I’ve wanted to try writing interactive fiction for a while, but coding always got in the way. AI tools finally made it possible for me to experiment, so I built a short piece called Your Dearest:
It’s a meditative, philosophical IF about grief, memory, attachment, and continuing bonds with someone after they’re gone. Tonally, it’s closer to Creatures Such as We than a conventional adventure.
Some of my favorite IFs are Choice of Robots and Choice of the Dragon, and I’ve always loved the intimacy of a story remembering what you tell it. That’s something I wanted to play with here.
There are different paths, replay elements, and a hidden ending. I’d really love to know how people experience the personalisation and choices.
Content note: death and grief. I’d recommend not choosing your child as your “dearest.”
I like the visual design of it. The interface was clean and usable. Some of the text could have used a bit more contrast but that’s a minor thing.
I wanted to start off with something positive because I don’t really have much positive to say about the content. It front-loads a lot of information and then it doesn’t feel like it actually does anything with it, except for a sort of mad libs substitution, I guess.
I didn’t feel like I actually made any meaningful decisions.
It asks about the ashes, and then it seems like it goes wrong no matter what you picked. The therapist never does anything remotely helpful; this felt realistic to me given my general disdain for psychotherapists but it didn’t do anything game-wise. And then at the end it asks if I wanted to change anything and then says “well you can’t” and ends.
Maybe I would get more out of it if I played through it again, but I’m not interested in doing that.