Let me guess: you had a BrailleNote Apex.
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Hiya, tis be Ordon. (ordonsop is my full legal name. I’m also royalty, but don’t get shaky, it’s chill)
Been playing IFs on itch for a few years now, keeping an eye on the IF community, finally decided to dip my tippy toes.
I like short IFs, fun IFs (prefer wholesome kinda funny), cool IFs, original, handmade art is what I love and visuals/“aesthetics” are the things I consider the most when playing something. Doesn’t mean images, just. If it’s pure text, then the text should look good.
My favourite IF is Bogeyman by Elizabeth Smyth. It appeals to me on a personal level. That’s also another thing, I mostly judge based off of vibes. Kid PCs, childhood adventures, yes please.
I’m now gonna say something really funny so you get a good first impression of me… ready?
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Hello everyone. I hope you’re all doing okay.
My name is Alyssia, pronouns she/her. I joined the forum at the beginning of this month and have been loving it, and have also been enjoying posting all the random thoughts in my head to people who also enjoy IF. In terms of game preferences I am not good at puzzles unfortunately, and I don’t exactly love forgetting to save and restarting again so I tend to play newer works that are more story based. I have a favourite games list on the IFDB. Here is the link if anyone is at all interested: My favourite games of all time - Recommended List
Outside of IF, I sing. I have been part of many choirs, chamber choirs, music groups and for a couple times briefly bands throughout my life. I’m also a big fan of musical theatre, reading books, journalling, arts and crafts but only the tactile stuff (sorry painters or sketching enthusiasts), stuff, gardening, dancing (I haven’t done lessons before and I’m not trained at all), listening to music, playing RPG games and trying new food. I’m interested in science, history particularly Victorian history, psychology, child development although I’m not a parent or teacher, linguistics, mathematics and lots of random niche things. I used to study German so can speak it a little bit, my favourite food is cheese and I like a good cup of tea. I’m blind by the way.
I have really enjoyed hanging out here so far! Have a nice day everyone, and please don’t break the law!
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You discovered IF in the exact same way as me, including the fact that we started with The Dream Hold. I think we might have even been the same age, and if it was the braille note Apex, the same device. That’s insane, I’m also blind.
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Hey, I’m JR, still figuring out the lay of the land here. My day job is programming and I am lucky enough that my main hobby is ALSO programming.
I create sprawling…not quite ARGS? They focus more on reading comprehension (including code reading) than solving math or cipher puzzles. Pouring over lots and lots of text and realizing connections and new interpretations and new pages of the story and how they relate to old pages, and then realizing the source code is simply another layer of the story… I’ve made dozens and dozens of mostly text experiences over the years that change as you interact with them.
It feeds me.
My most recent game is something I call “MallSim”, which generates a procedural story of a bunch of cultists delving into an abandoned mall to try to become gods, and the horrors and wonders they can find within. The story itself is intentionally fairly repetitive with sharp bursts of unexpected interruptions. But the REAL game is what happens when you start digging into ways it can vary, how to control that variance and how to FIND that variance.
I have fun : )
I’m curious what other kinds of interactive fiction are out there. I’ve read visual novels like Slay the Princess (I consider this to be a master class in having the simplest possible interaction for the biggest bang) or Hatoful Boyfriend, and enjoy digging into lore heavy games like Inscryption and its layered puzzles.
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[performs secret handshake]
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this sounds really cool!! i’ll have to check it out. this is on your site in your bio right?
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Hello everyone,
I’m Yohan Dupuy, writing from France. I’ve been reading here for a little while, and the system just nudged me to introduce myself properly, so, hello.
My way into all this started early. I grew up buried in gamebooks, the “you are the hero” kind, Fighting Fantasy and its cousins, and I’ve been a tabletop roleplayer since my teens. Branching, choice-driven storytelling was more or less my native language long before I knew it had a name like “interactive fiction.” Later I spent years writing ordinary linear prose and kept running into the limits of the fixed page, so coming to IF felt less like a new hobby than like circling back to where I’d started. I work in Twine/SugarCube, and I’m currently finishing a psychological horror novel called “Maximilien”, an occult investigation in 1920s Boston where the narrator’s grip on reality (and the player’s) quietly comes apart. I’m hoping to enter it in IFComp this year.
