at the end he learns that it was his own twisted mind that he was playing games with.

Is this a good enough reason? :)