ChoiceFall: An interactive experience I developed while going through a depression and anxiety episode
I have bipolar disorder, and recently went through a pretty severe episode of depression and anxiety.
During the periods where I wasn't completely numb, I found myself needing something to focus on. Something that could occupy my brain and give all that restless energy somewhere to go.
So I started building ChoiceFall.
It began as a fairly simple idea: a browser-based interactive story where you're presented with choices and the narrative branches depending on what you do.
Then I kept building.
And writing.
And making increasingly questionable decisions about just how far a branching story could actually branch.
The first story starts with you lying in bed and refusing to get up when your alarm goes off.
That's it.
Except the alarm clock starts talking to you.
Then it starts getting increasingly frustrated with you.
At one point it attempts to strangle you, and you end up catching it in a logic loop by pointing out that killing you would be directly counterproductive to its primary objective of getting you out of bed.
Things continue to deteriorate from there.
Underneath the absurdity, though, the story has ended up reflecting quite a bit of what I was experiencing while I was building it, particularly anxiety, questioning your own perception of things, intrusive thoughts, and that uncomfortable feeling that you can't necessarily trust what your own brain is telling you.
I didn't really set out to make a game about mental health. It just seems to have found its way into the thing I was making.
ChoiceFall itself has also grown beyond that first story. I've been building systems around branching narrative, persistent choices and state, so things you've done earlier can quietly affect what happens much later.
It's still very much a work in progress, and I'm at the point where I'd really like people other than me to play it.
I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who enjoy interactive fiction:
- Did you actually feel curious about what was down the other branches?
- Did the choices feel meaningful?
- Were there moments where the story genuinely surprised you?
- And, probably most importantly, where did you get bored or lose interest?
You can play it here:
No download or account required.
I'd genuinely love to know what you think — including criticism. I've spent so long inside the branching mess at this point that I have absolutely no idea what it feels like to encounter it for the first time anymore.