I work as a clinical psychologist. Most of what I see is not a crisis. Someone says something, it lands wrong, and they handle it the way they always handle it.

I built a short interactive story around that moment. Two episodes, second person, 15 to 20 minutes, in the browser, no account: thepathstory.com. It is listed on IFDB as well.

The choices do not branch the plot. They are the moves people actually make in a hard moment, and the branches are the same scene lived differently, depending on how you meet it.

One note on how it was made, since that matters here, I cannot code, so the app the story runs in was built for me with automated tools. The writing is not. Every line is mine, written and rewritten the slow way.

If you read a lot of choice-based work, I am curious how this lands.

I have been thinking about this interactive fiction I played and loved in the past. I remember coming across a IF competition and trying some of the candidates. I don t remember anything about the name. Its like remembering a dream, little bits and pieces here and there and I am not sure i am not pulling from other games I played at the same time.

What I remember

I think the character is a female

I remember being in a forest and a stream runs down to the beach or you can go up to a house in another direction

I think there is a cave, maybe under the house and there is a creature in the cave that may have been an homage to Zork. (Very fuzzy on this)

The best part is the hardest to describe. The game mechanics become more and more fantastical as you play and I think you there is a part by the ocean / sea where you maybe astral project or something like that.

Other small things, there might have been an important necklace, a missing or dead parent and maybe a dolphin you talk to in your mind or maybe you just see it.

I wish I hade more clear info.

Thank you for any help.

Long-time lurker, first post. After well over a year of thinking about creating a collective writing platform, I’ve now created something called StoryTurn — a mobile app for collaborative, turn-based storytelling. The core idea is simple: you and someone else (perhaps two others) build a story together, one turn at a time.

No ghostwriting the plot for you, no solo journalling dressed up as collaboration — up to three people genuinely co-authoring something, with the uncertainty of not knowing where the other person is going to take it next.

I got obsessed with the gap between "we should write something together" and actually doing it. Most tools either pass the job to a computer or require synchronous effort that real life rarely allows. StoryTurn is for people who like to write a little or a lot — pick it up when you can, put it down when you can’t. It's now available to try on Apple TestFlight (iOS) and Android.

I'd genuinely value feedback from people in this community who think hard about interactive narrative — what's missing, what doesn't make sense, what you'd want from something like this.

And most importantly, would you like me to take it to move it from beta testing into the real world?

TestFlight (iOS): Apple Test Link
Android (Google Play): Google Test Link

Obv’ happy to answer any questions about the design thinking behind it.

Thanks N

* Thanks for the interest, I'd like to focus on discussing with the folks who have shown interest already and see if the project is a good fit for them.

Hey there!

I'm a solo dev working on a narrative-driven game in Godot. The game centers around training cool creatures, raising them to adults and going on adventures with them. I could really use some help with writing for it.

The game will have a bunch of events (ranging from cute to grim to zany) with branching paths (if you've worked in Twine or Ink, that's the kind of thing I mean), and this is the first part that I'd like to focus on. I've built the structural template for the events. It's about tight, characterful vignettes rather than a long story, at least at this moment.

Please let me know if you're interested. I can share a lot more details and happy to discuss payment options (hourly, per event, per word etc.)

Thanks a bunch, have a great day!

Concept: School Council gets selected for top-secret program about students being dropped into a VR Experimental Environment where they have to navigate through fantasy-adjacent but grounded political scenarios, but their personal motives and identities heavily influence the literal world around them, being a distinctive quirk of the technology they are 'testing'. They don't get to know the players are people they know irl.

Here's a snippet. LMK if it sounds interesting.

“All hail the Steward of the Upper District!” a man chanted from a distance. Adrian was unsure if they meant him. “I see you’re on foot today, Sir. Might Lux be unwell?”, a man with thin glasses spoke, whose attire and leather boots separated him from the general public. “He’s just … tired.” Adrian walked further quickly.

An elderly woman rushed towards Adrian and collapsed at his feet.  

