Hi all,
I’ve been building a small hobby project called Footnote, a tool for writing interactive fiction that unfolds through real-world places, and I’m looking for a handful of people here to try it and tell me where the idea or authoring experience stops making sense.
The basic premise is that real world places are part of the story world. A player might visit somewhere, encounter something, make a choice, change the state of the story, then return later and find that the same place now means something different.
So rather than treating location as just a map marker, Footnote is trying to make movement and revisiting places part of the storytelling itself.
It’s still very early, and this definitely isn’t a launch or a polished commercial product. At this stage I’m mainly interested in questions like:
- Can someone who wasn’t involved in designing it work out how to make something?
- Do the concepts and terminology make sense?
- Where does the authoring flow become confusing?
- Does the underlying model feel useful for interactive storytelling?
- Does writing around real places create interesting possibilities, or mostly friction?
If you’re willing to help, I’d ask you to spend perhaps 30–60 minutes trying to make a very small story using a couple of public locations, then Playtest what you’ve made.
I’m deliberately trying not to give people a step-by-step tutorial beforehand, because I want to see what is understandable without me explaining the interface. There is optional in-product help and a tiny worked example if you get stuck.
There’s also a simple feedback tool built into the authoring interface, so you can leave comments against the page or bit of interface you’re looking at if something feels confusing or awkward.
You don’t need to use your own home or any private location. A park, café, landmark, town centre, or somewhere fictionalised around public places is absolutely fine.
It’s free, invite-only for the beta, there’s nothing to buy, and I’m not collecting people for a mailing list. I’m just trying to learn whether the thing I’ve made actually makes sense to people who understand interactive storytelling.
If anyone fancies giving it a go, reply here or send me a message and I’ll send you a single-use invite link and a very small authoring challenge.
Thanks!
