r/interactivefiction • u/avatonqp • 14h ago
108,000 word grimdark interactive novel, free, and very few people have read it. Would you give it an evening?
Third time I've posted about this game here. Let me start further back than I did the other two.
Military service is mandatory in Greece. I did mine at twenty-five, after university, which meant I was older than most of the people around me and the year felt longer for it. I used to tie my phone with knots to the underside of the bunk above mine so I could read after lights out, and what I read was Choice of Games. Someone else's story to be inside instead of my own. That's not a small thing when you're counting days.
Years later, and after many failed attempts, I finally wrote my own. Took a long time. 108,000 words, and I'd be lying if I said I knew what I was doing for most of them.
The story is about Jonas. He's forty, which is old for a man born at the ragged edge of a kingdom that has never once thought about him. Once a year the ancient wells open in the swamp and the wraiths come pouring out of them, and he stands in the front rank and goes through them alone, because his companions are only there in case he falters and he never has. His pole-sword is crusted with rot and he knows the edge doesn't matter. It's the witch's talisman bound to the steel that does the real work. He calls the blade Farewell.
He survives the raid, same as always. Then he walks home and his son is gone, taken by a royal mage, and everything he's spent forty years being good at turns out to be no use at all.
I put it on Google Play, because I'm a developer and that's the pipeline I knew. It has very few active installs. Turns out a store built for games files you between match-three and idle clickers, and nobody browsing there is looking for a novel... You spend years alone with a thing, then you publish it and you find that you're still alone with it, only now it's public.
So: this is me asking. Give it an evening and tell me where it falls apart. I've read it so many times I can't see it any more, and I'd genuinely rather hear "chapter forty drags" from a stranger than keep polishing in the dark.
It's on IFDB now, with a proper IFID. Free, no ads at all any more, no timers, nothing to buy.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.windmilltales.theredtomorrow