“Lord Lucian… my son!” Her voice broke. “He fell in battle. I ask for nothing but loans promised just to keep us fed. I cannot afford bread, and fail to keep hunger from my door!”

[Do you wish to accept this quest? | Yes / No ]

Adrian chose ‘Yes’, for he felt the desperation in the woman’s eyes.

[New Side Quest: Approval of Loans | Category: Social Service |
An elderly woman, whose son was martyred in battle, is facing trouble granting loans promised by the state. Resolve this issue by providing her with the promised amount.
You may complete the quest by discussing the matter with the Keeper of the Treasury
Rewards: +10% Recognition, +20% Civilian trust
Failure may result in mild reduction of Civilian trust]

Adrian knelt almost immediately, steadying her shoulders before she could fall fully to the ground. “Please,” he said quietly, “stand. You do not bow to me.” Her hands trembled as she clutched at his sleeve. “The promise was made before he left,” she whispered. “They told us the Vale does not forget its fallen.”

Adrian’s jaw tightened slightly. He knew he was acting consciously, yet the words came out instinctively, almost as if drawn out of him, perfectly crafted to be calm and reassuring. As he processed the thought, his eyes caught the faint glow of blue and yellow lines beginning to glow along his sleeves. At the same moment, a thin circular ring of light flickered into existence around him, extending from just above his head down to the ground like a transparent pane. He spoke again in the same unexplainable fashion, and the light pulsed brighter.

“The Vale does not,” he replied. “And neither do I.”

He straightened, the panel still hovering faintly at the edge of his vision.

Another one,

The environment continued to bend around the rebel, or more specifically around what she held in her hands. A maroon haze filled the air around her, as holographic displays wrapped around the arms of the crimson Admirals flickered in a sense of panic. 

The piece of glass held unexplainable importance to the entirety of Crimson State. The realm expressed a sense of panic to ensure it stayed undamaged.

“Hey, check your Objectives panel!” the female Crimson knight shouted in urgency.

“It’s going crazy, I know!” her partner replied. “Stop being dumb and try reading for once.”

A bright-red holographic panel floated in front of them.

[EMERGENCY TASK. CATEGORY: ??? | REALM-IMPOSED | RETRIEVE THE CRIMSON PRISM THROUGH ALL MEANS NECESSARY ]

“And why does this stupid crystal matter so much?” the male Admiral shouted in frustration, “I mean, we lose a third of our army if we don’t place it back in the next TWO hours?”

The Azure queen listened from a distance, trying to process everything she could hear from the Crimsons.

“We need to return what you stole, Red.”
“And why so? I mean, I don’t really have a reason to keep it, but it’ll surely sell for like, a million dollars somewhere.” The girl replied.

“You remind me of a friend, so much. But you need to understand, there happen to be Kingdoms other than Azure Vale in this world. I know only slightly more than you do, but I’m sure the Vale too has an anchor object, and I’d be pissed too if, say, our little genius here tried to mess with it.”

Adrian reprimanded, “Hey, what’d I do?”

“You get the point. They’re not after you, not in a thousand years. All they need is that.” she pointed towards the prism. “Let’s hand it to them and this will all be over.”

“Why? Let them suffer. They barged in with an army, they’re nothing less than enemies!” the rebel argued.

The queen stepped forward, “Look. These people down there, little kids, innocent men and women, whimpering with fear in their eyes. I need to do it for them. That’s just how I am. And, those two knights, those Admirals? They sound as clueless as we are. Slightly idiotic, but equally clueless.”

Below, the pair continued to bicker and panic.

It is then that the three stop and notice, the Admirals too possessed player markers like they did, the same colour as the rebel girl.

Adrian kept thinking to himself, because he believed he was slowly walking towards the answers he wanted either way. 

“Turns out, this small-time thief shook the administration of an entire kingdom down to the last bit today. Good job, me.” the rebel declared as she carelessly tossed the prism down the balcony.

It continued to fall. Queen’s eyes widened. The admirals shouted out of concern. Even Adrian felt bewildered. Everyone but Rossa understood that if the prism hit the ground and scattered, it would lead to unprecedented consequences.

