Hello everyone! I’d like to share Proximity, a short, quiet interactive romance set on a lunar station. It started as backstory I wrote for a character (Keiko), and I kept finding moments where I was hesitant choosing how she would act, which made me think: why not let the reader decide?
The UI is deliberately minimal, with just text and choices, running in any browser to keep it mobile-friendly. For transparency: AI assisted with coding. As English is not my native language, I also used AI to review my writing for grammar and flow.
As it’s my first IF, I’d appreciate feedback. Do the choices feel meaningful to you? Does the pacing work? Any impressions welcome.
Hello. I played the game. The pacing seemed slower than i expected and some of the choices felt like “continue” buttons, but overall the story developed smoothly.
Some of the prose felt it had seen a bit of AI and could be more concise. But generally, the writing is good.
The UI is good, although the text is rather too small on desktop browser. I had to zoom it.
I didn’t “open all the doors”, so i don’t know if there are other endings or alternate scenes. Presumably there are, which is good.
Just a note about the text size: increasing the size is not enough. The font is designed for dark on light and inherently too thin. You’ll need a heavier weighted font for light on dark.
There are moments upon clicking a link, that the text of the new passage scrolls to the bottom automatically and forces me to scroll back up to begin reading from the start. This is a major point of friction and, oddly, seems inconsistent.
I agree with both of the issues pointed out by @jkj_yuio: the text is too small on my screen, and some of the writing feels a bit “AI.” It’s pretty good otherwise, though.
Aside from the font size issues I like your UI. What did you use to develop it?
Thanks a lot for the constructive feedback! Really appreciate it!
I added an option to increase the font size (I experimented with some different fonts, too, but kept the original because I still think it fits the story best) and I should have fixed the scrolling issues reported by HAL9000. Version 1.03 has just been uploaded.
As for development: It’s a single HTML file with JavaScript. I keep the story in Obsidian and use Notepad++ for code. It’s pretty lightweight, I know, and probably wouldn’t scale for more complex IF.
Checked out your game again and the scrolling seems to be fixed. This is so much better! The font size toggle is a great addition too.
I like the subtle mix of font styles and colour changes. It adds texture to your prose. I wish more authors would take the time to do that. For me, it breaks up the monotony a huge wall of text can present, even when the story is moving in interesting ways. Great job!
