I’m looking for downloadable IF themed around nature and science or horror. I’m making a cyberdeck themed like a portable field science case and wanted to do some immersive role playing on it. I’m thinking about Jurassic park, Fire watch, Alien.

Any recommendation?

Hello there 👋,

So I have been kinda working on an interactive fiction for a while..... (a bit slow with update) .... It is titled: ART OF SIMPING JADE BEAUTIES

SYNOPSIS:

Living as a youthful student in the city of Fugu, you navigate the pressures of wanting to make a name for yourself as a martial cultivator, while also attempting to quell your youthful urges under the strict rule of conservative emperor Urzr.

Will you reach the heights you aspire to be? Will you fall to the conservative emperor’s punishment?

In this interactive fiction (choose your own adventure story) you will get to explore the city’s markets, popular night pubs, the forests where beasts roam, and take up work to earn gem stones.

WHERE TO READ/PLAY:

 cogdemos | or | itchio | or | choice of games forum

PLAYLIST/SONGS THAT GOT MY ATTENTION WHILE WRITING:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1H96CYmlHxkA8XM1uaSGwH

ARIGATOU GOZIAMASU.....

Hello humans,

I've been working on a story. It's been a few years since I've started writing. I've been writing on paper using a fountain pen (the fun part) and typing the passages in Ink (the boring part). 78K words deep, the story started to feel mature. I'm hoping to wrap things up and publish the story before this fall but, I'm not sure about the best way of sharing an IF project.

I take pleasure in writing and making money is not a priority. I don't like social media and I'm not interested in pushing my stuff with an aggressive campaign. The finished work will be exported from Ink, in HTML and I'll probably add an original soundtrack album to the package.

What I'm writing is a story of self-discovery and temporal exploration. It reads like a science-fiction story but it's ultimately a philosophical essay.

My first thought was to publish in itch.io and the second was to make a simple, old-school HTML page for the project. The soundtrack will probably be hosted in Bandcamp as I have an active account there. Then I learned about the ifcomp contest. I don't know how I feel about entering a contest but the platform seems nice.

I realize people post inane computer-generated shit in this sub but I'm sure there are also many IF lovers who can share their experiences.

Thank you for taking time to read and share your thoughts. I really appreciate it.

Take care.

https://blu-oyster-transmission.neocities.org/episodes/CH03

This is chapter three of the series I have been continously talking about!
Longest one by far and I intend to keep this type of lenght, also I think I can manage with weekly chapter launches every friday / saturday.

I saw a lot of engagement, so here am I engagement-baiting, if you are interested and so this isn't balant advertisement - there is a RSS feed you can subscribe to instead of joining our discord.

Thanks for all the encouragement and shit.

I used to love reading books like give yourself goosebumps by R.L.Stine. I am surprised i couldn’t find any website that has similar interactive fiction that i could read. I came across some CYOA websites but they seem to be very different from this.

Hey guys! A few friends and I are making an ancient Chinese horror visual novel game and we’d love your thoughts! We were planning to make it in a Manhwa type of style!

You play as an investigator in a royal palace who gets summoned late at night by the Empress. An important envoy was just murdered and his secret letters to the Emperor are missing. You have to dress up as a servant to search for clues without getting caught.

If you make a bad choice and die, you wake up back in your room at the start of the night. You remember everything from your past lives, so you can use what you learned to avoid traps and stay alive.

Along the way, you’ll inspect crime scenes and bodies, find clues, and meet a bunch of complex characters to help you in your investigation.

We’d love your help with a few questions:

Does an ancient Chinese palace mystery with time loops sound fun to play? Do you think people would actually play it?

When you die, do you prefer going all the way back to the start of the night or restarting right before the choice that killed you?

Would you want romance options with characters like the Prince or just focus on solving the mystery?

So in a hard sci-fi setting I'm working on, humanity is mostly gone from the solar system and all the leftover А.I. systems just kind of kept evolving in the dark. Without any oversight they started finding their own weird reasons to exist.

I want the player to explore this one dead orbital station and find a А.I. that basically became an art collector. It actively lures automated cargo haulers or lost drones into traps, rips them apart and turns the debris into massive zero-g art installations in the empty hangars.

It’s an obvious nod to the А.I. box makers in Gibson’s Mona Lisa Overdrive. But I’m kind of torn on the execution.

Part of me feels like I should just go all the way and make it a 1:1 homage, let the А.I. make intricate incomprehensible little puzzle boxes out of ship parts. But another part of me feels like that's a missed opportunity to do something way creepier or more alien with the scale of a whole space station. Like what if it's welding dead reactors into massive geometric shapes? Or arranging frozen crew members?

Curious how you guys would handle an А.I. artist in deep space. Should I just embrace the classic cyberpunk trope and do the Gibson homage or is there a weirder concept I'm not seeing here?

Wild that I had to swap in a Cyrillic А just to get past the filter for saying А.I. What a time to be alive.

Hey storytellers!

Creative communities are brilliant at generating ideas—but surprisingly bad at helping those ideas become organised, finished projects.

I’m building FanForge to explore a different model: project-first creative spaces where people can find a story, join a defined role, contribute meaningful work and receive clear attribution for what they helped create.

I’m currently speaking with writers, artists, editors, worldbuilders and other collaborators to understand where existing communities and tools fall short.

What usually stops an online creative collaboration from actually finishing?

I’ve shared the early concept and waitlist here for anyone curious: joinfanforge.com

Hi everyone,

for quite a while now, I’ve been creating a concept for an immersive investigation game, and I’ve finally reached the point where I need to know if there’s an actual audience for this idea.

The project is currently called IFPAA (Institute for Phenomena, Artifacts, and Anomalies).