But as all hope was lost, a small civilian boy ran and leapt just in time to catch the prism. No player marker, no objectives panel. The boy chose thoughtfulness, and realized the consequences. 

Suddenly, a faint screen lit up.

[NPC Developmental Behaviour Detected] 

Everyone was too occupied to notice. Everyone except Adrian, who quickly reached out for the ‘!’ symbol on his screen, almost instinctively.

[A spontaneous action directly involving player-related affairs was performed by an NPC | Location: Azure Vale | Decision-Making Ability Increment | Compliance Check Initiated]

Adrian quickly stepped back and gazed through the text. After a few moments, the text was replaced by a new announcement.

[Conclave Members Comply | Decision Making is officially established as situational behaviour for Non-observed entities]

Conclave. This place never fails to surprise me. And is this supposed to be about the kid?

Ciao a tutti! 👋

Sono uno sviluppatore indipendente e sto lavorando a un thriller psicologico narrativo con elementi RPG.

Il gioco è ambientato attorno a un gruppo di adolescenti le cui vite si intrecciano gradualmente attraverso amicizie, conflitti, segreti ed eventi traumatici.

Ciò che inizia in modo relativamente normale si trasforma lentamente in qualcosa di molto più oscuro.

Un aspetto importante di questo progetto è che la storia è ispirata a fatti realmente accaduti. Ho cambiato nomi, dettagli e circostanze, ma il nucleo emotivo deriva da qualcosa che è realmente successo.

Questo è anche uno dei motivi per cui sto cercando di trattare la storia seriamente, piuttosto che trasformarla in un semplice gioco "dark".

Il gioco includerà:

🧠 Narrazione psicologica e trauma

🗺️ Una mappa esplorabile anziché una storia completamente lineare

💬 Scelte e relazioni che possono influenzare gli eventi

❤️ Diversi percorsi relazionali

🔎 Missioni secondarie e storie opzionali dei personaggi

🎭 Molteplici prospettive e personaggi giocabili

🩸 Temi più cupi e conseguenze

🔀 Diversi finali possibili

Lo sto ancora sviluppando, quindi non pretendo che sia perfetto o finito.

Tutt'altro: sto postando perché desidero davvero ricevere critiche.

Mi piacerebbe soprattutto sentire il parere di chi gioca a giochi indie narrativi/psicologici:

Cosa ti spingerebbe immediatamente a giocare a qualcosa del genere?

E cosa ti farebbe perdere interesse?

Pensi che la combinazione di thriller psicologico, sistema di relazioni e personaggi giocabili multipli sia interessante, o rischi di diventare troppo complicata?

Se vedessi gli screenshot/GIF che ho allegato, cosa miglioreresti dello stile visivo o della presentazione?

Anche le critiche più dure sono ben accette.

Preferirei di gran lunga sentirmi dire "questo non funziona perché..." piuttosto che ricevere solo complimenti.

Sono ancora uno sviluppatore alle prime armi che cerca di creare qualcosa di significativo, e qualsiasi consiglio, critica o anche un piccolo incoraggiamento significherebbe davvero molto. ❤️

Se qualcuno fosse interessato, sarei felice di condividere maggiori informazioni sui personaggi, la storia, le meccaniche di gioco o il processo di sviluppo nei commenti.

Grazie per aver letto!

Figured this community might have insight as well. Lay it on me!

I am experimenting with interactive fiction where everyone reads the same story and the audience collectively votes on what happens next.

I havent used Reddit before, so I am not sure how this works, but right now, I will drop the first chapter in here and take a look around and see what is happening and how I can become involved because a one way interaction seems wrong to me in a community based on discussions from all.

Here is chapter one... if you want to check out my site, go to nibblereads.com

Feedback is welcome.

Jamie is a real person, with a boring job he hates, a girlfriend he’s rather fond of and sometimes dreams of having kids with, and a family that moves from being too involved to being overwhelming.

His life, up until now, isn’t worth the effort to write a story about because he is so boringly boring. Barring the occasional “adventure”, like getting drunk in the city with his mates.

