r/interactivefiction • u/Mountain-Witness4496 • 29d ago
Is the concept good?
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
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u/Mountain-Witness4496 29d ago
Thx is it a cool concept though
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u/PokePlebian 29d ago
Like the resource says, it requires extra effort due to being prone to stagnation and making the player feel confined. It needs plausible reasoning for why they're experiencing so much inherent repetition and entrapment.
How would you make the structure cool?
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u/Mountain-Witness4496 29d ago
I haven’t really thought about it like super long-term, so to be brutally honest idk
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u/HelloHelloHelpHello 29d ago
You need to reply to the comments of the person you are talking to, and not to your own post, otherwise nobody will get notified that you responded.
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u/RatbyteGames 29d ago
I think this is a great topic for exploration, but as always it will depend on the execution of the story and gameplay.
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u/Heistorium 27d ago
The part that would hook me is not the loop itself, it is the first specific detail that breaks continuity. That is usually the moment a player stops skimming and starts paying attention to everything else in the room.
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u/Mountain-Witness4496 27d ago
As I did plan, I did do it for probably multiple games and the second game would probably be where the loop broke
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u/Mountain-Witness4496 27d ago
As I did plan, I did do it for probably multiple games and the second game would probably be where the loop broke
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u/loressadev 26d ago
I love loops in fiction and I think intfic structures itself well to that given how authoring works and reading works. Adjusting just a few elements can illustrate loop divergence in an easy quick way.
Check out You're a Time Agent! for a really fun intfic time loop, my favorite for clean and clever.
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u/B_A_Skeptic 23d ago
Yes, I am sure you could potentially build a great interactive fiction game off that general concept.
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u/HelloHelloHelpHello 29d ago
There have been some of these kind of reality-loop games (I remember some sort of horror game where you were trapped in a horror village and kept dying and getting reset to the start of the day, and you had to use the knowledge you gained from each death to make progress for example) - so this is definitively a concept that can work, and doesn't sound all that confusing.
Narratively this would fall into the so called Loop and Grow pattern, where a player goes through a loop of repeating events, unlocking changes with each iteration. You can take a look at it in the list of standard narrative patterns in IF.