Josh Grams's IFComp 2026

Uninteractive Fiction 3: The Ununinteractiving

Right, so… I guess this is a group game. You’re in a cave. There’s a button to play a drum. And then you wait 60 seconds before you can play again.

And gradually graaaaaduaaaally a story plays out

over about 400 turns, I think? Except that everybody who plays (on the same URL, at least?) get the same turn counter.

So… that’s like 6 hours and 40 minutes if you’re playing by yourself, but if you can get some friends… it repeats the same message a lot so it seems like it’s built for maybe six or eight people?

Ooooorrrr… if you cheat and open multiple browser windows… let’s say you do like I did and tile three virtual workspaces in quarters with a total of twelve browser windows, that’s only 400/12 = 33.333 minutes but… if you play the drum more than about once a second you get a *pop* instead of a drumbeat and the counter doesn’t go up, so you’re going to play it a little safe… let’s say it’s going to take you an hour until the pile of cookies tears a hole in the fabric of reality and reveals the man behind the curtain (Damon L. Wakes) who is startled to be discovered and resets time.

Edit: and the little red number at the top is how many times the game has been played through.

But I think we can all agree that this is way too much interactivity.

Edit edit: also the gorilla was a nice touch.

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