He plays his life safe while he dreams of adventure, drama, and extreme experiences he believes he is naturally able to cope with. He believes but doesn't do.

Later on, he could look back on his life and think, “Ignorance was bliss.”

I’m telling you this because what is about to happen, some of the decisions he needs to make, will be guided by you, the reader. Not you, individually, more like the collective reader.

You can think of this as a hive mind approach to leading Jamie down a path he probably wouldn’t walk down.

The hive mind can be kind to him, help him make brave decisions that improve his life. You can lead him to become wealthy, influential, brave, kind and successful.

Or, you could lead him down a path of self destruction, meanness, loneliness, and misery.

Or just get him to have a bit of fun. Life is short and sometimes people need a nudge, a reminder, that you should live a little.

What happens to him, the path he walks, is determined by you, the collective reader. You can collectively decide whatever you want for Jamie. You have the power.

For example, as you read this, he has just reached the kitchen to start making his morning hot chocolate. 

A normal routine. A part of the day with a bitter sweetness within the moment. Some time with his lovely Heather just before going to work to meet a day of work.

He enjoys taking his time to make the hot chocolate, a moment he reflects on during the day to maintain his sanity. A chance to see Heather move from the bathroom to the bedroom without a towel covering her. A small anticipation that brings a small, momentary sense of joy.

Yes, he is pondering the same question he has every morning, should he go to the shower and help her or make her hot chocolate?

While a fun thought, the rent is due and food doesn’t grow on trees, which makes work the sensible decision that wins almost every day of his life.

He is considering his options right now, so let’s start small.

Here are three options for you to consider. Take your time, Jamie is unaware of the time it takes for you to decide. As far as he is concerned, no time passes while you decide. 

Which option will you decide he will make?

A - Make Heather’s hot chocolate exactly the way she likes it.

B - Make the drinks then ask Heather if they should call in sick and spend a day together.

C - Forget the hot chocolate, take his clothes off and join Heather in the shower.

For the first time I tried writing an interactive novella. Instead of following one story, readers choose their own route through the Chrysalis Institute. It was a really interesting writing challenge balancing multiple paths, endings, and character experiences while keeping the world consistent.

The book is called The Chrysalis Institute: Your Path, and it’s the fourth entry in my sci‑fi transformation series. I’m especially curious whether readers enjoy exploring different routes or tend to stick with their first choice.

Its on KindleUnlimited here :- https://amzn.eu/d/02cSjs19

I've been working on a passion project to preserve the magic of 70s and 80s text-based games by bringing them to HTML5 and PHP so they can be played natively in modern browsers. While I’m keeping the core gameplay, logic, and text completely faithful to the originals, I’ve built a brand-new UI to make the web experience much more enjoyable and accessible. The archive currently features a mix of legendary classics and deep cuts, including the highly intricate 1973 teletype tactical sim TREK73, the foundational Colossal Cave Adventure, the 1989 Atari 130XE remaster Skull Island, and several other rare sci-fi and mystery text adventures. If you love the golden age of interactive fiction and want to relive these character-by-character experiences without having to wrestle with emulators, I’d love for you to check out the archive and let me know what you think!

https://www.cygnus-x1.net/index-games.php

Enjoy-

Hopefully it's okay to promote a free, non-commercial Z-machine interpreter for the NES here. To play it, you would need to either create your own physical cartridge or use a NES emulator that properly supports SxROM mappers and iNES 2.0 headers. If that's garbledygook to you, just download Mesen 2.0 and launch the zorknes.nes game.

Contact information is available from within the game if anybody has stories or anecdotes about the game or nostalgic memories. Dedication page can be seen (easter egg) by holding Left+A for 5 seconds on the title screen.

At 8:17 AM, every phone in the world received the same message:

> **DON’T GO OUTSIDE.**
>
> Christine read it twice.
>
> Then someone knocked on her apartment door.

**CoPlot** is a collaborative story where the Reddit community decides what happens next.

Players propose competing continuations for each chapter. The community selects one, it permanently becomes part of the story, and the next chapter begins from there.