One thing a few of you might relate to: I write in French first, and the English version is a real literary adaptation made with a translator, Lucia Desogus, not a literal pass (neither AI). I’ve started thinking of the two versions as siblings rather than original-and-copy.
Glad to be here, and looking forward to talking craft with you.
- Yohan
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Yupyup, though I have a few other sites too (that should be reachable if you dig into the main one). Warning that they tend to have horror or creepy themes, but that’s mostly ‘cuz I find the genre interesting for digging in psychologically. What IS identity, what is reality and what would it be like to know you’re in a story, you know?
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I think that’s really fun! So many creators (or readers!) think of translation as sort of… “this means that” and I think engaging with it intentionally is a really fun move. Neither version will be identical but there’s things you can do in each to make them their own.
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Hello. I have recently started to dabble in IF again after being away for decades. It’s great to see the continued interest in this genre. It is amazing to see the variety of games available and a lot of them for free.
I look forward to perusing these pages.
Cheers
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Those are exactly the questions that hooked me too, the “what would it be like to know you’re in a story” one especially. That’s the thread I keep pulling on: not horror as threat-from-outside, but horror as the floor of your own perception giving way. The moment a narrator (or a player) starts suspecting the frame itself is unreliable is, to me, far more unsettling than anything with teeth. I’d love to dig into the sites you mentioned, drop me whatever’s reachable from the main one whenever you feel like it.
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Yes, that’s it exactly. The “this means that” reflex is so strong that people forget a translator is constantly making choices, and those choices are authorship. With Maximilien there were images that simply land differently in English, so Lucia and I sometimes let the English version reach the same feeling by a different road rather than forcing a literal match. Treating it as a deliberate move instead of a compromise changed the whole project for me.
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Welcome back, Gage, there’s something nice about returning to a form after decades and finding it not just alive but thriving. The “lots of them for free” part is one of my favourite things about this community. Enjoy the perusing.
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Hello everyone,
I hope you are all well at the time of reading this.
Firstly, please feel free to shorten my name to Glou. I’ve been a lurker for around a year, browsing the sugarcube2 tags until now, thanks to a friend of mine gently nudging me to join in. I am a hobbyist artist and writer, and am currently using my developing skills to write my own IF on itch.io. While I would like to add the link or name here, I’d rather be cautious and wait to link it with the adult tag in the correct area later. There isn’t any sexual content, but some slight mentions of sensitive topics such as suicide in a few bad ends, and violence throughout the story.
I have two reasons why I agreed to join - 1. I would greatly appreciate feedback from IF players instead of from friends who I often fear are just stroking my ego, and 2. to finally be able to discuss and share recommendations with other IF readers. I currently read from itch.io and Choice of Games, and would be thrilled be introduced to more places I can access them from.
I apologise for the awkwardness of this introduction - it has been many years since I’ve joined a forum and wasn’t entirely certain what to say. Believe it or not, I am happy to have finally joined, even if this reads as a bit stiff.
I look forward to finally making some IF friends.
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Hello, everyone! I hope you’re all doing alright. I’m Valentina, 24 years old and I’m from Argentina.
When I was a kid I read a “choose your own adventure” book and I was beyond intrigued by the possibility of a story having multiple endings. A few years ago I got into gaming and found out about narrative-driven videogames such as Life is Strange and Until Dawn. I did some research on videogame and narrative design and started to develop my skills on Twine. I later joined Itch.io and since then I’ve played multiple IF and my curiosity and passion for this type of media have grown wider. This month I joined my first Game Jam in itch.io where I created my first IF game, although it’s short I had a lot of fun making it.
I hope to continue developing my skills and gaining more knowledge as well as sharing my projects and ideas with the community. Thanks a lot to the people who keep this forum up and running!
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Welcome! A great place to find IF is the Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB), which has lots of ways to search/browse games (by genre, by tags, by rating, etc.). It doesn’t host games itself, but the game pages almost always have links to where to play them.
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Thank you so much, I’ve now bookmarked the site!
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Oh whoops, didn’t see this til now. farragofiction.com (not sure if it’ll let me do links) is where you can see a lot of my work, though its intentionally a maze. If it censors the link, its the thing from my profile.
And you understand it completely, horror as realizing your own senses/perception of reality being suspect. 10/10
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Wait, isn’t there a minimum age limit for using this site? I thought all sites had those…
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