>>5586033I really admired your writing and scene-setting! I enjoyed your depiction of the protagonist thoughts and sensations, the emphasis on her small movements and feelings.
I have to say, I did not find it frightening or disturbing, because whilst you did successfully inhabit the player, and it felt there was some psychological affinity being conveyed, there was not a tremendous sense of threat or trauma lingering in the background (maybe you were not trying to convey this). I was engaged more by the mystery of motivation and manifestation, there was an intensity to this - I kept expecting some Silent Hill or Kojima Productions P.T. style family horror reveal with the father.
If you wanted to move in that direction you could incorporate memories, maybe as the protagonist girl glances around the room she could see more items, photos or objects that remind her of past scenes or life events (with friends, with the father etc) before each turn of the card. What I also liked with regards to your writing is it was relatively understated - the idea with horror is to produce the unnerving sensation without repetitively using the horror words, eg demon, ghost, blood, it is very frightening!! etc etc. (See the TS Eliot objective correlative theory if you want more detail on this)
You could trigger new memory recollections that explore why she plays the game, surface reenactments of a relived moment of distress, or you could use them as prompts (pbta style) from the player audience here to further develop the scenario eg, what does she see in this photo that reminds her of a time her father made her resent him etc. You could make this more supernatural by doing the P.T. thing eg the radio or tv / phone / tablet turns on with a news event alert mentioning something disturbingly related etc. and describe and elaborate the scenario further. Maybe things are happening outside in the world... but she is trapped in the room playing the game, and cannot get out to help somehow unless she completes it?
Overall I really enjoyed this experiment, I was very impressed by the writing and invention of this established scenario! I have to admit also (if another anon had not highlighted it on the qtg) I would have missed it, I thought just glancing at your cover picture it was literally about playing solitaire lol. I am very glad I read it, though!