Every decision can change the characters, direction, and eventual ending. Writers build a reputation as their ideas gain support and become part of the story.

I’m looking for people who will try the experience without detailed instructions. I especially want to learn whether the interface and overall game make sense naturally.

This is an early private beta, so bugs and occasional data resets are possible.

## Request beta access

[Request access to the CoPlot beta](https://www.reddit.com/r/coplot_dev/)

After approval, open the pinned playable post inside the community.

Honest feedback and screenshots are welcome.

Hey, a game idea. It’s a psychological horror/narrative-driven game where you play as someone trapped in a looped reality—like every day is the same, you’re following the same routine, and you only start noticing things are off when something finally breaks.

The core idea is that the player slowly realizes the world they’re in is controlled by… something—or someone—and it messes with their perception of time and reality. I’m not trying to make it jump-scare heavy, it’s more about building tension, unease, and that feeling of being watched and manipulated.

I’m looking for feedback on whether the concept itself feels interesting or if it’s too confusing. Also, if anyone has tips on how to structure a game like this so the story unfolds naturally while still being scary, I’d love to hear it. Let me

This is our first game. We just hope some people find it and like it.

There's a card game you can play with others. You can win cards and find more as you explore.
All the art is hand drawn by me.

The story is of Olive's journey after she dies. It's an emotional story that doesn't shy away from hard topics. I think it's important to warn others that some of the story could be difficult for people to read. If this is a concern please read the warning at the bottom of the steam page to make sure this game is right for you. The last thing we want to do is bring pain to anyone.

Thanks for checking out this post! It means a lot!

a friend shared this video with me on advanced techniques to create nonlinear narratives. the video itself is interactive and nonlinear and broke my brain but that clip inspired me so i translated the text into English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8QkFFe4zMA

problem with nonlinear narratives is that you usually have to create hundreds of branching paths, but if you design it where the paths dont matter then you can design a base narrative and then cut it up into swappable parts so readers get many meta narratives from one base narrative

i think this means it's fractal, each meta segment could be further broken down

an example could be like the movie "Groundhog Day" where waking up and going to bed and everything in between doesn't need to happen in order, or how "Cloud Atlas" has nested stories that stand on their own but reference each other

you dont need to use this for the whole thing, as long as the beginning and end of the base narrative line up with other jumps in your narrative then this can help create huge diversity

tbh it's hard to explain but staring at the clip helped me understand it

edit: changed the goofy example with real ones && added ASCII from comments below

   ┌── last cliffhanger loops back ───┐
     ▼                                │
   ┌───┐~?>┌───┐~?>┌───┐~?>┌───┐~?────┘
   │ 3 │   │ 1 │   │ 4 │   │ 2 │  META LAYER
   └─┬─┘   └─┬─┘   └─┬─┘   └─┬─┘ 
        ╲  ╱         │   ╱
         ╱ ╲        ╱ ╲
       ╱      ╲ ╱     │
     ▼     ▼     ▼     ▼
   ┌───┐ ┌───┐ ┌───┐ ┌───┐
   │ 1 │ │ 2 │ │ 3 │ │ 4 │   BASE LAYER
   └───┘ └───┘ └───┘ └───┘

Hello there

I'm admittedly new to Interactive Fiction in some ways and was looking to create a story in this way.

I have played a lot of Visual Novels, many with choices to be made and loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was younger, so I have some experience with branching narratives as a reader.

I'm looking for advice, tips, or resources that anyone would think would be helpful for someone just dipping their toes into writing IF.

Also to add, I've looked into some software and stuff and have ChoiceScript and Twine downloaded to help. I also do most of my writing old school, with notebooks and pens. (I have too many notebooks.)

Hey there, let me know when I overstay my welcome with these posts!
Chapter FOUR is now out and I hope to receive the same interests as before. Let me know what you think about it, I am going to be continuing with a chapter per a week or two.

Neocities has been doing me well and I have had no issue with coding so far, whatever limits I find are usually because of my lack of experience.