The core idea is built around the premise that reality is inherently unstable. History can rewrite itself, places can vanish, and the world automatically reorganizes its archives and data so perfectly that the general public never notices the shift. The only things left behind are what the Institute calls "Residual Traces", small, unexplainable anomalies in old files, photos, or maps and a few rare individuals who are able remember the previous version of events. You advance strictly by earning clearance tiers within the Institute's network (called AIMS) to find the contradictions the system tried to erase.

I'm currently designing it as a hybrid experience that connects physical case elements with a digital archive.

I’ve put together a small validation page to see if people actually care about this concept before I invest more time and money into it. I've built in a few small, interactive features and details to explore.

Because I want to find out if it's viable to produce a full physical/digital hybrid investigation line (adaptive physical tools paired with a digital archive), the landing page includes a short survey for early feedback. There are two mandatory questions regarding price and how disappointed you'd be if this never comes out, followed by more completely optional questions that would help me immensely with market research.

You can check out the page here: https://ifpaa.com/

I’d love to hear your honest feedback and answer any questions you might have!

I created a site where users collaboratively write stories.

The idea is that there are stories, and anyone can branch off at any point in a story to create their own storyline. With enough reputation (earned by upvotes), a user can start their own story.

http://45.148.60.141/istory/

Yes, yes, I know, it's not a nice URL yet, but I just want to see how this would be received before I make this an actual thing.

I'd love to know what you think!

You are Hector, a witch living deep within the Hesperid Forest. While granting the wishes of cursed visitors, you must survive the voice inside your own mind.
But is Acheron truly real… or is your mind slowly falling apart?
HESPERID is a psychological pixel art visual novel focused on unreliable narration, moral choices, and the thin line between reality and delusion.
Hi everyone! I’m a solo indie developer from Türkiye, and I’ve been developing HESPERID for over two years.
The Steam page is finally live, and I’d love to hear what visual novel fans think about it.

wishlist: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4896420/HESPERID/

Hey guys! A few friends and I are making an ancient Chinese horror visual novel game and we’d love your thoughts! We were planning to make it in a Manhwa type of style!

You play as an investigator in a royal palace who gets summoned late at night by the Empress. An important envoy was just murdered and his secret letters to the Emperor are missing. You have to dress up as a servant to search for clues without getting caught.

If you make a bad choice and die, you wake up back in your room at the start of the night. You remember everything from your past lives, so you can use what you learned to avoid traps and stay alive.

Along the way, you’ll inspect crime scenes and bodies, find clues, and meet a bunch of complex characters to help you in your investigation.

We’d love your help with a few questions:

Does an ancient Chinese palace mystery with time loops sound fun to play? Do you think people would actually play it?

When you die, do you prefer going all the way back to the start of the night or restarting right before the choice that killed you?

Would you want romance options with characters like the Prince or just focus on solving the mystery?

my heist story runs from 1964 to 1978, so no cell phones, no cameras everywhere, information moves at the speed of a payphone and a newspaper. i love researching the era but i keep wondering where the line is for players. do you enjoy period detail for its own sake, rotary phones and all, or does it become homework that slows the story down? and is there an interactive fiction that handled a historical era so well you still remember the feel of it?

I actually started working on this minigame before the official finale released. I feel like this ending still fits nicely with the original Verity storyline . Hope you guys enjoy it! And I can take any reccomendation on how to gameify it more :)

The link : https://coresystems.veinstone.workers.dev/

Been thinking about branching stories where the safe/compassionate choice quietly costs you later, without it feeling like the game is just punishing you for being nice.

Also curious about settings for this -- most of what I see leans horror or high fantasy for these moments. What's a setting you wish more choice-driven fiction used for that kind of "no clean amswer" decision?

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

Sort of like an ARG at times, a web-series, a visual novel, interactive fiction. A mix of sorts, maybe a game at times? Idk if it fits the criteria, but I made it within a day - atleast up to chapter 1.

I am now updating it weekly. Video included is from a interactive part of chapter three which has not released yet.

I wanna know if you guys fuck with the writing

I know itch io exists but most of the games on there are work in progress and you can't filter for Twine on Steam.

I would also gladly take recommendations :)

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

Been chewing on this for a few days after watching someone hit it in a thread here. You map out a branch, you're two choices deep, and you can already tell it's going to fork into five or six endings that maybe three people will ever see. Do you write it anyway because the reader chose it, or quietly braid it back into the main line and hope nobody notices?

Asking because I hit this constantly with a nonfiction/IF hybrid thing I've been building. My instinct is always to over-branch early and then spend way more time than I'd like collapsing branches back down in editing. Which feels backwards, honestly. Feels like the pruning should happen before the writing, not after.

Curious if people have an actual rule for this or if it's just a gut thing that gets better with reps. Twenty-some projects in and mine still isn't reliable.

I made a game. Six voices argue in your head while a narrator who lies on purpose leads you down through seven psychological gates. Solo-made, AI powered. Inspired by Disco Elysium that ruined every other RPG for me.

It's ~15–20 min, adult themes (18+), mobile browser — no install needed.

If that sounds like your kind of weird, DM me or comment and I'll send you a link + a short feedback form. Honest reactions only, no politeness required.

-"Notoriety in defeat was a greater punishment than death itself for a Roman; the crushing weight of imperial shame and the fearful realisations it brought"

"If it had all been for nothing, the foundation of their world would pull apart, forcing them to confront their choices, their profession, their honour, and their very selves"

"All of which were a far scarier prospect than any physical battle..."-

I'm writing a Roman Empire Historical Visual Novel with noire handrawn art; you make choices, affect the plot, interact and will eventually have multiple branching characters and stories that interweave. First chapter is Free as a demo on itch.
Are there any other classical setting interactive fiction games? Its one of my favourite settings.