Im actually very curious, since i love interactive fiction, are there novels where you can’t affect plot at all, but still can interact with individual elements, and what do you think about such IF in general?
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So what do you mean by ‘can interact with individual elements’? Because I can think of some IF that is completely non-interactive (just ‘click next link’) that’s pretty good:
https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=doc8ql4yqaadzxtw
But that one doesn’t let you interact with individual elements.
Yesterday I played the horror story Bogeyman where the author says that only the very last choice has any effect on the ending, but all the other choices affect the scenes that they’re in and sometimes a bit further:
Ooh, another one is Birdland:
You have a lot of choices, but each chapter only affects itself and not the overall plot.
Do any of those sound like what you’re talking about, or is it something else? I think this kind of thing is really interesting, so I’d be happy to help.
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Im asking cuz i work on a story myself, i am making it well, a hypertext fiction/web serial/idk how to describe, and like, I don’t plan to have a branching narrative or choices in general, but i still want to tell a story in spirit of IF, if it makes any sense
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There’s actually a jam for games like that right now:
It’s for games that have almost no choices (except for exactly one choice somewhere). It runs every year if you want to look at last year’s games for inspiration or try to make your game for it this year or next.
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Here are two hypertext novels that I know of!
Sophia de Augustine also writes a lot of kinetic pieces.
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Yeah, I think there are games like that which often work well in an IF context; I’m thinking of stuff like January, where you can choose the order you read the text vignettes in but there’s no responsiveness or narrative impact (and honestly I think it would have worked just as well for me without that element of choice).
I do think it’s helpful to have an answer for why a particular work is or should be presented as IF, but IMO there are a bunch of answers to that question and many of them don’t involve having a branching narrative or anything like that.
Edit: oh man I love Queenlash, always exciting to see someone bring that up!
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Arguably the 1986 game Portal (Rob Swigart) is the prototype of this sort of game/story. The course of the story is fixed; the only interactivity consists of discovering the next chapter.
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I haven’t played it yet, but definitely intend to eventually!
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I think this is one people like. I like it, for sure
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Ooooh loooks interesting
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You called it “kinetic IF” - I know there are “kinetic novels” which I understand is a term for Visual Novels without plot-branching, essentially stories that have media elements but are read linearly.
In IF the term some people use is “dynamic fiction” - it does stuff, but isn’t necessarily “interactive” in the way we usually classify it. It is a legitimate format. It kind of coincides with “ergodic literature” which in most cases is a physical/printed novel that you somehow interact with in some manner besides linear reading, such as House of Leaves or S.
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What comes to mind regarding the topic of this thread is exploring locations where some events took place or interview people who where involved in or witnessed some events. The story is about events that have already happened rather than events the player is part of, so the player can’t affect the story, but instead of being spoon fed a retelling of eventsin a coherent fashion as a static novel would, the player has to piece together the story from environmental clues and witness testimonies. Think crime scene investigation or investigative journalism,but where you just explore until you get board instead of their being an explicit goal of solving a crime or finding proof that the official story isn’t true.
Don’t know of any games that fit the build though.
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This is now called the “Obra Dinn” genre. It’s pretty hot right now; I’ve played several.
There’s generally some explicit goal, but it’s a thin skin over “figure out every person’s name, parentage, time of death, or whatever it is you’re filling out on the chart.”
EDIT-ADD: Every person or plant. Sometimes it’s plants.
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Out of curiosity, do you have any particular recommendations? I loved Return of the Obra Dinn and haven’t found anything quite like it. (I’ve also heard Case of the Golden Idol recommended.)
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I found Curse of the Golden Idol pretty fun - the DLC wasn’t as engaging as the main storyline IMO, and much like Obra Dinn it escalates its violence to a level I didn’t enjoy, but it did do a good job of keeping its focus on its characters over the course of the game, which was my major complaint about Obra Dinn.
Family is a good riff on the genre, with a British music scene theme rather than wall-to-wall murder; I think the developer has some other games in the subgenre but I haven’t played them myself.
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Interestingly enough, the first thing that came to my mind when talking about kinetic IF is Beat Witch. Certainly the most kinetic parser game I’ve ever played.
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So in terms of “can’t affect plot at all, but can interact with individual elements”: honestly a significant percentage of parsers are like that. Assuming you don’t get a You Died ending, many (the majority of?) parsers have one (1) canon ending, with interactable bits and bobs along the way (usually puzzles).
Some “dynamic”/“kinetic” parsers with (if I remember right) very few or no puzzles nor any branching, off the top of my head:
I suggest looking into dynamic fiction (as Hanon said). There’s a post by Emily Short about it.
Given you are writing hypertext fiction, I will back the recommendations to check out Birdland, January, and my father’s long long legs (I haven’t played the others). I will also recommend:
You might also check out the dynamic fiction tag on IFDB:
Oh also, since you said “web serial”, I think you should check out 17776 and 20020. I’m just gonna link you this directly.
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For the purposes of this question (the “kinetic novel/etc” category), puzzle actions are part of the plot by courtesy.
That is, “can’t affect the plot” really means every playthrough includes exactly the same events, including “I searched the room a few more times” and “I failed to open the lock because I didn’t have the key yet.” If you take action to solve a puzzle, you’ve affected the plot.
I realize this is different from the common notion of “game plot” as referring to significant story events. But that’s why this is a separate category.
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I believe kinetic / dynamic fiction could be the text equivalent of the thing some people refer to as “walking simulator” in other genres. You won’t get lost or stuck, you won’t need to draw a map or make notes, it’s vibe and prose. It’s the equivalent of many first person horror games like Layers of Fear that are a walk-through experience like a themed haunted house or an interactive museum; the bullet point in this variation is it’s ‘playful text’. The story is linear, but like an interactive museum you might push a button to see what happens, or read a plaque more closely, but none of that blocks or changes your path to the ending.
(Of course that doesn’t mean a thing is not kinetic nor dynamic if it does branch; there are hybrids and examples that aren’t just dynamic.)
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I differentiate most parsers from dynamic parsers in the second paragraph.
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