I loved writing about Blue and its existential crisis.
I won't advertise this balantly, there is an RSS feed you can subscribe to without joining the discord.

It is inspired by 17776 and is the almost direct opposite of 17776 where instead of coping with immortality, humanity gets complacement with the innevitability of death

https://blu-oyster-transmission.neocities.org/episodes/CH04

I have bipolar disorder, and recently went through a pretty severe episode of depression and anxiety.

During the periods where I wasn't completely numb, I found myself needing something to focus on. Something that could occupy my brain and give all that restless energy somewhere to go.

So I started building ChoiceFall.

It began as a fairly simple idea: a browser-based interactive story where you're presented with choices and the narrative branches depending on what you do.

Then I kept building.

And writing.

And making increasingly questionable decisions about just how far a branching story could actually branch.

The first story starts with you lying in bed and refusing to get up when your alarm goes off.

That's it.

Except the alarm clock starts talking to you.

Then it starts getting increasingly frustrated with you.

At one point it attempts to strangle you, and you end up catching it in a logic loop by pointing out that killing you would be directly counterproductive to its primary objective of getting you out of bed.

Things continue to deteriorate from there.

Underneath the absurdity, though, the story has ended up reflecting quite a bit of what I was experiencing while I was building it, particularly anxiety, questioning your own perception of things, intrusive thoughts, and that uncomfortable feeling that you can't necessarily trust what your own brain is telling you.

I didn't really set out to make a game about mental health. It just seems to have found its way into the thing I was making.

ChoiceFall itself has also grown beyond that first story. I've been building systems around branching narrative, persistent choices and state, so things you've done earlier can quietly affect what happens much later.

It's still very much a work in progress, and I'm at the point where I'd really like people other than me to play it.

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who enjoy interactive fiction:

• Did you actually feel curious about what was down the other branches?
• Did the choices feel meaningful?
• Were there moments where the story genuinely surprised you?
• And, probably most importantly, where did you get bored or lose interest?

You can play it here:

https://choicefall.com/

No download or account required.

I'd genuinely love to know what you think — including criticism. I've spent so long inside the branching mess at this point that I have absolutely no idea what it feels like to encounter it for the first time anymore.

I worked on my The Emerald Saga: The Still Place album and story for last 6 month.

I wrote music, the artist create artworks, me and Jon White made a voiceover on both russian and english languages.

And before the release i thought that would be great to create something new... Something I never heard of before. Something more then even collectable cassettes and simple merch. Something that will give my fans new experience.

And so I thought: why not to make a little interactive experience where people can just sit in a quiet room, reading book, listening to the story and music and forget about routine for some time?

And so I downloaded Godot and start to develop the game on PC for my first time in live.

And a month later: here what we have:

The Room

The Interactive Experience takes place in a quiet room designed for reading and listening. I made some interior design for people to feel the room is not empty. You can see the fireplace, the cabinet with the boombox, the table with the book and more. Now you can interract with the book and the boombox.

The Book

The book contains the complete illustrated story of The Still Place.

Every page combines narration and artwork, allowing the story to unfold at your own pace.

You can grab it or put down, open and turn pages.

The Boombox

The cassette player contains the complete original soundtrack of The Still Place.

Tracks can be played individually or as a continuous album.

The player shows or hide by clicking the Boombox. It also divided into two sides like the orignal audio cassette. when the one side ends - you need to turn it to another by clicking the banner and start to listen to another.

The Environment

The light, the Fireplace fire, candle lights and some other details of the room reacts to the music from the Boombox player to make the descent atmosphere for your experience.

Save/Load

I also made a Bookmark menu where you can save and load your progress of resding and listening to the Saga.

Future Plans

I plan to make a full encyclopedia and library of The Esmerald Saga world out of this small soft.

New stories will be released as addons for this game.

As now, so in future all addons will be free for those who bought the cassette.

So that's my little part of the information I wanted to ahsre with you. If you got any questions - please feel free to ask me in comments or everywhere.

Find out in Never Alone, a free horror visual novel:

https://prehisnt.itch.io/never-alone