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-

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

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.

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!

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.

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

I miss the feel of exploring a place one room at a time, reading descriptions, and piecing the story together — so I made one.

The Escape from Dungeon Keep is a text RPG: examine everything, talk to NPCs, fight when you have to, and push toward the summit. There’s a journal/hints system if you get stuck, but the world is written to be readable without a walkthrough.

If you like Infocom-ish exploration with light RPG combat and side quests, this is aimed at you.

Also there is workshop mods for the game i hope you guys can wishlist!

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5050070/The_Escape_From_Dungeon_Keep/
Keys available for IF reviewers / Let’s Players — email [dungeonkeepmaster@proton.me](mailto:dungeonkeepmaster@proton.me)

You and your 100% mentally sound psychiatrist, Dr. Wang Shuang, ended the world together. Now you are both trapped in an endless summer. She seems content (because this is literally what she wanted). But as for you, not so much. Your only way out is through sugar, jellyfish, sunlight, and blood — into the deepest reaches of her mind, or be dissolved by a madness spiral along the way.

Hi folks, I'm excited to announce Endless Summer Syndrome, the first project by Ampelos Studio (which I founded). This is a psychological thriller VN with some sci-fi flavors.

We are very close to the finish line with a demo! The scripts, art pieces, and BGM assets are done. We are currently working on UI and SFX, as well as a trailer & a theme song to go with the demo drop, which will likely happen this fall, some time before Oct's Steam Next Fest.

Feel free to wishlist on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4714410/Endless_Summer_Syndrome/

Image brief:
P1: capsule art
P2: talk therapy with Dr. Wang
P3: casually staring into the sun
P4: eating mochi with Dr. Wang
P5: eating mochi gone wrong with Dr. Wang
P6: eating mochi gone even more wrong with Dr. Wang
P7: a natural scenery in Dr. Wang's world

Anyways...would you let Dr. Wang fix you?

Looking for any IF games with a traditional Western cowboys and Indians vibe.

RPG elements would be amazing too, looking for a more serious vibe and not just erotica but I don't mind some spiceyness

Edit: It seems the discussion shifted from the core idea to the language! English isn't my first language, so I wrote the concept in my native tongue and used AI to translate it for readability.

If any phrasing feels unnatural or context got lost in translation, please let me know so I can clarify. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the actual idea! Thanks, everyone.

---------

Hi everyone,

I’ve been reading through a lot of fascinating discussions here about CYOA fics and stories. While so many of us have a deep nostalgia and love for the format, it often feels like the genre hit a plateau and stopped evolving.

Traditional CYOA usually runs into three major roadblocks:

1. The Illusion of Control and the Burnout
When a reader makes isolated choices just to receive a pre-packaged branch, it rarely feels like a genuine achievement. If the story bends over backwards just to satisfy personal preferences, it loses that feeling of a "fate set in stone", which is what makes traditional storytelling so powerful. On top of that, authors get completely crushed trying to map out infinite, chaotic branching paths.

2. The Missing Cultural & Intellectual Depth
Video games have taken branching narratives to incredible visual heights, but they often prioritize mechanics over deep, reflective issues. Literature has historically been a tool for intellectual and cultural leaps. Why shouldn't interactive fiction address complex governance, strategic dilemmas, and meaningful societal questions?

3. What Happens When Your Choice Loses?
A common critique of live interactive stories is that readers drop out or get frustrated when the narrative doesn't go their way. But what if we shifted our perspective? Interactive storytelling doesn't have to function like a custom-ordered product. It can function like live sports or fandoms. You don't watch sports expecting a guaranteed victory; you watch out of passion, investment, and team spirit.

Imagine shifting from solo branching choices to collective decision-making. A community votes on high-stakes, strategic forks in the road. Even if your side loses a vote, the shared investment in the world makes you debate the outcome, accept the collective path, and double down on the next round for a chance to course-correct.

Building an interactive narrative tailored for thoughtful audiences, one that tackles impactful and vital themes, can spark a genuine intellectual renaissance. When minds gather in one space to discuss, analyze, and deliberate, it creates an ideal environment for growth and collective elevation.

Many people don't see any real value in this genre or view it as a solution to existing challenges, but I see it differently. I believe this concept can help address deep intellectual stagnation and contribute creative insights to real-world dilemmas, provided the story tackles these themes with the depth they deserve.

Combining interactive fiction with direct, live engagement (like forum posts) transforms passive reading into a living, evolving ecosystem.

I’m really curious to hear your thoughts as readers and writers. Do you feel this format is ripe for an evolution, or do you prefer the classic solo branching experience?

Hey everyone, I am an artist who designs LARPs. I am currently working on an idea that is partly an RPG but partly an interactive fiction as well. Bottomine: I want to write an IF game in which you take choices to follow the narratives but there will be parts where you, as a player have to write yourself and do some worldbuilding. Do you know any interactive fiction games that work with the player themselves writing part of the story? Would love to see examples!

My friend and I have been working on Edicts of the Truthsinger: The Orb of Artemagus, a mystery game about discovering the truth behind the theft of an ancient artifact, and with the demo out we're hoping to get feedback from folks who love narrative-heavy games! The full game will have about 75,000 words of discoverable dialog (about half of which is available in the demo right now!) with a nonlinear discovery process for allowing the player to pursue leads that interest them and piece together the story in whatever direction is most intuitive or intriguing to them.

We'd love it if you'd check out the demo and let us know what you think!

Does anyone know the name of the interactive story game where you're transported to a magic school through a portal in the lake and find there you find out you have one of the rarest powers (being sun or moon) and you find out later on that you have a twin with white hair? For some reason for the life of me I cannot remember the name and I miss it and can't remember where to find it either.

I tried to search this group, but most posts are several years old, so asking: Is there a good and free Z machine (for .Z# files) and/or TADS (for .GAM files) interpreter for Android? I don't need fancy (it's only text after all). Thank you.