Hello everyone. Recently I have undertaken a project with some of my friends who are passionate about writing to create a piece of Interactive Fiction. However, different from Parser IF or some Choice IF, I am seeking to minimize the “game” aspect and treat it more like a piece of literature. For example, the choices should not be verb phrases like “open chest” but rather complete sentences that will be connected with the upcoming text. The project is currently at the planning stage, the platform will probably be ink because ink is simpler for my friends who have never written IF before to learn. But the story’s structure and the use of choices is still unclear to me. Therefore, I’m needing recommendations of similarly-styled games to take inspiration from, especially games in which choices contribute greatly to the story-telling. Any other suggestions or tips would also be greatly appreciated.
I’ve been replaying Stay? by ejadelomax recently which is written in this way. It’s also in Ink and choices are incorporated into the text. Most are dialogue choices (a lot of the game is talking to people to further relationships and gather clues). As an example:
Mister Pent looks at you, solemn and serious. “Anything specific driving this request?”
“I’m worried about a friend.”
He looks even more serious at that, leaning forward over his ale. “A friend I know?”You hesitate. “Suzette Higgins. She comes into the shop sometimes.”
“No, no. Can you tell me about the spell, though?”
The last two lines are choices you can pick from: whether to involve Mr Pent in the problem with Suzette or keep her name out of it. “I’m worried about a friend.” was also a line I chose, the other option was to say the request is out of academic curiosity and not a real-life concern at all.
There is no shortage of such games. Many of the games I’m aware of are Twine and often embed the links in the passages themselves. The first that springs to mind are most of Porpentine’s works, such as vesp. Another early example is my father’s long, long legs by Michael Lutz. As well, you should definitely check out Will Not Let Me Go by Stephen Granade and January by litrouke. (I’ve recommended this exact list to people before on this forum, haven’t I…)
Naarel’s body of work also is heavily poetic, with sentence links that move the story forward. Lastly (for now), if you check out the Neo-Twiny Jam, many of the games are short poetic bites, as 500 words does not allot standard IF stuff like puzzles.
Edit: I realize I misread some of this, you want games with meaningful choices, not just meaningful links. Most of the games I offered are linear, sorry! But for meaningful/“poetic” choices I’ll point you toward Revenant’s Lament and Something Blue, at least off the top of my head. If dialogue choices are welcome as meaningful I’ll also offer my own game, Andromeda Chained.
However, a better path I might point you to is most of Choice of Games works, as they’re more structurally similar to ink’s choices at the bottom rather than embeds. Creatures Such as We is one of the most poignant of these.
Yes, I’ve played Porpentine and long legs before, and several Choice of Games works. Porpentine’s storytelling is definitely powerful, however, I’m aiming for something more akin to traditional literature. This is also one of the reasons why I chose ink, because I feel it’s the most natural platform in imitating a traditional reading experience.
Creatures Such as We is one of the more story-focused CoG works, but like all CoG works, it still has a RPG influence, and the choices are phrased like you are, well, playing a game.
I’ve also played Stay which iaraya recommended, I loved it. It’s probably one of the best games written in ink excluding inkle’s official games. The issue is, it’s still structured like a game, even though I loved the multi-playthrough game design and exploration, it’s not completely a story. I’m trying to strike a delicate balance between choices being meaningful and the work being replayable without it being a game.
I will definitely check out the other works you recommended though, especially Will Not Let Me Go which I have on my to-play list. Thank you!
I’m confused by what you mean here, and your desire to avoid “being a game”. Can you provide a sample of the phrasing you’re thinking of? I will note that Will Not Let Me Go is one of the many linear works I suggested in the first half…
I’m assuming you’re referring to the phrasing of choices I mentioned. Please correct me if I’m wrong, as it has been a long time since I played a CoG game. But what I meant was the choices were mostly about what you, the player, wanted to do, it’s your actions, your thoughts, your words that matter. I think this is one of the characteristics of a game-like design, it’s player-centric. But in a work of interactive literature, you should not only be allowed to dictate over the main character’s actions, but over the whole story.(Of course, depending on the circumstances, the player may be very limited at times.)
Are you thinking of the interactive equivalent of an omniscient 3rd-person narrator, where the narrator “plays god” and determines what happens to the characters and world overall? I’m thinking of something like (simplified):
The little girl with a red hood talked to the wolf despite her mother’s warnings.
[choices]
- She then got eaten by the wolf.
- The wolf and her became best friends.
The end
That seems like a very narrow definition of game vs literature 
and I can’t think of anything like that off the top of my head.
You may be interested in The Ballroom by Liza Daly: The Ballroom
It is a brief story with details that you can change that affect the story structure as a whole.
Emily Short’s game Holography (which may be her least well known game) similarly builds up a fictional fairy tale one choice at a time:
(The https certificate has expired on the site it’s hosted on but it’s fine).
For parser games that strive to be literary and more like “continuing the story” while eschewing game-ness, My Angel, Laid Off at the Synesthesia Factory and Mirror and Queen all independently came up with the same idea (if the player makes a parser error, just continue the story along a “track”). I haven’t linked them as it doesn’t sound like what you’re interested in.
Just remembered I do have a game like that! Kitty and the Sea, that’s advertised as “a hypertext walking simulator about loneliness; a short story where nothing happens because the good days are past”. Can’t offer any special insights about making it however. Hope it helps anyway!
You dudes might want to see Detective Grimoire’s sentence mechanic. (I tried linking it but could not). It sounds eerily close to what @VanishingSky was referring to
complete sentences that will be connected with the upcoming text.
Side note:
I was recently playing its sequel; Tangle Tower and the sentence structuring really threw me off completely. I was not expecting it at all.
My lone work in choice-based literary IF ended in an irritating failure, but keeping the constructive part of criticism, I admit that 90% of the failure lies in the bad design of the first chapter, where I attempted a more choice-based approach instead of a literary, linear approach as the later chapters. (I still have in WIP the partial (and expanded, in two versions) rewriting of First Contact)
(minor peeve, seems that no one actually read the README, where I pointed clearly the double meaning of the title, because, was my first serious attempt at choice-based IF…)
lesson learned, stick with literary or choice-based non-parser narrative, I doubt that can mix well together, even taking in account that I’m relatively new to choice-based IF.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
Failure is the most important part of learning…hard to stomach but amazing to overcome…